1805 Thomas Graham – Scottish chemist who did much to establish the science of physical chemistry and who discovered the principle of dialysis
1898 Irene Dunn - Actress (I Remember Mama, The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife, Penny Serenade, Love Affair, Show Boat)
1918 Audrey Totter - Actress (The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Carpetbaggers)
1918 James Leasor – British author (Follow the Drum, Ship of Gold, Tank of Serpents)
1924 Errol John – Trinidadian playwright (Moon on a Rainbow Shawl) and actor (The African Queen, Buck and the Preacher, PT 109) He appeared in the Rumpole of the Bailey episode Rumpole and the Golden Thread
1932 John Hillerman – Actor (Magnum PI, Blazing Saddles, The Betty White Show, One Day at a Time, Ellery Queen, Chinatown, Paper Moon, High Plains Drifter) He played Dr John Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movie Hands of a Murderer
1945 Peter Criss - Drummer with the group Kiss (I Just Want To Rock and Roll All Night)
1952 Jenny Agutter – British actress (Logan's Run, An American Werewolf in London, The Railway Children, Call the Midwife, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, MI-5/Spooks)
Died this Day
1954 James Hilton, age 54 – British novelist (Goodbye Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon, Random Harvest)
1968 John Steinbeck, age 66 – US Nobel Prize winning author (Cup of Gold, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, East of Eden, The Winter of our Discontent)
1973 Bobby Darrin, age 37 – US singer (Mack the Knife, Splish Splash, Dream Lover, Beyond the Sea, Irresistible You, Things) He died during open heart surgery
1982 Artur Rubenstein, age 95 – Polish born US virtuoso pianist, who died at his home in Geneva, Switzerland
1996 Carl Sagan, age 62 – US astronomer and author (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Cosmos, Contact)
On this Day
1699 Peter the Great ordered the Russian New Year to begin January 1st instead of September 1st
1790 The first successful cotton mill in the US began operating at Pawtucket, RI
1803 The Louisiana Purchase was completed as the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States during ceremonies in New Orleans. In April that year, the US had purchased from France the 828,000 square miles that had formerly been French Louisiana. The area was divided into two territories. The northern half was Louisiana Territory, which was home to many Indians, but largely unsettled by Europeans. It was this frontier section that would later be explored by Lewis and Clark. The second area was the southern Orleans Territory, which was populated by Europeans. Unlike the sprawling and largely unexplored northern territory, which eventually encompassed a dozen large states, Orleans Territory was a small, densely populated region that was like a little slice of France in the New World. With borders that roughly corresponded to the modern state of Louisiana, Orleans Territory was home to about 50,000 people, a primarily French population that had been living under the direction of a Spanish administration. These former citizens of France knew almost nothing about US laws and institutions, and the challenging task of bringing them into the fold fell to the newly appointed governor of the region, twenty-eight-year-old William Claiborne. Historians have found no real evidence that the French of Orleans Territory resented their transfer to US control, though one witness claimed that when the French tri-colour was replaced by the Stars and Stripes in New Orleans, the citizens wept. The French did resent that their new governor was appointed rather than elected, and they bridled when the US government tried to make English the official language and discouraged the use of French. The young Claiborne knew neither French nor Spanish, which exacerbated the situation. Claiborne soon found himself immersed in a complex sea of ethnic tensions and political unrest that he little understood, and in January he wrote to Thomas Jefferson that the population was "uninformed, indolent, luxurious-in a word, ill-fitted to be useful citizens for a Republic." To his dismay, Claiborne found that most of his time was spent not governing, but dealing with an unrelenting procession of crises like riots, robberies, and runaway slaves. Despite his concerns, Claiborne knew that somehow these people had to be made into US citizens, and over time he gradually made progress in bringing the citizenry into the Union. In December 1804 he was happy to report to Jefferson that "they begin to view their connexion with the United States as permanent and to experience the benefits thereof." Proof of this came eight years later, when the people of Orleans Territory drafted a constitution and successfully petitioned to become the eighteenth state in the Union. Despite Claiborne's doubts about whether the French would ever truly fit into their new nation, the approval of that petition meant that the people of Louisiana were officially part of the US
1820 Unmarried men in Missouri between ages 21 and 50 were ordered to pay a one-dollar annual tax for the luxury of remaining bachelors
1860 South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union
1864 Confederate forces evacuated Savannah, Georgia, as Union General William T. Sherman continued his “March to the Sea”
1879 Thomas A. Edison privately demonstrated his incandescent light at Menlo Park, NJ
1880 An English court decided that the telephone company was an infraction of the telegraph company monopoly. As a result, telephones in Britain were operated by the post office
1883 A cantilever bridge was opened between the US and Canada at Niagara Falls. The 150-metre bridge was the first to be called a cantilever
1886 At New Westminster, BC, the first all-Canadian telegraph system opened for regular traffic. The first official inaugural message was sent from New Westminster to Canso, Nova Scotia, in three minutes, and then relayed to England by submarine cable
1915 One of the classic withdrawals in military history, the ANZAC evacuation from Gallipoli during World War I, was completed. The ANZACs, Australian and New Zealand forces, along with British troops, began the final phase of their evacuation on December 18th. This retreat of the last 26,000 troops was completed without a single loss. Fifteen-thousand troops had already been moved out in the preceding months. The Gallipoli campaign had begun earlier that year. In early 1915 when the Russians appealed for some relief when threatened by the Turks in the Caucasus, the British decided to mount a naval expedition to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula on the western shore of the Dardanelles, with Constantinople as its objective. By capturing Constantinople, the British hoped to link up with the Russians, knock Turkey out of the war and possibly persuade the Balkan states to join the Allies. The initial naval attack began in February 1915, but was delayed by bad weather. By the time troops began to land that April, the Turks had had ample time to prepare adequate fortifications and the defending armies were now six times larger than when the campaign began. Against determined opposition, Australian and New Zealand troops won a bridgehead at “Anzac Cove” on the Aegean side of the peninsula. The British, meanwhile, tried to land at five points around Cape Helles but established footholds in only three before asking for reinforcements. Thereafter little progress was made, and the Turks took advantage of the British halt to bring as many troops as possible into the peninsula. This standstill led to a political crisis in London between the first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, the operation's chief advocate, and Lord Fisher, the first sea lord, who had always expressed doubts about it. Fisher resigned when his demands that the operation be discontinued were overruled. The Liberal government was replaced by a coalition and Churchill, though relieved of his former post, remained in the War Council. Amid sweltering and disease-ridden conditions, the deadlock dragged on into the summer, when further British initiatives at Gallipoli proved ineffectual. The War Council remained divided until late 1915 when it was decided to end the Gallipoli campaign. Had Gallipoli succeeded, it could have ended Turkey's participation in the war. As it was, the Turks lost some 300,000 men and the Allies around 214,000, achieving only the diversion of Turkish forces from the Russians
1919 The Canadian Cabinet passed an Order in Council creating the government owned Canadian National Railways. The move was made to unite and rescue five near-bankrupt railroads: the Grand Trunk, Grand Trunk Pacific, Canadian Northern, Intercolonial and Canadian Government Railways. The new CNR system was the longest in North America, with over 30,000 miles of track in the US and Canada
1945 Tire rationing in the US ended on this day as the effects of World War II wound down, and widespread shortages in the US began to ease
1946 The Frank Capra film It's A Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, had a preview showing for charity at New York City's Globe Theatre, a day before its official world première
1957 At the height of his career, Elvis Presley received his call-up papers
1989 The US invaded Panama in an attempt to overthrow military dictator Manuel Noriega. Noriega had been indicted in the US on drug trafficking charges and was accused of suppressing democracy in Panama and endangering US nationals. His Panamanian Defence Forces were promptly crushed, forcing the dictator to seek asylum with the Vatican anuncio in Panama City, where he surrendered in January, 1990
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