1747 Leopold II - Holy Roman emperor from 1790 to 1792
1813 Soren Kierkegaard - Danish religious philosopher
1818 Karl Marx - Prussian born German political philosopher, economist and writer (Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto) He was the founder of communism
1843 Dr. George Beers – Canadian dentist and lacrosse promoter. He was the first to write down the basic rules of the original Iroquois game of lacrosse. In 1860 he published them in a booklet, and organised the founding convention of the National Lacrosse Association at Kingston, Ontario, in September of 1867. He was also dean of Canada's first dental college in Montreal, and one of the leading founders of the Stanley Cup winning Montreal Amateur Athletic Association hockey team
1846 Henryk Sienkiewicz - Polish author (Quo Vadis)
1861 Peter Cooper Hewitt - US electrical engineer who invented the mercury-vapour lamp
1867 Nelly Bly - US journalist who pioneered investigative journalism by writing exposés about the taboo subjects of her time: divorce, poverty, capital punishment, insanity, etc. She was famous for her daring exploits such as going down into the sea in a diving bell and living in an insane asylum as a patient, but the feat that made her famous was her trip around the world in 1889. She was sent by the newspaper, The World, to beat the mark of Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne's fictional hero of "Around the World in Eighty Days", and she succeeded, making the tour in 72 days 6 hours 11 minutes. Every one who read newspapers followed her progress and she landed in New York a national character
1890 Christopher Morley - US columnist (New York Evening Post, Saturday Review) and novelist (Kitty Foyle, Thunder on the Left) In 1930, he was commissioned by Doubleday Publishers to write a preface to their book, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and in 1934 he founded the Baker Street Irregulars
1892 Dorothy Garrod - British archaeologist
1913 Tyrone Power - Actor (Tom Brown of Culver, The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, This Above All, The Eddie Duchin Story, The Long Gray Line, Witness for the Prosecution)
1915 Alice Faye - Actress (In Old Chicago, Lillian Russell, Rose of Washington Square, Tin Pan Alley, State Fair)
1927 Pat Carroll - Actress, comedienne (Caesar's Hour, The Ted Knight Show, With Six You Get Eggroll, Brothers O'Toole, Make Room for Daddy, The Little Mermaid)
1934 Ace Cannon - Saxophonist (Tuff, Blues-Stay Away From Me)
1936 Patrick Gowers – British composer who did many TV themes (Forever Green, Smiley's People, The Woman in White, Mother Love) He also composed the themes for the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series
1940 Lance Henriksen - Actor (Millennium, The Quick and the Dead, Delta Heat, Aliens, The Terminator, The Genesis Code)
1942 Tammy Wynette - Country singer (I Don't Wanna Play House, Stand By Your Man, D-I-V-O-R-C-E, Near You, Apartment #9)
1943 Michael Palin - British comedian, actor (Monty Python's Flying Circus, Life of Brian, Brazil, A Fish Called Wanda, American Friends, GBH)
1944 Roger Rees - Welsh actor (Cheers, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Titanic, Boston Common, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Crossing, Warehouse 13, The Prestige)
1944 John Rhys-Davies - British actor (Lord of the Rings, Raiders of the Lost Ark, I Claudius, Shogun, Victor/Victoria, The Living Daylights, The Lost World) He was also in the Perry Mason TV movies, The Case of the Murdered Madam and the Case of the Fatal Framing
1955 Melinda Culea – Actress (Knots Landing, The A-Team, Brotherly Love)
1956 Lisa Eilbacher – Saudi-born American actress (Beverley Hills Cop, An Officer and a Gentleman, The Winds of War, Leviathan, Midnight Caller, 10 to Midnight)
1957 Richard E. Grant - Swaziland born British actor (How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Withnail and I, Henry & June, Hudson Hawk, The Age of Innocence, Jack and Sarah, Karaoke, Cold Lazarus, Captain Star, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Trial and Retribution III, Gosford Park, The Iron Lady) He also played Jack Stapleton in the 2002 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles
1973 Tina Yothers - Actress (Family Ties, Shoot the Moon) She played Claire Howard in the Perry Mason TV movie The Case of the Jealous Jokester
1979 Vincent Kartheiser – Actor (Mad Men, Angel, Alpha Dog, The Unsaid, The Indian in the Cupboard)
1983 Henry Cavill – British actor (The Tudors, Man of Steel, Red Riding Hood, Town Creek, Immortals, The Cold Light of Day)
Died this Day
1760 Earl Ferrers - The first person executed at Tyburn in London. He was hanged for murdering his steward. The gallows at Tyburn were known as the “Tyburn Tree”
1821 Napoleon Bonaparte, age 51 - Former French Emperor and army officer who once ruled an empire that stretched across Europe. He died in exile on the remote island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean, most likely of stomach cancer. In 1840 his body was returned to Paris, where it was interred in the Hotel des Invalides
1902 Bret Harte, age 65 – Author (The Outcasts of Poker Flats, The Luck of Roaring Camp, Brown of Calaveras, The Saint of Calamity Gulch, The Stolen Cigar-Case)
1949 Count Maurice Maeterlinck - Belgian playwright (The Blue Bird)
1981 Bobby Sands - Irish-Catholic militant and IRA activist. He died in a Belfast prison after refusing food for 66 days in protest of his treatment as a criminal rather than a political prisoner by British authorities. He took only water and salt, and his weight dropped from 155 pounds to 95 pounds. After two weeks, another protester joined the strike, and six days after that, two more. On April 9, in the midst of the strike, Sands was elected to a vacant seat in the British Parliament from Fermanagh and South Tyrone in Northern Ireland. Parliament subsequently introduced legislation to disqualify convicts serving prison sentences for eligibility for Parliament. His election and fears of violence after his death drew international attention to Sands' protest. In the final week of his life, Pope John Paul II sent a personal envoy to urge Sands to give up the strike. He refused. On May 3, he fell into a coma, and two days later, in the early morning, he died. His death immediately touched off widespread rioting in Belfast, as young Irish-Catholic militants clashed with police and British Army patrols and started fires. After Sands' death, the hunger strike continued, and nine more men perished before it was called off on October 3, 1981, under pressure from Catholic Church leaders and the prisoners' families
On this Day
1778 France allied herself with the rebellious American colonies against Britain
1788 Vancouver Island was claimed for Spain by Captain Martinez
1814 A small British and Canadian fleet destroyed the US naval base at Oswego, New York. The Americans were outnumbered more than two to one. The victory re-established British control of Lake Ontario for the remainder of the War of 1812
1836 Europe's first railway began operating in Belgium
1862 During the French-Mexican War, a poorly supplied and outnumbered Mexican army under General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a French army attempting to capture Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. In 1861 Benito Juarez became president of Mexico, a country in financial ruin, and was forced to default on his debts to European governments. In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew. Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large French force and driving President Juarez and his government into retreat. Certain that French victory would come swiftly in Mexico, 6,000 French troops set out to attack Puebla de Los Angeles. From his new headquarters in the north, Juarez rounded up a rag-tag force of loyal men and sent them to Puebla. Led by Texas-born General Zaragoza, the 2,000 Mexicans fortified the town and prepared for the French assault. On the fifth of May, the French army, well-provisioned and supported by heavy artillery, began their assault from the north. The battle lasted from daybreak to early evening, and when the French finally retreated they had lost nearly 500 soldiers to the fewer than 100 Mexicans killed. Although not a major strategic victory in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza's victory at Puebla tightened Mexican resistance and represented a great moral victory for the Mexican government, symbolising the country's ability to defend its sovereignty against threat by a powerful foreign nation. Today, Mexicans celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla as Cinco de Mayo, a national holiday in Mexico
1891 New York's Carnegie Hall, then called the Music Hall, had its opening night with a concert that included works conducted by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Walter Damrosch
1893 Panic swept the New York Stock Exchange. Factors, including the bankruptcy of a major railroad and shrinking national gold reserves, were blamed. By year's end, the country was in the throes of a severe depression
1900 Private Richard R. Thompson of Ottawa was awarded the Queen's Scarf for gallantry in the Boer War. Knitted by Queen Victoria herself, the scarf was one of only seven Queen's Scarves ever presented
1925 The trial of John Scopes, who had been arrested for teaching the theory of evolution, as opposed to Creation, began in Dayton, Tennessee
1942 Sales of sugar resumed in the United States under a rationing program
1955 West Germany became a sovereign state
1961 From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. was launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first US astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere
1988 Broadcasting history was made with the first live broadcast from the top of Mount Everest. A Japanese network financed the 10-million-dollar Japan-China-Nepal expedition, during which a record 12 climbers reached the highest peak on the same day
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