1882 Franklin Delano Roosevelt - The 32nd president of the US, born in Hyde Park, NY
1911 Roy 'Little Jazz' Eldridge - US jazz trumpeter with Gene Krupa's Band. He was a child prodigy who became one of the great creative musicians of his time
1914 David Wayne - Actor (The Tender Trap, The Last Angry Man, The Three Faces of Eve, The Andromeda Strain, Adam's Rib, Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie, The Good Life, Dallas, Ellery Queen, House Calls) He played The Mad Hatter/Jervis Tetch in the Batman TV series
1914 John Ireland - Actor (Gunfight at the OK Corral, Little Big Horn, Spartacus, All the King's Men, Marilyn: The Untold Story, Messenger of Death)
1915 John Profumo - British Conservative War Minister, who was a leading figure in the "Profumo Scandal", in which his mistress, Christine Keeler, was also keeping company with a Russian naval attaché. The 1989 movie Scandal was based on the incident
1922 Dick Martin - Comedian (Laugh In: "Say good night Dick." "Good night, Dick!")
1925 Dorothy Malone - Actress (Written on the Wind, Beach Party, Battle Cry, Man of a Thousand Faces)
1928 Harold Prince - Theatrical director (A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Something for Everyone) and theatrical producer (West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Damn Yankees)
1928 Ruth Brown - R&B and jazz singer (So Long, Teardrops from My Eyes, Hours, Mambo Baby, Lucky Lips, This Little Girl's Gone Rockin')
1930 Gene Hackman - Actor (The French Connection, Bonnie and Clyde, Hawaii, Mississippi Burning, The Poseidon Adventure, Postcards from the Edge, Superman, The Firm, Crimson Tide, Young Frankenstein, The Mexican, Enemy of the State, The Birdcage)
1934 Tammy Grimes – Stage and screen actress (The Tammy Grimes Show, Mr North, Can't Stop the Music, The Borrowers) She originated the title role in the Broadway production of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. She is the mother of actress Amanda Plummer
1937 Vanessa Redgrave - Actress (Mary Queen of Scots, Julia, A Man for All Seasons, Howard's End, Mrs Dalloway, Camelot) She played Agatha Christie in the movie, Agatha. She also played Lola Deveraux in the Sherlock Holmes movie, The Seven Percent Solution
1937 Boris Spassky - Russian World Champion chess player
1951 Charles S. Dutton - Actor (Random Hearts, Cookie's Fortune, Alien 3, Roc, Threshold, Gothika)
1951 Phil Collins - Drummer and singer with the group Genesis (In the Air Tonight, I Missed Again, Sussudio, Two Hearts) and actor (Hook, Buster, A Hard Day's Night)
1958 Brett Butler - Actress-comedian (Grace Under Fire)
1974 Olivia Colman – British actress (Broadchurch, The Night Manager, The Crown, The Iron Lady, Hot Fuzz, Tyrannosaur, The Time of Your Life, Thomas & Friends, The Favourite)
1974 Christian Bale – British actor (Batman Begins, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Shaft, American Psycho, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Little Women, Newsies, Treasure Island, Henry V, Empire of the Sun, Terminator Salvation, The Dark Knight, 3:10 to Yuma)
Died this Day
1649 King Charles I - Executed by beheading for treason, in London. Charles ascended to the English throne in 1625 following the death of his father, King James I. In the first year of his reign, Charles offended his Protestant subjects by marrying Henrietta Maria, a Catholic French princess. He later responded to political opposition to his rule by dissolving Parliament on several occasions and in 1629 decided to rule entirely without Parliament. In 1642, the bitter struggle between king and Parliament for supremacy led to the outbreak of the first English Civil War. The Parliamentarians were led by Oliver Cromwell, whose formidable Ironsides force won important victories against the King's Royalist forces in 1644 and 1645. In 1648, Charles was forced to appear before a high court controlled by his enemies, where he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Charles I was beheaded. The man believed to have wielded the axe was Richard Brandon, an experienced executioner who got £30 for his trouble. The monarchy was abolished, and Cromwell assumed control of the new Republican English Commonwealth
1730 Peter the Second - Russian Tsar, died of smallpox on his wedding day
1888 Edward Lear - British artist, author and poet (The Book of Nonsense, Botany and Alphabets, Laughable Lyrics, Teapots and Quails, The Owl and the Pussy Cat) He died in Italy
1948 Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, age 78 - Political and spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement who was assassinated on his way to prayer in New Delhi by a Hindu fanatic
1948 Orville Wright, age 76 - US flight pioneer, who with his brother Wilbur, made the first powered and controlled flights
1951 Ferdinand Porsche, age 75 - Austrian auto engineer and designer. He designed the Volkswagen Beetle
1991 John Bardeen - Inventor of the transistor, along with William Shockley and Walter Bratton. Bardeen was the only person ever to win the Nobel Prize for physics twice
On this Day
1487 Bell chimes were invented
1798 A brawl broke out in the House of Representatives in Philadelphia, as Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut
1815 President James Madison approved an act of Congress appropriating $23,950 to purchase Thomas Jefferson's library of 6,487 volumes. After capturing Washington, DC in 1814, the British burned the US Capitol, destroying the Library of Congress and its 3000-volume collection. Thomas Jefferson, in retirement at Monticello, offered to sell his personal library to the Library Committee of Congress in order to rebuild the collection of the Congressional Library. Jefferson's library not only included over twice the number of volumes as had been destroyed, it expanded the scope of the library beyond its previous topics of law, economics, and history, to include a wide variety of subjects in several languages. Anticipating the objection that his collection might be too comprehensive, he argued, "I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer." Thomas Jefferson arranged his books into three categories: Memory, Reason and Imagination. Today, Thomas Jefferson's library is one of the Library's special collections.
1835 In the House chamber of the US Capitol, President Andrew Jackson, the 7th president of the United States, survived the first attempt against the life of the chief executive. During a funeral service honouring the late Representative Warren R. Davis of South Carolina, a man identified as Richard Lawrence discharged two separate pistols in the direction of President Jackson. Both weapons misfired, and Lawrence was promptly subdued and arrested. The subsequent criminal investigation found the suspect to be insane, and he was sent to a mental prison
1868 The Nova Scotia legislature opened its first session
1901 The court of international arbitration was established at The Hague in the Netherlands
1923 The Grand Trunk Railway was taken over by the Canadian government, beginning the organisation of what is now the Canadian National Railway
1933 With the stirring notes of the William Tell Overture and a shout of "Hi-ho, Silver! Away!" The Lone Ranger debuted on Detroit's WXYZ radio station. The creation of station-owner George Trendle and writer Fran Striker, the "masked rider of the plains" became one of the most popular and enduring western heroes of the 20th century. Joined by his trusty steed, Silver, and loyal Indian scout, Tonto, the Lone Ranger sallied forth to do battle with evil western outlaws and Indians, generally arriving on the scene just in time to save an innocent child or sun-bonneted farm wife
1958 A bill passed by Britain's House of Lords admitted women to the Upper Chamber
1962 Two members of the Flying Wallendas high-wire act were killed when their seven person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit
1965 The state funeral of Winston Churchill took place in London
1972 In Londonderry, Northern Ireland, British paratroopers, believing they were under fire from Catholic protesters, opened fire killing thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights leaders on what became known as Bloody Sunday, when a march turned into a riot
1989 Egyptian archaeologists discovered five life-sized black granite figures close to the foundation of the Temple of Luxor in upper Egypt. The Pharaonic statues dated back to 1470BC
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