1692 Guiseppe Tartini - Italian violinist and composer who invented a new type of bow
1778 John Strachan - Scottish-born Canadian educator. He was the first Anglican bishop of Toronto, and founder of Trinity College, which is today, part of the University of Toronto.
1831 Grenville Dodge - US engineer. He was the chief engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1866-70
1853 Sir James Mackenzie - Scottish cardiologist and a pioneer in the study of cardiac arrhythmia
1903 Jan Tinbergen - Dutch economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1969 for his work with econometric models
1916 Russell Garcia - Musician, composer, orchestra leader (Waiter, Make Mine Blues, Royal Wedding Suite)
1919 Billy Vaughn - Musician, orchestra leader (Melody of Love, The Shifting, Whispering Sands, Sail Along Silvery Moon)
1923 Ann Miller - Actress, dancer (Easter Parade, Sugar Babies, You Can't Take It with You, Hit the Deck, Kiss Me Kate, On the Town) Many of her successes were on Broadway
1926 Jane Withers - Actress (Giant, The North Star, Danger Street) She is best known for her 1960's commercials as Josephine the Plumber, for Comet Cleanser
1932 Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury) - Ukulele playing, falsetto singer (Tiptoe Through The Tulips, Sonny Boy) He was born in New York City
1936 Charles Napier - Actor (Austin Powers, The Cable Guy, Philadelphia, Silence of the Lambs, The Grifters, Miami Blues, Earnest Goes to Jail, Outlaws, Blues Brothers)
1939 Sir Alan Ayckbourn - British playwright (Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests, Relatively Speaking, How the Other Half Loves, House/Garden)
1940 Herbie Hancock - Jazz/fusion musician, composer (Riot, Cantaloupe Island, Rockit, Dolphin's Dance)
1944 John Kay - Guitarist and vocalist with the group Steppenwolf (Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride, Rock Me, The Pusher)
1946 Ed O'Neill - Actor (Married ... With Children, Modern Family, Popeye Doyle, Wayne's World, The 10th Kingdom, Dragnet, The Bone Collector)
1947 Dan Lauria - Actor (The Wonder Years, Stakeout, Independence Day)
1947 David Letterman - TV host & comedian (Late Night with David Letterman)
1947 Tom Clancy – Author (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six)
1949 Scott Turow - Author (Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Pleading Guilty)
1950 David Cassidy - Actor (The Partridge Family, Spirit of '76, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) and singer (Cherish, I Think I Love You) He was the son of Jack Cassidy and Evelyn Ward
1951 Tom Noonan – Actor (Hell on Wheels, Damages, The Alphabet Killer, The Astronaut’s Wife, Heat, The Monster Squad)
1956 Andy Garcia - Cuban born actor (Sins of the Father, Hero, When a Man Loves a Woman, Dead Again, The Godfather Part III, Internal Affairs, Stand and Deliver)
1956 Richard Martin – Canadian director (Diminished, Matinee, North of Pittsburgh) He’s the son of comedian Dick Martin of Rowan and Martin fame
1957 Vince Gill – Country singer (I Still Believe in You, The Heart Won’t Lie, Next Big Thing, Oklahoma Borderline)
1971 Shannen Doherty - Actress (Little House on the Prairie, Beverly Hills 90210)
1979 Jennifer Morrison – Actress (House, Once Upon A Time, Star Trek, Warrior, Surviving Christmas, Urban Legends: Final Cut, This Is Us, How I Met Your Mother)
1979 Claire Danes – Actress (Homeland, Little Women, How to Make an American Quilt, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, The Hours, Shopgirl, Temple Grandin)
1979 Paul Nicholls – British actor (EastEnders, Law & Order: UK, Harley Street, Marple: Towards Zero, A Thing Called Love, The Trench, City Central)
Died this Day
1817 Charles Joseph Messier - French astronomer who published the first list of the nebulae
1838 Colonel Samuel Lount and Captain Peter Matthews – Rebels publicly hanged for treason and sedition during the Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada. Lount had seven children, but petitions for mercy and clemency, and a personal appeal by his wife Elizabeth to Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur failed. Before mounting the gallows, Lount said he would do it again, in order that Canada would be free
1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, age 63 - 32nd US President who was the longest serving president in US history. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in his home at Warm Springs, Georgia. In his inaugural address in 1933, President Roosevelt promised the US that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and outlined his New Deal, an expansion of the federal government as an instrument of employment opportunity and welfare. His progressive legislation improved the US's economic climate, and in 1936 he swept to re-election. During his second term, he became increasingly concerned with German and Japanese aggression, and so, in 1940, with World War II raging in Europe and the Pacific, Roosevelt agreed to run for an unprecedented third term and proved a highly effective commander-in-chief during World War II. In 1944, with the war not yet won, he was re-elected to a fourth term. Three months after his inauguration, he died while vacationing in Georgia. Following a solemn parade of his coffin through the streets of the nation's capital, his body was buried on a family plot in Hyde Park, New York. Roosevelt's unparalleled thirteen years as president led to the 1947 passing of the Twenty-second Amendment to the US Constitution, limiting future presidents to a maximum of two elected terms in office. FDR was also a member of the Baker Street Irregulars from 1942 until his death, and had an article published in the Baker Street Journal, which was titled "Sherlock Holmes Was an American!"
1975 Josephine Baker - US born French singer and dancer. As a young woman, Baker was stranded in Paris in 1925 when a show in which she was performing went bankrupt. She landed a dancing job in the Folies Bergère, where her dancing and skimpy costumes became an instant hit with Parisian audiences. In France, Baker was considered the epitome of the jazz era, and French fans continued to adore her for 50 years
1981 Joe Louis, age 66 - US and World Heavyweight boxing champion known as The Brown Bomber
1989 Sugar Ray Robinson, age 67 - Former middleweight boxing champion. He died in Culver City, California
1999 Boxcar Willie (Lecil Travis Martin), age 67 – Songwriter and singer known as 'The Singing Hobo' (Not the Man I Used to Be, Lonesome Whistle Blues, Hobo Til I Die, Thru a Boxcar Door)
On this Day
1606 England adopted as its flag the original version of the Union Jack
1654 Ireland and Scotland were united with England
1709 The Tatler magazine was first published in Britain
1861 The US Civil War, the bloodiest four years in US history, began. Confederate shore batteries under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay. Over the next thirty-four hours, fifty Confederate guns and mortars launched over four thousand rounds at the poorly supplied fort, and on April 13, US Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union garrison, surrendered. On April 15, US President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteer soldiers to help quell the Southern "insurrection". The ongoing conflict between the North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the US and by 1860, the majority of the Southern states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans won the presidency. Following Lincoln's victory, South Carolina initiated secession proceedings and its legislature passed the "Ordinance of Secession," which declared that "the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states had followed South Carolina's lead. In February 1861, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convened to establish a unified government, electing Jefferson Davis of Mississippi the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, seven states had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after Fort Sumter was first attacked, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead
1862 Union volunteers led by James J. Andrews stole a Confederate train near Marietta, Georgia, but were later caught. This episode inspired the Buster Keaton comedy The General
1877 The catcher's mask was first used in a baseball game
1898 John Moodie imported a Winton automobile, the first gasoline-powered automobile brought to Canada
1914 The Strand movie theatre opened in New York City. It was the first movie "palace," seating 3,000 people and boasting a second-floor balcony. Enormous theatres caught on in the following decades
1914 George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion opened in London, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle, and Sir Herbert Tree as Professor Higgins
1917 Women in Ontario won the right to vote
1934 Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published
1936 In Moose River, Nova Scotia, J. Frank Willis broadcast non-stop for 69 hours after an explosion trapped three men in the Moose River mine. Two of the men survived. The broadcasts were picked up by 650 stations in the US, and 58 in Canada
1938 New Yorkers were advised that anyone applying for a marriage licence would have to take a syphilis test
1945 Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Westerbork, Netherlands
1954 Bill Haley and the Comets recorded Rock Around the Clock
1955 The Salk vaccine against polio was declared safe and effective in a report from Michigan University
1960 Montréal Canadien hockey legend Maurice "Rocket" Richard scored his last goal before retiring. It helped Montréal defeat Toronto 5-2
1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel in space, orbiting Earth once before the Vostok One made a safe re-entry 89 minutes later. Seven years later, Gagarin died in an accident during a routine training mission
1967 The Canadian House of Commons voted to adopt the music for O Canada as the national anthem, while God Save the Queen was to be the Royal anthem in Canada. O Canada was proclaimed Canada's national anthem on July 1, 1980, 100 years after it was first sung on June 24, 1880
1980 At St. John's, Newfoundland, 21-year-old Terry Fox dipped his artificial leg into the Atlantic to start his cross-country 'Marathon of Hope', backed by the Canadian Cancer Society, to raise money for cancer research. Fox lost his leg to a rare form of bone cancer. He was forced to end his run in September that year, at Thunder Bay, Ontario, when cancer was discovered in his lungs. He covered 3,340 miles and raised $1.7 million. Terry Fox ended his battle with cancer on June 28, 1981
1981 The first launching of a space shuttle took place as the Columbia was lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, becoming the first reusable manned spacecraft to travel into space. Piloted by astronauts Robert L. Crippen and John W. Young, the Columbia undertook a fifty-four-hour space flight of thirty-six orbits before successfully touching down at California's Edwards Air Force Base
1982 The Canadian government banned imports from Argentina, to protest the invasion of the Falkland Islands
1988 The first patent on an animal was granted to Harvard University for a genetically-engineered laboratory mouse
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