1783 John Heathcoat – British inventor of lace-making machinery
1846 Anna Swan – Canadian-born circus entertainer with P.T. Barnum's circus. Barnum claimed she was 8'1", but in reality she was only 7'6". She earned $1000 a month and schooling in exchange for her performances. In 1871 she married Kentucky giant Martin Bates. Their two children were abnormally large and died at birth
1876 Margaretha Geertruida Zelle – Exotic Dutch spy known as Mata Hari, who was accused of passing secrets to the Germans during World War I. She separated from her husband in 1905, and went to Paris, finding fame as a performer of exotic Indian-inspired dances. She soon began touring all over Europe, spinning a story of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient Indian dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning "eye of the dawn." In reality, she was born in a small town in northern Holland. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls from Russia to the US, largely because of her willingness to dance almost entirely naked in public. She was also a famous courtesan, and with the outbreak of World War I her catalogue of lovers began to include high-ranking French officers. In February 1917, French authorities arrested her for espionage. That July she was found guilty and sentenced to death, although the evidence against her was inconclusive. She was executed by a French firing squad in October
1885 Billie Burke – Comedienne and actress (The Wizard of Oz, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Father of the Bride, Topper)
1904 Ralph Johnson Bunche – US diplomat and Nobel prize winner for his efforts to bring peace to Palestine. A grandson of a slave, he became UN under-secretary from 1954 to 1967
1921 Warren Covington – Trombone player, who played with Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights
1926 Stan Freberg – Comedian (Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, The Old Payola Roll Blues, St. George and the Dragonet, John and Marcia) He was also the voice of Cecil in the Beany & Cecil cartoons
1928 James Randi – Canadian magician and illusionist known as The Amazing Randi. He’s a skeptic, exposing psychic and supernatural frauds
1932 Edward Hardwicke – British actor (Poirot: The Hollow, Love Actually, Colditz, Elizabeth, The Scarlet Letter, Shadowlands) His father was Sir Cedric Hardwicke. He appeared with John Thaw in The Sweeney episode Hearts and Minds. He also played Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the movie, Photographing Fairies. And of course, he gave one of the best portrayals of Dr. John H. Watson
1942 Garrison Keillor – Humorist, radio host (The Prairie Home Companion) and author (Radio Days)
1942 B.J. Thomas - Singer (Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, Hooked on a Feeling, Hey Won't You Play Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song)
1944 John Glover - Actor (Scrooged, The Chocolate War, South Beach, Batman and Robin)
1944 David Rasche - Actor (Sledge Hammer, Nurses, Barbarians at the Gate, Burn After Reading) He played Ben Landry in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Jealous Jokester
1952 Alexei Sayle – British comedian (The Young Ones, Whoops Apocalypse, The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball, Gorky Park, The Thief Lord)
1955 Wayne Knight - Actor (Seinfeld, JFK, Basic Instinct, Jurassic Park, Third Rock From the Sun, Space Jam)
1960 David Duchovny – Actor (The X-Files, Zoolander, Red Shoe Diaries, Kalifornia, Chaplin, Aquarius)
1961 Maggie Wheeler – Actress (The Parent Trap, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond)
1963 Harold Perrineau – Actor (Lost, Oz, Romeo + Juliet, The Unusuals, 28 Weeks Later)
1971 Sydney Penny – Actress (The Thorn Birds, Pale Rider, Largo Winch, All My Children)
1972 Karl Urban – New Zealand actor (Comanche Moon, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Xena: Warrior Princess, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Bourne Supremacy)
1975 Charlize Theron – South African-born actress (Monster, The Italian Job, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Cider House Rules, Mighty Joe Young)
1979 Eric Johnson – Canadian actor (Rookie Blue, Legends of the Fall, Flash Gordon, Smallville)
Died this Day
1657 Robert Blake – British naval commander who captured the Spanish treasure fleet off Santa Cruz
1931 Bix Beiderbecke, age 28 – Influential US jazz musician and composer who played coronet and piano. He died of a combination of alcoholism and pneumonia
1957 Oliver Hardy, age 65 – US comedian who was half of the vaudeville team with Stan Laurel. They also starred in numerous feature films (The Music Box, Babes in Toyland, Utopia)
2005 Peter Jennings – Canadian-born US news anchor with ABC TV. He died a week after his 67th birthday
On this Day
1711 The Ascot races became “Royal” with the attendance of Queen Anne at the horse races
1782 At his headquarters in Newburgh, New York, General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, created the "Badge for Military Merit," a decoration consisting of a purple, heart-shaped piece of silk, edged with a narrow binding of silver, with the word Merit stitched across the face in silver. The badge was to be presented to soldiers for "any singularly meritorious action" and permitted its wearer to pass guards and sentinels without challenge. The honouree’s name and regiment were also to be inscribed in a Book of Merit. Washington's Purple Heart was awarded to only three known soldiers during the Revolutionary War: Elijah Churchill, William Brown, and Daniel Bissell, Jr. The Book of Merit was lost, and the decoration was largely forgotten until 1927, when General Charles P. Summerall, the US Army chief of staff, sent an unsuccessful draft bill to Congress to "revive the Badge of Military Merit." In 1931, Summerall's successor, General Douglas MacArthur, took up the cause, hoping to reinstate the medal in time for the bicentennial of George Washington's birth. On February 22, 1932, Washington's 200th birthday, the US War Department announced the creation of the "Order of the Purple Heart." In addition to aspects of Washington's original design, this new Purple Heart also displayed a bust of Washington and his coat of arms. The Order of the Purple Heart, the oldest US military decoration for military merit, is awarded to members of the US armed forces who have been killed or wounded in action against an enemy. It is also awarded to soldiers who have suffered maltreatment as prisoners of war
1789 The US War Department was established by Congress
1840 The British parliament passed an act prohibiting the employment of climbing boys as chimney sweeps
1869 George Davidson, a prominent astronomer and explorer, impressed Alaskan Native Americans with his ability to predict a total solar eclipse. A native of Nottingham, England, Davidson immigrated to the US in 1832, joining the US Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1845. In 1869, Davidson began preparations for a scientific trip, to the Chilkat Valley in Alaska. He was warned, however, that the Chilkat Indians had been angered by some US provocation and might welcome him with guns and hostility rather than open arms. His initial meeting with the Chilkat on August 6th was tense. Davidson explained that he had come for purely scientific reasons, and he meant them no harm. He told the Chilkat that he was especially anxious to observe a total eclipse of the sun that he predicted would occur the following day. The Indians scoffed at Davidson's prediction, but they left the party in peace for the time being. On the 7th, the sky grew dark over the Chilkat Valley as the moon eclipsed the sun, just as Davidson had predicted. Apparently dismayed by this frightening display of power, the Chilkat fled to the woods. Thereafter, they left Davidson and his party alone, leading one historian to speculate that the astronomer's prediction may have saved the entire team from attack
1912 Theodore Roosevelt, the former US president, was nominated for the presidency by the Progressive Party, a group of Republicans dissatisfied with the renomination of President William Howard Taft. Also known as the Bull Moose Party, the Progressive platform called for the direct election of US senators, women’s suffrage, reduction of tariffs, and many social reforms. Roosevelt embarked on a vigorous campaign as the party's presidential candidate. A key point of his platform was the "Square Deal," which was Roosevelt's concept of a society based on fair business competition and increased welfare for the needy
1934 The US Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling striking down the government's attempt to ban the controversial James Joyce novel, Ulysses
1942 US forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II
1947 The balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, which had carried a six-man crew 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean, crashed into a reef in a Polynesian archipelago
1954 England's Roger Bannister was clocked at three minutes, 58.8 seconds in defeating Australia's John Landy in the mile run at Vancouver. Landy's mile was also under four minutes
1959 From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the US unmanned spacecraft Explorer 6 was launched into an orbit around the earth. The spacecraft, commonly known as the Paddlewheel Satellite, featured a photocell scanner that transmitted a crude picture of the earth's surface and cloud cover from a distance of 17,000 miles. The photo, received in Hawaii, took nearly 40 minutes to transmit. Released by NASA in September, the first photograph ever taken of the earth by a US satellite depicted a crescent shape of part of the planet in sunlight. It was Mexico, captured by Explorer 6 as it raced westward over the earth at speeds in excess of 20,000 miles an hour
1985 British radio and television journalists staged a 24-hour strike to protest the BBC's cancellation of a documentary on Northern Ireland
1993 Buckingham Palace in London was opened to the public for limited tours. The money raised from the admission and souvenirs was earmarked for repairing Windsor castle, which had been damaged by fire the previous November
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