August 9 Illinois History Minute

This music is widely recognized as the first to be composed by a computer. The Illiac Suite for string quartet had its first performance on this day, April 9th in 1956, at the University of Illinois. It was composed on the U of I’s Illiac One computer, using a computer program created by Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson.

Gillian Anderson, who played Dana Sculley, the skeptical FBI agent on “The X-Files” was born on this day in 1968. Anderson was born in Chicago, and graduated from the Theatre School at Chicago’s DePaul University.