1853 James Whitcomb Riley – US poet (When the Frost is on the Punkin', Little Orphant Annie, The Raggedy Man, Old Swimmin’-Hole)
1905 Andy Devine - Actor (The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, Flipper, Andy's Gang, Whale of a Tale, Myra Breckinridge, How the West was Won, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Red Badge of Courage, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves)
1911 Vaughn Monroe - Singer (Racing with the Moon, Riders in the Sky, There I Go, Rum and Coca Cola, There! I've Said It Again, Let It Snow Let It Snow! Let It Snow!, Ballerina, They were Doing the Mambo) and actor (Meet the People, Carnegie Hall, Singing Guns)
1914 Alfred Drake – Stage and screen actor (Kismet, Kiss Me Kate, Oklahoma)
1917 June Allyson - Actress (Best Foot Forward, The Glenn Miller Story, Little Women, Strategic Air Command) She was married to actor Dick Powell
1927 Diana Lynn - Actress (Bedtime for Bonzo, The Kentuckian, The Annapolis Story, My Friend Irma, Miracle of Morgan's Creek)
1927 Al Martino – US singer (Here in My Heart, I Love You Because, I Love You More and More Each Day, Spanish Eyes, Mary in the Morning, Wanted) and actor (The Godfather)
1931 Bishop Desmond Tutu - Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Archbishop and the first black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, South Africa
1950 Hugh Fraser – British actor (Patriot Games, Sharpe’s Company, Lorna Doone, The Draughtman’s Contract, Rielly: Ace of Spies) He is married to British actress Belinda Lang. He plays Captain Hastings in the Poirot series
1951 John Mellencamp - Rock musician (Jack and Diane, Cherry Bomb, Get a Leg Up, Hurts So Good)
1955 Yo Yo Ma – French-born cellist who trained at Julliard School in the US
1957 Jayne Torvill – British figure skater who is half of the duo Torvill and Dean
Died this Day
1849 Edgar Allan Poe, age 40 – US short story writer and poet (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, Lenore, Tamerlane, The Gold Bug, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher) He died in Baltimore, the exact cause of which remains a mystery. Many wide-ranging theories on his death have been advanced. Some are health related, ranging from epilepsy, a weak heart, diabetes, tuberculosis, lesions on the brain, and rabies to alcohol or carbon monoxide poisoning. Others have him the victim of crimes such as mugging, or cooping. Cooping is the theory given in a number of Poe biographies. In those days, Baltimore elections were notorious for corruption and violence, and political gangs were willing to go to great extremes to ensure the success of their candidates. Some gangs were known to kidnap innocent bystanders, holding them in a room, called the "coop." The victims were then forced to go in and out of poll after poll, voting over and over again. Their clothing might even be changed to allow for another round. To ensure compliance, their victims were plied with liquor and beaten. Coincidence or not, the day Poe was found on the street was election day in Baltimore and the place near where he was found, Ryan's Fourth Ward Polls, was both a bar and a place for voting. As well, it was determined by witnesses that the clothes he was last seen in were not the ones in which he was found. A possible flaw in the cooping theory is that Poe was reasonably well-known in Baltimore and likely to be recognised. In any event, in the early morning of September 27th, Poe left Richmond, his intended destination Philadelphia. He was wearing a black wool suit. On October 3rd, he was found unconscious on the street in Baltimore by Joseph Walker, who sent a note to Dr. J.E. Snodgrass. Walker, apparently, helped Poe into a nearby bar to wait for the arrival of his friend. By this time Poe was wearing an ill-fitting suit of cheap gabardine, stained and faded, with an old straw hat. Dr. Snodgrass and Poe’s uncle, Henry Herring, came and took him to Washington College Hospital. For days he passed from delirium to unconsciousness, but never recovered well enough to tell how he had arrived in such a condition. The exact details of Poe's condition and treatment are left to us only in the writings of his attending physician, Dr. John J. Moran. However, Moran's description of the cause of Poe's death is sufficiently vague that he probably did not know precisely what happened to his patient. Depending on which account one accepts, Poe died at either 3:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. on October 7th. Moran gives his last words as "Lord help my poor soul." Death certificates were apparently not required then and none is known to have been filed for Poe. The only official cause of death noted at the time comes from the Baltimore Clipper as "congestion of the brain." Poe was buried in the yard of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland
1894 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, age 85 – Physician, author and poet (The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Elsie Venner, Old Ironsides, The Chambered Nautilus) He was Professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, and Dean of Harvard Medical School. His son was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, the Supreme Court Justice. Holmes Sr was much admired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and it is widely believed that Doyle named his detective Sherlock after him
1956 Clarence Birdseye, age 69 – US inventor of a process for deep-freezing food
On this Day
1571 In the Battle of Lepanto, the last great naval battle featuring galleys, the Ottoman navy under Ali Pasha was defeated by a 316-ship-strong Christian coalition under the overall command of Spain's Don Juan de Austria. Fought off of the southwestern coast of Greece, at least 25,000 Turks were killed and eighty of the Ottoman navy's 250 ships destroyed during the last major confrontation between oared ships
1737 Iron was first smelted in Canada, at St. Maurice, Québec
1763 Cape Breton was first annexed to Nova Scotia
1765 Twenty-eight delegates from nine American colonies met at the Stamp Act Congress in New York City to protest Parliaments' British Stamp Act, which imposed a direct tax on the colonies to raise revenue for a standing army in America. The delegates adopted the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, a series of protest resolutions sent to Parliament and King George III, and called for a united American refusal to import any goods requiring payment of duty. In November, despite a general call for repeal in the colonies, the Stamp Act was enacted, forcing colonists to buy a British stamp for every official document that they obtained
1774 In London, England, the Quebec Act was given Royal Assent. The province was to be ruled by a governor and councillors. Freedom of religion would be given to Roman Catholics, as well as permission for Catholics to hold public office. They were also guaranteed use of the French language, maintenance of the seigniorial system and the establishment of the French Civil Code and the English Criminal Code. These concessions were all to promote loyalty of the French in the event of an American revolution
1777 An American revolutionary force under the command of George Washington was routed at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, by the 1st American Regiment. The 1st American Regiment later became known as the Queen's York Regiment, and is one of Canada's oldest military units. It was organised before the American Revolution by Robert Rogers, famed for his Rogers' Rangers, and was later moved to Toronto by Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada
1799 The bell was salvaged from the Lutine, which sank off the coast of Holland. It was presented to Lloyds of London. Known as the Lutine Bell, it has been rung ever since to mark a marine disaster
1806 Carbon paper was patented by Ralph Wedgewood of London
1816 The first double-decked steamboat, the Washington, arrived in New Orleans. The Washington was the work of a shipbuilder named Henry M. Shreve. Shreve's cleverly designed Washington had all the features that would soon come to characterise the classic Mississippi riverboat: a two-story deck, a stern-mounted paddle wheel powered by a high-pressure steam engine, a shallow, flat-bottomed hull, and a pilothouse framed by two tall chimneys. Perfectly designed for the often-shallow western rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri, the Washington proved itself on its inaugural voyage the following spring. Steaming upriver against the current with full cargo, the Washington reached Louisville in only 25 days, demonstrating that the powerful new generation of steamboats could master the often-treacherous currents of the mighty western rivers. Soon the Washington began to offer regular passenger and cargo service between New Orleans and Louisville, steaming upstream at the then dizzying speed of 16mph and downstream at as much as 25mph
1825 The Great Miramachi Fire destroyed Newcastle and Douglastown, New Brunswick, leaving 160 dead. The fire would kill over 500 people before it burned out
1868 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY was inaugurated
1913 Henry Ford unveiled his new “moving assembly line” for mass producing cars, at his Highland Park automobile factory in Michigan. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one Model T from 12 1/2 hours to six
1913 Oil was discovered at Okotoks, near Calgary, sparking Alberta's first oil boom. William Stewart Herron, a local horse wrangler, who had first noticed gas bubbling out of an old mine shaft in 1911, collected samples, and formed a company to drill on the site
1940 Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” was recorded by Artie Shaw and his Orchestra
1949 The Republic of East Germany was formed
1982 The musical Cats opened on Broadway in New York City
1985 The Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise liner was seized by terrorists
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