1778 Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac – French physicist and chemist who made balloon ascents to study the weather. He investigated gasses which led to his discovery of a way to produce sulphuric and other acids
1863 Charles Martin Hall – US chemist who pioneered the manufacture of aluminium around 1885
1864 William S. Hart – Silent screen star who was the original screen cowboy (Wild Bill Hickock, Tumbleweeds, Blue Blazes Rawden, The Gun Fighter)
1886 Alfred Joyce Kilmer - Poet (Trees, Memorial Day, Prayer of a Soldier in France)
1896 Ira Gershwin - US lyricist who wrote with his brother George (Lady Be Good, Someone to Watch Over Me, I’ve Got Rhythm)
1900 Agnes Moorehead - Actress (Bewitched, The Singing Nun, Pollyanna, Magnificent Obsession, Citizen Kane, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Show Boat)
1920 Dave Brubeck - Jazz musician (Take Five)
1924 Wally Cox – Actor (The Barefoot Executive, Mr Peepers, The Night Strangler, Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County, State Fair, Babes in Toyland, Underdog, The Hollywood Squares)
1928 Bobby Van – Actor and dancer (Small Town Girl, Lost Horizon, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis)
1932 Don King – Boxing promoter (Muhammud Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson)
1938 Colin Farrell – British actor (In Loving Memory, Coronation Street, Signs and Wonders, Kiss Me Kate, Thicker Than Water, A Bridge Too Far)
1945 James Naughton – Actor (The Devil Wears Prada, The Paper Chase, Gossip Girl, The First Wives Club, The Cosby Mysteries, The Glass Menagerie)
1948 JoBeth Williams - Actress (The Big Chill, Kramer vs Kramer, Wyatt Earp)
1953 Tom Hulce – Actor (Amadeus, Murder in Mississippi, Parenthood)
1955 Steven Wright – Comedian known for his deadpan delivery & actor (Resevoir Dogs, Mad About You, Canadian Bacon)
b1956 Peter Buck - Rock musician with REM (Radio Free Europe, Fall On Me, The One I Love, Stand)
1962 Janine Turner - Actress (Northern Exposure, Cliffhanger, Steel Magnolias)
Died this Day
1749 Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de La Verendrye, age 64 – French-Canadian explorer, soldier, farmer, and fur trader. He and his sons were the first to bring the French fur trade from Lake Superior to the lower Saskatchewan and Missouri rivers. He died at Montréal, in the midst of planning another of many expeditions to search for the elusive Northwest Passage. Born in the small frontier town of Trois-Rivières, New France, now Quebec, La Verendrye exhibited an adventurous spirit from an early age. When he was only 12 years old, he joined in the French-Indian raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, and then sailed across the Atlantic to fight for France in the War of the Spanish Succession. After spending time as a soldier, he returned to New France, and in 1726, he became a fur trader in the frontier region north of Lake Superior. In 1738 he reached the Mandan Indian villages along the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota, some sixty years before Lewis and Clark reached the same area. From this base, two of his sons continued westward searching for the North-West Passage, and it is believed they may have travelled far enough into Montana and Wyoming to see the massive Rocky Mountains in the distance. Unfortunately, La Verendrye and his sons never found the elusive Northwest Passage, and their failure earned them only scorn from the French authorities in Montreal. This derision was perhaps unfair, as he did open new areas to French fur traders. Without his exploration, those areas likely would have been claimed by British competitors. At entirely his own expense, La Verendrye pushed farther into the West than any other Frenchman, at least temporarily strengthening French political claims in North America
1793 Madame du Barry – Mistress of Louis XV of France. She died by the guillotine, after being found guilty of “wasting the treasures of the state” by the Revolutionary Tribune
1882 Anthony Trollope, age 67 – British suveyor and novelist (Can You Forgive Her?, The Eustace Diamonds, The Barchester Chronicles)
1889 Jefferson Davis – The first and only President of the Confederate States of America
1988 Roy Orbison, age 52 - Rock 'n' roll pioneer (Crying, Only The Lonely, Oh Pretty Woman) He died of a heart attack, near Nashville, Tennessee
1993 Don Ameche, age 85 – Actor (Cocoon, Harry and the Hendersons, Trading Places, Down Argentine Way)
2000 Werner Klemperer, age 90 – German-born actor (Hogan's Heroes, Ship of Fools, Houseboat) He appeared in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Desperate Daughter, The Case of the Two-Faced Turn-About, and The Case of a Place Called Midnight He also appeared, uncredited, in the Batman episode It’s How You Play the Game
On this Day
1752 John Bushell published an 8-page pamphlet for the government in Halifax. It was the first book published in Canada
1774 Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system
1873 The first international football game was played in New Haven, Connecticut. Yale defeated Eton, England 2-1
1877 US inventor Thomas Edison demonstrated the first sound recording of the human voice, reciting "Mary had a Little Lamb" at West Orange, New Jersey
1884 US Army engineers completed construction of the Washington monument, 36 years after the cornerstone was laid
1907 The Monongah coal mine disaster killed 361 coal miners in an explosion in West Virginia’s Marion County. The explosion, in a network of mines owned by the Fairmont Coal Company, was the worst mining disaster in US history. In 1883, the creation of the Norfolk and Western Railway opened a gateway to the untapped coalfields of south-western West Virginia. New towns sprung up in the region virtually overnight as European immigrants and African Americans from the south poured into southern West Virginia in pursuit of a livelihood from the new industry. By the late 19th century, West Virginia fell far behind other major coal-producing states in regulating mining conditions. In addition to poor economic conditions, West Virginia had a higher mine death rate than any other state. Nation-wide, a total of 3,242 people were killed in mine accidents in 1907
1911 A Calgary, Alberta judge convicted two dairy delivery men of theft after they removed a rival firm's milk bottles from doorsteps and milk chutes. They were trying to get annoyed customers to switch companies
1917 At 9:05 am, in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurred when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, exploded shortly after colliding with the Belgium steamship Imo. The Mont Blanc’s cargo holds were packed with highly explosive TNT, picric acid, high octane gasoline, and gun cotton. As World War I raged in Europe, the port city of Halifax bustled with the movement of ships carrying troops, relief supplies, and munitions across the Atlantic Ocean. The Imo left its mooring in Halifax Harbour for New York City, while at the same time, the Mont Blanc was forging through the harbour's narrows to join a military convoy that would escort it across the Atlantic. At approximately 8:45 am, the two ships collided, setting the picric acid ablaze. The Mont Blanc was propelled toward the shore by the collision, and the crew rapidly abandoned the ship, attempting to alert the harbour of the peril. Spectators gathered along the waterfront to witness the spectacle of the blazing ship. The Halifax Fire Department responded quickly, and were positioning their engine up to the nearest hydrant when the Mont Blanc exploded in a blinding white flash. Train dispatcher Vince Coleman and a colleague were warned of the coming disaster by two sailors who had been sent rushing from building to building, trying to evacuate residents from the site. The pair started to leave the station, which stood just a few hundred feet from the firey munitions ship, but Coleman went back in a last-ditch bid to warn trains approaching Halifax of the pending explosion in the city's harbour. The last message Coleman typed out was: "Hold up the trains. Munitions ship on fire. Making for Pier 6 and will explode. Goodbye boys." The force of the explosion levelled the train station, and the tidal wave that followed the blast swept through what was left of the structure. The massive explosion killed more than 1,800 people, injured another 9,000, including blinding 200, and destroyed almost the entire north end of the city of Halifax, including more than 1,600 homes. The resulting shock wave shattered windows 50 miles away, and the sound of the explosion could be heard hundreds of miles away
1921 The Irish Free State, comprising four-fifths of Ireland, was declared, ending a five-year Irish struggle for independence from Britain. Like other autonomous nations of the former British Empire, Ireland was to remain part of the British Commonwealth, symbolically subject to the king. The Irish Free State later severed ties with Britain and was renamed Éire, and is now called the Republic of Ireland
1921 Agnes MacPhail became the first woman elected to Canada’s House of Commons. It was the first election in which all Canadian women were able to exercise their right to vote
1922 The first commercial carrier of electricity launched its service in Utica, New York. General Electric built the Utica Gas and Electric Company plant, which consisted of transmitters, power lines, and receivers. The lines could carry both power and voice signals, and one line could carry numerous frequencies simultaneously
1927 Ottawa city council approved installation of its first automatic traffic light control system
1933 A US federal judge ruled that James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, was not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in the US and England when it came out in 1922
1947 Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Truman
1955 The US Federal government standardised the size of license plates throughout the nation. Previously, individual states had designed their own license plates, resulting in wide variations
1964 The stop motion animation TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer first aired
1969 A concert by The Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Livermore, California was marred by the deaths of four people, including one who was stabbed by a Hell's Angel
1989 Fourteen women were shot to death and thirteen others wounded at the University of Montréal's School of Engineering. It was the worst mass killing in Canadian history. The 25-year-old gunman, Marc Lepine, was armed with a Sturm Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle, knives and bandoliers of ammunitions. He rampaged through the school, vowing to "fight the feminists," before shouting “You're all a bunch of feminists” and turning the gun on himself
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