1592 George Villiers Buckingham - English courtier, and a favourite of James I and Charles I
1749 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - German author (Faust) He was the founder of modern German literature and leader of the Romantic Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement
1774 St. Elizabeth Ann Seton - Founder of the Sisters of Charity, born in New York City. She was the first US-born saint
1828 Count Leo Tolstoy - Russian author who is considered one of history’s greatest novelists (War and Peace, Anna Karenina)
1899 Charles Boyer – French actor (Around the World in 80 Days, Barefoot in the Park, Gaslight, Casino Royale, The Mad Woman of Chaillot) He was everyone’s idea of the great French lover, and his character Pepe Le Moko, from the movie Algiers, inspired the cartoon character Pepe Le Pew
1908 Roger Tory Peterson – US ornithologist and conservationist who developed practical, user-friendly guidebooks to birdwatching (Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds) The series has grown to include all aspects of nature guides
1913 Robertson Davies - Canadian journalist, novelist and playwright (Tempest Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties, Fifth Business, World of Wonders, What’s Bred in the Bones) He attended university in Ontario, and at Balliol College in Oxford. Davies became the first Canadian admitted to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
1919 Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – British inventor of the EMI medical scanner. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1979
1921 Nancy Kulp – Actress (The Beverly Hillbillies, The Bob Cummings Show, The Brian Keith Show, The Three Faces of Eve, Sanford and Son, The Aristocats, Shane)
1924 Peggy Ryan - Actress (Hawaii Five-O, Here Come the Co-Eds, Miss Annie Rooney)
1925 Billy Grammer - Singer (Gotta Travel On, Bonaparte's Retreat)
1925 Donald O'Connor – Actor and dancer (A Time to Remember, Singing in the Rain, Francis the Mule series)
1929 Roxie Roker - Actress (The Jeffersons, Roots, The Bermuda Triangle) She is the mother of rock star Lenny Kravitz
1930 Ben Gazzara - Actor (Run for Your Life, Arrest and Trial, Anatomy of a Murder, The Bridge at Remagen, QB VII, Voyage of the Damned, Road House)
1930 Windsor Davies – Welsh actor (It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Carry On England, Carry On Behind, Vanity Fair, Gormenghast)
1933 Elizabeth Seal – Italian-born British stage and screen actress (Irma La Douce, Mack the Knife, Vampire Circus, Trelawny of the Wells, Cone of Silence)
1938 Paul Martin – The 21st Prime Minister of Canada
1943 David Soul - Actor (Starsky and Hutch, Salem's Lot, Magnum Force, Lewis: The Incredible Stain)
1951 Wayne Osmond – Singer with his family group The Osmond Brothers (One Bad Apple, Any Time)
1957 Daniel Stern - Actor (Breaking Away, Blue Thunder, Diner, The Milagro Beanfield War, Home Alone, City Slickers) He was the uncredited narrator in the TV series The Wonder Years
1960 Emma Samms – British actress (Dynasty, The Colbys, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, General Hospital)
1961 Jennifer Coolidge – Actress (Legally Blonde, A Cinderella Movie, Epic Movie, American Pie, Joey)
1965 Amanda Tapping – Canadian actress (Sanctuary, Stargate SG-1, Golden Will: The Silken Laumann Story)
1965 Shania Twain – Canadian singer (Man! I Feel Like a Woman, From This Moment On, Your Still the One, Forever and For Always, Up, Party for Two, Love Gets Me Everytime, Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under, The Woman in Me)
1968 Billy Boyd – Scottish actor (Lord of the Rings movies, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, The Flying Scotsman)
1969 Jason Priestley – Canadian actor (Beverly Hills 90210, Sister Kate, Calendar Girl, Tombstone, The Boy Who Could Fly)
1969 Jack Black – Actor (King Kong, School of Rock, Gulliver’s Travels, Tropic Thunder, Nacho Libre, Enemy of the State, Mars Attacks!)
1982 LeeAnn Rimes – Country singer (Blue, Unchained Melody, Sittin’ On Top of the World)
Died this Day
1861 William Lyon Mackenzie, age 66 - Toronto's first mayor and the leader in the Upper Canada rebellion of 1837. He was a sworn foe of the powerful Family Compact, a group of rich settlers who held the reins of power in the colony. After three years as a member of the legislature in Upper Canada, Mackenzie was expelled and not allowed to resume his seat, although his constituents re-elected him five times
1978 Robert Shaw - British stage and screen actor (Jaws, Robin And Marian, Black Sunday, The Luck Of Ginger Coffey, The Sting) novelist and playwright. He died less than three weeks after his 51st birthday, of a heart attack while driving with his wife in Tourmakeady, Ireland
1987 John Huston - Director (The Asphalt Jungle, Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, The Misfits, Prizzi's Honor) He was the father of actress Angelica Huston, and the son of Walter Huston. He died in Middletown, RI, less than a month after his 81st birthday
On this Day
1609 Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay and the Delaware River
1846 The British Possessions Act allowed Canada and the Maritime provinces to enact tariffs and cut or repeal duties. This marked a new stage in Canadian independence
1850 The English Channel telegraph cable was finally laid between Dover and Cap Griz Nez
1850 The first performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin was staged at Weimar. Morse would have loved that!
1872 At Niagara Falls, Ontario, Wild Bill Hickok starred in the Grand Buffalo Hunt at Niagara Falls. It was the first Wild West Show in Canada, and featured Native American and Mexican cowboys doing a thrilling display of roping and riding, and 'hunting' three tame buffalo
1879 King Cetshwayo, the last great ruler of Zululand, was captured by the British following his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He was subsequently sent into exile
1916 Italy's declaration of war against Germany took effect during the First World War
1917 Ten suffragists were arrested as they picketed the White House
1922 The first-ever radio commercial aired on station WEAF in New York City. The 10-minute advertisement was for the Queensboro Realty Co., which had paid a fee of $100
1933 The BBC was used for the first time by the police in tracking down a wanted man by broadcasting an appeal for information on Stanley Hobday, wanted for murder
1963 On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, the African American civil rights movement reached its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to more than 200,000 people attending the March on Washington. The demonstrators, black and white, poor and rich, came together in the nation's capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination. The peaceful rally was the largest assembly for a redress of grievances that the capital had ever seen, and King was the last speaker. With the statue of Abraham Lincoln towering behind him, King evoked the rhetorical talents he had developed as a Baptist preacher to articulate how the "Negro is still not free." He told of the struggle ahead, stressing the importance of continued action and non-violent protest. Coming to the end of his prepared text (which, like other speakers that day, he had limited to seven minutes), he was overwhelmed by the moment and launched into an improvised sermon. He told the hushed crowd, "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed." Continuing, he began the refrain that made the speech one of the best known in US history, second only to Lincoln's 1863 "Gettysburg Address": "I have a dream," he boomed over the crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today." He ended his stirring, 16-minute speech with his vision of the fruit of racial harmony: "When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'" In the year after the March on Washington, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished the poll tax and thus a barrier to poor African American voters in the South; and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities
1988 Seventy people were killed when three Italian stunt planes collided during an air show at the US Air Base in Ramstein, West Germany, sending flaming debris into a crowd of spectators
1996 After four years of separation, Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, and his wife, Princess Diana, ended their 15 year marriage and formally divorced. In exchange for a generous settlement, and the right to retain her apartments at Kensington Palace and her title of Princess of Wales, Diana agreed to relinquish the title of Her Royal Highness and any future claims to the British throne
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