1207 Henry III - King of England from 1216 to 1272. He was born at Winchester, the son of King John. By all accounts, he was totally incompetent
1730 Richard Stockton – Lawyer and signer of The Declaration of Independence
1781 Sir Robert Smirke – British architect who built the British Museum
1881 William Boeing – US engineer
1890 Stanley Holloway - British actor and entertainer (My Fair Lady, Blanding’s Castle, In Harm’s Way) He performed in theatre, music hall and radio
1903 Vladimir Horowitz – Russian piano virtuoso with a huge repertoire, who played with the NY Philharmonic. He first played in concert at the age of 20. He once gave a series of 25 recitals, performing over 200 works, without once repeating a single piece
1909 Everette Sloane - Actor (Citizen Kane, Marjorie Morningstar, The Enforcer)
1910 Bonnie Parker – US outlaw who, with her partner Clyde Barrow, left behind a string of bank robberies and murders
1920 Walter Matthau - Actor (The Fortune Cookie, The Odd Couple, Grumpy Old Men, Dennis the Menace, Hello Dolly!, Pete & Tillie, Plaza Suite, The Sunshine Boys, JFK, Fail-Safe, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Bad News Bears, Cactus Flower)
1921 James Whitmore - Actor (Give 'Em Hell Harry, Kiss Me Kate, Oklahoma!, Planet of the Apes, Tora! Tora! Tora!)
1924 Jimmy Carter - 39th US President. In his retirement, he has become active in Habitat for Humanity, both building houses and speaking on behalf of the organisation
1926 Roger Williams - Pianist (Autumn Leaves, Born Free, Near You, Two Different Worlds)
1927 Tom Bosley - Actor (Happy Days, Father Dowling Mysteries, Murder She Wrote, The Dean Martin Show, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home)
1928 Laurence Harvey – Lithuanian-born actor (Room at the Top, Butterfield 8, The Manchurian Candidate, Of Human Bondage, The Alamo)
1928 George Peppard - Actor (The A-Team, Banacek, The Carpetbaggers, The Blue Max, Pork Chop Hill, Breakfast at Tiffany's, How the West was Won, Bang the Drum Slowly, The Executioner)
1930 Richard Harris – Irish actor (Harry Potter, Camelot, The Guns of Navarone, Hawaii, A Man Called Horse, Mutiny on the Bounty, Unforgiven, This Sporting Life, The Cassandra Crossing, Patriot Games) and singer (MacArthur Park, Didn't We)
1935 Julie Andrews – British stage and screen actress (Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria, 10, Hawaii, Victoria Regina, The Boyfriend)
1936 Stella Stevens - Actress (The Poseidon Adventure, Li'l Abner, The Nutty Professor, Flamingo Road, Ben Casey)
1947 Stephen Collins - Actor (Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, All The President’s Men, Sisters, The First Wive’s Club)
1950 Randy Quaid - Actor (The Last Picture Show, Dead Solid Perfect, Days of Thunder, The Paper, Bye Bye Love, Caddyshack 2, National Lampoon's Vacation, Independence Day, Paper Moon, The Chiorboys, Midnight Express) He is the brother of Dennis Quaid
1962 Esai Morales – Actor (NYPD Blue, American Family, A Family in Crisis: The Elian Gonzales Story, La Bamba)
1964 Christopher Titus – Actor/comedian (Titus, Big Shots, Future Tense, Who’s Watching Who?)
Died this Day
1684 Pierre Corneille, age 78 – French playwright (Le Cid)
1972 Louis Leakey, age 69 – British anthropologist and archaeologist who discovered giant animal fossils in Kenya
On this Day
1578 Martin Frobisher and his ships all returned to England safely from North America. He had been hunting for gold in the Arctic, but returned instead, with tons of worthless pyrites, which were dumped as street ballast in London, giving rise to the legend that the streets of London were paved with gold
1764 Civil law replaced military rule in Canada
1792 Money orders were first issued in Britain
1800 The territory of Louisiana, encompassing the entire region of the Mississippi-Missouri river valleys, was ceded by Spain to France in the secret treaty of San Ildefonso. Only forty years before, France had ceded the territory to Spain with the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau. France first brought colonial rule to the territory in 1731 with the establishment of the crown colony of Louisiana. In 1803, only twenty days after French government authorities finally took over, the territory was acquired by the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. The massive land purchase nearly doubled the size of the young republic, and was Thomas Jefferson's most notable achievement as president
1856 The first instalment of Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, was published in the Revue de Paris. The novel, about the romantic illusions of a country doctor's wife and her adulterous liaisons, scandalised French traditionalists. Flaubert was brought to trial for obscenity in 1857. He was acquitted, and the book became a popular success. The book's realistic, serious portrayal of humble characters and situations became a milestone of French realism
1871 Mormon leader Brigham Young was arrested for cohabiting with 16 young women
1885 Special delivery mail service began in the United States
1890 The US Congress decreed that about 1,500 square miles of public land in the California Sierra Nevada would be preserved forever as Yosemite National Park. The area was once the home to the indigenous whose battle cry Yo-che-ma-te, meaning "some among them are killers," gave the park its name
1896 The US Post Office established Rural Free Delivery, with the first routes in West Virginia
1908 Henry Ford introduced the Model T at a price of $825.00. It was also the world’s first left-hand drive vehicle. Henry Ford and his engineers had struggled for five difficult years to produce a reliable, inexpensive car for the mass market. It wasn't until their twentieth attempt, christened the Model T after the twentieth letter in the alphabet, that the fledgling Ford Motor Company hit pay dirt. Affectionately known as the Tin Lizzy, the Model T revolutionised the automotive industry by providing an affordable, reliable car for the average person. Ford was able to keep the price down by retaining control of all raw materials, and by employing revolutionary mass production methods
1918 Lawrence of Arabia captured Damascus from the Turks during World War I. In command of the combined British and Arab forces was T. E. Lawrence, a legendary British soldier known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence, an Oxford-educated Arabist born in Tremadoc, Gwynedd, began working for British Army intelligence in North Africa in 1914, and spent more than a year in Cairo processing intelligence information. In 1916, he accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, had proclaimed a revolt against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein's rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein's son Faisal as a liaison officer. Under Lawrence's guidance, the Arabians launched an effective guerrilla war against the Turkish lines. In November 1917, he was captured by the Turks while reconnoitring behind enemy lines in Arab dress and was tortured and abused before escaping. He rejoined his army, which slowly worked its way north to Damascus in 1918. Arabia was liberated, but Lawrence's hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation was dashed when Arabian factionalism came to the fore after Damascus. Lawrence, exhausted and disillusioned, left for England. Feeling that Britain had exacerbated the rivalries between the Arabian groups, he appeared before King George V and politely refused the medals offered to him. After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries
1936 General Francisco Franco, whose army revolt in Morocco had set off the Spanish Civil War, was named leader of the Falange, Spain's fascist party. Over the next three years, a million lives would be lost in a ruthless civil war between Franco's Nationalist and the left-leaning Loyalists. After the Nationalists' triumph in 1939, Franco met with supporter Adolf Hitler, but evaded military entanglement in World War II. Franco ruled over Spain with an iron grip for almost forty years
1938 Hitler occupied the Sudetenland as German forces entered Czechoslovakia and seized control of the area, thus changing its frontier for the first time since the twelfth century. Two days before, Britain and France signed the Munich Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in an attempt to avoid war over Czechoslovakia. After British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to England from the Munich negotiations, he declared that there would be "peace in our time." However, peace lasted less than a year, as in September of 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, igniting World War II in Europe
1946 The International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg sentenced twelve high-ranking Nazi officials to death, seven others to terms of imprisonment varying from ten years to life, and acquitted three
1947 In Canada, the Governor-General became independent, and was given the authority to exercise all Royal powers and executive authority of the Crown in relation to Canada
1949 Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung raised the first flag of the People's Republic of China during a ceremony in Beijing
1961 Canada’s CTV television network went on the air with eight stations
1966 In Montreal, Quebec, the CBC started its first colour television broadcasting
1971 Disney World opened in Florida
1974 The first McDonald’s opened in London
1989 Thousands of East Germans were welcomed into West Germany after the communist government agreed to let them go to the West
1990 For the first time in seven decades, Soviets were free to worship. The Supreme Soviet approved legislation to officially end state atheism and to grant freedom of worship
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