1500 Benvenuto Cellini – Italian sculptor and goldsmith who made celebrated pieces (Persus). He was one of the most picturesque characters of the Renaissance, a brawler who killed a rival goldsmith and was absolved by Pope Paul III. He was imprisoned for embezzlement, but escaped
1762 Stephen Percival – British Prime Minister from 1809. His political career ended abruptly in 1812, when he was assassinated in the House of Commons
1871 Stephen Crane – US author (The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Open Boat) He was born, the youngest of 14 children, in Newark, New Jersey
1915 Michael Denison – British stage and screen actor (The Importance of Being Earnest, Shadowlands) He played Napier Lee in the Rumpole of the Bailey episode Rumpole and the Old Boy Net
1926 Betsy Palmer - Actress (Knots Landing, The Last Angry Man, It Could Happen to Jane, Mr. Roberts, Friday the 13th, I've Got a Secret)
1937 'Whispering' Bill Anderson - Songwriter (City Lights, I Missed Me, Happy Birthday to Me) and singer (Three Times a Lady, Still, My Life, 8x10) He’s a member of the Grand Ole Opry
1939 Barbara Bosson - Actress (Hill Street Blues, Cop Rock, Richie Brockelman Private Eye, Hooperman, The Committee, The Last Starfighter)
1941 Robert Foxworth – Actor (Falcon Crest, Storefront Lawyers, Double Standard, Ants, Frankenstein)
1942 Marcia Wallace - Actress (The Bob Newhart Show, My Mom's a Werewolf, The Simpsons)
1957 Lyle Lovett – Country singer (Cowboy Man) songwriter (This Old Porch, You Can't Resist It, Closing Time, If I Had a Boat) and actor (Ready to Wear, Short Cuts, The Player)
1958 Rachel Ticotin – Actress (Total Recall, Con Air, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Something's Gotta Give, Don Juan DeMarco, Ohara, Fort Apache the Bronx)
1972 Toni Collette – Australian actresss (Muriel’s Wedding, In Her Shoes, Connie and Carla, Changing Lanes, Shaft, Emma, Spotswood)
Died this Day
1793 Lord George Gordon – British anti-Catholic who stirred up the infamous Gordon Riots in 1790. He died in Newgate Prison, having been convicted of libelling Marie Antoinette
1924 William Tilghman, age 70 – Legendary US marshal in the Wild West. He was murdered by a corrupt prohibition agent who resented Tilghman's refusal to ignore local bootlegging operations. Known to both friends and enemies as "Uncle Billy," Tilghman was one of the most honest and effective lawmen of his day. Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, he moved west when he was only 16 years old. Once there, he flirted with a life of crime after falling in with a crowd of disreputable young men who stole horses from Indians. Despite this shaky start, Tilghman gradually built a reputation as an honest and respectable young man, eventually becoming the marshal of Dodge City. Tilghman was one of the first men into the territory when Oklahoma opened to settlement in 1889, and he became a deputy US marshal for the region in 1891. In the late 19th century, lawlessness still plagued Oklahoma, and Tilghman helped restore order by capturing some of the most notorious bandits of the day. He earned a well-deserved reputation for treating even the worst criminals fairly, protecting the rights of the unjustly accused, and for not tolerating vigilante mobs who took the law into their own hands. In 1924, after serving a term as an Oklahoma state legislator, making a movie about his frontier days, and serving as the police chief of Oklahoma City, Tilghman accepted a job as city marshal in Cromwell, Oklahoma, where he was shot and killed while trying to arrest a drunken Prohibition agent
1972 Ezra Pound – US poet (With Tapers Quenched, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, 116 Cantos, Pisan Cantos) He died two days after his 87th birthday
1985 Phil Silvers, age 73 – Actor and comedian (The Phil Silvers Show/Sergeant Bilko, The Beverly Hillbillies, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Cheap Detective)
1987 Rene Levesque – Former Québec Première and founder of the Parti Québecois. He was a war correspondent with the US forces during the Second World War, and joined Radio-Canada in 1946 as a radio and TV reporter. In 1960, he won a seat as a Liberal in the Québec National Assembly and held several portfolios in the Lesage government. In 1967, Levesque left the Liberal party and united several separatist groups to form the Parti Québecois, which came to power in 1976. A 1980 referendum on sovereignty was defeated, thanks in part to a strong federal campaign against it. Levesque gave up his leadership in 1985, and the party lost to the Liberals that December
1988 Louis Johnson – New Zealand poet (The Sun Among the Ruins, Roughshod Among the Lilies, New Worlds for Old)
On this Day
1512 Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were first exhibited to the public. He had been called to Rome in 1508 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which was the chief consecrated space in the Vatican. Michelangelo's epic ceiling frescoes are among his most memorable works. Central in a complex system of decoration featuring numerous figures are nine panels devoted to biblical world history. The most famous of these is The Creation of Adam, a painting in which the arms of God and Adam are stretching toward each other
1604 William Shakespeare's tragedy, Othello, was first presented in London
1695 The Bank of Scotland was founded
1755 An earthquake reduced two-thirds of Lisbon to rubble, causing an estimated 60,000 deaths
1765 Britain’s Parliament enacted the Stamp Act, in the face of widespread opposition in the American colonies. Defense of the American colonies in the French and Indian War and in Pontiac's Rebellion had been costly affairs for Great Britain, and Prime Minister George Grenville had hoped to recover some of these costs by taxing the colonists. The controversial act forced colonists to buy a British stamp for every official document that they obtained. The stamp itself displayed an image of a Tudor rose framed by the word "America" and the French phrase “Honi soit qui mal y pense”, or “Shame to him who thinks evil of it.” The colonists, who had convened the Stamp Act Congress the month before to vocalise their opposition to the impending enactment, greeted the arrival of the stamps with outrage and violence. Most colonists called for a boycott of British goods and some organised attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After four months of organised protests, and an appeal by Benjamin Franklin before the British House of Commons, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in a major victory for the colonists
1838 Lord Durham, Britain's high commissioner to North America, sailed for England to write what became known as the Durham Report. The report urged reuniting Upper and Lower Canada to accelerate the assimilation of the French. It also recommended the introduction of responsible government
1848 The first medical school for women in the US opened in Boston, Massachusetts, with two professors and an enrolment of twelve pupils. Known as the Boston Female Medical School, the institution was founded through the efforts of Samuel Gregory, a pioneer in medical education for women. Over the next few years, Gregory worked persistently to obtain official recognition of the medical school, which was finally obtained in 1856 when the school was incorporated as the New England Female Medical College, with the formal right to confer degrees. In 1874, the school merged with the Boston University School of Medicine, founded the year before as a school of homeopathy, and thus the first coeducational medical school in the world was established
1848 W.H. Smith opened their first railway bookstall at Euston Station, London, the start of Britain’s first multiple retailer
1858 Queen Victoria was proclaimed sovereign throughout India
1870 The US Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations, using reports gathered by telegraph from 24 locations
1884 Prince George, later King George V, drove the last spike of the Harbour Grace Railway, opening traffic on Newfoundland's first railway between St. Johns and Harbour Grace. The Prince was visiting the province as a midshipman aboard the HMS Cumberland
1895 The first automobile club in the US, the American Motor League, held its preliminary meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Sixty members attended that first meeting
1927 The Ontario government shelved Regulation No. 17, which banned French in Ontario schools past Grade 1
1927 Ford Model A production began, marking the first time since the Model T was introduced in 1908, that the Ford Motor Company began production on a significantly redesigned automobile. The vastly improved Model A had elegant Lincoln-like styling on a smaller scale, and used a capable 200.5 cubic-inch four-cylinder engine that produced forty horsepower. With prices starting at $460, nearly five million Model A’s, in several body styles and a variety of colours, rolled onto to US highways before production ended in early 1932
1940 A prehistoric cave painting was found at Lascaux in the Dordogne
1941 The Rainbow Bridge linking Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, New York opened
1950 In Washington, DC, one policeman was mortally wounded and two others hurt during an assassination attempt on President Harry S. Truman by two radical Puerto Rican nationalists. Since 1948, President Truman and his family had been staying in the Blair-Lee mansion across the street from the White House, while workers laboured to repair dangerous structural problems in the 135-year-old executive mansion. However, the Blair-Lee house lacked necessary security measures like the White House's iron fence and large surrounding lawns, and when the would-be assassins arrived at the Blair-Lee mansion with two pistols and more than sixty rounds of ammunition between them, only a locked screen door and eleven security guards protected the president. One gunman began an assault on the front door, as the other attempted to penetrate the basement entrance. A gunfight ensued and one officer was shot in his right knee, while two other officers were shot three times each. Private Leslie Coffelt, who was shot in the chest, abdomen, and legs, managed to shoot one of the assailants in the head before losing consciousness, and the assailant died instantly. A moment later, the second assailant, who was also wounded, was subdued, and the shoot-out ended with approximately thirty shots having been fired in less than three minutes. Coffelt died in a hospital less than four hours later, but the other two wounded officers recovered. President Truman, who was napping after a lunch with his wife, overheard the gun-battle, but was unhurt. Ironically, Truman had actually contributed to US efforts to grant Puerto Rico greater autonomy, and two years before had approved a measure allowing Puerto Ricans to manage their own internal affairs under a freely elected governor
1952 The first hydrogen bomb was detonated by the US in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean
1959 The first stretch of Britain’s first motorway, the M1, was opened
1969 Elvis Presley scored his first No. 1 hit in more than seven years when Suspicious Minds topped the Billboard chart. It also proved to be the last chart-topper of his career
1993 The Maastricht Treaty came into effect, formally establishing the European Union. The treaty was drafted in 1991 by delegates from the European Community meeting at Maastricht in the Netherlands, and signed in 1992. The agreement called for greater economic integration, common foreign and security policies, and cooperation between police and other authorities on crime, terrorism, and immigration issues. The treaty also laid the groundwork for the establishment of a single European currency, the Euro. By 1993, twelve nations had ratified the Maastricht Treaty on European Union: Great Britain, France, Germany, the Irish Republic, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. After suffering through centuries of bloody conflict, the nations of Western Europe were finally united in the spirit of economic cooperation
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