Let's toast ...

... this is the date in 1693 on which Dom Perignon is said to have invented champagne.

Shelley, Walter Pater, and Knut Hamsun were also born on this date.

Here is Pater's fasmous Conclusion to The Renaissance, with its suggestion that "To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."

Most important of all, though: The great Raoul Wallenberg was born on this date in 1912.