1483 Martin Luther – German religious leader who founded the Protestant Reformation. He wrote the 95 Theses On the Power of Indulgences, calling for reformation of the Roman Catholic Church
1730 Oliver Goldsmith – Irish poet, playwright and novelist (She Stoops to Conquer, The Vicar of Wakefield, Poems for Young Ladies, The Beauties of Poesy, The Deserted Village)
1759 Johann Christoph Freidrich von Schiller – German poet and playwright who wrote Hymn to Joy which Beethoven used for his Ninth Symphony
1793 Jared Kirtland – Physician and naturalist who found the first Kirtland's Warbler, which is now a rare bird
1845 John Sparrow David Thompson - Canada's 4th Prime Minister
1889 Claude Rains – British actor (Casablanca, The Invisible Man, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Lawrence of Arabia, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Notorious, The Phantom of the Opera, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Lost World, The Wolf Man)
1893 John P. Marquand – Author (Thank You Mr. Moto, H.M. Pulham Esquire, Wickford Point, The Late George Apley)
1907 Jane Froman - Singer (I Only Have Eyes for You, I'll Walk Alone, I Believe)
1911 Harry Andrews – British actor (Death on the Nile, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, Ice-Cold in Alex, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Modesty Blaise, Battle of Britain, Theatre of Blood, Equus) He also played Lord Bellinger in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Adventure of the Second Stain
1924 Russell Johnson – Actor (Gilligan’s Island, MacArthur, The Greatest Story Ever Told, This Island Earth, It Came from Outer Space, Black Saddle, Courage of Black Beauty, Owen Marshall Counselor at Law)
1925 Richard Burton – Welsh-born stage and screen actor (Camelot, Hamlet, Anne of the Thousand Days, Becket, The Desert Rats, The Robe, The Taming of the Shrew, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) He was twice-married to Elizabeth Taylor, and was the father of Kate Burton
1932 Roy Scheider – Actor (Jaws, All that Jazz, Blue Thunder, Marathon Man, The French Connection, seaQuest DSV, Naked Lunch)
1939 Russell Means - Native American rights activist and actor (The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, Wind River, Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Into the West)
1944 Tim Rice – British lyricist and writer (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) He did a lot of his work with Andrew Lloyd Webber
1945 Donna Fargo – US singer/songwriter (The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA, Funny Face)
1947 Greg Lake - Rock singer-musician with Emerson, Lake and Palmer (From the Beginning, Lucky Man)
1949 Ann Reinking – Dancer and actress (Pippin, All that Jazz, Annie, Mickey and Maude)
1951 Jack Scalia - Actor (Dallas, Pointman, The Devlin Connection, Berrenger's, Hollywood Beat, Tequila & Bonetti)
1959 MacKenzie Phillips - Actress and singer (One Day at a Time, American Graffiti, Eleanor & Franklin) She is the daughter of singer Papa John Phillips
1963 Hugh Bonneville – British actor (Iris, Notting Hill, Tomorrow Never Dies, Downton Abbey, Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express, Marple: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, Miss Austen Regrets, Mansfield Park, The Scold’s Bridle) He portrayed Victor Savage in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Dying Detective
Died this Day
1796 Catherine the Great - Empress of Russia
1982 Leonid Brezhnev, age 75 – Soviet leader and president of the USSR
1986 Francis “King” Clancy, age 83 – Canadian hockey legend. In 1930 he was acquired by the Toronto Maple Leafs for the then unheard of sum of $35,000 plus two players. He led the Leafs to their first ever Stanley Cup victory in 1932. For over 60 years, he was involved in hockey, as player, referee, coach and Vice President of the Maple Leaf Gardens from 1956 until his retirement
1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa - Nigerian playwright and environmental activist. He was an outspoken critic of Nigeria's military regime, and was charged by the government with the 1994 murder of four pro-military traditional leaders. He maintained his innocence, claiming that he was being unlawfully silenced for his criticisms of the exploitation of the oil-rich Ogoni basin by the Nigerian ruling government and the Shell Petroleum Development Company. Most of the international community agreed, but Nigerian leader General Sani Abacha refused to grant the defendants an appeal and would not delay the executions
2001 Ken Kesey, age 66 – US author (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Sometimes A Great Notion, Kesey’s Garage Sale) In the early 1960s he volunteered for government drug experiments, and subsequently became an aide on a psychiatric ward of a Veteran’s Hospital. This experience came in useful when he was writing his first novel
On this Day
1775 The US Marine Corps were first born during a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the Continental Congress passed a resolution stating that "two Battalions of Marines be raised" for service as landing forces for the US naval fleet. This resolution, sponsored by future US president John Adams, established the Continental Marines and is considered the birth of the United States Marine Corps. Less then two weeks later, Samuel Nicholas of Philadelphia was commissioned captain, and became the first marine commandant. Serving on land and at sea during the War for Independence, the original marines distinguished themselves in a number of significant operations, including an amphibious raid into the Bahamas under the command of Captain Nicholas in March of 1776. In 1783, with the end of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Navy and thus the US Marines temporarily went out of existence. However, on July 11, 1798, Congress passed an act calling for the establishment of a permanent US Marine Corps, and the next day William Ward Burrows of South Carolina was named the first major of the modern US Marines
1793 The French Revolution abolished the worship of God in favour of a state cult of reason
1801 Tennessee became the first US state to legislate against duelling when Governor Archibald Roane signed an act passed by the Fourth General Assembly outlawing the "evil practice of duelling." Ironically, future president Andrew Jackson, who would become one of the most notorious duellers in US history, was a leading Tennessee politician at the time
1871 An expedition headed by journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley found missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa. Stanley delivered his famous greeting: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Livingstone replied: “Yes, and I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you”
1926 Vincent Massey took up his position as Canada's first Ambassador to the United States
1928 Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan. He ruled for more than 60 years
1932 Foster Hewitt, Canada’s legendary hockey broadcaster, made his first Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. Boston and Toronto tied 1-1
1951 Direct-dial transcontinental telephone service began in the US. The mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, talked to the mayor of Alameda, California, for 18 seconds. Previously, coast-to-coast calls were placed by long-distance operators
1963 The US opened a hotline to Moscow
1970 The Great Wall of China, previously out-of-bounds, opened to world tourism. Commercial benefits for the People's Republic were quickly realised as tourists flocked to see the greatest building enterprise in the history of man. The first emperor of China had linked up existing walls and built new sections to create the Great Wall in the third century BC. Built of earth and stone as a fortification against the Huns in the north, it stretched 1,500 miles
1975 The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, 17 miles from the entrance to Whitefish Bay with all 29 of her crewmembers. At the time of its launch in 1958, the 729-foot long, 75-foot wide freighter, built by the Great Lakes Engineering Works for the Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company, was the largest ship on the Great Lakes. The ship was named for an insurance company executive who died in 1986, at the age of 90. It began its final journey the previous day, carrying 26,116 tons of taconite pellets. The second day out, the ship and her crew met a violent storm with 60-MPH winds and waves in excess of 15 feet. Captain Ernest McSorley steered the ship north, heading for the safety of Whitefish Bay, but the ship's radar failed, and the storm took out the power to Whitefish Point's radio beacon, effectively cutting off the Fitzgerald from communication. Exactly what happened next remains a mystery, although a Coast Guard inquiry found that water entered through leaking hatch covers, causing it to sink, while others have speculated that the Fitzgerald, its radar disabled by the storm, took on water after striking a shoal. The ship now lies under 530 feet of water, broken in two sections, in Canadian waters. In July 1995, with the blessing of the sailors' families, the ship's bell was recovered from the wreck for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. A replica of the bell, engraved with the names of the crewmembers who perished was left in its place. This tragedy was commemorated in a 1976 ballad by Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
1979 More than 250,000 residents of Mississauga and Oakville, Ontario were evacuated after a train carrying chlorine gas derailed. An explosion and fire followed the derailment and fear of a major gas leak kept evacuees out of the area for six days
1982 As part of a four-day national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed by architect Maya Lin, was dedicated in Washington, DC. The long-awaited memorial is a simple black granite wall, inscribed with the names of the 58,183 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank
1989 Workers began punching a hole in the Berlin Wall, one day after East Germany abolished it border restrictions
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