1592 Jahan Shah - Mughal emperor of India and builder of the Taj Mahal
1779 Stephen Decatur - US naval officer, who uttered the famous line: "...our country right or wrong"
1787 John Burke - British genealogist and founder of Burke's Peerage which was first published in 1826
1855 King Camp Gillette - US inventor and manufacturer of the safety razor, which went on sale in 1903. Within a year of his invention, he was producing 90,000 razors and over 12.4 million blades
1863 Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky - Russian actor, producer, teacher and philosopher of theatre
1887 Clifford Grey - British lyricist (If You Were the Only Girl in the World, Spread a Little Happiness)
1914 George Reeves – Actor (The Adventures of Superman, Gone With the Wind, So Proudly We Hail, Westward Ho the Wagons, The Blue Gardenia, The Good Humor Man, The Adventures of Sir Galahad, Jungle Jim)
1917 Jane Wyman – Actress (Falcon Crest, Johnny Belinda, The Lost Weekend, Pollyanna, Magnificent Obsession, The Glass Menagerie, The Yearling, Brother Rat, Stage Fright, Here Comes the Groom, The Story of Will Rogers) She was married to Ronald Regan for eight years in the 1940s
1923 Sam Phillips - Record executive with Sun Records (The Million Dollar Quartet, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich)
1931 Robert Duvall - Actor (Apocalypse Now, To Kill a Mockingbird, Days of Thunder, The Godfather, Secondhand Lions, The Natural, The Terry Fox Story, M*A*S*H, True Grit, Lonesome Dove, Tender Mercies, Open Range) He also portayed Dr. John H. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movie, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
1942 Charlie Rose – Journalist (The Charlie Rose Show)
1946 Diane Keaton - Actress (Annie Hall, Sleeper, Hair, Love and Death, Something’s Gotta Give, The First Wives Club, Manhattan Murder Mystery, The Little Drummer Girl, The Godfather III)
1948 Ted Lange – Actor (The Love Boat, That’s My Mama, Last of the Romantics, The Redemption, Othello)
1950 Chris Stein - Rock musician with the group Blondie (Call Me, Heart of Glass, My T-Bird)
1953 Pamela Sue Martin - Actress (The Poseidon Adventure, Dynasty, The Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Lady in Red)
1959 Clancy Brown - Actor (Highlander, Blue Steel, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, The Bride, The Shawshank Redemption, Carnivŕle) Both his father and grandfather were United States Representatives from the 7th District of Ohio
1962 Suzy Amis – Actress (The Usual Suspects, Titanic, Blown Away, Where the Heart Is)
1965 Vinnie Jones – British actor (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Cape, Legend of the Bog, The Heavy, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, Snatch, Gone in Sixty Seconds)
1975 Bradley Cooper – Actor (Alias, The Hangover, He’s Just Not That Into You, Failure to Launch)
1978 January Jones – Actress (Mad Men, X-Men: First Class, American Wedding, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Love Actually, Anger Management)
Died this Day
1066 Edward the Confessor - English king known for his piety. His death led to the Norman Conquest
1589 Catherine de Medici, age 69 - Wife of Henry II, of France
1943 John Calvin Coolidge - 30th US president
1943 George Washington Carver, age 81 - US agricultural chemist, agronomist, and educator. He died in Tuskegee, Alabama. He helped revolutionise the agricultural economy of the South. Carver demonstrated to farmers how fertility could be restored to their land by diversification, especially by planting peanuts and sweet potatoes, to replenish soil impoverished by the regular growth of cotton and tobacco. He showed that peanuts contained several different kinds of oil, and peanut butter is among his many innovations. In all he is reported to have developed over 300 new products from peanuts and over 100 from sweet potatoes. For most of his career he taught and conducted research at the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama where he stayed despite lucrative offers to work for such magnates as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison
1982 Elizabeth Bagshaw, age 100 - One of Canada's first female doctors, she had practised medicine for over 60 years
1987 Margaret Laurence, age 60 - Canadian author (The Stone Angel, The Diviners, This Side of Jordan, The Tomorrow-Tamer, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, Long Drums and Cannons)
1987 Herman Smith (Jackrabbit) Johannsen, age 111 - Norwegian born Canadian ski pioneer. Johannsen moved to Canada after World War I and settled in Piedmont, Quebec. He started building ski trails across the Laurentian Mountains in 1932, including the trail for the Lachute to Ottawa marathon. Because of his energy and style, the local first nations people gave him the nickname Jackrabbit. In 1979 at age 104 he became involved with the Jackrabbit Ski League, a national cross-country ski program started in his honour. He died at Piedmont, Quebec
1998 Sonny Bono, age 62 - Singer with Sonny and Cher (I Got You Babe, The Beat Goes On) restaurateur and politician. He was killed when he struck a tree while skiing in South Lake Tahoe, California
On this Day
1643 In the first record of a legal divorce in the colonies, Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband, Denis Clarke, by the Quarter Court of Boston, Massachusetts. In a signed and sealed affidavit presented to John Winthrop, Jr, the son of the colony's founder, Denis Clarke admitted to abandoning his wife, with whom he had two children, for another woman, with whom he had an another two children. He also stated his refusal to return to his original wife, thus giving the Puritan court no option but to punish Clarke and grant a divorce to his wife, Anne. The Quarter Court's final decision read: "Anne Clarke, beeing deserted by Denis Clarke hir husband, and hee refusing to accompany with hir, she is graunted to bee divorced"
1781 A British naval expedition led by US traitor Benedict Arnold burned Richmond, Virginia
1838 In Washington, DC, US President Martin Van Buren issued the Neutrality Proclamation forbidding US citizens from taking sides in Canadian rebellions
1839 A gallows was erected in London, Ontario, where the first hanging in the province took place
1874 331 ballots were cast in Winnipeg, Manitoba's first civic election. Only 304 voters were registered. The multiple votes resulted from people who owned land in more than one riding being granted a vote for each riding in which they were a landowner
1896 German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen gave the first demonstration of X-rays. Roentgen had made the discovery of X-rays the previous year while investigating the passage of electricity through gasses
1914 Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per eight hour shift day, effectively doubling workers' pay
1925 Nellie T. Ross succeeded her late husband as governor of Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in US history
1933 Construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge stretched across the San Francisco Bay and made it a lot easier to get around town. With its tall towers and famous red paint job, the bridge quickly became a US landmark, and a symbol of San Francisco
1938 In New York, Billie Holiday recorded the song, When You're Smiling The Whole World Smiles With You
1940 FM radio was demonstrated for the first time in the US by Major E. H. Armstrong. A year later, the first FM transmitter was broadcasting
1956 US actress Grace Kelly announced her engagement to Prince Rainier of Monaco
1958 Sedgefield General Hospital in England revealed that 424 coins and about five pounds of wire had been removed from the stomach of a 54-year-old man (it didn't say how the patient fared)
1960 The oldest railway in the world made its final journey. The Mumbles Railway, which ran from Swansea to Mumbles Head, Wales, was set up in 1804 as a goods railway, and carried passengers from 1807
1972 President Richard Nixon ordered development of the space shuttle
1973 US airlines began scanning passengers with electronic devices
1980 Hewlett-Packard introduced its first personal computer. The HP-85 came with a monitor, a built-in printer, and a cassette tape recorder for data storage. Hewlett-Packard entered a crowded field that already included the TRS-80, the Atari home computer, and the best-selling Apple II. IBM would shortly introduce its IBM PC and immediately become the market leader
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