1737 John Hancock - US revolutionary statesman who was the first person to sign the US Declaration of Independence. The expression "put your John Hancock on that" derives from his historic signature
1832 Edouard Manet - French artist and leader of the impressionist movement
1898 Randolph Scott - Actor (Last of the Mohicans, The Nevadan, Ride the High Country, To the Shores of Tripoli, Man in the Saddle, Go West Young Man, Bombardier)
1906Anya Seton – Author (Devil Water, Foxfire, Dragonwyck, Avalon, The Mistletoe and the Sword) She was the daughter of Ernest Thompson Seton, English-born naturalist and pioneer of the Boy Scouts of America
1907 Dan Duryea - Actor (The Flight of the Phoenix, Five Golden Dragons)
1919 Ernie Kovacs - Comedian and actor (The Ernie Kovacs Show, Bell Book and Candle, North to Alaska) He was married to Edie Adams
1928 Jeanne Moreau - French stage and screen actress (Les Liaisons Dangereuses)
1933 Chita Rivera - Singer, dancer, actress (Sweet Charity, Pippin, Mayflower Madam)
1934 Lou Antonio – Actor (Cool Hand Luke, Thirteen at Dinner, The Snoop Sisters, Hawaii) He also directed episodes of many TV series (Numb3rs, CSI, American Gothic, Diagnosis Murder, The Rockford Files, The Flying Nun)
1943 Gil Gerard - Actor (Buck Rogers, Sidekicks, Hooch, Soldier's Fortune)
1944 Rutger Hauer - Dutch actor (Ladyhawke, Nighthawks, Blade Runner, Beyond Justice, Forbidden Choices, The Hitcher, The Wilby Conspiracy, The Osterman Weekand, Batman Begins, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The 10th Kingdom)
1950 Danny Federici - Rock musician and keyboardist with Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band (Glory Days, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Thunder Road, The River)
1950 Richard Dean Anderson – Actor (MacGyver, Stargate SG-1, Pandora's Clock, Ordinary Heroes, Emerald Point NAS, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, General Hospital)
1950 Richard Gilliland – Actor (Designing Women, Airplane II: The Sequel, The Waltons, Little Women, Operation Petticoat, McMillan and Wife) He is married to actress Jean Smart
1957 Princess Caroline of Monaco - Daughter of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier
1964 Mariska Hargitay – Actress (Law & Order: SVU, Lake Placid, Tequila and Bonetti, Falcon Crest, Ghoulies) She’s the daughter of Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield
1974 Tiffani Amber Thiessen – Actress (Beverley Hills 90210, White Collar, Saved By the Bell)
1985 MeKenna Melvin – Actress (Chuck, Amber Lake, Thrillseekers: The Indosheen)
Died this Day
1622 William Baffin - British explorer, after whom Canada's Baffin Island is named
1883 Charles Kingsley - British clergyman and author (The Water Babies, The Heroes, Westward Ho!)
1931 Anna Pavlova - Russian prima ballerina. She died in Holland, three weeks before her 50th birthday
1944 Edvard Munch - Norwegian painter and lithographer whose predominant theme was death (The Scream)
1989 Salvador Dali, age 84 - Spanish surrealist artist. He died in his native Spain
1991 Northrop Frye, age 78 - Canada's greatest literary scholar (Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, Anatomy of Criticism, A Natural Perspective, Fables of Identity, The Stubborn Structure, The Critical Path)
2005 Johnny Carson, age 79 – Comedian and TV host (The Tonight Show, The Johnny Carson Show, Who Do You Trust?, Earn Your Vacation, Carson's Cellar)
On this Day
1556 An earthquake in Shensi Province, China, is thought to have killed some 830,000 people
1571 Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange in London. It was originally a banker's meeting house
1789 Georgetown University was established in present-day Washington, DC
1831 The Lower Canada Assembly voted to extend legal rights to Jews
1834 A fire destroyed the Chateau Saint-Louis in Quebec City. The Chateau had been home to the governors of New France since it was built by Samuel de Champlain
1845 The US Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November
1849 British-born Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in US history to receive a medical degree. It was from the Medical Institution of Geneva, NY, where she graduated with the highest grades in her class. In 1857, after several years of private practice, she founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with her sister, Emily Blackwell, also a doctor. In 1868, the institution was expanded to include a women's college for the training of nurses and doctors, the first of its kind in the US. The next year, Blackwell returned to England, where in 1875 she became professor of gynaecology at the London School of Medicine for Women, a medical discipline she had helped to establish
1870 Declaring he did not care whether or not it was the rebellious band of Indians he had been searching for, Colonel Eugene Baker ordered his men to attack a sleeping camp of peaceful Blackfeet along the Marias River in northern Montana. The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named Owl Child of stealing some of his horses, and punished him with a brutal whipping. In retribution, Owl Child and several allies murdered Clarke and his son at their home near Helena, and then fled north to join a band of rebellious Blackfeet under the leadership of Mountain Chief. Outraged and frightened, Montanans demanded that Owl Child and his followers be punished, and the government responded by ordering the forces garrisoned under Major Eugene Baker at Fort Ellis to strike back. Baker led his troops out into sub-zero winter weather and headed north in search of Mountain Chief's band. On January 22nd, Baker discovered an Indian village along the Marias River, and, postponing his attack until the following morning, spent the evening drinking heavily. At daybreak on the morning of the 23rd, Baker ordered his men to surround the camp in preparation for attack. As the darkness faded, Baker's scout, Joe Kipp, recognised that the painted designs on the buffalo-skin lodges were those of a peaceful band of Blackfeet led by Heavy Runner, and not those of Mountain Chief and Owl Child. Kipp rushed to tell Baker that they had the wrong Indians, but Baker reportedly replied, "That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans (Blackfeet) and we will attack them." Baker then ordered a sergeant to shoot Kipp if he tried to warn the sleeping camp of Blackfeet and gave the command to attack. Baker's soldiers began blindly firing into the village, catching the Indians utterly unaware and defenceless. By the time the brutal attack was over, Baker and his men had, by the best estimate, murdered 37 men, 90 women, and 50 children. Knocking down lodges with frightened survivors inside, the soldiers set them on fire, burning some of the Blackfeet alive, and then burned the band's meagre supplies of food for the winter. Baker initially captured about 140 women and children as prisoners to take back to Fort Ellis, but when he discovered many were ill with smallpox, he abandoned them to face the deadly winter without food or shelter. When word of the Baker Massacre (now known as the Marias Massacre) reached the east, Americans were outraged. One angry congressman denounced Baker, saying "civilisation shudders at horrors like this." Baker's superiors, however, supported his actions, as did the people of Montana. Neither Baker nor his men faced a court martial or any other disciplinary actions. However, the public outrage over the massacre did derail the growing movement to transfer control of Indian affairs from the Department of Interior to the War Department, and President Ulysses S. Grant decreed that henceforth all Indian agents would be civilians rather than soldiers
1883 The first ice palace carnival was held in Montréal
1888 Natural gas was found at Kingsville, Ontario
1909 Radio was first used to save lives at sea. A distress signal brought help when the "Republic" rammed and sank the "Florida" off the New England coast
1912 The Aermore Manufacturing Company of Chicago, received a patent for the Aermore Exhaust Horn, a multiple-pipe horn powered by engine exhaust that played a chord like a church organ
1950 The Israeli Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel
1964 The first heart transplant took place on a human when Dr. James Hardy transplanted the heart of a chimpanzee into an elderly man. The patient died within hours
1989 Gallons disappeared from Britain's 20,000 petrol stations as legislation came into force that dictated fuel be sold by the litre
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