1790 John Ross – Chief of the United Cherokee Nation from 1839 to 1866. He was born near Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, of a Scottish father and his part Cherokee mother. Ross was named Tasman-Usda (Little John) and raised in the Cherokee tradition. At that time, the Cherokee resided on approximately 43,000 square miles of land, which they had held for centuries, located mainly in Georgia. They had successful farms, strong schools, and a representative government. In the 1830s, Ross made many trips to Washington to argue against the forced removal of the Cherokee from their homeland under the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Although the Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee might keep their land, President Andrew Jackson refused to supply the troops necessary to enforce the Court's ruling. During the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, Ross found himself leading his people away from their south-eastern home, on a thousand-mile forced march which became known as the Trail of Tears. Some 4,000 Cherokee died on the journey to what is now Oklahoma, many because escorting US troops refused to accommodate older and infirmed individuals
1873 Emily Post – US authority on proper etiquette
1879 Warner Oland – Swedish-born actor (The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu, Werewolf of London, Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back, Mandalay, The Jazz Singer, Riders of the Purple Sage) He is best known for his portrayal of Charlie Chan
1882 A.Y. (Alexander Young) Jackson – Canadian painter, storyteller, and a leading member of the influential Canadian art group, the Group of Seven. During World War I, Jackson served in the infantry, and in 1917 was appointed the official artist for the Canadian war memorials
1900 Thomas Wolfe - US author (Look Homeward Angel, You Can't Go Home Again)
1902 Harvey Kurtzman – Cartoonist and a founder of Mad Magazine
1911 Sir Michael Hordern – British stage and screen actor (Where Eagles Dare, King Lear, Sink the Bismarck!, Cleopatra, Up Pompeii, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Shogun, Lady Jane, Gandhi, The Missionary) He played Dr. Starkie in the Inspector Morse episode The Service of All the Dead He also was the voice of the older Watson in the movie Young Sherlock Holmes
1916 James Herriott – British veterinarian and author (All Creatures Great and Small) He was fifty when he began writing his series of novels based on the experiences of a Yorkshire vet
1925 Gore Vidal – US author and playwright (Myra Breckenridge, Suddenly Last Summer)
1935 Madlyn Rhue - Actress (A Majority of One, Executive Suite, Houston Knights)
1938 Eddie Cochran - Singer (Summertime Blues, Sittin' in the Balcony, Teenage Heaven, C'mon Everybody)
1940 Alan O'Day - Songwriter (Angie Baby, Rock and Roll Heaven) and singer (Undercover Angel)
1941 Chubby Checker - Singer (The Twist, Pony Time, The Fly, Limbo Rock, Slow Twistin')
1942 Alan Rachins - Actor (L.A. Law, Dharma and Greg)
1949 Lindsay Buckingham - Singer with Fleetwood Mac (Go Your Own Way, Tusk, Big Love) and solo (Trouble, Go Insane)
1950 Pamela Hensley - Actress (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Marcus Welby, MD, Matt Houston)
1954 Stevie Ray Vaughan - Blues guitarist (Pride and Joy, Cold Shot, Couldn’t Stand the Weather, Crossfire) He was one of the leading blues and rock guitarists of his generation
1964 Clive Owen – British actor (Second Sight, Killer Elite, The Hire, King Arthur, Beyond Borders, Gosford Park, Doomsday Gun, Lorna Doone)
1973 Neve Campbell – Canadian actress (Party of Five, Scream, The Canterville Ghost, Panic) Her first name, Neve, is her mother's maiden name, and means “snow” in Dutch
Died this Day
1226 St. Francis of Assisi – Founder of the Franciscan Order who received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, and suffered great pain for the two years leading up to his death. He was canonised in 1228
1656 Miles Standish – Pilgrim father who sailed on the Mayflower
1867 Elias Howe, age 48 – US inventor of the sewing machine in 1846
1896 William Morris, age 62 – British craftsman, artisan, pattern designer, furniture designer, painter, poet (The Willow and the Red Cliff, The Earthly Paradise, The Story of the Glittering Plain) He is credited with starting the Arts and Crafts movement in the 19th century. According to one doctor, the cause of his death was “simply being William Morris and having done more work than most ten men”
1967 Woody Guthrie, age 55 – US folksinger (This Land is Your Land, Pastures of Plenty, So Long Its Been Good to Know You) He died from Huntington’s chorea, a disease that destroys the nervous system. His son, Arlo Guthrie, also became a songwriter
1998 Roddy McDowall – British-born actor (Planet of the Apes series, The Poseidon Adventure, The Longest Day, How Green was My Valley, My Friend Flicka, Lassie Come Home, Kidnapped, Cleopatra, That Darn Cat, The Martian Chronicles) He played The Bookworm in the Batman TV series He was evacuated to the US during the London Blitz, in World War II. He died of cancer, 2 weeks after his 70th birthday
2004 Janet Leigh, age 77 – Actress (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate, Bye Bye Birdie, Houdini, Pete Kelly's Blues) She was the mother of actress, Jamie Lee Curtis
2005 Ronnie Barker – British comedian, writer and actor (The Two Ronnies, The Gathering Storm, Porridge, Open All Hours, My House in Umbria) He died a week after his 76th birthday
On this Day
1678 The Taj Mahal, one of the world's finest architectural jewels, was completed. It was designed by a council of architects from India, Persia, and Central Asia under orders of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. Master builders, masons, inlayers and, calligraphers, along with more than 20,000 labourers, toiled for twenty-two years to complete the great mausoleum for the shah's beloved wife
1863 President Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as US Thanksgiving Day
1895 The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, was published in book form. The story of a young man's experience of battle was the first US novel to portray the Civil War from the ordinary soldier's point of view. The tale originally appeared as a serial published by a newspaper syndicate
1899 A motor-driven vacuum cleaner was patented as a "pneumatic carpet renovator" by J.S. Thurman of St. Louis, Missouri. Thurman offered a door to door, horse-drawn vacuum service at $4 per visit, a significant amount in that era. By 1906, Thurman was offering built-in central vacuum systems. They actually used compress air, and featured no dust collection
1906 The second international conference on wireless telegraphy in Berlin adopted SOS as the international distress signal, replacing the call sign CQD. The Marconi company originally suggested CQD for a distress signal. Established in February 1904, and sometimes thought to mean, "Come Quick Danger," its origin was simply a general call, "CQ," with "D," meaning distress. "CQ" originated in England as a general call on a landline wire, and was a sign for "all stations". Unfortunately, the 1906 Conference proceedings do not give an account of the discussions nor the origin of SOS, merely specifying what the signal would be
1910 British comedians Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel arrived in the US on tour with a British vaudeville company. Both would later became silent film stars
1922 The first facsimile picture was transmitted over the telephone between buildings in Washington DC
1922 Rebecca L. Felton, a Democrat from Georgia, became the first woman to be seated in the US Senate. She was appointed to serve out the remaining term of Senator Thomas E. Watson
1927 Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King inaugurated the first transatlantic telephone service to the UK by chatting with British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin
1929 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formally changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
1932 Britain’s The Times newspaper first used Stanley Morrison’s Times New Roman print
1941 The aerosol was patented by L.D. Goodhue and W.N. Sullivan
1941 The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston, opened in New York
1942 President Roosevelt established the Office of Economic Stabilisation and authorised controls on farm prices, rents, wages and salaries
1947 After 11 years of grinding and polishing, a 200-inch diameter telescope lens for the Mount Palomar Observatory was completed at the California Institute of Technology. This lens, the first of its size made in the US, began when 20 tons of molten glass at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit were poured into a ceramic mould at Corning Glass Works, NY in December, 1934. The glass lens was allowed to cool only one or two degrees per day over the next eleven months, and then brought to room temperature. The telescope in which the lens was mounted was named the Hale Telescope in recognition of the late Dr. George E. Hale who had initiated the project. The completed telescope was first used in February, 1949 for taking pictures of a Milky Way constellation
1951 Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the deciding game of a three-game playoff series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Known as “the shot heard 'round the world,” the homer sent the Giants into the World Series
1959 Post-codes were introduced into Britain
1981 Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives
1990 Eleven months after East Germany opened its borders to the West and dismantled the infamous Berlin Wall, East and West Germany become a united and sovereign state for the first time since Germany's defeat in World War II, burying forty-five years of Cold War division. Nearly a million people gathered at the Reichstag in Berlin, and at midnight a replica of the Liberty Bell, a gift from the United States, was rung, officially proclaiming reunification
1995 O.J. Simpson, a former professional football star, was acquitted of the 1994 murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman, in Los Angeles, California. Simpson was later found liable in a civil proceeding
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