Jake Gyllenhaal is an Academy Award-nominated and BAFTA Award-winning American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at age eleven, and his career has seen performances in diverse roles. Gyllenhaal's first major film appearance was in 2001's cult hit Donnie Darko, in which he played a teenager troubled by psychological problems. In the 2004 blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, he portrayed a student caught in a cataclysmic global cooling event alongside Dennis Quaid. He then played against type as a frustrated Marine in Jarhead (2005) and, that same year, won critical acclaim as a "gay cowboy" in the controversial but highly lauded film, Brokeback Mountain. Gyllenhaal has taken an activist role in supporting various political and social causes. He appeared in Rock the Vote advertising, campaigned for the Democratic party in the 2004 election, and has promoted environmental causes and the American Civil Liberties Union.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1305: After a show trial, William Wallace, leader of the Scottish resistance against England during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was executed in Smithfield Market, London. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace)

1839: As it prepared for war against China's Qing Dynasty, an ensuing conflict that became known as the First Opium War, Britain captured the southeast Asia port of Hong Kong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War)

1927: After a controversial trial, and despite worldwide protests, Italian-born American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed via electrocution in Massachusetts for the charge of murder and theft. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti)

1939: World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a 10-year, mutual non-aggression treaty that was eventually broken when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union two years later. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact)

1989: Baltic Way: Approximately two million people joined their hands to form an over 600 km (373 mi) long human chain across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics during the Singing Revolution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

cheval de frise: (military) An obstacle made of wood with spikes, for use against attacking cavalry. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheval de frise)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. -- William Ernest Henley (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Ernest_Henley)