1831 John X. Beidler - One of the best known of the notoriously secretive Montana vigilantes. Beidler, known as Vigilante X, was born in Pennsylvania. In 1863 he joined the Gold Rush to Montana Territory. When Beidler arrived in Virginia City, the area was plagued by marauding bandits who roamed the isolated roads of the region robbing and killing. The bandits were led by a charming psychopath named Henry Plummer, who had managed to con the citizens into electing him sheriff of the nearby town of Bannock. Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the local law enforcement, the citizens of Virginia City and Bannock formed a highly secretive vigilance committee and began systematically hunting down and hanging the rogue agents, including Sheriff Plummer. Not long after arriving in Virginia City, Beidler joined the vigilantes and became one of the group's most active members. Unlike most of the members, who took pains to conceal their identities, Beidler welcomed attention. Numerous legends arose around the so-called Vigilante X, and Beidler did little to discourage exaggerations, though much of the Beidler lore was true. He was the principal hangman for at least five of the vigilante's victims, and he survived several narrow escapes in his relentless pursuit of dangerous men. As an old man, he fell on hard times and became dependent on the charity of Montanans who remembered his previous service. When he died in Helena, Montana, in 1890, his death certificate listed his occupation as "Public Benefactor"
1860 Ernest Thompson Seton – British-born naturalist and author (Wild Animals I Have Known, Two Little Savages) Seton came to Lindsey, Ontario as a young boy, attended school in Toronto and graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1879. After further studies in London and Paris, he started specialising in painting and drawing animals in realistic settings. He homesteaded in Manitoba, then moved to the US in 1896. In 1902, he founded the Woodcraft League, a naturalists club for children, and in 1910, he helped Daniel Bears and Lord Baden Powell in founding the Boy Scouts of America. His books on woodcraft formed the basis of the first Boy Scouts of America Official Manual. In 1915, after quarrelling with the BSA about what he considered their militaristic stance, he was expelled from the organisation. He spent the remainder of his life in studying nature, and wrote extensively on Manitoba and sub-arctic wildlife. He also set up the Seton Village for children's nature study in Santa Fe, New Mexico
1863 Ernest Thayer – US writer (Casey at the Bat)
1867 John Galsworthy – British author and playwright (The Forsyte Saga, Strife, The Silver Box, The Skin Game)
1886 Arthur Jeffrey Dempster – Canadian-born physicist who built the first mass spectrometer, a device that separates and measures the quantities of different charged particles, such as atomic nuclei or fragments of molecules
1915 Max Klein – US painter who invented "paint by numbers"
1925 Russell Baker - Newspaper columnist and commentator for PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre
1926 Buddy Greco - Singer (Mr. Lonely, The Lady is a Tramp)
1926 Alice Ghostley - Actress (Bewitched, Designing Women, Mayberry RFD, The Graduate, To Kill a Mockingbird, With Six You Get Eggroll)
1936 Trevor Bannister – British actor (Are You Being Served?, Doomsday Gun, Cider with Rosie)
1940 Dash Crofts – Musician and singer with Seals and Crofts (Summer Breeze, Diamond Girl, Hummingbird)
1941 Connie Smith - Singer (Once a Day, Baby's Back Again, Just One Time)
1941 David Crosby - Musician, songwriter and singer with The Byrds (Mr. Tambourine Man) and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Teach Your Children, Woodstock)
1945 Steve Martin - Comedian and actor (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, All of Me, Roxanne, Father of the Bride, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Jerk, The Man with Two Brains, Planes Trains & Automobiles)
1946 Antonio Fargas – Actor (Starsky & Hutch, Foxy Brown, Everybody Hates Chris, Paper Dolls)
1946 Susan St. James - Actress (The Name of the Game, Macmillan and Wife, Kate and Allie, Love at First Bite)
1947 Danielle Steel – Author (Remembrance, Once in a Lifetime, Secrets)
1950 Gary Larson - Cartoonist (The Far Side)
1952 Carl Lumbly – Actor (Cagney & Lacey, Alias, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Pacific Heights, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension)
1959 Earvin “Magic” Johnson – Basketball player (LA Lakers, Michigan State University)
1959 Marcia Gay Harden – Actress (Pollock, Mona Lisa Smile, Mystic River, The Education of Max Bickford, Space Cowboys, Spenser: Small Vices, The First Wives Club, Fifty Shades of Grey, Code Black, How to Get Away With Murder)
1960 Sarah Brightman – British singer (The Music of the Night, Make Believe, I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper, Dust in the Wind, Time to Say Goodbye, Phantom of the Opera Suite, Free, Snow on the Sahara)
1961 Susan Olsen - Actress (The Brady Bunch)
1966 Halle Berry – Actress (X-Men, Catwoman, Die Another Day, Monster's Ball, Executive Decision, Queen, Knots Landing)
1968 Adrian Lester – British actor (Hu$tle, Primary Colors, Love’s Labour Lost, Storm Damage, The Day After Tomorrow, As You Like It)
1974 Christopher Gorham – Actor (Ugly Betty, Harper’s Island, Covert Affairs, Out of Practice, Medical Investigation, Popular)
1983 Mila Kunis – Ukranian actress (Black Swan, The Book of Eli, That ‘70s Show, Family Guy, Date Night)
Died this Day
1778 Augustus Toplady – British clergyman who wrote the hymn, Rock of Ages
1922 Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe – Founder of the Daily Mail in 1896 and the Daily Mirror in 1903. He revolutionised British journalism
1951 William Randolph Hearst, age 88 – US newspaper publisher, who introduced banner headlines and other techniques to sensationalise news. He was reportedly the subject of the movie, Citizen Kane and was the grandfather of Patricia Hearst. He died in Beverly Hills, California
1956 Bertold Brecht, age 58 – German poet and playwright (The Threepenny Opera)
On this Day
1784 On Kodiak Island, Grigory Shelikhov, a Russian fur trader, founded Three Saints Bay, the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska. The European discovery of Alaska came in 1741, when a Russian expedition led by Danish navigator Vitus Bering sighted the Alaskan mainland. Russian hunters were soon making incursions into Alaska, and the native Aleut population suffered greatly after being exposed to foreign diseases. The Three Saints Bay colony was founded on Kodiak Island in 1784, and Shelikhov lived there for two years with his wife and 200 men. From Three Saints Bay, the Alaskan mainland was explored, and other fur-trade centres were established
1848 The Oregon Territory was established
1877 In Regina, Saskatchewan the Northwest Territorial Council passed an ordinance 'For the Protection of the Buffalo' in an attempt to slow the destruction of the herds. They made it unlawful to drive the buffalo into ravines or pits where they could be easily killed, or to hunt or kill buffalo for amusement, or solely to secure their tongues and pelts. The herd numbering 60 million in 1800 was almost extinct by 1890
1885 Several Métis involved in the North West Rebellion plead guilty in Regina, Saskatchewan to treason and felony charges. They got jail sentences ranging from one to seven years
1893 The world’s first car registration plates were introduced in France. To make sure drivers were really what they claimed, they also issued the first driving licences for passing the driving test conducted by the Chief Engineer of Mines. To complete the day, the first parking restrictions also came into force
1899 Bell Telephone Company installed the first push-button (not touch-tone) pay phone in a Montréal drugstore. Connections were made after a 5¢ deposit
1900 During the Boxer Rebellion, an international force featuring British, Russian, US, Japanese, French, and German troops relieved the Chinese capital of Peking after fighting its way 80 miles from the port of Tientsin. The Chinese nationalists besieging Peking's diplomatic quarter were crushed, and the Boxer Rebellion effectively came to an end. By the end of the 19th century, the Western powers and Japan had forced China's ruling Ch'ing dynasty to accept wide foreign control over the country's economic affairs. The Boxers were a secret society formed with the original goal of expelling the foreigners and overthrowing the Ch'ing dynasty. Open attacks on missionaries and Chinese Christians began in late 1899, and by May 1900 bands of Boxers had begun gathering in the countryside around Peking. In spite of threats by the foreign powers, Tz'u Hsi, the empress dowager, began openly supporting the Boxers. In early June, an international relief force of 2,000 soldiers was dispatched by Western and Japanese authorities to Peking. Tz'u Hsi ordered Imperial forces to block the advance of the foreigners, and the relief force was turned back. Meanwhile, the Peking-Tientsin railway line and other railroads were destroyed by the Chinese, and the Boxers, now some 140,000 strong, moved into Peking and began burning churches and foreign residences. Tz'u Hsi then called on all Chinese to attack foreigners. The German ambassador Baron von Ketteler was killed and the Boxers began besieging the foreign legations in the diplomatic quarter of the Chinese capital. Diplomats, their families, and guards suffered through hunger and degrading conditions as they fought desperately to keep the Boxers at bay. Eventually, an expedition of 19,000 multinational troops pushed their way to Peking after fighting two major battles against the Boxers. The eight-nation allied relief force captured Peking and liberated the legations. The foreign troops looted the city and routed the Boxers, while the empress and her court fled to the north. The victorious powers began work on a peace settlement. In September 1901 the Peking Protocol was signed, formally ending the Boxer Rebellion. By the terms of agreement, the foreign nations received extremely favourable commercial treaties with China, foreign troops were permanently stationed in Peking, and China was forced to pay $333 million as penalty for its rebellion. China was effectively a subject nation. The Boxers had failed to expel the foreigners, but their rebellion set the stage for the successful Chinese revolutions of the 20th century
1934 In London, Ontario millionaire brewer John Labatt was abducted at gunpoint by three men, who asked for a ransom of $150,000, which the kidnappers never received. He was released unharmed three days later. It was the first recorded kidnapping for ransom in Canada
1935 The US Social Security Act became law, creating unemployment insurance and pension plans for the elderly
1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies and the Second World War was officially over
1973 The US bombing of Cambodia came to a halt
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