1890 Aimee Semple McPherson Canadian born US evangelist who was one of the first to use radio to reach a wide audience. She built up a huge following and her theatrical style helped her amass a fortune. When she was 17, McPherson married Pentecostal evangelist Robert Semple, and accompanied him to China on missionary duty. When he died she moved to the US with her daughter, married another evangelist, H.S. McPherson, and started tent preaching. In 1918, they moved to Los Angeles, and in 1923, with her marriage shaky but her services packed, she opened her 5,000 seat Angelus Temple of the Foursquare Gospel, complete with high wattage radio show. Her main message was no divorce, no dancing and no cosmetics, but in 1926 she divorced McPherson, and disappeared for a time with her radio station manager. Her career faltered, and she divorced a third husband, and died of an apparent accidental drug overdose in 1944
1891 Otto Schnering - Candy bar mogul who founded Curtiss Candy Company (Baby Ruth, Butterfinger bars)
1900 Alastair Sim Scottish actor (A Christmas Carol, Laughter in Paradise, The Belles of St Trinians, An Inspector Calls, The Anatomist)
1905 Howard St. John - Actor (I Died a Thousand Times, L'il Abner, The Tender Trap, Lover Come Back, Hank, The Investigator)
1914 Edward Andrews - Actor (Broadside, Supertrain, Advice and Consent, Elmer Gantry, Sixteen Candles, Tea and Sympathy)
1923 Sir Donald Sinden British actor (The Children, The Captain's Table, Doctor in the House, Simba, Father Dear Father, The Day of the Jackal, The Canterville Ghost)
1923 Fyvush Finkel - Actor (Picket Fences, Boston Public)
1937 Brian Blessed British stage and screen actor (I Claudius, Z Cars, Metropolis, Cold Comfort Farm, Man of La Mancha, The Black Adder, The Last Days of Pompeii, War and Remembrance, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Much Ado About Nothing, Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace) He is a mountaineer, and has attempted to climb Mount Everest three times. He played Geoffrey Lyons in the 1983 movie The Hound of the Baskervilles
1940 John Lennon British singer and songwriter who was part of the legendary Beatles (She Loves You, Hey Jude, Revolution, Help) and solo (Imagine)
1944 John Entwistle Bass player with The Who (My Generation, Happy Jack, Pinball Wizard, I Can See For Miles)
1948 Jackson Browne - Songwriter and singer (Doctor My Eyes, Running on Empty, Somebody's Baby, The Pretender, Lawyers in Love)
1953 Tony Shalhoub - Actor (Monk, Wings, Barton Fink, Addams Family Values, Men in Black, Primary Colors)
1954 Scott Bakula Actor (Quantum Leap, Star Trek: Enterprise, Chuck, Men of a Certain Age, American Beauty, Eisenhower & Lutz, Necessary Roughness, NCIS: New Orleans)
1979 Brandon Routhe Actor (Superman Returns, Chuck, Table for Three, Scott Pilgrim vs the World)
Died this Day
1562 Gabriel Fallopius Italian anatomist who researched the reproductive organs
1967 Chι Guevara, age 39 - Latin American guerrilla leader, executed in Bolivia. He fought what he perceived as the American domination of Latin America. Theory held that in spite of his Marxist beliefs, Soviet pressure caused his disappearance in 1965. Though others believed that the CIA had a hand in his assassination, the official statement by the Bolivian government was he was killed in a skirmish with guerrillas
1974 Oskar Schindler, age 66 German businessman who is credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust
On this Day
28BC The Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, Rome, was dedicated
1635 Rhode Island founder and religious dissident Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the General Court of Massachusetts. Williams had spoken out against the right of civil authorities to hand out punishment for religious offences and opposed the practice of doling out land that belonged to Indians. After leaving Massachusetts, Williams established a settlement at the junction of two rivers near Narragansett Bay, located within present-day Rhode Island. Williams declared the settlement open to those seeking freedom of conscience and the removal of the church from civil matters. Taking the success of the venture as a sign from God, Williams named the first community in history boasting complete religious freedom Providence. Among those who found a haven in the religious and political refuge of the Rhode Island Colony were Anne Hutchinson, exiled from Massachusetts for theological reasons, some of the first Jews to settle in North America, and the Quakers. Roger Williams also founded the first Baptist church in America and edited the first dictionary of Native-American languages
1701 The Collegiate School of Connecticut, later Yale University, was chartered in New Haven
1776 Spanish missionaries settled in what is now San Francisco
1781 In the last major battle of the Revolutionary War, American and French armies under General George Washington commenced a bombardment of the Lord Cornwallis's encircled British forces at Yorktown, Virginia. Three days before, Washington had ordered his 8,500-strong allied force to build 2,000-yard-long trenches around the British defences, cutting off any possible escape routes for the British. With the Marquis de Lafayette's army to the west, Americans to the south and east, and a French naval fleet under Comte de Grasse dominating the Virginia shore, Lord Cornwallis, after enduring eight days of heavy bombardment, had no choice but to surrender his 9,000 troops. Although skirmishes and limited military actions continued in the colonies for over a year, Washington had achieved victory at Yorktown - winning American independence from Britain, then the most powerful nation on Earth
1789 Torture was abolished in France
1820 At Halifax, the Governor issued a proclamation rejoining Cape Breton to Nova Scotia. Cape Breton, originally part of the colony of Nova Scotia in 1763, became a separate colony for Loyalist refugees in 1784
1858 The first overland mail reached St. Louis from San Francisco
1874 James Farquharson Macleod arrived at Fort Whoop-Up, Alberta, with the first North West Mounted Police troop, guided by Metis scout Jerry Potts. They found the whisky trading post empty, but build a fort on an island in the Oldman River. The first arrest came with the capture of five whiskey traders with two wagon loads of buffalo robes, rifles and fire water, which was a concoction of brandy and pepper
1888 The Washington Monument was opened to the public
1936 The first generator at Boulder (later Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles
1938 The St. Clair River Bridge from Port Huron, Michigan to Point Edward, Ontario was dedicated
1940 Londons St. Paul's Cathedral was bombed during a heavy German night air raid on London in World War II. The dome of the Cathedral was pierced by a bomb, leaving the high altar in ruin. It was one of the few occasions that the 17th-century cathedral suffered significant damage during the bombing raids in the fall of 1940. According to tradition, a Roman temple to the goddess Diana once stood on Ludgate Hill at the site of St. Paul's Cathedral. In 604AD, King Aethelberht I dedicated the first Christian cathedral there to St. Paul. That cathedral burned, and its replacement was destroyed by Vikings in 962. A third cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1087 and was replaced by a grand Norman structure that was completed in the 13th century. In the 16th century, the fourth cathedral fell into disrepair and was damaged by fire. Further harm was done to it during the English civil wars of the 17th century. In the 1660s, the English architect Sir Christopher Wren was enlisted to repair the cathedral, but the Great Fire of London intervened, destroying Old St. Paul's Cathedral in 1666. In the aftermath of the fire, Wren designed a new St. Paul's Cathedral, with dozens of smaller new churches ranged around it like satellites. The cathedral was Wren's masterpiece, featuring a baroque design and a prominent, stately dome. St. Paul's Cathedral became an inspiration to the British people during World War II, surviving numerous air raids. Images of St. Paul's framed by smoke and fire became a symbol of Britain's indomitable spirit, and despite the damage caused on the night of October 9th, the cathedral survived the Blitz largely intact. Many British heroes and statesmen lie buried within St. Pauls Cathedral
1947 The first telephone call between a car and an airplane was made above Wilmington, Delaware
1973 Elvis and Priscilla Presley divorced
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