107BC Marcus Tullius Cicero - Roman orator and statesman. After Caesar's assassination, he spoke in favour of a republican Rome, which led to his eventual death
1823 Robert Whitehead - British engineer who invented the modern self-propelled torpedo
1877 Josephine Hull – Actress (Harvey, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Lady from Texas)
1892 J.R.R. (John Ronald Rueul) Tolkien - South African born British author (Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit)
1894 Zasu Pitts - Actress (Dames, Greed, The Wedding March, Life With Father) She played Daphne Whilom in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Absent Artist
1898 T. Claude Ryan - US aircraft manufacturer and the designer of the Spirit of St. Louis
1905 Ray Milland - Actor (The Lost Weekend, We're Not Dressing, Star- Spangled Rhythm, Dial M for Murder, Lady in the Dark, Let's Do It Again, The Man with the X-ray Eyes)
1909 Victor Borge - Danish pianist and musical comedian
1917 Jesse White – Actor who was known for years as the Maytag Repairman (Harvey, The Bad Seed, The Ann Sothern Show, Private Secretary, Death of a Salesman, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Bedtime for Bonzo) He also appeared in several Perry Mason episodes
1918 Maxene Andrews - Singer with her sisters LaVerne and Patti who formed the group The Andrews Sisters (Why Talk About Love?, A Simple Melody, Bei Mir Bist Du Schñn, Rum and Coca Cola)
1921 John Russell - Actor (Lawman, Soldiers of Fortune, Rio Bravo, Alias Smith and Jones, Pale Rider)
1922 Bill Travers - British actor (Born Free, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Lion at World's End)
1926 George Martin - British record producer (The Beatles)
1930 Robert Loggia - Actor (Mancuso FBI, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Prizzi's Honour, Big, Independence Day)
1932 Dabney Coleman - Actor (Buffalo Bill, Nine to Five, Tootsie, On Golden Pond)
1935 Jeremy Kemp - British actor (The Winds of War, The Blue Max, Prisoner of Zenda, Top Secret!, Duel of Hearts, Colditz) He also portrayed Dr. Grimesby Roylott in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Speckled Band
1939 Bobby Hull - Hockey player known as The Golden Jet (Chicago Blackhawks, Winnipeg Jets) His lucrative contract and million dollar signing bonus to jump from the NHL to the WHA in 1972 opened the way for bigger contracts for all hockey players
1942 John Thaw - British stage, film and television actor (Inspector Morse, Into the Blue, Home to Roost, Kavanagh QC, The Plastic Man, The Sweeney, Goodnight Mr. Tom, The Bofors Gun, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, A Year in Provence, Chaplin, Cry Freedom, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner) He also played Jonathan Small in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Sign of the Four
1945 Stephen Stills - Singer and musician with the groups Buffalo Springfield (For What It's Worth) and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Marrakesh Express, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Woodstock, Teach Your Children, Ohio)
1946 Victoria Principal - US actress (Dallas, Earthquake, The Burden of Proof)
1956 Mel Gibson - US-born Australian-raised actor (Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Hamlet, Braveheart, Tequila Sunrise, Bird on a Wire, The Bounty, Maverick)
1975 Danica McKellar – Actress (The Wonder Years, The West Wing, Camp Cucamonga)
Died this Day
1795 Josiah Wedgewood - British founder of the famous pottery company that still bears his name
1875 Pierre Larousse - French editor and encyclopaedist
1946 William Joyce, age 39 - US born British traitor who collaborated with Germany during World War II, and broadcast propaganda from Germany to Britain in a curious British accent, which earned him the nickname of Lord Haw Haw. He was hanged in London for treason
1967 Jack Ruby - Dallas night-club owner. He died of cancer in a Dallas hospital, while awaiting a second trial for killing Lee Harvey Oswald
1979 Conrad Hilton - US hotel magnate who began by helping his father turn their large New Mexican house into an inn for travelling salesmen. He died a week after his 92nd birthday
1980 Joy Adamson - German born conservationist and author (Born Free) She was killed in northern Kenya by a servant in a wage dispute
On this Day
1521 Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church following his refusal to retract any of his views about the wrongs of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem excommunicating Luther, who was the chief catalyst of Protestantism. Luther was a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany when he drew up his 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church for its corrupt practice of selling indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins. He followed up the revolutionary work with equally controversial and groundbreaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformers all across Europe. Three months after his excommunication, Luther was called to defend his beliefs before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, where he was famously defiant. For his continued refusal to recant his writings, the emperor declared him an outlaw and a heretic. Luther was protected by powerful German princes, however, and by his death in 1546, the course of Western civilisation had been significantly altered
1777 The US officially adopted the Stars and Stripes as its official flag
1825 The first engineering college in the US, the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York, opened to a class of ten students
1833 Britain seized control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. In 1982, Argentina captured the islands from the British, but Britain took them back after a 74-day war
1841 Herman Melville shipped out on the whaler Acushnet to the South Seas. Born in New York City, a childhood bout of scarlet fever permanently weakened his eyesight. He went to sea at age 19, as a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool, and two years later, he sailed for the South Seas. The Acushnet anchored in Polynesia, where Melville took part in a mutiny. He was thrown in jail in Tahiti, escaped, and wandered around the South Sea islands for two years. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee, based on his Polynesian adventures. In 1851, Harper & Brothers published Moby-Dick. The book flopped and was not recognised as a classic for many years
1863 Canada's first covered skating rink opened in Halifax
1871 The patent for oleo margarine was granted to Henry Bradley of Binghamton, NY
1888 Waxed-paper drinking straws were patented in the US
1899 An editorial in the New York Times made a reference to an "automobile" on this day. It was the first recorded use of the word
1921 The Studebaker Corporation announced that it would no longer build farm wagons, but would focus instead on automobiles. Studebaker began in 1852 as a horse-drawn wagon shop, and over the following years became the world's single biggest manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages and carts
1924 King Tut's sarcophagus was uncovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter, two years after he and his workmen originally discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen near Luxor, Egypt. When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, although the little-known Pharaoh Tutankhamen, who had died when he was a teen, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for "King Tut's Tomb," finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb, finding it miraculously intact. Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over four years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years
1926 General Motors introduced the Pontiac brand name. The new Pontiac line was the descendant of the Oakland Motor Car Company, acquired by General Motors in 1909
1938 The March of Dimes campaign to fight polio was organised
1947 Congressional proceedings were televised for the first time as viewers in Washington, Philadelphia and New York City saw some of the opening ceremonies of the 80th Congress
1958 Sir Edmund Hillary reached the South Pole in an overland trek, the first since Robert Scott's feat 46 years earlier
1959 President Eisenhower signed a special proclamation admitting the territory of Alaska into the Union as the 49th and largest state. The European discovery of Alaska came in 1741, when a Russian expedition led by Danish navigator Vitus Bering sighted the Alaskan mainland. Russian hunters were soon making incursions into Alaska, and the native Aleut population suffered greatly after being exposed to foreign diseases. In 1784, Grigory Shelikhov established the first permanent Russian colony in Alaska on Kodiak Island. In the early 19th century, Russian settlements spread down the west coast of North America, with the southernmost fort located near Bodega Bay in California. Russian activity in the New World declined in the 1820s, and Britain and the US were granted trading rights in Alaska after a few minor diplomatic conflicts. In the 1860s, a nearly bankrupt Russia decided to offer Alaska for sale to the US, which earlier had expressed interest in such a purchase. In March 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million. Despite the bargain price of roughly 2¢ an acre, the Alaskan purchase was ridiculed in Congress and in the press as "Seward's folly," "Seward's icebox," and President Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden." Nevertheless, the Senate ratified purchase of the tremendous landmass, one-fifth the size of the rest of the US. Despite a slow start in settlement from the continental US, the discovery of gold in 1898 brought a rapid influx of people to the territory
1961 The US severed diplomatic relations with Cuba
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