1623 François de Laval – French priest and bishop, born at Montmagny-sur-Avre, France. Laval was sent to New France by the Jesuits in 1659, founded the Quebec Seminary in 1663, and was appointed first Bishop of Quebec in 1674
1770 David Thompson - British explorer, geographer, and fur trader in western Canada. He was the first European to explore the Columbia River from its source to its mouth
1777 Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss - German mathematician and astronomer who developed new theories about numbers, as well as work in the field of magnetism and electricity. The term "degauss", for countering magnetic mines, originated from his name, and was later used in electronic equipment
1870 Franz Lehar - Hungarian composer (The Merry Widow)
1901 David Manners – Canadian actor (Journey's End, Dracula, The Last Flight, The Mummy, Jalna)
1908 Eve Arden - Actress (Our Miss Brooks, Anatomy of a Murder, Grease, Stage Door, Tea for Two, Mildred Pierce, Under the Rainbow, The Mothers-In-Law, The Eve Arden Show, No No Nanette)
1909 Princess Juliana - Queen Mother of the Netherlands. She passed her international law exam in 1930, and married in 1937. During WWII, she escaped to Britain, and later resided in Canada. On her 39th birthday, her mother, Queen Wilhelmina, abdicated, and Juliana became Queen
1910 Al Lewis - Actor (The Munsters, Car 54 Where Are You?, They Shoot Horses Don't They?, They Might Be Giants, Married to the Mob)
1926 Cloris Leachman - Actress (Young Frankenstein, The Last Picture Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis, The Facts of Life)
1930 Richard Bevir – British-born Canadian adventurer who, in 1960, was the first man to drive an automobile from North America to South America, crossing the notorious Darien Gap, consisting of hundreds of miles of mountainous jungle in Panama and Colombia. In the mid-1950s he had heard that construction workers were needed in Brazil, where the new capital city, Brasilia, was being created. He thought of driving to Brazil from Ontario, and made inquiries. In 1958, the International Road Federation in Washington told him: "We are of the opinion that your idea of driving a vehicle from North to South America is an impossibility." That was enough for Bevir, and he set out to do it. Several hundred people responded to his newspaper ad, which said: "Expedition to South America. Wanted: Adventurous, determined, diplomatic bachelor aged 21 to 30. Must be willing to take risks." From the responses, he selected Terry Whitfield, an Australian living in Canada. Bevir spent two years' savings on a Land Rover, and while sponsors donated equipment to the project, none came forward with major cash donations. After a send-off from the mayor at Toronto City Hall, the two-man crew headed south in October, 1959. In Panama, they got unexpected support from a group called the Darien Subcommittee, who were seeking a route through the Gap. They offered fuel and supplies, and local manpower with machetes to cut through the jungle, then added a Jeep and three of their own people to the expedition. A freelance writer and a National Geographic editor also joined in. Bevir took charge of the hastily arranged crew and saw the team safely through the Darien Gap and onward to Bogota, Colombia. In 1972, a larger, better-equipped British expedition made its way through the Darien Gap. Mr. Bevir found it irksome that this group claimed to be the first drivers through the Gap, even though his own effort was well documented in the March, 1961 National Geographic
1938 Gary Collins - Talk show host and actor (Born Free, Roots, The Sixth Sense, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, Airport) He was married to actress Mary Ann Mobley for almost 45 years at the time of his death
1940 Burt Young - Actor (Chinatown, The Gambler, Rocky movies, The Choirboys, Crocodile Shoes, The Boys of Sunset Ridge, Once Upon a Time in America)
1943 Bobby Vee - Singer (Devil or Angel, Rubber Ball, Take Good Care of My Baby, Run to Him, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes)
1944 Jill Clayburgh - Actress (An Unmarried Woman, Luna, Portnoy's Complaint, Semi-Tough, The Silver Streak, Terminal Man, Honour Thy Father and Mother)
1944 Richard Schoff - Singer with the group The Sandpipers (Guantanamera, Come Saturday Morning)
1945 Annie Dillard – US poet, essayist, and novelist (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, The Living)
1947 Leslie Grantham – British actor (EastEnders, The Stretch, Cluedo, Waiting for Godot)
1947 John Flanagan – British actor (A Is for Acid, Shipman, Doomsday Gun, Sleepers, Brazil) He played D.S. Matt Mathews in The Sweeney TV series, and he also played Willard in the movie Sweeney 2
1948 Perry King - Actor (Riptide, A Cry in the Night, Kaleidoscope, The Lord's of Flatbush, Search and Destroy, Switch, Slaughterhouse Five, The Day After Tomorrow, Melrose Place)
1959 Paul Gross - Canadian actor (Due South, Buffalo Jump, Red Green, Men With Brooms, Passchendaele, The Yard, Slings and Arrows)
1965 Adrian Pasdar – Actor (Heroes, Judging Amy, Mysterious Ways, Secondhand Lions, Top Gun, The Lying Game) He is married to Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks
1967 Steven Mackintosh – British actor (Luther, Inside Men, Criminal Justice, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, The Other Boleyn Girl, Lady Audley’s Secret, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Our Mutual Friend, Karaoke, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Poirot: The Plymouth Express) He played DS Cheetham in the Inspector Morse episode Absolute Conviction
1975 Johnny Galecki – Belgian-born actor (The Big Bang Theory, In Time, Hancock, Vanilla Sky, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Bean, Roseanne, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation)
1982 Kirsten Dunst – Actress (Spider-man, Wimbledon, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mona Lisa Smile, Wag the Dog, Jumanji, Marie Antoinette)
Died this Day
1900 John Luther "Casey" Jones, age 36 - Legendary engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, died in a wreck near Vaughan, Mississippi, as his train, the Cannonball Express, was making its run between Chicago and New Orleans. There was a stalled freight train ahead on the tracks, but Jones stayed at the controls in an effort to save the passengers, who all managed to jump to safety before the train crashed. He was immortalised in the song, The Ballad of Casey Jones
1936 Alfred Edward Housman - British poet (A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, Manuscript Poems) He also wrote the poem, The Remorseful Day, which was taken as the title of the last Inspector Morse book. He died a month after his 77th birthday
1945 Adolph Hitler - Nazi dictator of Germany. As Russian troops approached his Berlin bunker, Adolph Hitler committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun
1974 Agnes Moorehead, age 73 – Actress (Bewitched, The Singing Nun, Pollyanna, The Magnificent Ambersons, Johnny Belinda, Citizen Kane, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Show Boat)
1983 Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) - Blues singer, and guitarist (I Can't Be Satisfied, Hoochie Coochie Man, Close to You) He died 3 weeks after his 68th birthday
On this Day
AD 311 Galerius Valerius Maximianus issued the edict of Nicomedia, which meant the Roman Empire legally recognised Christianity
1772 John Clais of London patented the first dial weighing machine
1789 George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States
1803 Representatives of the US and Napoleonic France signed a treaty approving the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land purchase that more than doubled the size of the young republic. In its first territorial acquisition since the end of the Revolutionary War, the US government paid France approximately $15 million, or 4¢ an acre, for some 828,000 square miles of land. On October 20, Congress approved the purchase, and, on December 20, 1803, France formally transferred authority over the region to the US. The acquisition of the territory of Louisiana, encompassing the entire region of the Mississippi-Missouri river valleys, was Thomas Jefferson's most notable achievement as president. US expansion westward into the new lands began immediately, and in 1804, a territorial government was established. On April 30, 1812, exactly nine years after the Louisiana Purchase was signed, the first of thirteen states to be carved from the territory, Louisiana, was admitted into the Union as the eighteenth US state
1821 The first iron steamship, Aaron Manby, named after the proprietor of the Staffordshire ironworks at which it had been made, was completed, having been assembled at Rotherhithe in London, England
1939 The New York World's Fair, billed as a look at "the world of tomorrow", opened
1941 A German U-boat torpedoed the Canadian passenger ship Nerissa off the coast of Ireland, in the North Atlantic. Seventy-three Canadian Army personnel were lost
1947 President Truman signed a measure officially changing the name of Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam
1948 The first Land-Rover, made by the Rover Company, went on show at the Amsterdam Motor Show
1975 North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces captured Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, and the president of South Vietnam surrendered unconditionally to the Communists. The same day, US forces completed the largest helicopter evacuation in history, airlifting select South Vietnamese officials and troops and the last few Americans still in Vietnam to the safety of US aircraft carriers offshore. At 7:52 p.m., the last US Marines in the country were lifted off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. Hours later, the city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. This reunification of Vietnam under the North Communist regime came two years after representatives of the US, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the US military involvement in the Vietnam War. By the end of 1973, the US contingent in Vietnam had shrunk to only fifty military advisors. On April 30, 1975, the last of these and other Americans were airlifted out of Vietnam and the war came to end. The Vietnam War was the longest foreign war in US history, and cost 58,000 US lives
1986 Western governments urged their citizens to leave the Ukraine republic of the Soviet Union because of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
1991 An estimated 125-thousand people died as a cyclone struck Bangladesh
1992 CERN, the European particle physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland, released a milestone document, declaring that World Wide Web technology, developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, would be free to anyone, with no fees due to CERN. Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist on fellowship at CERN, proposed a hypertext project in 1989. By 1990, he had created the basic underpinnings of the web, which were made available to the public over the Internet in the summer of 1991. Berners-Lee continued to develop the design for the Web through 1993, working with feedback from Internet users
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