1794 Robert Liston – Scottish physician who carried out the first British operation with the aid of an anaesthetic, ether
1846 Georges Escoffier – The “King of chefs and chef of Kings” who invented Peach Melba. He received the French Legion d'Honneur for his contribution to the international reputation of French cuisine. He wrote A Guide to Modern Cookery, with some 5,000 recipes
1897 Edith Head - Academy Award-winning costume designer (Rear Window, The Sting, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Show on Earth, Sunset Blvd)
1902 Elsa Lanchester – Actress (The Bride of Frankenstein, Murder by Death, Witness for the Prosecution, Mary Poppins, That Darn Cat) She was married to actor Charles Laughton for 33 years, until his death in 1962
1903 Evelyn Waugh – British author and journalist (Brideshead Revisited, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, The Life of Ronald Knox)
1912 Sir William Richard Doll – British physician and cancer researcher who first proved the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer
1914 Jonas Edward Salk – US microbiologist who developed the polio vaccine
1915 Dody Goodman – Comedienne and actress (Forever Fernwood, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, The Jack Paar Show)
1917 Jack Soo – Comedian and actor (Barney Miller, Return from Witch Mountain, The Green Berets, Flower Drum Song, Thoroughly Modern Millie, MASH, Valentine’s Day)
1929 Dame Joan Plowright – British stage and screen actress (Avalon, Dennis the Menace, Widow’s Peak, Enchanted April, The Merchant of Venice, Equus, Jane Eyre) She was married to Sir Lawrence Olivier for 25 years, until his death in 1989
1936 Charlie Daniels - Country singer and musician with the Charlie Daniels Band (The Devil Went Down to Georgia, Uneasy Rider)
1938 Anne Perry – British author (The Cater Street Hangman, The Face of a Stranger, No Graves As Yet, Tathea)
1939 Jane Alexander – Actress (Kramer vs. Kramer, The Great White Hope, All the President's Men)
1944 Dennis Franz – Actor (NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, Beverly Hills Buntz, Die Hard 2, Body Double, Dressed to Kill)
1948 Telma Hopkins – Singer with the group Tony Orlando and Dawn (Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, Knock Three Times) and actress (Gimme a Break, Family Matters, Bosom Buddies)
1952 Annie Potts – Actress (Designing Women, Who's Harry Crumb?, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Ghost Busters, Any Day Now, Dangerous Minds, Love & War, Magnum PI, Young Sheldon)
1955 William Henry Gates – US computer whiz and entrepreneur who founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen
1962 Daphne Zuniga - Actress (Melrose Place, Spaceballs, One Tree Hill, Eight Hundred Leagues Down the Amazon)
1963 Lauren Holly – Actress (Picket Fences, Dumb & Dumber, Chicago Hope)
1967 Julia Roberts – Actress (Pretty Woman, Mystic Pizza, Steel Magnolias, Hook, The Pelican Brief, Erin Brockovich) She is the sister of actor Eric Roberts
1974 Joaquin Phoenix – Actor (Ladder 49, Hotel Rwanda, Gladiator, Parenthood) His brother was River Phoenix
1982 Matt Smith – British actor (Doctor Who, The Shadow in the North, The Ruby in the Smoke, Party Animals)
1988 Devon Murray – Irish actor (Harry Potter movies, Angela’s Ashes, Yesterday’s Children, This is my Father)
Died this Day
1792 John Smeaton, age 68 – British civil engineer and designer who is regarded as the father of civil engineering in Britain. From 1756 to 1759, he built the third Eddystone Lighthouse, Plymouth, Devon. It was all-masonry, using dovetailed blocks of portland stone. Smeaton was the first to develop a cement which would be used underwater. He recognised what constitutes a hydraulic lime, when he discovered the best mortar for underwater construction to be limestone with a high proportion of clay. Smeaton also constructed the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland between the Atlantic and the North Sea. He introduced cast-iron shafts and gearing into wind and water mills, designed large atmospheric pumping engines for mines, and improved the safety of the diving bell
1899 Otto Morgenthaler – German inventor of the Linotype machine
On this Day
1636 The college that would later be known as Harvard University was founded by an act of the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Court appropriated a sum of £400 to be used toward the new institution, and in 1637 appointed twelve men of the colony "to take orders for a college in New Towne." In 1638, the college was named for its first benefactor, John Harvard of Charlestown, a young minister who upon his death, left his 300-volume library and half his estate, £779, to the new institution. Harvard, the first school of higher education in America, was established less than two decades after the Pilgrims first arrived on the continent. Harvard's first class consisted of nine students with a single master
1793 Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his cotton gin, which was granted the following March
1830 Josiah Henson arrived in Upper Canada from Maryland with his wife and four children on the Underground Railway. The escaped US slave became the pastor of a local church and started a technical school. He was the model for the hero of Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, the book that Abraham Lincoln said started the US Civil War
1831 Michael Faraday demonstrated the first dynamo
1846 In the high Sierra Nevada Mountains, the ill-fated Donner party camped near a lake, later named Donner Lake, with plans to begin the final push over the pass the next day. Unfortunately, an early winter storm arrived in the mountains, and by morning, a thick mantle of snow covered the ground and the pass was blocked, trapping them there for the winter. A rescue party set out early the next year, but the last survivors would not reach safety until late April 1847. Of the 89 emigrants, only 45 survived to reach their destination in sunny California
1862 The Aereated Bread Company (ABC) began in London. It eventually developed into a major food and retail chain
1864 The Quebec Conference to adopt a blueprint for Confederation adjourned with a celebratory banquet after weeks of discussion and debate. The delegates from Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and PEI summarised proceedings in a proposal called Seventy-Two Resolutions, or the Quebec Resolutions, which were sent to the British Parliament and the provincial legislatures for approval. It would take two more years before the Confederation proposal was approved
1886 The Statue of Liberty was formally dedicated by President Grover Cleveland and unveiled at ceremonies on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbour. Originally known as "Liberty Enlightening the World," the statue was proposed by the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution. The 151-foot statue was designed by French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, while its framework of gigantic steel supports was designed by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the latter famous for his design of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
1889 Stanley Park was dedicated in Vancouver, BC. It was named after the Governor General, Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston
1914 George Eastman announced the invention of a colour photographic process to be marketed by his Eastman Kodak Company
1919 The US Congress passed the Volstead Act, or National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto of the previous day. The Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which had been previously passed by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states. The Eighteenth Amendment, also known as the Prohibition Amendment, prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes." The Volstead Act defined as intoxicating liquor any beverage containing more than one-half of 1 percent alcohol. The movement for the prohibition of alcohol began in the early nineteenth century, when citizens concerned about the adverse effects of drinking began forming temperance societies. By the late nineteenth century these groups had become a powerful political force, campaigning on the state level and calling for total national abstinence. During the 1920s, despite an often-vigorous effort by law-enforcement agencies, the Volstead Act failed to prevent the large-scale distribution of alcoholic beverages, and organised crime flourished in the US. In 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution was passed and ratified, repealing prohibition
1929 The first baby born on a plane arrived somewhere above Florida. It was a girl
1954 Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature
1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis effectively ended as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced his government's intent to dismantle and remove all offensive Soviet weapons from Cuba
1965 The Gateway Arch was completed, after four years of work, as part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial along the waterfront of St. Louis, Missouri. The US's tallest memorial is a graceful 603-foot high ribbon of gleaming stainless steel, spanning 630 feet at the ground. The Gateway Arch has foundations sunken 60 feet into the ground and is built to withstand earthquakes and high winds. An internal tram system takes visitors up to the top. It is meant to symbolically mark the gateway from the eastern US to the West. Architect Eero Saarinen's dramatic design was chosen during a 1947 competition, and commemorates Thomas Jefferson's vision in authorising the Louisiana Purchase. Saarinen, who died in 1961, did not live to see the completion of his architectural masterpiece, but in 1967 his widow attended the formal opening of the monument. The Gateway Arch is the most prominent feature of St. Louis's Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park, which also includes an Underground Visitors Centre featuring exhibits charting the 100-year history of westward expansion
1971 Britain's House of Commons approved entry into the European Common Market
1973 The former Triple Crown champion horse, Secretariat, won his final race by 6 1/2 lengths in the Canadian International Stakes at Woodbine, in Toronto, Ontario
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