1728 Captain James Cook – British naval officer and explorer who was one of the greatest navigators in history. His voyages led to the European discovery of Australia, New Zealand and the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, and he was the first to map the Newfoundland coast and the Grand Banks. Thanks to Cook’s understanding of diet, no member of his crew ever died of scurvy, the great killer on other voyages. One of his ships was the Endeavour – the inspiration for Morse’s first name
1782 Niccolò Paganini – Italian violin virtuoso and composer (Devil’s Dance)
1811 Isaac Meritt Singer - US inventor and manufacturer of sewing machines
1858 Theodore Roosevelt – 26th US President, born in New York City. He was the first president to ride in a car, submerge in a submarine and fly in a plane. As a young Republican, he held a number of political posts in New York, and was a leader of reform Republicans in the state. In 1880, on his 22nd birthday, he married Alice Lee. In February 1884, a mere 12 hours after his much-beloved mother died, Roosevelt's young wife died after giving birth to their daughter. Devastated by this cruel double blow, Roosevelt sought solace in the wide open spaces of the West, establishing himself on two ranches in the Badlands of Dakota Territory and writing to friends that he had given up politics and planned to make ranching "my regular business." From an early age, Roosevelt had been convinced of the benefits of living the "strenuous life," arguing that too many men had succumbed to the ease and safety of modern industrialised society and become soft and effeminate. Roosevelt thought more men should follow his example and embrace the hard, virile, pioneer life of the West, a place where "the qualities of hardihood, self-reliance, and resolution" were essential for survival. He earned the respect of Dakotans by tracking down a gang of bandits who had stolen a riverboat. Three years later he returned to New York City and resumed the political career that would eventually take him to the White House. In 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated, and Vice-President Roosevelt, at 43 years old, became the youngest president ever to assume the office. Though he spent the vast majority of his life in the East, Roosevelt always thought of himself as a westerner at heart, and he did more than any president before him to conserve the wild western lands he loved
1889 Enid Bagnold (Lady Jones) – British author (National Velvet, The Chalk Garden)
1910 Fred De Cordova - Producer (The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) and director (Bedtime for Bonzo, Frankie and Johnny, I'll Take Sweden)
1911 Leif Erickson - Actor (The High Chaparral, Force Five, On the Waterfront, Rocky 3, Tea and Sympathy)
1914 Dylan Thomas – Welsh poet, playwright and short-story writer (The Three Weird Sisters, Under the Milkwood, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, In Country Sleep, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night)
1915 Harry Saltzman – Canadian-born film producer (Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Battle of Britain, Days of Fury) He partnered with Albert R. Broccoli and produced many of the Bond films (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun)
1918 Teresa Wright – Actress (The Little Foxes, Mrs Miniver, Pride of the Yankees, Somewhere in Time) She was in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Desperate Deception
1920 Nanette Fabray (Fabares) - Actress (Caesar's Hour, One Day at a Time, Westinghouse Playhouse) She’s the aunt of actress Shelley Fabares
1924 Ruby Dee - Actress (Decoration Day, Peyton Place, Zora is My Name, Do the Right Thing, A Raisin in the Sun, The Jackie Robinson Story, All God's Children, Gore Vidal's Lincoln, Roots: The Next Generation)
1932 Sylvia Plath – US poet and novelist (The Bell Jar, Ariel, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees)
1933 Floyd Cramer - Pianist (Last Date, On the Rebound, San Antonio Rose)
1939 John Cleese – British comedy actor and writer (A Fish Called Wanda, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Splitting Heirs, Life of Brian, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Silverado, The Big Picture, Fawlty Towers, The World is Not Enough) He starred in the Sherlock Holmes spoof The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It
1942 Lara Parker - Actress (Foxfire Light, The Solitary Man, Race with the Devil, Night of Dark Shadows)
1943 Lee Greenwood - Country singer (Dixie Road, Hearts Aren't Made to Break, Going Going Gone, Mornin' Ride, I Don't Mind the Thorns, God Bless the USA)
1946 Ivan Reitman - Director (Ghostbusters series, Dave, Kindergarten Cop, Meatballs, Stripes)
1946 Carrie Snodgrass - Actress (Diary of a Mad Housewife, 8 Seconds, The Solitary Man, Woman with a Past, Pale Rider, Chill Factor)
1947 Terry Anderson - News correspondent who was kidnapped by Lebanese terrorists in Beirut in 1985 and not released until 1991
1949 Jack Daniels - Country musician (Highway 101)
1949 Garry Tallent – Bass guitarist with Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band (Born to Run, Thunder Road, Badlands, Promised Land, Independence Day, The River, My Hometown, Rosalita, Darkness on the Edge of Town)
1952 Roberto Benigni – Italian actor (Life is Beautiful)
1953 Peter Firth – British actor (The Hunt for Red October, Spooks/MI-5, Heartbeat, Resort to Murder, Amistad, Tess, Equus, Northanger Abbey) He played Charlie Beck in the Kavanagh QC episode Ancient History
1953 Robert Picardo – Actor (Star Trek: Voyager, China Beach, Stargate: Atlantis, The Wonder Years, Amazon Women on the Moon, The Howling)
Died this Day
1505 Ivan III, age 65 – The first Tsar of Russia, also known as Ivan the Great
1659 William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson - Quakers who came from England in 1656 to escape religious persecution, were executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for their religious beliefs. The two had violated a law passed by the Massachusetts General Court the year before, banning Quakers from the colony "under the pain of death." The Religious Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, was a Christian movement founded by George Fox in England during the early 1650s. Quakers opposed central church authority, preferring to seek spiritual insight and consensus through egalitarian Quaker meetings. They also advocated sexual equality, and were some of the most outspoken opponents of slavery in early America. Robinson and Stevenson, who were hanged from an elm tree on Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, were the first Quakers to be executed in America
1975 Rex Stout, age 88 – Mystery writer who created the detective, Nero Wolfe (Fer-de Lance, The Doorbell Rang, Some Buried Caesar, Eeny Meeny Murder Mo, Champagne for One) He was a Sherlockian from the earliest days, and wrote the humorous article, Watson Was A Woman, in 1946 for the Baker Street Journal
On this Day
1795 The US and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo, also known as Pinckney's Treaty, which provided for free navigation of the Mississippi River
1829 A patent for the baby carriage was granted in the US
1853 The city of Sherbrooke, Québec donated a US/Canadian flag to be flown on the boundary. One side displayed the Stars and Stripes, the other the British Cross of St. George
1854 A Great Western Railway express train hit a gravel train at Baptiste Creek, Ontario, between Chatham and Windsor, killing 52, and injuring 48. It was Canada's first major rail accident
1873 Joseph Glidden, a De Kalb, Illinois farmer, applied for a patent on his barbed wire design. His design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs was an invention that would forever change the face of the US West. Glidden's was not the first barbed wire, as he only came up with his design after seeing an exhibit of Henry Rose's single-stranded barbed wire at the De Kalb county fair. But Glidden's design significantly improved on Rose's by using two strands of wire twisted together to hold the barbed spur wires firmly in place. Glidden's wire also soon proved to be well suited to mass production techniques, and by 1880 more than 80 million pounds of inexpensive Glidden-style barbed wire was sold, making it the most popular wire in the nation. Prairie and plains farmers quickly discovered that Glidden's wire was the cheapest, strongest, and most durable way to fence their property. As one fan wrote, "it takes no room, exhausts no soil, shades no vegetation, is proof against high winds, makes no snowdrifts, and is both durable and cheap"
1878 Three million dollars was stolen from the Manhattan Savings Bank in New York City in a celebrated robbery accredited to the gang leader George "Western" Leslie. In the subsequent investigation, two of Leslie's associates were brought to trial and convicted, but insufficient evidence prevented the prosecution of their boss. In a sensational statement that only acted to advance Leslie's underworld reputation, New York's chief of police credited four-fifths of the bank holdups in the US to Leslie. The $3,000,000 was never found, but Leslie's prosperous crime career came to an end in 1884 when he was murdered
1901 A “get away car” was used for the first time when thieves robbed a shop in Paris and raced away
1904 The first rapid-transit subway system in North America was opened in New York City by Mayor George B. McClellan. The first route of New York's subway ran north from City Hall, under Lafayette Street and Park Avenue to Grand Central Station, west along 42nd Street to Times Square, then north on Broadway to 145th Street. At 2:35 in the afternoon the first subway train emerged from the City Hall station with Mayor McClellan at the controls. And at seven o'clock in the evening, the subway officially opened and over 100,000 people paid a nickel each to take a ride underneath Manhattan. Today, the New York subway system is the largest in the world
1927 The first newsreel featuring sound was released in New York. Only three weeks after the opening of The Jazz Singer, the world's first talking feature, Fox Movietone News added sound to its productions. Newsreels were a movie house fixture until the 1950s when television news supplanted them
1936 Wallis Simpson was granted a divorce in England. She later married the Duke of Windsor and was the reason he abdicated his throne
1938 Du Pont announced a name for its new synthetic yarn: nylon
1978 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize
1995 Tens of thousands of people from across Canada arrived in Montréal by bus, train, plane and car for a major unity rally at the downtown Place du Canada. Bearing signs and Maple Leaf flags at what was described as the biggest political rally in Canadian history, they all urged Québec to stay in Canada. Speaking to the euphoric crowd, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien promised major changes to Canada. Days later, Québec voters narrowly rejected sovereignty, and voted to remain in Canada
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