1873 Etienne Desmarteau - Canadian policeman and strongman who was the first Canadian to win an Olympic gold medal. The Montreal policeman was unbeatable in tug of war and other weight sports. He won the gold medal for the 57-pound hammer throw at the 1904 St. Louis games
1883 E.J. (Ned) Pratt - Canadian poet (Newfoundland Verse, The Cachalot, The Titanic, Towards the Last Spike)
1885 Cairine Ray Wilson - Canada's first woman senator. She was appointed to the Senate in 1930 by Prime Minister Mackenzie King, and was also Canada's first delegate to the United Nations in 1949
1895 Nigel Bruce – Mexican-born British actor (Treasure Island, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Charge of the Light Brigade) He was born while his British parents were on tour in Mexico. Some sources quote his birthday as being September 4th. He is best known for his portrayal of a bumbling Dr. Watson in numerous Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone
1902 Charles Lindbergh - US pioneer aviator who was the first to fly solo and non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. He flew The Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in May of 1927. He became an international celebrity, and was in the news again when his baby was kidnapped and murdered
1904 MacKinlay Kantor - Author (Andersonville, Long Remember, Gettysburg, Signal Thirty-Two)
1905 Eddie Foy Jr. - Actor (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Bells Are Ringing, The Pyjama Game, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Four Jacks and a Jill)
1906 Dietrich Bonhoeffer - German theologian who took part in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler and was executed in Flossenberg concentration camp. His "Letters and Papers from Prison" was published posthumously
1912 James Craig - Actor (The Devil's Brigade, The Human Comedy)
1913 Rosa Parks - African-American civil rights pioneer who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The incident launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a non-violent protest that crippled the city's transportation economy and helped motivate the civil rights movement in the US
1914 Ida Lupino - British actress (On Dangerous Ground, My Boys Are Good Boys, The Man I Love) and director (The Bigamist, The Hitch-Hiker, The Trouble with Angels) She played Ann Brandon in the 1939 movie The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes She also played Dr Cassandra in the Batman episode, The Entrancing Dr Cassandra
1915 Sir Norman Wisdom - British comedian and actor (The Night They Raided Minsky's, A Little Bit of Wisdom, What's Good for the Goose)
1915 William Talman - Actor (Armoured Car Robbery, The Hitch-Hiker, One Minute to Zero) He is best known for playing DA Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason
1923 Conrad Bain - Canadian-born actor (Different Strokes, Maude, Postcards from the Edge, Bananas, The Anderson Tapes)
1929 Jerry Adler – Actor (Manhattan Murder Mystery, The Sopranos, In Her Shoes, Six Ways to Sunday)
1940 John Schuck – Actor (McMillan and Wife, M*A*S*H, Outrageous Fortune, Roots, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Brewster McCloud, The Munsters Today)
1941 John Steele - Rock musician with the Animals (Baby Let Me Take You Home, House of the Rising Sun)
1944 Florence LaRue - Singer with the group The Fifth Dimension (Up Up and Away, Stoned Soul Picnic, Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, Wedding Bell Blues, One Less Bell to Answer)
1948 Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier) - US pop singer (I'm Eighteen, School's Out, You and Me, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Welcome to My Nightmare)
1949 Michael Beck – Actor (Xanadu, Houston Knights, The Warriors, The Golden Seal)
1952 Lisa Eichhorn – Actress (The Vanishing, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cutter’s Way, Blind Justice) She played Dr Millicent Van Buren in the Inspector Morse episode The Wench Is Dead
1962 Michael Riley – Canadian actor (French Kiss, Being Erica, This is Wonderland, Power Play, Butterbox Babies)
1962 Clint Black - Country singer (A Better Man, Loving Blind, Killin' Time, Nobody's Home, Walkin' Away)
1970 Gabrielle Anwar – British actress (Burn Notice, The Tudors, The Three Musketeers, Scent of a Woman, Press Gang)
1972 Vincent Walsh – Irish-Canadian actor (Shatterd City: The Halifax Explosion, Lost Girl, Jozi-H, ReGenesis, Chef!, Degrassi Junior High)
Died this Day
1555 Giambattista della Porta - Italian inventor of the camera obscura
1925 Robert Koldewey - German archaeologist who excavated Babylon
1983 Karen Carpenter, age 32 - US singer, who with her brother Richard formed the duo The Carpenters (Close to You, We've Only Just Begun, For All We Know) She died of complications arising from anorexia nervosa
1987 Liberace, age 67 - Flamboyant US pianist
2005 Ossie Davis, age 87 – Actor (Grumpy Old Men, Evening Shade, The Client, Miss Evers’ Boys, Promised Land) He was married to Ruby Dee for 56 years at the time of his death
On this Day
1667 In Quebec, Alexandre de Prouville, the Marquis de Tracy hosted the first ball held in New France, to celebrate his victories over the Mohawks
1783 Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colonies, the United States of America, ending the American Revolutionary War
1789 George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, was unanimously chosen to be the first president of the US by all sixty-nine presidential electors. The electors, representing ten of the eleven states that had ratified the US Constitution, were chosen by popular vote, legislative appointment, or a combination of both one month before the election. John Adams of Massachusetts, who received 34 votes, was elected vice president. According to Article Two of the US Constitution, the states appointed a number of presidential electors equal to the "number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress." New York, though it was to be the seat of the new US government failed to choose its eight presidential electors in time for the vote on February 4th. Two electors each from Virginia and Maryland were delayed by weather and did not vote. In addition, North Carolina and Rhode Island, which would have had seven and three electors respectively, had not ratified the Constitution and so could not vote. Each elector voted for two people, at least one of whom did not live in their state. The individual receiving the greatest number of votes was elected president, and the next-in-line, vice president. In 1804, this practice was changed by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which ordered separate ballots for the office of president and vice president
1826 The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fennimore Cooper, was published. One of the earliest distinctive US novels, the book was the second of the five-novel series called the Leather-stocking Tales
1847 The first telegraph company, the Magnetic Telegraph Company, was incorporated under the laws of Maryland. The company opened offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. At first, the company used carrier pigeons to send messages across the Hudson River from Jersey City to New York City. Later, a lead pipe enclosing a covered wire was laid under the river, allowing telegraph service to replace the pigeon system. Sending a message from Baltimore to Washington cost 10˘ for the first ten words and a penny for each additional word. From New York to Washington, the first ten words cost 50˘ and additional words were a nickel each
1858 Gold was discovered along British Columbia's Fraser River, attracting thousands to Canada's West Coast. Hundreds of ships, jammed with gold-seekers, worked their way across the Strait of Georgia to the Fraser, then made the dangerous trip up the swift running river
1861 In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convened to establish the Confederate States of America
1873 Winnipeg, Manitoba received its charter and was incorporated as a city. It was originally known as Fort Garry
1880 Five members of the Donnelly family were massacred in their farmhouse near the village of Lucan, Ontario, by a party of armed men. Two witnesses, one of them another Donnelly son, identified six of the murderers. After two trials, the six men were acquitted of murder. The case sparked international interest when it was revealed that the killings were the result of a factional feud that originated in County Tipperary, Ireland
1913 Louis Henry Perlman of New York received a patent for the first demountable tire-carrying rim. Until Perlman's invention, changing a tire meant changing the wheel
1932 New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid
1938 The Thornton Wilder play, Our Town, opened on Broadway
1941 The United Service Organization was founded. The civilian agency was formed to offer support for US service members and their families, and sent many actors, musicians, and other performers to entertain the troops. In 1948, the original USO was disbanded, but formed again the following year, and still exists today, providing recreation, entertainment, children's programs and other services to US military families. Bob Hope made annual trips to entertain overseas troops from World War II through Desert Storm in 1991
1945 Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss post-war plans and the defeat of the Axis powers
1974 Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, then 19, was kidnapped in Berkeley, California, by the Symbionese Liberation Army
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