1755 Louis XVIII – The first King of France after the fall of Napoleon
1887 Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (Bernard Law Montgomery) – British soldier who had his most successful victory when he broke through Rommel’s lines in North Africa during WWII. “Monty,” as he was known, was a meticulous planner, and superb communicator, both of which contributed to his successes
1901 Lee Strasberg – Actor (The Cassandra Crossing, …And Justice for All, The Godfather Part II) He taught method acting at Actor's Studio
1905 Mischa Auer - Actor (My Man Godfrey, Brewster's Millions, Destry Rides Again, You Can't Take it with You)
1914 Archie Campbell – Country singer (Trouble in the Amen Corner, Bleeping Sleauty, Ridercella, The Men in My Little Girl's Life) and comedian (Hee Haw, Grand Ole Opry)
1916 Shelby Foote - Historian, writer (The Civil War)
1925 Rock Hudson – Actor (McMillan and Wife, Giant, Ice Station Zebra, A Gathering of Eagles, Magnificent Obsession, Pillow Talk, The Undefeated, Tobruk)
1928 Rance Howard – Actor (Gentle Ben, Huckleberry Finn, Grand Theft Auto, The Long Hot Summer, Universal Soldier, Apollo 13, Mars Attacks!, Frost/Nixon) He is the father of Ron Howard and Clint Howard
1937 Peter Cook – British actor (The Princess Bride, Goodbye Again, The Secret Policeman’s Ball, Yellowbeard, Whoops Apocalypse) He was also a writer and entertainer who was one of the original Beyond the Fringe team that revolutionised British comedy. He portrayed Greenhough in the Sherlock Holmes parody, Without a Clue and he also played Sherlock Holmes in a comedy version of The Hound of the Baskervilles
1938 Gordon Lightfoot – Canadian singer/songwriter (Sundown, If You Could Read My Mind, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Black Day in July, Carefree Highway)
1942 Bob Gaudio – Singer with The Royal Teens (Short Shorts) and The Four Seasons (Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry, Walk like a Man, Rag Doll)
1942 Martin Scorsese – Film director (Taxi Driver, The Color of Money, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, New York New York)
1943 Lauren Hutton – Actress (American Gigolo, Lassiter, Paper Lion, Once Bitten)
1944 Lorne Michaels – Canadian producer (Saturday Night Live, The Kids in the Hall, Coneheads, Wayne’s World)
1944 Danny Devito – Actor (Taxi, Romancing the Stone, Hoffa, Tin Men, Twins, Get Shorty, Ruthless People) and director (Throw Mama from the Train, The War of the Roses, Matilda) His wife is actress Rhea Perlman. He also played The Pengiun in the movie, Batman Returns
1946 Martin Barre - Musician with Jethro Tull (Living in the Past, Aqualung)
1958 Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio - Actress (The Color of Money, The Abyss, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves)
1975 Diane Neal – Actress (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, My Fake Fiance, Future Tense)
1983 Harry Lloyd – British actor (Game of Thrones, Jane Eyre, Lewis: Counter Culture Blues, Robin Hood, David Copperfield, Brave New World, Wolf Hall, The Theory of Everything)
Died this Day
1558 Mary I, Queen of England, age 42 – British monarch who was also known as Bloody Mary. She was the daughter of King Henry VIII and Catharine of Aragon, and was succeeded by her twenty-five year-old half-sister, Elizabeth I. Both daughters of Henry VIII, they had a stormy relationship during Mary's five-year reign. Mary, who was brought up as a Catholic, enacted pro-Catholic legislation and made efforts to restore papal supremacy on the island. A Protestant rebellion ensued, and Queen Mary imprisoned Elizabeth, a Protestant, in the Tower of London on suspicion of complicity
1917 Auguste Rodin – French sculptor (The Thinker, The Kiss) He died five days after his 77th birthday
On this Day
1558 The Elizabethan Age began as Elizabeth I ascended the English throne upon the death of her Catholic half-sister, Queen Mary. Elizabeth's ascension to the throne upon Mary's death was greeted with general approval by England's lords, who hoped for greater religious tolerance under a Protestant queen. Under the early guidance of Secretary of State Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth repealed Mary's Catholic legislation, established a permanent Protestant Church of England, and encouraged the Calvinist reformers in Scotland. In foreign affairs, Elizabeth practised a policy of strengthening England's Protestant allies and dividing her foes. In 1588, Elizabeth's unabashed dislike of Spain led to hostilities, and the Spanish Armada, the greatest naval force in the world at the time, was destroyed by a persistent English navy. With increasing English domination at sea, Elizabeth encouraged voyages of discovery, such as Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world, and Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions to the North American coast. Elizabeth became known as the Virgin Queen for her reluctance to endanger her authority through marriage. Her long reign was concurrent with the flowering of the English Renaissance, and associated with such renowned authors as William Shakespeare. By her death in 1603, England had become a major world power in every respect, and Queen Elizabeth I passed into history as one of England's greatest monarchs
1603 Sir Walter Raleigh’s trial, for treason, began. He had been offered a large sum of money by Lord Cobham, a critic of England’s King James I. For this payment, Raleigh was to make peace with the Spanish, and to put Arabella Stuart, James’s cousin on the throne. Raleigh claimed he was falsely accused, and that he had turned down the offer, but Lord Cobham told his accusers that Raleigh was involved in the plot
1623 Canada's first highway was built, connecting the Lower and Upper Towns of Quebec
1800 The United States Congress convened for the first time in the new nation's capital, meeting in the partially completed Capitol building. The city of Washington was created to replace Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the nation's capital because of its geographical position in the centre of the new republic. The states of Maryland and Virginia ceded land around the Potomac River to form the District of Columbia, and work began on Washington in 1791. French architect Charles L'Enfant designed the city's radical layout, full of dozens of circles, criss-cross avenues, and plentiful parks. In 1793 Benjamin Latrobe began construction on the US Capitol
1839 Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi debuted his first opera, Oberto
1840 At Norway House, Manitoba, James Evans, General Superintendent of the Northwest Indian Missions, invented a nine-character syllabic alphabet for the Cree and Inuit people, which is still in use today. He later printed birch-bark hymn books in Cree
1856 The US established Fort Buchanan, strengthening its control over the Gadsden Purchase. Named for recently elected President James Buchanan, Fort Buchanan was located on the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona. The US acquired the bulk of the south-western corner of the nation from Mexico in 1848 as victors' spoil after the Mexican War. However, congressional leaders, eager to begin construction of a southern railroad, wished to push the border farther to the south. The government directed the US minister to Mexico, James Gadsden, to negotiate the purchase of an additional 29,000 square miles. Despite having been badly beaten in war only five years earlier and forced to cede huge tracts of land to the victorious US, Mexican ruler Santa Ana was eager to do business. Having only recently regained power, Santa Ana was in danger of losing office unless he could quickly find funds to replenish his nearly bankrupt nation. Gadsden and Santa Ana agreed that the narrow strip of south-western desert land was worth $10 million. When the treaty was signed on December 30, 1853, it completed the modern-day boundaries of the US West. The government established Fort Buchanan to protect emigrants travelling through the new territory from the Apache Indians, who were strongly resisting Anglo incursions. However, the government was never able to fulfil its original purpose for buying the land and establishing the fort, which was a southern transcontinental railroad. With the outbreak of the Civil War four years later, northern politicians abandoned the idea of a southern line in favour of a northern route that eventually became the Union Pacific line
1866 Vancouver Island was united with the colony of British Columbia. Vancouver Island was first visited by Captain James Cook in 1778 but was named for Captain George Vancouver, who explored and surveyed its coasts in 1792. The US recognised the island as British territory in 1846
1869 In Egypt, the Suez Canal, stretching 101 miles across the Isthmus of Suez, opened to navigation in an elaborate ceremony attended by French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul to Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build a canal 100 miles across the Isthmus of Suez, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Construction began in April 1859. At first digging was done by hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced labourers. Later, European workers with dredgers and steam shovels arrived. When it opened, the Suez Canal was only 25 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 200 to 300 feet wide at the surface
1880 The first three women to graduate in Britain received their Bachelor of Arts degrees at London University
1968 NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the dramatic end of a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game to begin a TV special, Heidi, on schedule. Viewers were deprived of seeing the Raiders come from behind to beat the Jets 43-32
1973 President Nixon spoke those famous words “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook” to an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Florida
1979 Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of female and minority US hostages and non-US hostages, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the US government. The remaining fifty-two captives being held at the US Embassy in Tehran were at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next fourteen months
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