1757 Marquis de Lafayette - French statesman and soldier who fought with the colonists against the British in the War of Independence. During the French Revolution he became a major figure, presenting his famous Declaration of the Rights of man to the Assembly. He was known as The Hero of Two Worlds
1766 John Dalton – British chemist and physicist who was one of the founders of modern physical science with his work developing the theory of atomic matter
1811 James Gillis – US naval officer who founded the US Naval Observatory
1885 Otto Kruger - Actor (The Young Philadelphians, Cover Girl, Corregidor, High Noon, I am the Law) He passed away on his 89th birthday in 1974
1888 Joseph P. Kennedy - US Ambassador to Great Britain, and father of US President John F. Kennedy, Senator Edward Kennedy and US Attorney General Robert Kennedy
1890 Claire Chennault – US brigadier general who led the Flying Tigers
1895 Walter Robert Dornberger - German engineer who directed the construction of the V-2 rocket
1899 Billy Rose – US impresario and composer (Me and My Shadow, That Old Gang of Mine, It's Only a Paper Moon, Does the Spearmint Lose Its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight)
1937 Jo Anne Worley - Comedienne (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In)
1942 Carol Wayne - Actress (Scavenger Hunt, Heartbreakers, The Party)
1944 Swoosie Kurtz – Stage and screen actress (Mike & Molly, Sisters, Love Sidney, The World According to Garp) She was named after her father's World War II bomber plane, "Alexander the Swoose"
1944 Roger Waters – Musician and songwriter with Pink Floyd (Another Brick in the Wall)
1947 Jane Curtin – Actress and comedienne (Kate and Allie, Saturday Night Live, 3rd Rock From The Sun)
1948 Claydes Smith – Guitarist with the group Kool & The Gang (Ladies Night, Celebration)
1953 Anne Lockhart – Actress (Battlestar Galactica, Gidget's Summer Reunion, Fire On Kelly Mountain) She’s the daughter of June Lockhart
1958 Jeff Foxworthy – Actor/comedian (You Know You're a Redneck, The Jeff Foxworthy Show)
1964 Rosie Perez – Actress (It Could Happen to You, White Men Can't Jump, Do the Right Thing)
1972 Idris Elba – British actor (Luther, Thor, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, The Wire)
1972 Dylan Bruno – Actor (Numb3rs, Where the Heart Is, Saving Private Ryan, High Incident)
Died this Day
1566 Suleiman I the Magnificent – Ottoman ruler known as The Lawgiver. He was the Ottoman ruler under whom the Ottoman Empire achieved its peak
1959 Kay Kendall, age 33 – British actress (Genevieve, Once More With Feeling, Doctor in the House) She died in London, from leukaemia, and was married to Rex Harrison at the time of her death
1998 Akira Kurosawa, age 88 - Japanese film director (Rashomon, Ran, Rhapsody in August, The Idiot, The Bad Sleep Well) His movie, The Seven Samurai, inspired the Hollywood film, The Magnificent Seven. He died in Tokyo
On this Day
1522 Ferdinand Magellan's ship, the Vittoria, arrived at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the world. The Vittoria was commanded by Basque navigator Juan Sebastián de Elcano, who took charge of the vessel after the murder of Magellan in the Philippines in April 1521. During a long, hard journey home, the people on the ship suffered from starvation, scurvy, and harassment by Portuguese ships. Only Elcano, 17 other Europeans, and 4 Indians survived to complete the voyage and reach Spain. Nearly three years before, on September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. Of the five ships that set out on the voyage, only the Vittoria returned
1844 Western explorer John C. Fremont arrived at the shores of the Great Salt Lake, a remnant of the much larger prehistoric Lake Bonneville. It was one of the many areas he would map for the lasting benefit of a westward-moving nation. When Fremont reached the strange saltwater inland lake he was not the first Euro-American to view its shores. As early as the 1820s, fur trappers had returned to the East with tales of a bizarre salt lake where no fish swam. French explorer Benjamin Bonneville was the first to map the lake's outlines in 1837. But for the far-ranging John C. Fremont, the Great Salt Lake was only one small part of a much wider journey of discovery and mapping. Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1813, Fremont began honing his skills as an explorer and mapmaker in his early twenties. His first major expedition was an 1842 survey of the Platte River for the US Corps of Topographical Engineers. More skilled in cartography and science than trailblazing and wilderness survival, Fremont relied heavily on the abilities of men like Kit Carson as guides and advisers. Fremont reached the Great Salt Lake during his second expedition. His 14 months of western rambling also took him across the Sierra Nevada and resulted in the first comprehensive map of the Great Basin, the region between the Wasatch and the Sierra Nevada mountains where water drains to neither the Pacific nor the Atlantic. After Fremont's Great Basin map was published, one commentator noted, it "changed the entire picture of the West." It also made Fremont a national hero. Along with charts resulting from three further expeditions, Fremont's maps became indispensable guides to thousands of overland immigrants heading westward to begin new lives
1852 The first free lending library in Britain opened in Manchester
1879 The first British telephone exchange opened in Lombard Street, London
1886 Queen Victoria instituted the Distinguished Service Order for meritorious service by officers in the armed forces in wartime
1901 President McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. He died eight days later, succumbing to a gangrene infection. McKinley was greeting the crowd in the Temple of Music when Czolgosz stepped forward and shot the president twice at point-blank range. Czolgosz, a labourer from Cleveland, fell under the sway of several charismatic anarchist leaders, and decided to kill McKinley to further the anarchist cause. Although the newly formed Secret Service was now available to protect President McKinley, when Czolgosz stepped up to shake McKinley's hand with a handkerchief covering the .32 revolver in his hand, the agents thought nothing of it. After the shots were fired, the agents grabbed Czolgosz and began pummelling him, but McKinley warned, "Be easy with him, boys," as he was helped to an ambulance. The president then told his secretary to be careful in telling the First Lady what happened. Working in a building with no electricity, surgeons operated on the president, who seemed to be recovering at first. Legend has it that his recovery diet was raw eggs and whiskey. Before lapsing into a coma and dying, McKinley's last words were: "It is God's way. His will, not ours, be done." At the time of the shooting, President McKinley was very popular and the US was in the midst of a period of peace and prosperity. McKinley's assassination led to reprisals against his critics across the country, and those who had spoken poorly of the president were tarred and feathered
1907 The Lusitania embarked on her maiden voyage to New York, arriving on the 13th in a record time, averaging 23 knots
1915 The first tank prototype, developed by William Foster & Company for the British army, was completed and given its first test drive. Several European nations had been working on the development of a shielded, tracked vehicle that could cross the uneven terrain of World War I trenches, but Great Britain was the first to succeed. Lightly armed with machine guns, the tanks made their first authoritative appearance at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, when 474 British tanks managed to break through the German lines. The Allies began using the vehicles in increasing numbers throughout the rest of the war. After World War I, European nations on all sides continued to build tanks at a frantic pace, arming them with even heavier artillery and plating
1944 During World War II, the British government relaxed blackout restrictions and suspended compulsory training for the Home Guard
1952 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation opened the country's first TV broadcasting facilities, CBFT, in Montréal, followed two days later by CBLT in Toronto. Both began with 18 hours of programming a week
1953 Thirty Canadians were freed in a final exchange of POWs with the North Korean Communists
1959 The long-running radio show, Fibber McGee and Molly, aired its final episode after more than two decades on the air
1964 US President L.B. Johnson handed BC Premier W.A.C. Bennett a cheque for $273,291,661.25 in payment for the Columbia River Power agreement
1966 The television series Star Trek premiered on the CTV network in Canada, two days before it premiered in the U.S. on NBC
1972 At Fürstenfeldbruck air base near Munich, an attempt by West German police to rescue nine Israeli Olympic team members taken hostage the previous day by Palestinian terrorists ended in disaster. In an extended firefight that began at 11 p.m. and lasted until 1:30 a.m., all nine Israeli hostages were killed, as were five terrorists and one German policeman. Three terrorists were wounded and captured alive. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Munich Games were temporarily suspended. A memorial service for the 11 Israelis slain, including two in the initial attack, drew 80,000 mourners to the Olympic stadium on September 6. International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage, who was widely criticised for failing to suspend the Games during the hostage crisis, was further criticised for his decision to resume them on the afternoon of September 6
1977 Canada converted its highway signs to metric in all provinces except Québec and Nova Scotia
1989 A computer error resulted in 41,000 Parisians receiving letters charging them with murder, extortion and organised prostitution, instead of traffic fines
1991 The Soviet parliament voted to restore the pre-Bolshevik name of St. Petersburg to the country's second-largest city, Leningrad
1997 A funeral was held for Diana, Princess of Wales, who had died in a Paris car accident the previous week. The royal family arranged for a state funeral to be held for Diana at Westminster Abbey. Diana's coffin was taken from Kensington Palace to the Abbey on a horse-drawn gun carriage, and an estimated one million mourners lined the route. Diana's sons, William, 15, and Harry, 12, joined their father, Prince Charles, grandfather Prince Philip, and uncle Charles, the Earl of Spencer, to walk the final stretch of the procession with the casket. The only sound was the clatter of the horses' hooves and the peal of a church bell. The service was watched by an estimated two billion people worldwide. After the service, Diana's body was taken by hearse to her family's ancestral estate near Althorp, north of London. In a private ceremony, she was laid to rest on a tree-shaded island in a small lake
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