1859 Victor Herbert - Cellist, conductor and composer (Babes in Toyland, Naughty Marietta, Ah Sweet Mystery of Life)
1882 Louis Saint-Laurent Prime Minister of Canada from 1948 to 1957. He welcomed Newfoundland into Confederation as Canadas tenth province in 1949
1894 John Ford - US director (The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, Stagecoach, The Quiet Man). He began as a set builder, prop man and stunt man, before directing
1901 Clark Cable - Actor (Gone With The Wind, It Happened One Night, The Misfits, Across The Wide Missouri) He was turned down by all the major studios as having "big ears and the look of an ape" before eventually becoming known as the "King of Hollywood"
1902 Langston Hughes - Author and poet (Way Down South, Not Without Laughter, Montage of a Dream Deferred, Simple Speaks His Mind)
1904 S.J. Perelman - Humorist and author (Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, One Touch of Venus, Strictly from Hunger, Westward Ha!)
1918 Muriel Spark - Scottish author (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Loitering With Intent)
1928 Stuart Whitman - Actor (Johnny Trouble, The Sound and the Fury, The Longest Day, Cimarron Strip)
1934 Bob Shane - Singer with the group The Kingston Trio (Tom Dooley, M.T.A., Greenback Dollar, Where Have All the Flowers Gone)
1937 Garrett Morris - Comedian and actor (Saturday Night Live, The Anderson Tapes, Almost Blue)
1937 Don Everly - Singer with The Everly Brothers (Wake Up Little Susie, Bye Bye Love, Cathy's Clown, All I Have To Do Is Dream)
1937 Ray Sawyer - Singer with Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show (Only Sixteen, Cover of the Rolling Stone, Sylvia's Mother)
1938 Sherman Hemsley - Actor (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Amen)
1942 Terry Jones - Welsh born comedian and actor (Monty Python's Flying Circus, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Jabberwocky, The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, The Wind in the Willows)
1946 Elisabeth Sladen British actress (Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Peak Practice)
1948 Rick James - Singer (Mary Jane, Bustin' Out, Super Freak)
1954 Bill Mumy - Actor (Lost in Space, Papillon, Babylon 5) He also played Miles in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Shifty Shoebox
1964 Linus Roache British Actor (Law & Order, The Chronicles of Riddick, Kidnapped, Batman Begins, The Gathering Storm, The Wings of the Dove, Seaforth)
1965 Sherilyn Fenn - Actress (Twin Peaks, Fatal Instinct, Boxing Helena)
1965 Princess Stephanie of Monaco - Daughter of Princess Grace (Kelly) and Prince Rainier
1965 Brandon Lee Actor (The Crow, Rapid Fire, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Kung Fu: The Movie) He was the son of Bruce Lee
1968 Pauly Shore Actor and comedian (Pauly, Encino Man, Wedding Band)
1968 Lisa Marie Presley - Daughter of Elvis Presley & Priscilla Presley
1971 Michael C. Hall Actor (Dexter, Six Feet Under, Gamer, Paycheck)
1979 Rachelle Lefevre Canadian actress (Twilight, New Moon, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, A Gifted Man, Off the Map, Casino Jack, What About Brian, Big Wolf on Campus)
1984 Lee Thompson Young Actor (Rizzoli & Isles, Friday Night Lights, FlashForward, Akeelah and the Bee, The Famous Jett Jackson)
Died this Day
1650 Rene Descartes, age 53 - French philosopher known as the Father of Modern Philosophy
1851 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, age 53 - British novelist (Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus) She was the daughter of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and she was the second wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
1966 Buster Keaton, age 70 - Film comedian (The Paleface, Li'l Abner, Sunset Boulevard, In the Good Old Summertime, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Beach Blanket Bingo) He appeared in the 1924 movie, Sherlock Jr
1966 Hedda Hopper, age 75 - Hollywood gossip columnist. She worked as a chorus girl on Broadway and a silent-film actress before beginning writing a newspaper column for the Los Angeles Times in 1938. A year later, she spun the column off into a 15-minute radio program, kicking off a decades-long rivalry with established Hollywood gossip Louella Parsons, whose radio show had been around since 1931. Hopper's show became a hit, running until 1950. Her caustic remarks and loyal following made Hopper one of Hollywood's most feared and respected public figures. She was the mother of actor William Hopper, of Perry Mason fame
2003 Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel B. Clark and Ilan Ramon - The seven crew members of the space shuttle Columbia. NASA's 113th Shuttle Mission was launched January 16th, and ended in tragedy 16 days later as the Columbia broke up over East Central Texas shortly before its scheduled landing at 9:16am EST
On this Day
1790 The first Session of the US Supreme Court was held in the Royal Exchange Building on New York City's Broad Street, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding
1796 The capital of Upper Canada was transferred to York, now Toronto, from Newark, now called Niagara-on-the-Lake
1799 Ile St. Jean was given Royal Assent to change its name to Prince Edward Island
1814 Lord Byron's poem, The Corsair, was published and sold some 10,000 copies on its first day in print. The poem was one of several gloomy works he produced at a time when he was engaged in several ill-fated love affairs
1840 The first dental college opened in Baltimore, Maryland
1861 Texas voted to become the seventh state to secede from the Union. The Texans who voted to leave the Union did so over the objections of their governor, Sam Houston. The hero of the Texas War for Independence was in his third term as the state's chief executive. He was a staunch Unionist, and his election seemed to indicate that Texas did not share the rising secessionist sentiments of the other southern states, but events in the year following Houston's election, including the rise of the Republican Party, swayed many Texans to the secessionist cause. After Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency, pressure mounted on Houston to call a convention so that Texas could consider secession. He did so reluctantly, and he sat in silence as the convention voted overwhelmingly in favour of secession. Houston grumbled that Texans were "stilling the voice of reason," and he predicted an "ignoble defeat" for the South
1884 The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published
1893 Thomas Edison completed work on the world's first motion picture studio, the Black Maria, on his property in West Orange, New Jersey. The studio, a frame cabin covered with black roofing paper, was built on a pivot so it could be turned to face the sunlight throughout the day. Edison spent $638 building the studio, which he called a "revolving photographic building." It was set up to make movies for peepshow machines
1896 The opera La Boheme, by Giacomo Puccini, had its premiere in Turin, Italy
1898 The Travellers Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut, extended coverage to an automobile owner, becoming the first company to issue an automobile insurance policy to an individual. Dr. Truman J. Martin of Buffalo, New York, paid a premium of $11.25 for the policy that covered $5,000 to $10,000 of liability
1920 Canada's Royal Northwest Mounted Police merged with the Dominion Police under the new name, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The Northwest Police force had been formed in the 1870's to administer the vast unsettled territories. The Dominion Police was the federal force that guarded government buildings and had enforced federal statutes since 1868
1921 Carmen Fasanella of Princeton, New Jersey, obtained his cab driver's license at the tender age of seventeen. Mr. Fasanella would go on to drive his taxi for the next 68 years and 243 days, setting an unofficial record for the longest continuous career for a cabbie. The term "cab" comes from "cabriolet," a single-horse carriage used by coach drivers
1929 The Broadway Melody, Hollywood's first original film musical, opened at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. The movie became the first sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture
1939 A British White Paper proposing the formation of the Home Guard was published. The Home Guard was better known as "Dad's Army" because of the average age of the volunteers
1958 Elvis Presley recorded his last single, Wear My Ring Around Your Neck, before joining the army. Drafted in 1958, Elvis enlisted in the army in March that year and served until 1960. When he joined the army, his monthly salary dropped from $100,000 to $78. Fortunately, his manager had already recorded enough material to keep Elvis singles on the charts during most of his army service
1974 The Great Train Robber, Ronald Biggs, who escaped from a British gaol, was arrested by Brazilian police in Rio de Janeiro. He escaped extradition to Britain because he fathered a child by his Brazilian girlfriend
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