1735 John Adams – 2nd US President, 1st Vice President and father of John Quincy Adams, 6th US President. He was born in Braintree, Massachusetts
1751 Richard Sheridan – Irish-born playwright (The Critic, School for Scandal, The Rivals)
1821 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky – Russian author and political revolutionary (The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The House of the Dead)
1885 Ezra Pound – US poet (With Tapers Quenched, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, 116 Cantos, Pisan Cantos)
1893 Charles Atlas - Italian-born US bodybuilder who co-created a mail-order bodybuilding course. His advertisement featured the 97-lb. weakling who had sand kicked in his face
1896 Ruth Gordon - Actress (Harold and Maude, Rosemary's Baby, Every Which Way but Loose)
1911 Ruth Hussey - Actress (The Philadelphia Story, The Great Gatsby, Northwest Passage, Madame X, Another Thin Man)
1914 Anna Wing – British actress (EastEnders, The Witches and the Grinnygog, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Billy Liar) She played Mrs. Haldane in The Sweeney episode On the Run
1930 Timothy Findley - Canadian author (The Last of the Crazy People, The Butterfly Plague, The Wars, Famous Last Words, Not Wanted on the Voyage, Spadework)
1932 Louis Malle – French film director (Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, The Fire Within, The Silent World) He was the husband of Candace Bergen
1939 Eddie Holland – Songwriter with the writing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland (Where Did Our Love Go, Baby Love, Stop! In the Name of Love, Reach Out, I'll Be There)
1939 Grace Slick – US singer with Jefferson Airplane/Starship (Somebody to Love, White Rabbit, Miracles, We Built this City, Sara)
1940 Ed Lauter – Actor (The Longest Yard, Brothers in Arms, Seabiscuit, Mulholland Falls, The Return of Ironside, Born on the Fourth of July, Fat Man and Little Boy, Cujo, ER)
1941 Otis Williams - US R&B singer with The Temptations (I Can't Get Next to You, Cloud Nine, Just My Imagination, Papa was a Rolling Stone, Masquerade)
1945 Henry Winkler – Actor (Happy Days, An American Christmas Carol, The Lords of Flatbush) and director (Cop and a Half, Memories of Me, A Smokey Mountain Christmas)
1949 Leon Rippy – Actor (The Patriot, Stargate, Saving Grace, Universal Soldier, Deadwood, Eight Legged Freaks, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)
1951 Harry Hamlin – Actor (L.A. Law, Clash of the Titans, Dinner at Eight, Murder So Sweet)
1953 Charles Martin Smith – Actor (American Graffiti, The Untouchables, Starman, Never Cry Wolf, Da Vinci’s City Hall)
1956 Juliette Stevenson – British actress (The Politician’s Wife, Emma, Lewis: Old Unhappy Far Off Things, Marple: Ordeal by Innocence, Being Julia, Bend it Like Beckham, The Road from Coorain, Truly Madly Deeply)
1957 Kevin Pollak – Actor (The Usual Suspects, A Few Good Men, Casino, Hostage, The Wedding Planner, The Whole Nine Yards, End of Days, Grumpy Old Men)
1963 Michael Beach – Actor (Third Watch, Sons of Anarchy, ER, Waiting to Exhale, True Romance, The Abyss)
Died this Day
1747 Admiral Edward (Old Grog) Vernon – British naval commander who got his nickname when he ordered his captains to dilute the men’s rum with water to cut down on drunkenness. He died less than two weeks before his 63rd birthday
1823 Edmund Cartwright, age 80 – British inventor of the power loom
1908 Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, age 78 - Wife of William Waldorf Astor, the wealthy newspaper proprietor, she was known as the Queen of New York Society. Even before her union with William Astor, the great-grandson of fur trader John Jacob Astor, Caroline Schermerhorn was prime US aristocracy, as she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant and had colonial Dutch aristocracy on both sides of her family tree. In 1892, William and Caroline emigrated to Britain, where they bought their way into the British aristocracy. But their British citizenship, and William's title of viscount, were only means of advancing their already formidable position in New York society. Caroline's death marked the end of old-style society in New York City. She had ruled over society as an uncrowned US queen, and an invitation to one of Mrs. Astor's famous balls was the ultimate symbol of one's social rank
1910 Henri Dunant, age 82 – Swiss philanthropist who founded the Red Cross
1915 Sir Charles Tupper, age 94 – Former Canadian Primer Minister, died in Bexleyheath, England. He was the last surviving Father of Confederation, taking part in the Charlottetown, Québec and London conferences
2000 Steve Allen, age 78 – TV host (The Tonight Show, The Steve Allen Show, The Benny Goodman Story), comedian, author (Murder on the Atlantic, The Bug and the Slug In the Rug, The Man Who Turned Back the Clock, Die Laughing, Murder in Manhattan) musician and composer (The Magic Fountain) He was married to Jayne Meadows. He played Allan Stevens in the Batman episode The Bat’s Kow Tow
On this Day
1485 Henry VII established the Yeoman of the Guard
1768 The first Methodist chapel in the New World was dedicated in New York City
1811 Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was published anonymously. A small circle of people, including the Prince Regent, learned Austen's identity, but most of the British public knew only that the popular book had been written "by a Lady"
1864 The city of Helena, Montana, was founded by four gold miners who struck it rich at the appropriately named "Last Chance Gulch"
1875 Missouri's constitution was ratified by popular vote, bringing unity to a US state with a history of division. Named for one of the Native-American groups that once lived in the territory, Missouri became a US possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1817, Missouri Territory applied for statehood, but the question of whether it would be slave or free delayed approval by Congress. Finally, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was reached, admitting Missouri as a slave state but excluding slavery from the other lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of Missouri's southern border. However, in August of 1821, Missouri's entrance into the Union as a slave state was met with disapproval by a sizeable portion of its citizens. In 1861, when other slave states seceded, Missouri chose to remain in the Union, but a provincial government was established in the next year by Confederate sympathisers. During the war, Missourians were split in their allegiances, supplying both Union and Confederate forces with troops. Lawlessness persisted during this period, and Missouri-born Confederate guerillas such as Jesse James kept the spirit alive after the South's defeat. With the ratification of Missouri's new constitution by the citizens of the state in 1875, those old divisions were finally put to rest
1890 Oakland, California, enacted a law against opium, morphine, and cocaine. The new regulations allowed only doctors to prescribe these drugs which, until then, had been legal for cures or pain relief
1894 The Time Card Recorder was patented by D.M. Cooper of New Jersey
1899 Canadian troops embarked for the Boer War, as William Dillon Otter sailed from Québec with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, with 57 officers and 1,224 men. They were the first Canadian Contingent to join British forces in the Boer War in South Africa
1905 Aspirin, invented by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, first went on sale in Britain
1920 University of Toronto medical researcher Frederick Banting scribbled the research note that led to his team's discovery of insulin: “Tie pancreas ducts of dogs. Wait six or eight weeks. Remove and extract”
1938 Orson Welles’ radio production and adaptation of the H.G. Wells story, The War of the Worlds, panicked the US. The live drama, by his Mercury Theatre cast, employed fake news reports and panicked listeners who thought they were listening to an actual portrayal of a Martian invasion. War of the Worlds was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause. At 8 p.m. a voice announced: "The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the air in War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells." Millions of people had their radios turned on, but most were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway. Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to "the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra." Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that "Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory" had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer's field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired "heat-ray" weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site, annihilating a force of 7,000 National Guardsman. Soon "Martian cylinders" landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. In fact, that was not far from the truth. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey, terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders. People begged electric companies to turn off the power so that the Martians wouldn't see their lights. One woman ran into an Indianapolis church where evening services were being held and yelled, "New York has been destroyed! It's the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!" When news of the real-life panic leaked into the CBS studio, Welles went on the air as himself to remind listeners that it was just fiction. The Federal Communications Commission investigated the program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future
1968 Frank Sinatra recorded “My Way”, with lyrics by Paul Anka. The music came from the French song, “Comme d'Habitude”
1974 Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title
1995 Québec separatists were narrowly defeated as citizens of the province of Québec voted to remain within the federation of Canada by a majority of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent in a referendum. The referendum asked Québec's citizens, the majority of whom are French-speaking, to vote whether their province should begin the process that could make it independent of Canada. Beginning in the 1960s, the Québec independence movement steadily gained ground, leading to the establishment of a powerful separatist party in 1967, the Parti Québécois, and a 1980 independence referendum that was defeated by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin. Far narrower than the 1980 margin, the 1995 referendum was the biggest threat to Canadian unity in the country's 128-year existence, carrying with it the possibility of losing nearly one-third of its population if the "Oui" vote won. Québec separatists refrained from any significant violence after their narrow defeat, but former Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau raised the shadow of racial tension by declaring that his campaign had been beaten by "money and the ethnic vote". The next day, he announced his intention to resign
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