1784 John McLoughlin – Canadian-born fur trader and doctor, born near Rivière du Loup, Quebec. McLoughlin was hired by the North West Company in Montreal as a doctor in 1803, and by 1814 was a partner. He helped promote the coalition with the Hudson's Bay Company, and was made a Chief Factor, posted by Sir George Simpson to the Columbia District. The two often clashed over how to deal with US settlers and trading ships. McLoughlin saw US statehood as inevitable and left the HBC in 1848 to start a flour and sawmill operation, becoming The Father of Oregon in the process
1859 Alfred Dreyfus - French army officer who was falsely accused and convicted of treason in 1894, and sent to Devil’s Island. He was exonerated in 1906
1862 Auguste Lumière - French photographic pioneer, who with his brother Louis, developed a motion picture camera and projector called Cinématographe, which is where the word “cinema” came from. They made the first film, Lunchbreak at the Lumière Factory, in 1895
1885 Charles Merrill – US investment banker who helped create the stock brokerage firm, Merrill-Lynch
1909 Robert Beatty – Canadian actor (Where Eagles Dare, Calling Bulldog Drummond, 2001: A Space Odyssey)
1920 LaWanda Page - Actress (Sanford and Son, Detective School) She had a fire breathing act in Vaudeville as the Bronze Goddess, which performed once on Sanford and Son
1925 Bernard Hepton – British actor (Colditz, Secret Army, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I Claudius, Gandhi) He played Harold Winstanley in the Midsomer Murders episode Death of a Hollow Man
1931 John Le Carré – British novelist (The Russia House, A Small Town in Germany, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Night Manager, The Looking Glass War, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) He was born David Cornwell in Poole, England. Le Carré became involved in the British intelligence service in Austria before attending Oxford. After Oxford, he taught French and Latin at Eton, then joined the British Foreign Service in West Germany in 1959. He quit his government job in 1963, when his writing proved successful. His 1986 novel, A Perfect Spy, was the first of his novels not submitted to the British government for approval and possible censorship, which had previously been required of him, given his former intelligence status
1932 Robert Reed - Actor (The Brady Bunch, The Defenders, Mannix, Nurse, Rich Man Poor Man, Roots)
1937 Peter Max - Pop artist and psychedelic designer, he did the postage stamp for Expo '74, and was the official artist for the 1982 World's Fair
1940 Michael Gambon – Irish actor (Maigret, The Singing Detective, Paris by Night, The Challengers, The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover, Longitude, Sleepy Hollow)
1941 Simon Ward – British actor (Young Winston, The Three Musketeers, All Creatures Great and Small, Zulu Dawn, Supergirl)
1945 John Lithgow – US stage and screen actor (3rd Rock from the Sun, Twilight Zone: The Movie, I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, The World According to Garp, Terms of Endearment, Raising Cain, The Pelican Brief, Cliffhanger)
1945 Jeannie C. Riley - Singer (Harper Valley PTA, Country Girl, The Girl Most Likely)
Died this Day
1216 King John, age 48 – King of England. He died during the Civil War, which was the result of his repudiating the Magna Carta which he had signed previously. Some reports say that he died after consuming what was described as an excessive number of peaches, and too much beer
1745 Jonathan Swift, age 77 – Irish cleric and author (Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of a Tub, Drapier’s Letters, A Modest Proposal)
1897 George Pullman, age 66 – US designer and manufacturer of Pullman railway coaches
1966 Elizabeth Arden, age 81 – Canadian-born founder of the cosmetics manufacturing giant. She was born Florence Nightingale Graham in Toronto
1988 Son House, age 86 - Mississippi Delta bluesman. Musicians as diverse as
Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt cited him as an influence. His guitar and vocal styles helped lay the groundwork for rock 'n' roll, although he recorded only sporadically, beginning in 1930. He died in Detroit
On this Day
1781 British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing to an end the last major battle of the Revolutionary War. Two weeks earlier, Patriot and French forces under Washington encircled Cornwallis's troops at the strategic site of Yorktown, and commenced siege operations against the massive British force. With the Marquis de Lafayette's army to the west, Patriots to the south and east, and a French naval fleet under Comte de Grasse dominating the Virginia shore, Lord Cornwallis had no choice but to surrender his 9,000 troops after enduring eight days of heavy bombardment. Skirmishes and limited military actions continued in the colonies for over a year, and peace was not formally declared until September, 1783
1844 As many as 200 people drowned when strong winds forced water from Lakes Ontario and Erie onto the streets of Toronto and Buffalo
1860 The first company to manufacture internal combustion engines was formed in Florence, Italy. The engines were designed by Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci
1864 Confederate States of America Lieutenant Bennett Young led 25 Confederate Civil War fugitives hiding in Montreal to St. Albans, where they robbed three banks of $200,000, and killed one person, before escaping back across the border to St-Jean. Thirteen were arrested a few days later, and held for extradition, but were released on a technicality by a Montreal police magistrate. It was the northernmost engagement of the US Civil War
1869 Construction began on the Sutro Tunnel in Virginia City, Nevada. The famous Prussian-born mining engineer, Adolph Sutro, started work on one of the most ambitious western engineering projects of the day: a four-mile-long tunnel through the solid rock of the Comstock Lode mining district. One of the richest silver deposits in the world, the Comstock Lode had been discovered by prospectors in 1859, and quickly became the focus of the most intensive mining activity in the West. But as miners sank shafts ever deeper into the rock in search of more silver and gold, they began to encounter large amounts of water that had to be pumped to the surface at great expense. The mining companies would save a fortune if the water could be drained horizontally, and Adolph Sutro's tunnel was intended to do just that. Sutro proposed to blast a large horizontal tunnel right through the rock of the neighbouring Mt. Davidson and straight into the heart of the Comstock mine. Mine water would thus drain through the tunnel without need for expensive pumps, and the mining companies would also be able to use the tunnel to move men and ore in and out of the mine, greatly reducing transportation costs. While all involved agreed that technically Sutro's tunnel would be a boon to the Comstock, progress on the project was continually slowed down by resistance from some of the major mining interests who feared that Sutro would use his tunnel to take control of the entire lode. Only after securing European capital was Sutro able to complete the $5-million project in 1878. The successful tunnel drained some two million gallons of water from the mines per year and greatly reduced transportation costs, but by 1878, the richer sections of the Comstock Lode had been tapped out, and the mine had begun to steadily decline in profitability. Sutro sold his tunnel in 1879 at a fantastic profit and moved to San Francisco where he became one of the city's largest landowners as well as the city's mayor from 1894 to 1896
1915 The US showed its opposition to Pancho Villa, and recognised General Venustiano Carranza as the president of Mexico, imposing an embargo on the shipment of arms to all Mexican territories except those controlled by Carranza. The year before, Carranza, along with revolutionary leader Pancho Villa, led a successful revolt against the regime of Victoriano Huerta. After the victory, the two leaders became rivals and Villa fled into the mountains. Despite US military support for Carranza, Villa continued his resistance throughout the next year, and in 1916 the US launched a punitive expedition against him in northern Mexico. Like Carranza, the US force failed to capture the elusive revolutionary, but in 1917 the new government of Adolfo de la Huerta drafted a reformist constitution, and Villa agreed to retire from politics. The government pardoned Villa in 1920, but three years later he was assassinated at Parral
1943 During World War II, the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers began in Russia. Delegates from the USSR met with representatives from the Allied nations of Great Britain, the US, and China, in an attempt to hammer out a greater consensus on war aims, and to improve the rapidly cooling relations between the Soviet Union and its allies. The four powers agreed to collaborate on surrender terms for the enemy, and to recognise the need for an effective international organisation to prevent future wars
1957 Rocket Richard of the Montréal Canadiens became the first NHL player to score 500 career goals. He did it in 863 games
1960 In Washington, DC, Canada and the US signed an agreement to build the joint Columbia River project for hydro power and flood control
1960 The US imposed an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products
1977 The supersonic Concorde made its first landing in New York City after 19 months of delays caused by residents concerned about the supersonic aircraft's noise
1989 The Guildford Four, convicted of the 1975 IRA bombings of public houses in Guildford and Woolwich, England, were cleared of all charges after nearly 15 years in prison
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