1650 Nell Gwynne - Former orange seller at Drury Lane Theatre, who became a comedy actress, and later the mistress of King Charles II, by whom she had two sons
1850 Jesse Boot - British chemist and philanthropist who founded Boots the Chemists chain of stores, known now as Boots Drugstores
1867 Edward Saunder - Developer of the Marquis strain of wheat, which helped open the Canadian Prairies to farming
1882 James Joyce - Irish poet, author (Ulysses, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan's Wake, Chamber Music) He was born in Dublin, the eldest of 10 children of a cheerful ne'er-do-well who eventually went bankrupt. Joyce attended Catholic school and University College in Dublin, where he learned Dano-Norwegian so he could read the plays of Henrik Ibsen in the original form. In college, he began a lifetime of literary rebellion, self-publishing an essay rejected by the school's literary-magazine adviser. After graduation, Joyce moved to Paris. He resolved to study medicine to support himself while writing but soon gave it up. He returned to Dublin to visit his mother's deathbed and remained to teach school and work odd jobs. He met his future wife Nora, a lively, uneducated woman with little interest in literature, on June 16th, 1904. Joyce would immortalise this day in his masterpiece Ulysses, whose narrative unfolds entirely on that one day. He convinced Nora to return to Europe with him, settling first in Trieste, where they had two children, and then in Zurich. Joyce struggled with serious eye problems, undergoing 25 operations between 1917 and 1930. In 1914, he published The Dubliners, and his 1915 novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, brought him fame and the patronage of several wealthy people, including Edith Rockefeller. In 1918, his revolutionary stream of consciousness novel Ulysses began to be serialised in the US journal Little Review. However, the US Post Office stopped the publication's distribution in December of that year on the grounds that the novel was obscene. Sylvia Beach, owner of the bookstore Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, where Joyce moved in 1920, published the novel herself in 1922. However, it was banned in the UK and in the US until 1933. Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, was published in 1939, and he died in 1941
1905 Ayn Rand - Russian born US writer and philosopher (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, We the Living, The Virtue of Selfishness)
1923 James Dickey - US author and poet (Into the Stone and Other Poems, Buckdancer's Choice, The Firebombing, Deliverance)
1925 Elaine Stritch - Stage and screen actress (Three Violent People, Providence, September, Pollyanna, Cadillac Man, The Cherry Orchard, Showboat, Sail Away, Pal Joey)
1927 Stan Getz - Jazz musician, tenor saxophonist (The Girl from Ipanema)
1932 Robert Mandan Actor (Soap, The Nutt House, The Best Little #####house in Texas) He played Dr Michaels in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Lost Love
1937 Tom Smothers - Comedian and entertainer with his brother, Dick (The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour)
1939 Jackie Burroughs British-born Canadian actress (Anne of Green Gables, Road to Avonlea, Whispers, The Dead Zone, Chautauqua Girl, The Grey Fox)
1940 Sir David Jason - British actor (A Touch of Frost, Only Fools and Horses, Doctor at Sea, The Darling Buds of May, All the King's Men)
1942 Bo Hopkins - Actor (The Wild Bunch, American Graffiti, Midnight Express)
1942 Graham Nash - Singer, musician with the group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Ohio, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Teach Your Children) He was also with the Hollies (Bus Stop, Carrie-Ann, On a Carousel)
1947 Farrah Fawcett - Actress (Charlie's Angels, The Burning Bed, Logan's Run, Small Sacrifices)
1948 Ina Garten TV chef and cookbook author (Barefoot Contessa)
1949 Brent Spiner Actor (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Threshold, The Aviator, Geppetto, Independence Day, Corrina Corrina)
1954 Christie Brinkley - Model
1955 Michael Talbott Actor (Miami Vice, Jack Reed, Red Dragon: The Pursuit of Hannibal Lecter, James A. Michener's Space, Rambo: First Blood, Carrie)
1962 Michael T. Weiss Actor (The Pretender, The Legend of Tarzan, Written in Blood, Crossing Jordan)
1963 Stephen McGanney British actor (Catherine the Great, Streetwise, Emmerdale Farm, Business as Usual, Call the Midwife) He is the brother of actors Paul, Mark and Joe McGann
1978 Rich Sommer Actor (Mad Men, The Devil Wears Prada, Radio Free Albermuth)
1981 Emily Rose Actress (Haven, Operating Instructions, Washington Field, ER, Jericho, Brothers & Sisters, John from Cincinnati)
Died this Day
1913 Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval, age 67 - Swedish scientist, engineer, and inventor who pioneered in the development of high-speed turbines. In 1877, he began developing a high-speed centrifugal cream separator, a significant advance in butter-making, and he later perfected a vacuum milking machine
1918 John L. Sullivan - US bare-knuckle boxing champion who was known as the "Boston Strong Boy"
1969 Boris Karloff, age 82 British actor (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Treasure Island, Bikini Beach, The Raven, Die Monster Die!, The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Mummy, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Body Snatcher, The Lost Patrol) He was born William Henry Pratt. He narrated How the Grinch Stole Christmas and supplied the voice of the Grinch
1996 Gene Kelly, age 83 - Dancer, actor and choreographer (Singing in the Rain, An American in Paris, Brigadoon, Inherit the Wind, Going My Way)
On this Day
1046 The Little Ice Age began as the weather turned especially cold throughout Europe. Monks noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that "no man alive...could remember so severe a winter." It was the first known record of the beginning of the 200 year period of exceptional cold, known as the Little Ice Age
1536 The Argentine city of Buenos Aires was founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain
1653 New Amsterdam, now New York City, was incorporated
1709 Alexander Selkirk was rescued by Captain Thomas Dover after spending five years on the uninhabited island of Mas ΰ Tierra. He is the real-life Robinson Carusoe on whom Daniel Defoe based his novel
1795 A prize of 12,000 francs was offered by the French government for a method of preserving food and transporting it to its armies. The winner was Nicholas Appert, a French chef who invented a way to can food. He developed the method of heating food in airtight glass jars, not very different from the home-bottling method which now uses Mason jars. He published "The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances For Several Years," in Paris in 1801. Appert also invented the bouillon cube
1802 The first leopard to be exhibited in the US was shown by Othello Pollard in Boston, Massachusetts. It cost 25’ to see the "import from Bengal"
1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican War, was signed in Mexico City. It ended the Mexican War and extended the boundaries of the US west to the Pacific Ocean. The terms of the agreement established the border between the US and Mexico at the Rio Grande and the Gila River and granted the US more than 525,000 square miles of former Mexican territory that includes present-day Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. This treaty, along with the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, completed the continental expansion of the US
1869 James Oliver invented the removable tempered steel plough blade
1870 The Cardiff Giant, supposedly the petrified remains of a human discovered in Cardiff, NY, was revealed to be nothing more than carved gypsum
1876 The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs was formed in New York. Original teams were in Philadelphia, Hartford, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis and New York
1880 The SS Strathleven arrived in London with the first successful shipment of frozen mutton from Australia
1892 The bottle cap with cork seal was patented by William Painter of Baltimore. The cap was used until the 1970s, when cork in soft drink and beer bottle caps was considered unhealthy. Manufacturers then switched to plastic, instead
1893 The first movie close-up was filmed at the Edison studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Cameraman William Dickson photographed comedian Fred Ott sneezing
1897 Countess Ishbel Aberdeen began organising the Victorian Order of Nurses
1897 Fire destroyed the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. A new statehouse was dedicated on the same site nine years later
1912 Frederick R. Law, the world's first movie stuntman, jumped with a parachute from the torch of the Statue of Liberty. The stunt was filmed by Pathι News for a newsreel
1923 Leaded gasoline (mixed with Tetraethyl lead) was first sold to the public at a roadside gas station in Dayton, Ohio. Coined "ethyl gasoline" by Charles Kettering of General Motors, the blend was discovered in the GM laboratories to beneficially alter the combustion rate of gasoline and reduce knocking . Leaded gasoline would fill the world's gas tanks until emissions concerns lead to the development of vehicles which ran on unleaded gasoline
1935 The detective Leonard Keeler conducted the first use of his invention, the Keeler polygraph, or lie detector machine, in Portage, Wisconsin. Those examined were two criminals Cecil Loniello and Tony Grignano, who were convicted of assault at their trial, where the results were introduced as evidence
1986 Women in Liechtenstein were allowed to vote for the first time
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