1804 Benjamin Disraeli, The First Earl of Beaconsfield – British Prime Minister, author (Vivian Grey, Endymion, The Voyage of Captain Popanilla, The Young Duke) and statesman who said "No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition"
1879 Joseph Stalin - Russian dictator
1908 Pat Weaver - President of NBC-TV who is credited with the idea for the Today and Tonight shows. He was the father of actress, Sigourney Weaver
1922 Paul Winchell - Ventriloquist (Knucklehead Smith) and voice actor who was the voice of Tigger in many Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons. He was also an amateur medical inventor who patented an artificial human heart
1928 Ed Nelson - Actor (Anatomy of a Seduction, Deadly Weapon, Peyton Place)
1935 Phil Donahue - TV talk show host, husband of Marlo Thomas
1937 Jane Fonda - Actress (Coming Home, Klute, Barbarella, The China Syndrome, On Golden Pond, Julia) She’s the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and sister of actor, Peter
1940 Frank Zappa - Musician, songwriter, singer with the group Mothers of Invention (Who are the Brain Police, Plastic People, Valley Girl, Dancin’ Fool, Calling All Vegetables)
1946 Carl Wilson – Musician and guitarist with The Beach Boys (I Get Around, California Girls, Help Me Rhonda) He is the brother of Brian and Dennis
1948 Samuel L. Jackson - Actor (Pulp Fiction, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Changing Lanes, The Red Violin, Rules of Engagement, Patriot Games, Loaded Weapon I, Jurassic Park)
1955 Jane Kaczmarek – Actress (Malcom in the Middle, Pleasantville, Raising the Bar, Falling in Love)
1957 Ray Romano – Actor (Everybody Loves Raymond, Men of a Certain Age, Welcome to Mooseport)
1966 Michelle Hurd – Actress (The Glades, Gossip Girl, Leap Years, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Blindspot, Hawaii Five-0)
1966 Kiefer Sutherland – Canadian actor (A Few Good Men, Flatliners, Young Guns, 24, The Lost Boys, The Three Musketeers, An Eye For An Eye) He is the son of actor Donald Sutherland and actress Shirley Douglas, and the grandson of former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas
Died this Day
1940 F. Scott Fitzgerald, age 44 – US author (The Great Gatsby, Flappers and Philosophers, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night, Taps at Reveille, This Side of Paradise) Fitzgerald was named for his ancestor Francis Scott Key, author of the lyrics to the The Star Spangled Banner. He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to a once well-to-do family that had descended in wealth and influence. With the funding of a well-off aunt, Fitzgerald was sent to boarding school in New Jersey in 1911 and attended Princeton University two years later. Although Fitzgerald engaged actively in theatre, arts, and other campus activity, his financial background was considerably poorer than those of his classmates, and his outsider status, whether real or imaginary, left a sting. He left Princeton after three years and joined the army during World War I. While in the military, he was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, where he developed a romance with the privileged, pampered Zelda Sayre, daughter of a State Supreme Court justice. Like the heroine of The Great Gatsby, she rejected the young man, fearing he would not be able to support her, and like Gatsby, Fitzgerald vowed to win her back. He moved to New York, rewrote a novel about Princeton he had started in college, and promptly became the youngest author ever published by Scribner's. His fame and fortune secure for the moment, he convinced Zelda to marry him, and the two began a whirlwind life of glamorous parties and extravagant living in New York. Unfortunately, the Fitzgeralds lived far beyond their means and soon found themselves deeply in debt. They moved to Europe, hoping to cut back on expenses, where they befriended other expatriate writers, including Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. While in Europe, Fitzgerald finished his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, which was published in 1925. The Fitzgeralds failed to cut back on their extravagant ways, and although Fitzgerald published dozens of short stories, the couple's debts mounted. Fitzgerald plunged into alcoholism, and his wife became increasingly unstable. In 1930, she suffered the first of several breakdowns and was institutionalised. She spent the rest of her life in a sanatorium. Fitzgerald's next novel, Tender Is the Night, failed to resonate with the US public, and his fortunes plummeted. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood to try screenwriting. He fell in love with a Hollywood gossip columnist, stopped drinking, and began renewed literary efforts, but died of a heart attack three years later
1945 George S. Patton Jr, age 60 – US General. He died in a hospital in Heidelberg, Germany, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident near Mannheim. Although Patton was one of the ablest US commanders in World War II, he was also one of the most controversial. He presented himself as a modern-day cavalryman, designed his own uniform, and was known to make eccentric claims of his direct descent from great military leaders of the past through reincarnation. During one of his many successful campaigns, General Patton was said to have declared, "compared to war, all other forms of human endeavour shrink to insignificance"
1967 Louis Washkansky - The world's first heart transplant patient, died 18 days after the historic operation, at Cape Town, South Africa
On this Day
1620 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts
1719 The first edition of the Boston Gazette was published
1846 Surgeon Robert Liston performed the first anaesthetised operation in Europe when he used ether before amputating a patient's leg during an operation at London’s University College Hospital
1859 The sod for Canada's Parliament Buildings in Ottawa was broken by John Rose, commissioner of public works
1879 Ibsen’s play, A Doll House, was performed for the first time, at Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre. It had a specially revised happy ending to please the leading lady, but the more realistic ending soon replaced it
1883 The first Canadian infantry and cavalry schools were established
1884 General Herbert Kitchener led British troops into Khartoum, Sudan. They were on a mission to find General Charles Gordon's garrison which was wiped out three days earlier. The expedition was transported up the Nile by Canadian voyageurs and Caughnawaga Mohawks recruited by Colonel Garnet Wolseley, who had previously employed them during the Red River Campaign in Manitoba in 1870
1891 The first game of basketball was played, at the YMCA’s Springfield College in Massachusetts. Canadian instructor James Naismith had been given two weeks to come up with an indoor game free of rough play for the football and lacrosse players who were restless during the winter. Initially, a janitor would sit on a ladder next to a peach basket and retrieve made shots. Later, a small hole was cut from the bottom of the basket so a pole could be used to pop the ball free. Within two years, an iron rim with braided cord netting was manufactured, much like the modern day basketball rim
1898 Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium while experimenting with pitch-blende
1901 Norwegian women were granted the right to vote, but in local elections only
1910 Francis J. Fitzgerald and his Mounted Police patrol left Fort McPherson in Canada’s North West Territories on their mid-winter patrol to Dawson, in the Yukon Territory. The purpose of the 500 mile journey was to deliver mail and to confirm the presence of the Canadian police. They would meet with unusually heavy snow cover and temperatures that would reach –51 Fahrenheit. On January 18th they turned back for Fort McPherson, but lost their way and ran out of food after eating their dogs. By mid February the Lost Patrol members perished to a man. Their bodies were recovered and buried in Fort McPherson March 28th, 1911
1913 The first modern crossword puzzle appeared in "Fun," a supplement of the New York World - This must be one of Morse’s favourite days! The paper's other claim to fame is that it sponsored a baseball championship called…the World Series
1914 The first feature-length silent film comedy, Tilley's Punctured Romance, was released
1937 The film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs debuted. It was the first full-length colour and sound animated feature
1937 The Lincoln Tunnel was officially opened to traffic, allowing motorists to drive between New Jersey and Manhattan beneath the Hudson River
1948 The state of Eire declared its independence
1968 Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, was successfully launched by a three-stage Saturn 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard. On Christmas Eve, the astronauts entered into orbit around the moon, the first manned spacecraft ever to do so. During Apollo 8's ten lunar orbits, television images were sent back home, and spectacular photos were taken of Earth and the moon from the spacecraft. In addition to being the first human beings to view firsthand their home world in its entirety, the three astronauts were also the first to see the dark side of the moon. On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 left its lunar orbit and began its journey back to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27th
1970 Elvis Presley met with President Nixon in the Oval Office. Presley had requested the meeting to discuss his ideas for fighting drugs
1988 A terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 passengers and crew, and at least 11 others on the ground. The 747 jumbo jet was on its way from Frankfurt to New York via London, and was flying at 31,000 feet when an explosion occurred. The subsequent investigation by US and Scottish authorities indicates that the blast was caused by a bomb smuggled into the aircraft within a portable radio
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