1731 Henry Cavendish – French born British scientist and chemist who discovered hydrogen in 1766
1813 Guiseppe Verdi – Italian opera composer (Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Aida)
1863 Louis Cyr – Canadian strongman. Cyr's family moved from Québec to Massachusetts when he was a boy, but he returned to Montreal to work as a policeman in 1882. He was soon giving shows of his prowess in weightlifting. P.T. Barnum hired him as a strongman, and in Boston in 1895, Cyr hoisted the heaviest weight ever lifted by a human being - a platform with 19 big men weighing a total of 4,335 lbs On his retirement he opened a tavern in Montreal
1877 William Richard Morris, First Viscount Nuffield – British car manufacturer and philanthropist. He started the Morris Motor Company at Cowley, Oxfordshire in 1910 to build cars for those with modest incomes
1900 Helen Hayes – Actress known as The First Lady of American Theatre (Airport, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, Victoria Regina, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Snoop Sisters, Victory at Entebbe, Candleshoe)
1914 Ivory Joe Hunter – Singer (Since I Met You Baby, I Almost Lost My Mind, I Need You So) and songwriter (Ain't That Loving You Baby, My Wish Come True)
1917 Thelonius Monk – US jazz pianist and composer (Round Midnight, Misterioso, Straight No Chaser, Blue Monk, Epistrophy)
1924 James Clavell – British born US author (Shogun, Noble House, Tai-pan, King Rat, To Sir With Love)
1926 Richard Jaeckel - Actor (Come Back Little Sheba, The Devil's Brigade, The Dirty Dozen, Sands of Iwo Jima, Herbie Goes Bananas, Spenser: For Hire, Baywatch) He was in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Bogus Buccaneers and the Case of the Lover’s Leap
1933 Daniel Massey – British stage and screen actor (GBH, Star!, Mary Queen of Scots, The Crucible, Scandal, In the Name of the Father) He was the son of actor Raymond Massey, brother of Anna Massey, one time brother-in-law of Jeremy Brett, and the godson of Noel Coward. He played Anthony Donn in the Inspector Morse episode Deceived by Flight He also pla yed J. Neil Gibson in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Problem of Thor Bridge
1941 Peter Coyote – Actor (E.T. the Extra Terrestial, Law & Order: Los Angeles, Bitter Moon, Sphere, Patch Adams, Erin Brockovich, The 4400)
1946 Ben Vereen – US singer, dancer, and stage and screen actor (Pippin, All that Jazz, Funny Lady, Webster, Roots, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe)
1946 Charles Dance – British actor (The Jewel in the Crown, For Your Eyes Only, The McGuffin, The Golden Child, First Born, Rebecca) He played Sir Henry Carlyle in Murder Rooms: The Dark Origins of Sherlock Holmes
1948 Cyril Neville - Musician with his family group The Neville Brothers (Mona Lisa, The Ten Commandments of Love)
1955 David Lee Roth – Singer with the group Van Halen (Jump, Panama) and solo (California Girls, Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody)
1956 Amanda Burton – Irish actress (Silent Witness, Helen West, Forgotten, Boon, Peak Practice) She played Mirella Lunghi in the Inspector Morse episode, The Settling of the Sun
1958 Tanya Tucker - Country singer (Delta Dawn, San Antonio Stroll, Here's Some Love, Texas When I Die, Pecos Promenade)
1961 Bonita Freidericy – Actress (Chuck, The House of Sand and Fog, A Temporary Life)
1961 Martin Kemp – British actor (EastEnders, Embrace of the Vampire, The Krays, Marple: Sleeping Murder, Cyber Bandits)
Died this Day
1964 Eddie Cantor, age 72 – Actor and singer (Whoopee!, Kid Millions, Ali Baba goes to Town, Thank Your Lucky Stars, If You Knew Susie) He died of a heart attack in Beverly Hills, California
1983 Sir Ralph Richardson, age 80 – British stage and screen actor (Doctor Zhivago, The Return of Bulldog Drummond, Our Man in Havana, Exodus, Battle of Britain, Who Slew Auntie Roo?, Tales From the Crypt, O Lucky Man!, Rollerball, Time Bandits, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, The Four Feathers) He died of a stroke in London
1985 Yul Brynner, age 65 – Russian born actor (The King and I, The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, Anastasia, Westworld, The Brothers Karamazov, Taras Bulba, Futureworld) He died of lung cancer, in New York
1985 Orson Welles, age 70 – Actor, writer and director (War of the Worlds, Citizen Kane) He died of a heart attack, in Hollywood, California
On this Day
AD 732 At the Battle of Tours near Poitiers, France, Frankish leader Charles Martel, a Christian, defeated a large army of Spanish Moors, halting the Muslim advance into Western Europe. Abd-ar-Rahman, the Muslim governor of Córdoba, was killed in the fighting, and the Moors retreated from Gaul, never to return in such force. Charles was the illegitimate son of Pepin, the powerful mayor of the palace of Austrasia and effective ruler of the Frankish kingdom. After Pepin died in 714, with no surviving legitimate sons, Charles beat out Pepin's three grandsons in a power struggle and became mayor of the Franks. He expanded the Frankish territory under his control and in 732 repulsed an onslaught by the Muslims. Victory at Tours ensured the ruling dynasty of Martel's family, the Carolingians. His son Pepin became the first Carolingian king of the Franks, and his grandson Charlemagne carved out a vast empire that stretched across Europe
1710 Canada's first Anglican church service was held in Chebucto, Nova Scotia
1845 The United States Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Maryland, with fifty midshipmen students and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850, the curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French. The Naval School officially became the US Naval Academy in 1850, and a new curriculum went into effect requiring midshipmen to study at the Academy for four years and to train aboard ships each summer - the basic format that remains at the academy to this day
1877 The US Army held a West Point funeral with full military honours for Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who was killed the previous year at the Battle of the Little Big Horn
1886 In Tuxedo Park, NY the tuxedo dinner jacket, a tail-less dress coat, made its debut at the Autumn Ball
1913 The Panama Canal, a waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was completed with the explosion of the Gamboa Dike. US President Woodrow Wilson triggered the blast by pressing an electric button at the White House in Washington, DC, concluding one of the largest construction projects of all time. The rush of settlers to California and Oregon in the mid-nineteenth century was the initial impetus of the US desire to build a shipping route across Central America. In 1881, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French entrepreneur who had completed the Suez Canal in 1869, began work on a sea-level canal across Colombia-controlled Panama. However, inadequate planning, disease among the workers, and financial problems drove the company into bankruptcy in 1889. By the turn of the century, sole possession of the isthmian canal became imperative to the US, which had acquired significant Caribbean and Pacific territory at the end of the Spanish-American War. In 1901, Congress authorised purchase of the French-owned Panama Canal Company, and allocated funding for construction of the canal. In 1906, US engineers decided on a lock canal, and the next three years were spent developing construction facilities and eradicating tropical diseases in the area. In 1909, construction proper began. In one of the largest construction projects of all time, US engineers moved over 240 million cubic yards of earth and spent nearly $400 million dollars in constructing the forty-mile-long canal. In August, 1914, the Panama Canal opened to traffic with the passage of the vessel Ancon
1935 George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway
1949 Radio Corporation of America (RCA) presented the first public showing of its all-electronic television system
1959 The beginning of the first global airline service was announced by Pan American World Airways. Fourteen years before, Pan American had achieved the first around-the-world flight by a commercial aircraft when the Pacific Clipper flew west from Los Angeles, California, to New York City
1962 The BBC banned Bobby Pickett's novelty song, Monster Mash, because it deemed the record offensive. The goofy tune about a horror-movie-star record hop was soon the No. 1 record in the US, and was a big hit again when it was re-released in the early 1970s
1970 During the October Crisis the Front de Liberation du Québec (FLQ), a militant separatist group who employed terrorist tactics, kidnapped Québec labour minister Pierre Laporte. Five days earlier, FLQ terrorists had seized British Trade Commissioner James Richard Cross. In exchange for the lives of the men, the FLQ demanded the release of two dozen FLQ members convicted of various charges, including kidnappings, bombings, and arms theft. When the Canadian government refused their demands, Laporte was found strangled to death, eight days after he was abducted. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau responded by banning the FLQ, suspending civil liberties in Québec, invoking the War Measures Act, and sending thousands of troops into the province. In a series of police raids, over 500 Québec separatists were taken into custody and held without charges. The apartment building holding Cross and his kidnappers was discovered in late November. After a tense stand-off, the kidnappers agreed to release Cross in return for safe passage to Cuba for themselves and their families. Cross was freed on December 3 after the group arrived in Cuba. Laporte's kidnappers were later arrested and convicted of kidnapping and murder
1970 Fiji became independent after nearly a century of British rule.
1971 Britain's historic London Bridge, transported across the Atlantic, opened as a tourist attraction at Lake Havasu in Arizona
1973 US Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned due to charges of tax evasion
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