1824 Wilkie Collins - British author (Rambles Beyond Railways, Man and Wife, The Black Robe) and pioneer of detective and suspense fiction (The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale, The Law and the Lady) He also collaborated with his mentor, Charles Dickens, on a few works (The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, The Lighthouse, The Frozen Deep)
1862 Frank Nelson Doubleday - US publisher
1908 William Hartnell – British actor (Doctor Who, To Have and to Hold, The Mouse That Roared, Carry On Sergeant)
1909 José Ferrer - Puerto Rican born US actor (Joan of Arc, Cyrano de Bergerac, Deep in my Heart) He was the father of Miguel Ferrer
1923 Larry Storch - Comedian, actor (F Troop, The Great Race, S.O.B.) He was also the voice of Koko the Clown
1924 Ron Moody - British actor (Oliver!, Nobody's Perfect, A Ghost in Monte Carlo, EastEnders)
1926 Soupy Sales - Entertainer (The Soupy Sales Show)
1935 Elvis Aaron Presley - US singer who was known as The King (Hound Dog, Don't Be Cruel, Love Me Tender, All Shook Up, Are You Lonesome Tonight, Suspicious Minds, I Can't Help Falling In Love With You) He was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. In 1993, the Elvis Presley postage stamp went on sale in the US on what would have been the singer's 58th birthday. The US postal service printed 500-million of the 29¢ stamps, the most ever for a commemorative issue
1937 Shirley Bassey - Welsh born singer (Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever)
1941 Anthony Gourdine - Singer with the group Little Anthony and The Imperials (Tears on My Pillow, Hurt So Bad)
1941 Graham Chapman – Actor and writer (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life, Yellowbeard, Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
1942 Yvette Mimieux - Actress (The Time Machine, The Most Deadly Game)
1942 Stephen Hawking - British mathematician, physicist and author (A Brief History of Time)
1947 David Bowie (Jones) - British singer (Changes, Space Oddity, Fame, Golden Years) and actor (The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Hunger, Baal) He allegedly changed his name to Bowie to avoid confusion with Davey Jones of the Monkees
1965 Michelle Forbes – Actress (Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Killing, True Blood, Durham County, 24, Homicide: Life on the Street, Escape From L.A., New Amsterdam, Kalifornia, Big Sky, Orphan Black)
1980 Rachel Nichols – Actress (Star Trek, Alias, The Inside, Charlie Wilson’s War, Criminal Minds)
Died this Day
1324 Marco Polo - Venetian merchant and adventurer. He travelled from Europe to Asia for a 24-year period lasting from 1271 to 1295, remaining in China for 17 of those years. Polo excelled all the other travellers in his determination, his writing, and his influence, reaching farther than any of his predecessors, beyond Mongolia to China. His Il Milione (The Million), known in English as the Travels of Marco Polo, is a classic of travel literature
1642 Galileo Galilei - Italian mathematician and astronomer, died in Arcetri, Italy
1825 Eli Whitney - US inventor of the cotton gin
1941 Robert Baden-Powell - British Boer War hero, and founder of the Boy Scouts
1990 Terry-Thomas, age 78 - British actor (Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Munster Go Home, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Robin Hood, Arabella) He also played Dr. Mortimer in the 1978 comedy version of The Hound of the Baskervilles
On this Day
1679 Explorer De La Salle reached Niagara Falls
1800 The first soup kitchens for the poor of London began
1815 Pirate leader Jean Lafitte informed the US of an imminent attack on New Orleans by the British, led by General Sir Edward Pakenham. This enabled US General Andrew Jackson to hold off the British in The Battle of New Orleans, the last engagement in the War of 1812. The war had actually ended the previous month, when the Treaty of Ghent was signed, but news of the treaty did not reach the British forces in time to end their drive against the mouth of the Mississippi River. Although the battle had no bearing on the outcome of the war, Jackson's overwhelming victory elevated national pride, which had suffered a number of setbacks during the War of 1812. The Battle of New Orleans was also the last armed engagement between the US and Britain
1869 The first suspension bridge over the Niagara Gorge at Niagara Falls was opened to traffic
1877 Crazy Horse and his warriors fought their final battle against the US Cavalry in Montana. Six months earlier, Crazy Horse (Tashunca-uitco) and his ally, Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), led their combined forces of Sioux and Cheyenne to a stunning victory over Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and his men near the Little Bighorn River of Montana. Outraged by the killing of the flamboyant Custer and more than 200 soldiers, the people of the US demanded speedy revenge. The US Army responded by commanding General Nelson Miles to mount a winter campaign in 1876-77 against the remaining hostile Indians on the Northern Plains. Combining military force with diplomatic overtures, Nelson succeeded in convincing many Indians to surrender and return to their reservations. Much to Nelson's frustration, though, Sitting Bull refused to give in and fled across the border to Canada, where he and his people remained for four years before finally returning to the US to surrender in 1881. Meanwhile, Crazy Horse and his band also refused to surrender, though they were suffering badly from sickness and starvation. On this day in 1877, General Miles found Crazy Horse's camp along Montana's Tongue River. The soldiers opened fire with their big wagon-mounted guns, driving the Indians from their warm tents out into a raging blizzard. Crazy Horse and his warriors managed to regroup on a ridge and return fire, but they were outnumbered, low on ammunition, and had been forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves. Despite their disadvantages, they were able to hold off the soldiers long enough for the women and children to escape under cover of the blinding blizzard before they turned to follow them. Though he had escaped decisive defeat, Crazy Horse realised that Miles and his well-equipped cavalry troops would eventually hunt down and destroy his cold and hungry people. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse led 1,100 Indians to the Red Cloud reservation near Fort Robinson. The mighty warrior surrendered in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Five months later, a guard fatally stabbed him after he allegedly resisted imprisonment by Indian policemen
1889 The first practical tabulating machine was patented in the US by its inventor, Dr. Herman Hollerith. His electric tabulating machine tallied numbers fed to it on punch cards. The system was first used extensively to compile statistics for the eleventh US Federal Census in 1890. In 1896, Hollerith organised the Tabulating Machine Company, which later grew into the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)
1916 After almost a year of bloody but ineffectual advances, the Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, ending a disastrous invasion of the Ottoman Empire. The Gallipoli Campaign resulted in 250,000 Allied casualties and greatly discredited Allied military command. Roughly an equal number of Turks were killed or wounded. In early 1915, the British government resolved to ease Turkish pressure on the Russians in the Caucasus front by seizing control of the Dardanelles channel, the Gallipoli Peninsula, and then Istanbul. From there, pressure could be brought on Austria-Hungary, forcing the Central Powers to divert troops from the western front. The first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, strongly supported the plan, and in February 1915 French and British ships began bombarding the Turkish forts guarding the Dardanelles. Bad weather interrupted the operation, and in mid-March, six English and four French warships moved into the Dardanelles. The Turks, however, had used the intervening time wisely, setting mines that sank three Allied ships and badly damaged three more. The naval attack was called off, and a larger land invasion was planned. At the end of April, British, Australian, and New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula, while the French feinted a landing on the opposite coast to divert Ottoman forces. The Australians and New Zealanders were devastated by the Turkish defenders, who were led by Mustafa Kemal, the future President Atatürk of Turkey. Meanwhile, the British likewise were met with fierce resistance at their Cape Helles landing sites and suffered two-thirds casualties at some locations. During the next three months, the Allies made only slight gains off their landing sites and took terrible casualties. To break the stalemate, a new British landing at Sulva Bay occurred in early August, but the British failed to capitalise on their largely unopposed landing and waited too long to move against the heights. Ottoman reinforcements arrived and quickly halted their progress. Trenches were dug, and the British were able to advance only a few miles. In September, Sir Ian Hamilton, the British commander, was replaced by Sir Charles Monro, who in December recommended an evacuation from Gallipoli. In early January 1916, the last of the Allied troops escaped. As a result of the disastrous campaign, Churchill resigned as first lord of the Admiralty and accepted a commission to command an infantry battalion in France
1962 The Mona Lisa was exhibited for the first time in the US, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Over 2,000 dignitaries, including President John F. Kennedy, came out that evening to view the famous painting. The next day, the exhibit opened to the public, and during the next three weeks an estimated 500,000 people came to see it. The painting then travelled to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was seen by another million people. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Andre Malraux, the French minister of culture, arranged the loan of the painting from the Louvre Museum in Paris to the US
1969 A panel of the National Academy of Sciences agreed there was no evidence that UFO's are intelligently-guided spacecraft from beyond Earth
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