AD 37 Nero – 5th Roman Emperor, who put his mother to death in AD 59 and his wife Octavia 3 years after that. He also saw Rome destroyed by fire in AD 64. His behaviour inspired a revolt which eventually led to his suicide. He was born in Antium to Agrippina the Younger and Gnaeus Domitius Anenobarbus, a great-grandson of Augustus. He had a very unstable childhood. The emperor Caius Galigula banished his family around AD 39, seizing the entire family's fortune. His father died when he was only three years old, and he was raised by his mother in poverty. That changed when Agrippina married her uncle, the emperor Claudius. Agrippina convinced Claudius to adopt Nero and in AD 54 Nero inherited the throne when his mother murdered Claudius
1832 Alexandre Gustav Eiffel – French engineer who build the great landmark that bears his name for the Paris Exhibition of 1899. When the Eiffel Tower was originally proposed, it aroused a good deal of hostility, and fear that the structure would be an ugly, tall edifice
1859 Dr. Lazarus Ludovic Zamenof – Polish linguist who invented the artificial language of Esperanto in 1887
1892 J. Paul Getty - Oil magnate and founder of Getty Oil. He was once the richest man in the world
1916 Buddy (Edwin) Cole – Pianist with the group The Buddy Cole Trio, and singer with Rosemary Clooney (Swing Around Rosie)
1918 Jeff Chandler – Actor (Merril's Marauders, Broken Arrow, The Tattered Dress)
1922 Alan Freed - Disc jockey who was said to have coined the term “Rock’n’Roll”. He was fired on air at WABC for alleged involvement in the payola scandal of the late 1950s
1928 Ernest Ashworth - Country singer and member of the Grand Ole Opry (Talk Back Trembling Lips)
1933 Tim Conway - Actor, comedian (McHale's Navy, The Tim Conway Show, The Carol Burnett Show)
1938 Jerry Wallace - Singer (Primrose Lane, Shutters and Boards)
1939 Cindy Birdsong – Singer with Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles, and Diana Ross and The Supremes (Love Child, Someday We'll be Together)
1942 Dave Clark – Singer with the group The Dave Clark Five (Bits and Pieces, Do You Love Me, Glad All Over)
1949 Don Johnson - Actor (Miami Vice, Nash Bridges, Dead Bang)
1963 Helen Slater - Actress (Supergirl, Ruthless People, City Slickers)
1979 Adam Brody – Actor (The OC, Mr & Mrs Smith, The Ring, Growing Up Brady)
Died this Day
1675 Jan Vermeer – Dutch painter
1683 Izaak Walton, age 90 – British biographer and author (The Compleat Angler, The Life of Donne) His book, The Compleat Angler, first published in 1653, has since been reprinted on many hundreds of occasions
1816 Charles Stanhope, age 63 – British Earl who invented two early mechanical calculators, as well as a printing press, a microscope lens, and various other scientific devices. Stanhope was ahead of his time politically as well as scientifically: he argued for the democratisation of Parliament and criticised the slave trade in British colonies
1890 Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), age 59 – Leader of the Hunkpapa Teton Sioux was killed by Indian police at his home in a remote corner of the Standing Rock Reservation, South Dakota, allegedly while resisting arrest. He had retired, but remained influential, and there were fears that he would lead a rebellion. One of the most famous Native Americans of the 19th century, Sitting Bull was a fierce enemy of Anglo-Americans from a young age. Deeply devoted to the traditional ways, Sitting Bull believed that contact with non-Indians undermined the strength and identity of the Sioux and would lead to their ultimate decline. However, Sitting Bull's tactics were generally more defensive than aggressive, especially as he grew older and became a Sioux leader. Fundamentally, Sitting Bull and those associated with his tribe wished only to be left alone to pursue their traditional ways, but the Anglo settlers' growing interest in the land and the resulting confinement of Indians to government-controlled reservations inevitably led to conflicts. Sitting Bull's refusal to follow an 1875 order to bring his people to the Sioux reservation directly led to the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn, during which the Sioux and Cheyenne wiped out five troops of Custer's 7th Cavalry. After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada for four years. Faced with mass starvation among his people, due to declining bison populations and food shortages, Sitting Bull finally returned to the US in 1881, where he and his family were held prisoners of war for two years at Fort Randall in South Dakota. In 1883, Sitting Bull was assigned to the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota. He spent a season travelling with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. When the apocalyptic spiritual revival movement known as the Ghost Dance began to grow in popularity among the Sioux in 1890, Indian agents feared it might lead to an Indian uprising. Wrongly believing that Sitting Bull was the driving force behind the Ghost Dance, agent James McLaughlin sent Indian police to arrest the chief at his small cabin on the Grand River. The Indian police rousted the naked chief from his bed at 6:00 in the morning, hoping to spirit him away before his guards and neighbours knew what had happened. When he refused to go quietly, a crowd gathered and a few young men threatened the Indian police. Someone fired a shot that hit one of the Indian police, who retaliated by shooting Sitting Bull in the chest and head. The great chief was killed instantly. Before the ensuing gunfight ended, twelve other Indians were dead and three were wounded. Sitting Bull was buried in a far corner of the post cemetery at Fort Yates. Two weeks later, the army brutally suppressed the Ghost Dance movement with the massacre of a band of Sioux at Wounded Knee
1943 “Fats” Waller – Jazz pianist and composer (Ain’t Misbehavin, Honeysuckle Rose)
1944 Glenn Miller, age 40 – Bandleader (Chattanooga Choo Choo, Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree, Moonlight Serenade, In The Mood) and US Army Major, who disappeared during a flight over the English Channel while enroute to Paris. No wreckage or bodies were ever recovered. His innovative use of a saxophone-clarinet combination, along with light-hearted but infectious swing rhythms, won his big band group widespread popularity
1962 Charles Laughton, age 63 – British actor (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Private Life of Henry VIII, Captain Kidd, Hobson’s Choice, Spartacus) He was married to Elsa Lanchester for 33 years, until his death. In the play, Alibi, in 1928, he became the first actor to portray detective Hercule Poirot
1966 Walt Disney – Cartoonist, film-maker and founder of the Disney Empire. He died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, California, ten days after his 65th birthday
On this Day
1654 A meteorological society established in Tuscany began recording daily temperature readings
1791 Following ratification by the state of Virginia, the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, became the law of the land. In September 1789, the first Congress of the United States approved 12 amendments to the US Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. The amendments were designed to protect the basic rights of US citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion, as well as the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms, and the right that powers not delegated to the federal government would be reserved for the states and the people. Influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Bill of Rights was also drawn from Virginia's Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason in 1776. Mason, a native Virginian, was a lifelong champion of individual liberties, and in 1787 he attended the Constitutional Convention and criticised the final document for lacking constitutional protection of basic political rights. In the ratification struggle that followed, Mason and other critics agreed to support the Constitution in exchange for the assurance that amendments would be passed immediately. Virginia became the 10th of 14 states to approve 10 of the 12 amendments, thus giving the Bill of Rights the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it legal. Of the two amendments not ratified, the first concerned the population system of representation, while the second prohibited laws varying the payment of congressional members from taking effect until an election intervened. The first of these two amendments was never ratified, while the second was finally ratified more than 200 years later, in 1992
1919 The US Supreme Court upheld prohibition
1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation was incorporated
1938 Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Jefferson Memorial took place in Washington DC
1939 The motion picture Gone With the Wind, producer David O. Selznick's movie version of the Margaret Mitchell novel starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, had its world première at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta
1939 Nylon yarn was first produced commercially, in Delaware
1942 Canada’s Parliament approved the conscription of married men during the Second World War
1964 Canada's House of Commons approved dropping the Red Ensign flag in favour of a new Maple Leaf design
1965 Two US manned spacecraft, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, manoeuvred to within 10 feet of each other while in orbit and travelled side by side for four hours. It was the first space rendezvous
1967 A rush hour disaster occurred as the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River collapsed. Dozens of cars fell into the icy water. Forty-six people lost their lives in the accident, and many others were injured
1979 The game Trivial Pursuit was invented by Canadians Chris Haney and Scott Abbott
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