1580 Jean Baptiste van Helmont - Belgium chemist and scientist who coined the word "gas" from the Greek "chaos". He is regarded as having been the bridge from alchemy to chemistry by identifying carbon dioxide and other gases
1628 Charles Perrault - French writer and collector of fairy tales. His Tales of Mother Goose included Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots
1729 Edmund Burke - Irish born British statesman and philosopher who said "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
1876 Jack London - US author (The Call of the Wild, The Son of the Wolf, The Sea-Wolf, The People of the Abyss, White Fang, John Barleycorn) Born John Griffith London in San Francisco, he was the child of an unmarried mother who had come from a once wealthy family that had fallen on hard times. It is believed that his father was William Chaney, an itinerant journalist and lawyer whose main claim to fame was his role in popularising the US study of astrology. However, Jack took the name of John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran his mother married the year Jack was born. Growing up in poverty, he had a colourful adolescence filled with adventure and excitement. From an early age London struggled to make a living, working in a cannery, as a sailor, oyster pirate, and fish patroller. He sailed the Pacific on a whaling boat, and spent time as a hobo, riding trains. During the national economic crisis of 1893, he joined Kelly's Army of unemployed protestors against US economic inequality, and was jailed for vagrancy for a month. After his prison term, the 17-year-old London resolved to further his education. He completed an entire high school equivalency course in one year and enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, where he read voraciously. However, he dropped out after only one year to join the 1897 gold rush in Alaska's Klondike. Although his lasting claim to fame came from his stories of the Alaskan gold frontier, London only spent a brief time in the Klondike in the winter of 1897 searching for his fortune. Like most gold seekers, his prospecting efforts failed, but he returned to California with a trove of stories and tall tales that eventually proved even more valuable. London published his first stories of the Alaskan frontier in 1899, and he eventually produced over 50 volumes of short stories, novels, and political essays. His 1903 novel about a domestic dog who joins an Alaskan wolf pack, The Call of the Wild, brought him lasting fame and reflected his beliefs in Social Darwinism. Interestingly, despite his identification with rugged individualism and fierce competition, London was a committed socialist and supporter of the US labour movement. London spent piles of money on an enormous house and ranching operation in California, and although his writing was lucrative, he had to continue to write throughout his life to pay for these. In 1913, he wrote letters to H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Winston Churchill, asking how much they were paid for their writing. Plagued by illnesses from an early age, London developed a kidney disease of unknown origin and died in 1916. Recent scholarship has discredited claims made by earlier biographers that London was an alcoholic womaniser who took his own life
1899 Paul Hermann Muller - Swiss chemist who formulated the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948
1905 Tex Ritter - US singing cowboy (High Noon, The Old Chisolm Trail, Blood on the Saddle) He was the father of actor John Ritter. While studying political science, he became interested in cowboy ballads, which he sang on stage and radio
1926 Ray Price - Country singer (Crazy Arms, Make the World Go Away, For the Good Times)
1930 Tim Horton - Canadian hockey great and doughnut chain founder
1932 Des O'Connor - British comedian (The Des O'Connor Show)
1941 Long John Baldry - British born Canadian blues singer, songwriter and guitarist (Let the Heartaches Begin, Mexico, It Ain't Easy). He discovered and influenced Rod Stewart and Elton John. He is also the voice of Captain Robotnick on Sonic the Hedgehog
1944 Joe Frazier - Boxer (Smokin' Joe) World Heavyweight Champion (1970-1973)
1948 Anthony Andrews - British actor (Brideshead Revisited, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Ivanhoe, Love in a Cold Climate, The King’s Speech) He played Professor Moriarty in the 1990 Sherlock Holmes movie, Hands of a Murderer
1951 Kirstie Alley - Actress (Cheers, Look Who's Talking, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan)
1951 Rush Limbaugh – Radio host
1952 Ricky Van Shelton - Country singer (Just As I Am, Living Proof, Statue of a Fool)
1960 Oliver Platt - Actor (Queens Supreme, A Time to Kill, Executive Decision, The Three Musketeers, Benny & Joon)
1972 Sid Owen – British actor (EastEnders, Jury, Revolution)
1986 Gemma Arterton – British actress (Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Lost in Austen)
1998 HAL - According to the script of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the computer HAL, that becomes a sentient being with a strong sense of self-preservation, was born on this day in 1998
Died this Day
1519 Maximilian I - King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor from 1493
1897 Sir Isaac Pitman - British inventor of a shorthand system of writing. He died eight days after his 84th birthday
1960 Nevil Shute - British novelist (A Town Like Alice, On the Beach, No Highway, The Far Country) He died 5 days before his 61st birthday
1976 Dame Agatha Christie, age 85 - British detective novelist and playwright who wrote numerous books, and created the beloved characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple She died in Wallingford, England. During World War I, Christie worked as an assistant in a pharmacy, and learned much about poisons. She began to write on a dare from her sister and produced her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. She created Miss Marple, one of her most beloved detectives, in 1930. All told, Christie wrote some 80 novels, 30 short story collections, and 15 plays, plus 6 romances under the pen name Mary Westmacott. By the time of her death, more than 400 million copies of her books had been sold in more than 100 languages
1990 Laurence Johnston Peter, age 70 - Canadian-born author (The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong)
On this Day
1773 The first public museum in The US was established, in Charleston, SC
1819 St. Boniface College was founded at Red River in what was to become Manitoba
1879 The British-Zulu War began as British troops under Lieutenant General Frederic Augustus invaded Zululand from the southern African republic of Natal. In 1843, Britain succeeded the Boers as the rulers of Natal, which controlled Zululand, the neighbouring kingdom of the Zulu people. Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in the 17th century. Zulus, a migrant people from the north, also came to southern Africa during the 17th century, settling around the Tugela River region. In 1838, the Boers, migrating north to elude the new British dominions in the south, first came into armed conflict with the Zulus, who were under the rule of King Dingane at the time. The European migrants succeeded in overthrowing Dingane in 1840, replacing him with his son Mpande, who became a vassal of the new Boer republic of Natal. In 1843, the British took over Natal and Zululand. In 1872, King Mpande died and was succeeded by his son Cetshwayo, who was determined to resist European domination in his territory. In December 1878, Cetshwayo rejected the British demand that he disband his troops, and in January British forces invaded Zululand to suppress Cetshwayo. The British suffered grave defeats at Isandlwana, where 1,300 British soldiers were killed or wounded, and at Hlobane Mountain, but late in March of 1879 the tide turned in favour of the British at the Battle of Khambula. At Ulundi in July, Cetshwayo's forces were utterly routed, and the Zulus were forced to surrender to the British. In 1887, faced with continuing Zulu rebellions, the British formally annexed Zululand, and in 1897 it became a part of Natal, which joined the Union of South Africa in 1910
1896 The first X-ray photograph in the US was taken as Dr. Henry Louis Smith fired a bullet into a corpse's hand and then took a fifteen-minute X-ray photograph to reveal the exact location of the bullet
1900 The Detroit Automobile Company finished its first commercial vehicle, a delivery wagon. The wagon was designed by a young engineer named Henry Ford, who had produced his own first motorcar, the quadricycle, before joining the company. Ford, frustrated with his employers, soon quit the Detroit Automobile Company to start his own business
1910 Baroness Rosen, wife of the Russian ambassador, pioneered smoking by women in public at a White House reception
1932 Mrs. Hattie W. Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, became the first woman elected to the US Senate. She had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. With the support of Huey Long, a powerful senator from Louisiana, Caraway was elected to the seat. In 1938, she was reelected. Although she was the first freely elected female senator, Caraway was preceded in the Senate by Rebecca Latimer Felton, who was appointed in 1922 to fill a vacancy but never ran for election. Jeannette Rankin, elected to the House of Representatives as a pacifist from Montana in 1917, was the first woman to ever sit in Congress
1954 Queen Elizabeth II opened New Zealand's Parliament. It was the first time a reigning monarch had done so in that country's history
1966 The TV series Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward premiered on the ABC network
1991 The US Congress gave President Bush the authority to wage war in the Persian Gulf
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