1795 John Keats – British romantic poet (On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, Endymion, On a Grecian Urn, To a Nightingale, On Melancholy, To Autumn) He penned the line, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Unlike many writers of his day, Keats came from a lower-middle-class background. His father worked at a stable in London and eventually married the owner's daughter. John was the first of the couple's five children, and was sent to private school, where he was high spirited and boisterous, given to fist fights and roughhousing. When John was eight, his father fell off a horse and died, launching a long economic struggle that would keep Keats in poverty throughout his life, despite a large inheritance that was owed him. The Keats children were cheated from their money by an unscrupulous guardian who apprenticed John to a surgeon in 1811. Keats worked with the surgeon until 1814, then went to work for a hospital in London as a junior apothecary and surgeon in charge of dressing wounds. In London, Keats pursued his interest in literature while working at the hospital. Keats' work first appeared in the Examiner in 1816, and after 1817, he devoted himself entirely to poetry, becoming a master of the Romantic sonnet
1802 Benoit Fourneyron – French inventor who developed the water turbine based on a proposal by his former professor, Claude Burdin. It was only realised how important the turbine could be when it was installed at Niagara Falls to turn generators to provide electricity
1828 Sir Joseph Wilson Swan – British physicist, chemist and inventor. Both he and Edison are separately credited with the invention of the electric lamp
1860 Juliette Gordon Low – Founder of the Girl Scouts of America
1887 Chiang Kai-shek – The first constitutional President of the Republic of China, whose regime collapsed to the Communists in 1949
1896 Ethel Waters - Actress (Beulah, A Member of the Wedding, Cabin in the Sky, Pinky, Mamba's Daughters)
1912 Dale Evans – Singer and songwriter (Happy Trails to You), actress (The Roy Rogers Show) and author (Angel Unaware, Rainbow on a Hard Trail, Say Yes to Tomorrow) She was the wife of the King of the Cowboys, Roy Rogers and starred with him in many movies
1920 Dick Francis – British crime novelist (Decider, Break-In, Proof, Forfeit, Whip Hand) He set his stories in the horse racing world where he originally worked as a jockey
1922 Barbara Bel Geddes – Actress (Dallas, Vertigo, I Remember Mama)
1922 Illinois Jacquet – Musician on the tenor saxophone (Flyin' Home, I Didn't Know about You) He played with Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway and Count Basie
1926 H.R.F. Keating – British author who created Inspector Ghote of the Bombay Police, featured in many mystery novels (Inspector Ghote in California, Breaking and Entering, The Man Who…, The Soft Detective)
1927 Lee Grant - Actress (Shampoo, Peyton Place, Fay, Backstairs at the White House, Citizen Cohen, Voyage of the Damned, Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night)
1931 Dan Rather – US news correspondent and anchor (CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours)
1936 Michael Landon - Actor (Bonanza, I was a Teenage Werewolf, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven) and director (The Loneliest Runner, Killing Stone)
1937 Tom Paxton - Folk singer, songwriter and guitarist (I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound, The Last Thing on My Mind, Goin' to the Zoo, Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation, Is This Anyway to Run an Airline)
1942 David Ogden Stiers – Actor (M*A*S*H, The Accidental Tourist, Harry's War, Oh God!, North and South, Doc)
1944 Sally Kirkland – Actress (Anna, JFK, Private Benjamin, The Sting)
1945 Brian Doyle-Murray – Actor (JFK, Stuart Little, Groundhog Day, Wayne's World, Scrooged, National Lampoon's Vacation, Caddyshack) He is the brother of Bill Murray
1946 Stephen Rea – Irish actor (The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Prêt-à-Porter, Princess Caraboo, The Company of Wolves)
1947 Russ Ballard - Singer, songwriter and guitarist with the group Argent (Hold Your Head Up)
1947 Deidre Hall – Actress (Our House, Days of Our Lives, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl) She played Linda Horton in the Perry Mason TV movie The Case of the All-Star Assassin
1948 Michael Kitchen – British actor (Foyle’s War, Oliver Twist, The World Is Not Enough, Mrs. Dalloway, Reckless, GoldenEye, Doomsday Gun, To Play the King, The Russia House, Out of Africa) He played Russell Clark in the Inspector Morse episode The Death of the Self
1950 John Candy – Canadian actor and comedian (Second City TV, The Blues Brothers, JFK, National Lampoon's Vacation, Spaceballs, Stripes, Home Alone, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Who's Harry Crumb?) He studied journalism in college and began his career at CBC Toronto appearing in children's shows
1950 Jane Pauley – US news anchor and TV host (Today, Dateline NBC) She is married to cartoonist, Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury)
1961 Larry Mullen – Irish drummer with U2 (New Year's Day, Sunday Bloody Sunday, With You or Without You, Until the End of the World)
1963 Dermot Mulroney – Actor (About Schmidt, My Best Friend's Wedding, Point of No Return, Young Guns)
1976 Piper Perabo – Actress (Covert Affairs, The Prestige, Cheaper by the Dozen, Coyote Ugly, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle)
Died this Day
1828 Miss Docherty – Scottish beggar. She was the last victim of the infamous bodysnatchers William Burke and William Hare. Burke invited her to a house in Edinburgh, and Hare turned up soon after and strangled her. It was to be their downfall, as her death was discovered and the police called. Burke and Hare sold the bodies of their victims to Dr. Knox, who dissected them for research in medical classes
1926 Harry Houdini, age 52 – US magician and escapologist, of peritonitis and gangrene from a burst appendix, in Detroit. Ten days earlier, he was lecturing at the Princess Theatre in Montréal about how the stomach muscles could withstand punches and invited a student to punch him. He was injured when the student punched him twice without warning. Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, the son of a rabbi. At a young age, he immigrated with his family to Appleton, Wisconsin, and soon demonstrated a natural acrobatic ability and an extraordinary skill at picking locks. When he was nine, he joined a travelling circus and toured the country as a contortionist and trapeze performer. He soon was specialising in escape acts and gained fame for his reported ability to escape from any manacle. Many believed his powers were supernatural, but Houdini crusaded against all fakirs, magicians, and mediums making such claims. This caused a rift in his friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Still, Houdini made a pact with his wife and friends that the first to die was to try and communicate with the world of reality from the spirit world. Several of these friends died, but Houdini never received a sign from them. After Houdini’s death, his wife waited for a communiqué from the spirit world but it never came. She declared the experiment a failure shortly before her death in 1943
1984 Indira Gandhi, age 66 – Prime Minister of India, was assassinated by members of her own security guard while walking in the garden of her New Delhi home. She was enroute to a meeting with Peter Ustinov to discuss making a documentary about her. The only child of Jawahaelrl Nehru, the first prime minister of the Republic of India, she became a national political figure in 1955 when she was elected to the executive body of the Congress party. In 1959 she served as president of the party, and in 1964 she held a top position in Lal Bahadur Shastri's ruling government. When Shastri died suddenly in 1966, Gandhi succeeded him as prime minister and presided over a period of civil arrest in India during the 1970s. In 1975 she declared martial law when a conviction for a minor infraction in the 1971 election threatened to topple her administration. In 1977, Gandhi called a general election, and was defeated. However, in 1980 she made a spectacular comeback and was able to form a new majority government. In 1982, she decided to move vigorously against the problem of Sikh nationalists in the Indian state of Punjab, ordering a rapid suppression of Sikh insurgents. In response to this aggression, several of her Sikh bodyguards conspired to end her life
1988 John Houseman, age 86 – Bucharest born actor (The Paper Chase, Three Days of the Condor, The Winds of War, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, Rollerball, The Cheap Detective) In 1937 Houseman, along with Orson Welles, started the Mercury Theatre and produced a popular radio program called Mercury Theatre on the Air
1993 River Phoenix, age 23 – Actor (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Stand by Me, Sneakers, My Own Private Idaho, Running on Empty, The Mosquito Coast)
On this Day
1517 Martin Luther nailed his revolutionary Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Palace church, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany. The theses, were burned for being heretical but translations spread throughout Germany. Luther, a professor of Biblical interpretation at Wittenberg in Germany, condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the papal practice of asking payment, called indulgences, for the exoneration of sins. Luther denied the pope any right to forgive sins, and preached a new doctrine of salvation through private faith rather than public works. He followed up the ninety-five theses with equally controversial and ground breaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformists all across Europe, giving rise to the greatest schism in the Christian church in over one thousand years
1864 Nevada became the 36th state of the Union
1869 In Montréal, Québec, Georges-Édouard Desbarats published the first issue of the Canadian Illustrated News. It was the first periodical in the world to use a half-tone photo reproduction technique. The photo was an image of Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VI
1888 Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop patented the pneumatic bicycle tire
1902 The first Pacific telegraph line from Canada to Australia was completed. Sir Stanford Fleming sent the first message to open the Pacific Cable from Vancouver, BC to Brisbane, Australia
1915 The first steel helmets were issued to British troops on the Western Front during the Great War
1918 The Alberta government prohibited all public meetings of seven persons or more, as the Spanish Flu epidemic swept the province. Churches, schools and theatres all closed
1941 Early in the morning, while escorting a convoy of war material across the North Atlantic to Britain, the US Clemson Class destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German submarine. The blast pierced the ship's magazine, and the boat quickly sank, becoming the first US warship to be sunk by hostile action during World War II. Forty-four men were saved, but the other ninety-six members of the crew perished in the icy waters
1951 The first zebra crossings were introduced in Britain
1955 Princess Margaret announced that she would not marry Captain Peter Townsend, a divorced man
1956 US Rear Admiral George John Dufek became the first person to land an airplane at the South Pole. He and six officers landed their twin-engine Douglas transport plane, dubbed Que Sera Sera, at the South Pole as part of Operation Deepfreeze. It was a primarily scientific operation, and they were there to provide logistical support for the scientific body of the expedition. Upon stepping out of the Que Sera Sera, Dufek achieved his second “first” of the day as he became the first US citizen to set foot on the South Pole
1961 Five years after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalinism and the "personality cult" of Soviet rulers at the 20th Party Congress, Joseph Stalin's embalmed body was removed from Lenin's tomb in Moscow's Red Square
1962 The secret revolutionary group, the Front de Libération de Québec (FLQ), was founded in Montréal
1977 The James Bay Land Claims Agreement, Canada's first modern treaty with natives, became law. The agreement transferred aboriginal rights from the native people of Québec in return for $225-million, hunting and fishing rights and substantial self-government. The treaty paved the way for the massive James Bay Hydroelectric Project, which diverted rivers, created the world's largest underground powerhouse and built dams and dikes
1982 Pope John Paul the Second canonised Marguerite Bourgeoys, citing her heroism and concern for family life. The Québec nun, who died in 1700 at age 79, was Canada's first woman saint. She arrived in Montréal in 1657 and a year later, opened her first school for girls
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