1873 W.C. Handy - Composer known as the Father of the Blues (St. Louis Blues)
1889 George S. Kaufman - Playwright (The Man Who Came to Dinner, You Can't Take It with You, A Night at the Opera)
1896 Fibber McGee (Jim Jordan) - Actor (Fibber McGee and Molly)
1905 Eddie Condon – US guitarist and bandleader who was a major figure in the development of Dixieland Jazz
1907 Burgess Meredith – Actor (Of Mice and Men, MacKenna’s Gold, Gloria, Mr. Novak, The Day of the Locust, Rocky, Advice and Consent, Grumpy Old Men, In Harm's Way) He portrayed the Penguin in the TV series Batman. His character of The Penguin in the Batman series was so popular that the producers always had a script ready for him in case he was available to appear as a guest star
1922 Royal Dano - Actor (Mr. Lincoln, The Red Badge of Courage, The Right Stuff)
1928 Clu Gulager – Actor (The Virginian, Ballad of a Gunfighter, The Return of the Living Dead, Skyward, The Gambler, The Last Picture Show, The Tall Man)
1942 Joanna Pettet – British-born actress (Best Sellers, Casino Royale, Double Exposure, Captains and the Kings, Knots Landing)
1953 Griff Rhys Jones – British actor and writer (Alias Smith and Jones, Not the Nine O’Clock News, The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball, Marple: 4.50 From Paddington)
1958 Marg Helgenberger – Actress (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, China Beach, Erin Brockovich, Stephen King's The Tommyknockers)
1964 Diana Krall – Canadian jazz musician & singer (Just the Way You Are, You'll Never Know, I'll Make It Up As I Go) She’s married to Elvis Costello
1964 Harry Lennix – Actor (Dollhouse, Ray, 24, Commander in Chief, Guarding Tess, The Matrix Reloaded, The Blacklist)
1967 Lisa Bonet - Actress (The Cosby Show, A Different World, Angel Heart, Bank Robber)
1970 Martha Plimpton - Actress (The Goonies, Parenthood, The Mosquito Coast)
1972 Missi Pyle – Actress (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Galaxy Quest, Big Fish)
1974 Brooke Elliot – Actress (Drop Dead Diva)
1977 Oksana Baiul – Olympic figure skater
1977 Maggie Gyllenhaal – Actress (The Dark Knight, Donnie Darko, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, Crazy Heart) She is the sister of Jake Gyllenhaal
Died this Day
1724 Jack Sheppard – Legendary British highwayman whose first robbery took place in 1720. The Stepney-born robber inspired ballads and plays. He escaped the noose four times before he was finally hanged at Tyburn, in front of 200,000 people
1885 Louis Riel – Leader of the Métis rebellion on the Canadian Prairies. He was captured and tried for high treason after establishing a provisional government. Riel was found guilty by six English-speaking Protestant jurors, who recommended mercy. However, the jurors’ appeals were brushed aside, and he was hanged in Regina less than one month after his 41st birthday. Just after eight in the morning, the hangman appeared in the doorway of his cell at the Mounted Police barracks. Riel asked, “Mr. Gibson, you want me? I am ready.” After receiving absolution from the priest, Riel ascended the scaffold, and as he and the priest were reciting the words of the Lord's Prayer, the trap door dropped. Riel's body was sent to St. Boniface, Manitoba and interred in the cemetery there
1960 Clark Gable, age 59 – Actor (Gone With The Wind, The Misfits, Teacher’s Pet, Soldier of Fortune, Across the Wide Missouri, Comrade X)
1981 William Holden, age 63 – Actor (Stalag 17, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Born Yesterday, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Casino Royale, Moon is Blue, Network, Picnic, Sunset Boulevard, The Towering Inferno, The World of Suzie Wong) He died from injuries sustained in a fall
On this Day
1676 On Nantucket Island, located in the English colony of Massachusetts, local authorities hired William Bunker to establish the first prison in the colonies. For every year Bunker served as a prison warden for Nantucket's rowdiest citizens, the court agreed to pay him "foeur pounds, halfe in wheat, the other in other graine." The necessity of a prison on Nantucket had been growing steadily since 1672, the year that the island's English residents, looking for an additional source of revenue, encouraged whaling men to settle on the island. Whales were abundant at the time and could be caught close to shore, and soon Nantucket's residents had learned the tricks of the trade from their new settlers. By 1712, the coastal population of whales had greatly diminished, so the Nantucket islanders, all rowdy whalers by now, took to the high seas in search of valuable sperm whales. By the early nineteenth century, Nantucket was one of the greatest whaling centres in the world, and the third largest city in Massachusetts
1750 Westminster Bridge, which spans the Thames in central London, was formally opened
1776 During the Revolutionary War, Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 Hessian mercenaries lay siege to Fort Washington, on Long Island, at dawn. For several hours, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside, but by the afternoon the Patriots were overwhelmed, and Colonel Robert Magaw agreed to surrender the fort. Three thousand Patriots were taken prisoner, and valuable ammunition and supplies were lost to the Hessians. Two weeks earlier, William Demont, the first traitor to the Revolutionary cause, had deserted from the Fifth Pennsylvania Battalion and given the British intelligence information concerning the Patriot defence of New York, including information about the location and defence of Fort Washington. Demont's treason significantly contributed to Knyphausen's swift victory
1821 Missouri Indian trader William Becknell arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He sold his goods at an enormous profit, and made plans to return the next year, over the route that would become known as the Santa Fe Trail. Pure luck made Becknell the first businessman to revive US trade with Santa Fe. Fearing US domination of the region, the Spanish had closed their Southwest holdings to foreigners following the Pike expedition more than a decade earlier. They threw the few traders who violated the policy into prison and confiscated their goods. However, Becknell and other merchants continued to trade with the Indians on the US-controlled eastern slope of the southern Rockies. While on such an expedition in the fall of 1821, Becknell encountered a troop of Mexican soldiers. They informed Becknell that they had recently won their independence in a war with Spain, and the region was again open to US traders. Becknell immediately sped to Santa Fe, where he found a lucrative market for his goods, and his saddlebags were heavy with Mexican silver when he returned to his base in Franklin, Missouri. The next summer Becknell travelled to Santa Fe again, this time with three wagonloads of goods. Instead of following the old route that passed over a dangerous high pass, however, Becknell blazed a shorter and easier cut-off across the Cimarron Desert. Thus, while much of the route he followed had been used by Mexican traders for decades, Becknell's role in reopening the trail and laying out the short-cut earned him the title of "Father of the Santa Fe Trail." It became one of the most important and lucrative of the Old West trading routes. Merchants and other travellers continued to follow the trail blazed by Becknell until the arrival of trains in the late 1870s
1824 Australian explorer Hamilton Hume discovered the Murray River, the longest in Australia, at 1,609 miles
1848 Frédéric Chopin gave his last public performance, at London’s Guildhall
1849 A Russian court sentenced author Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for his allegedly antigovernment activities linked to a radical intellectual group. His December execution by firing squad was stayed at the last minute, and he was sent to a Siberian labour camp, where he worked for four years
1901 Three automobile racers in the New York borough of Brooklyn became the first people to exceed the speed of one-mile-a-minute in a car
1907 Oklahoma became the 46th state of the Union as the Indian and Oklahoma Territories collectively entered the US under the state name of Oklahoma. It’s name derives from the Choctaw Indian words "okla," meaning people, and "humma," meaning red. The US acquired Oklahoma from France in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. After the War of 1812, the US government decided to remove Indian tribes from the settled eastern lands of the US and move them west to the unsettled lands of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. In 1828, Congress reserved Oklahoma for Indians and in 1834 formally ceded it to five south-eastern tribes as Indian Territory. Many Cherokees refused to abandon their homes east of the Mississippi, and so the US Army moved them west in a forced march known as the "Trail of Tears." The uprooted tribes joined Plains Indians that had long occupied the area, and Indian nations with fixed boundaries and separate governments were established in the region. In 1865, the territory was placed under US military rule. White cattlemen and settlers began to covet the virgin ranges of Oklahoma, and after the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s, illegal white incursion into Indian Territory flourished. Most were expelled, but pressure continued until the federal government agreed in 1889 to open two million acres in central Oklahoma for white settlement. Thousands of people rushed to stake claims. Those who had already made illegal entry to beat the starting gun were called "Sooners," hence Oklahoma's state nickname. The following year, the region was divided into Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory. In 1907, Congress decided to admit Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory into the Union as a single state, with all Indians in the state becoming US citizens. Representatives of the two territories drafted a constitution, and on September 17, 1907, it was approved by voters of the two territories. On November 16, Oklahoma was welcomed into the United States by President Theodore Roosevelt
1933 The United States recognised the Soviet government that had come into being following the Revolution of 1917
1959 The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music, opened on Broadway. It told the story of the von Trapp family's flight from Nazi-occupied Austria, and starred Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel
1966 Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard was acquitted in his second trial of charges he had murdered his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in 1954
1973 Skylab Three, carrying a crew of three US astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on an 84-day mission
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