1818 Alexander II - Russian emperor who emancipated the serfs in 1861
1863 William Randolph Hearst - US newspaper magnate who introduced banner headlines and other techniques to sensationalise news. He was reportedly the subject of the movie, Citizen Kane and was the grandfather of Patricia Hearst
1899 Duke Ellington - Bandleader who was one of the founders of big band jazz, pianist, creator of over 1,000 musical pieces (Mood Indigo, Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me, Sophisticated Lady, Reminiscin' in Tempo, It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing, Take the A Train) He was born in Washington, DC, the son of a White House butler. As a child he took piano lessons, but was largely self-taught. In high school, art interested him more than music, and he won an art scholarship but turned it down to start a sign-painting business. His elegance and urbanity earned him the nickname Duke as a teenager. He became an itinerant pianist in Washington, DC, and New York City jazz clubs and by 1927 was leading the house band at Harlem's Cotton Club. In 1969, on his 70th birthday, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
1907 Fred Zinnemann - Austrian born US film director (From Here to Eternity, High Noon)
1912 Richard Carlson - Actor (I Led Three Lives, MacKenzie's Raiders, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Doomsday Flight, Tormented, Hold That Ghost, It Came from Outer Space, The Ghost Breakers, King Solomon’s Mines, No No Nanette) He was in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Avenging Angel and The Case of the Tragic Trophy
1915 Donald Mills - Singer with the Mills Brothers (Tiger Rag, Nobody's Sweetheart, Dinah, Paper Doll, Glow Worm, You Always Hurt the One You Love, Cab Driver)
1919 Celeste Holm - Actress (Gentlemen's Agreement, All About Eve, High Society, The Tender Trap, Three Men and a Baby)
1928 Carl Gardner - R&B singer with The Coasters (Yakety Yak, Charlie Brown, Along Came Jones, If I Had A Hammer)
1933 Willie Nelson - Singer (The Train They Call the City of New Orleans, On the Road Again, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Always On My Mind, To All the Girls I've Loved Before) and actor (The Electric Horseman, Honeysuckle Rose)
1933 Rod McKuen - Singer and poet-song writer (If You Go Away)
1936 Zubin Mehta - Indian born conductor and violinist
1936 April Stevens - Singer (Deep Purple, Whispering, Stardust)
1936 Lane Smith – Actor (My Cousin Vinny, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, The Mighty Ducks, Air America, Rooster Cogburn)
1947 Tommy James - Singer with the group Tommy James and The Shondells (I Think We're Alone Now, Hanky Panky, Mony Mony, Crimson and Clover, Sweet Cherry Wine, Crystal Blue Persuasion) He also had a solo career (Draggin' the Line, I'm Comin' Home, Three Times in Love)
1948 Reb Brown – Actor (Distant Thunder, Yor the Hunter from the Future, Centennial, Space Mutiny, Uncommon Valor)
1949 Anita Dobson - British actress (EastEnders, Get Well Soon, Sweet Revenge, The Stretch) She is married to Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist and musician with Queen
1951 Dale Earnhardt – NASCAR racing champion known as The Intimidator, born in Kannapolis, North Carolina. He dropped out of school when he was sixteen to pursue racing
1952 Nora Dunn – Actress (Saturday Night Live, Bruce Almighty, Sisters, Working Girl)
1954 Gavan O'Herlihy – Irish-born actor (Prince Valiant, Lonesome Dove, Willow, Never Say Never Again, Rich Man Poor Man, Butterfly Man, Happy Days, Sharpe’s Eagle) He played John Garrideb in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Mazarin Stone He is the son of Dan O'Herlihy
1954 Jerry Seinfeld - Comedian (Seinfeld)
1955 Kate Mulgrew - Actress (Star Trek: Voyager, Orange is the New Black, Mrs. Columbo, Ryan's Hope, Roots, Dallas, Throw Momma from the Train, Mercy)
1957 Daniel Day-Lewis - British actor (My Left Foot, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, In the Name of the Father, The Bounty, Age of Innocence, Gandhi, A Room with a View, Gangs of New York, The Last of the Mohicans, There Will Be Blood)
1958 Michelle Pfeiffer - Actress (Dangerous Liaisons, Batman Returns, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Grease 2, Ladyhawke, Scarface, Tequila Sunrise, The Age of Innocence, Married to the Mob, I Am Sam, What Lies Beneath)
1958 Eve Plumb - Actress (The Brady Bunch)
1969 Paul Adelstein – Actor (Private Practice, Little Fish Strange Pond, Prison Break, Hack, Intolerable Cruelty, Cupid)
1970 Andre Agassi – Tennis champion. He is married to Steffi Graf
1970 Uma Thurman - Actress (Batman & Robin, The Avengers, Dangerous Liaisons, Pulp Fiction, Gattaca, Kill Bill, The Producers, Smash)
1984 Taylor Cole – Actress (CSI: Miami, The Event, Twelve Rounds, Heroes, An American In China, Summerland)
Died this Day
1864 Abraham Gesner – Canadian medical doctor, geologist and inventor of kerosene. He died three days before his 67th birthday
1937 William Gillette, age 83 – US playwright and actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the first actor ever to portray Sherlock Holmes He died in Hartford, Connecticut of a pulmonary haemorrhage
1937 Wallace Hume Carothers - US chemist who, with his research team at E.I. du Pont de Nemours, developed nylon. He died just 2 days after his 41st birthday, and 2 months after patenting nylon
1966 William Eccles - British physicist and radio pioneer who was a proponent of the theory that an upper layer of the atmosphere reflects radio waves. His research helped establish the feasibility of long-distance radio transmission. He studied the effects of the sun and other environmental conditions on the speed and behaviour of radio waves
1980 Sir Alfred Hitchcock, age 80 - British film director (Psycho, The Birds, North by Northwest, Rebecca, Suspicion, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, Vertigo, Marnie, Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot ,The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes) He was the son of a London East End poultry dealer and greengrocer. Hitchcock entered show business when he was hired to design silent-film title cards for the newly formed London branch of Hollywood's Famous Players-Lasky, which later became Paramount Pictures. In 1925 he became a director, and the following year married film editor and script girl Alma Reville, who collaborated with him on several screenplays. Hitchcock directed a number of well-received English suspense films before moving to the US in 1939. At the time of his death, he and his wife, Alma, had been married for almost 54 years
On this Day
1376 Sir Peter de la Mare, the first Speaker of Britain's House of Commons, took office
1429 Joan of Arc entered the city of Orleans, France to score her great victory in driving out the English. During the Hundred Years' War, Joan, a seventeen-year-old French peasant, led a French force in relieving the city of Orleans, besieged by the English since October. Early in life, Joan began to hear "voices" of Catholic saints. Shortly after she turned sixteen, these voices told her to aid the French Dauphin, the later King Charles VII, in regaining the French throne and expelling the English from France. A captain in the French army arranged a meeting with Charles, and the Dauphin, convinced of the validity of Joan's divine mission, furnished her with a small force of troops. Wearing white armour, she led her troops to Orleans, and as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of the city, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. Bringing needed supplies and troops into the besieged city, she also inspired the French to a passionate resistance, and over the next week she led the charge during a number of skirmishes and battles. In under two weeks, the siege of Orleans was broken, and the English retreated. During the next five weeks, Joan led French forces into a number of stunning victories over the English, and Reims, the traditional city of coronation, was captured in July. Later that month, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan of Arc kneeling at his feet
1776 Benjamin Franklin arrived in Montréal with Charles Carroll and Samuel Chase. They were sent by the Continental Congress to try to convince Canadians to join the U.S.
1792 English explorer George Vancouver reached Juan de Fuca Strait and later explored what are now Vancouver Island and the city of Vancouver
1857 The first electric locomotive made a trial run on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway
1861 Maryland's House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union
1862 New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War
1880 Royal Assent was given to an act approving formation of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada. The company was incorporated by Melville Bell, Alexander Graham Bell's brother. The Bell stock was soon listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, whose members quickly took to the new-fangled device. The invention had been developed over the past decade at the Bell homestead in Brantford, Ontario
1885 Women were granted permission to be admitted to Oxford University examinations
1903 The coal mining village of Frank, Alberta was obliterated when a 90 million ton wedge of limestone slid off Turtle Mountain onto the village at 4:10 am. The rock buried the mine entrance and killed at least 70 people in 100 seconds. The slab was 1,300 ft high, 4,000 ft wide, and 500 ft thick. Seventeen men in the mine dug themselves out a day later. The town was permanently evacuated
1913 Swedish engineer, Gideon Sandback patented the zipper in the US. This zipper really zipped. Although previous patents had been granted, they weren't as practical or as functional as the Sandback zipper, that evolved into the zipper that we know today
1914 The Supreme Court of Ontario banned the employment of unqualified teachers
1930 The UK to Australia telephone service was inaugurated
1945 Allied soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, where tens of thousands of people had perished. The same day, the German army in Italy surrendered, and Adolph Hitler married his long-time mistress Eva Braun in his Berlin bunker
1967 Five-year-old Gino Lyons became the youngest painter to have his work exhibited at London's Royal Academy of Arts. His painting of "Trees and Monkeys" was done when he was only three years old
1982 China's population passed the one-billion mark
2011 Prince William, Duke of Cambridge married Catherine Elizabeth Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London in front of 1,900 guests. The worldwide television audience was estimated at two billion, and one million people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of William, the second in line to the throne, and his bride
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