AD 9 Titus Falvius Vespasianus – Roman emperor who consolidated the empire, directed the pacification of Wales and northern Britain, and established extensive sales and excise taxes, including one on public urinals
1789 Louis Daguerre – French theatre scene painter, physicist and inventor of the daguerreotype photographic process. He is said to have discovered the process when he accidentally spilt iodine on some silvered plates
1836 Sir William Gilbert – British humorist and librettist who collaborated with Sir Arthur Sullivan to produce light operas (HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, The Gondoliers)
1836 Cesare Lombroso - Professor of psychiatry and founder of criminology. He developed the process of identifying criminals by personality types
1901 George Horace Gallup – US organiser of pubic opinion surveys who devised the Gallup Poll. He conducted his first poll in 1932 for an advertising company. His opinion polls became famous by predicting FDR's win in 1935
1908 Imogene Coca – Comedienne and actress (Your Show of Shows, National Lampoon's Vacation, Sid Caesar Invites You, It's about Time)
1909 Johnny Mercer – US composer and lyricist (That Old Black Magic, Autumn Leaves, Moon River, On the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe, Days of Wine and Roses, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, Hooray for Hollywood, Jeepers Creepers) He wrote or co-wrote over a thousand songs. He was featured in the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
1923 Alan Shepard, Jr. – US astronaut
1926 Dorothy Collins - Singer (My Boy Flattop, Your Hit Parade) She sang with Benny Goodman’s band
1939 Margaret Atwood - Canadian author (The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat's Eye, Dancing Girls & Other Stories, The Robber Bride)
1939 Brenda Vaccaro – Actress (Once is Not Enough, Cactus Flower, Midnight Cowboy, Ten Little Indians)
1941 David Hemmings – British actor (Gladiator, Juggernaut, Barbarella, The Old Curiosity Shop, Calamity Jane) He played Inspector Foxborough in the Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder by Decree
1942 Linda Evans – Actress (The Big Valley, Dynasty, Standing Tall)
1942 Susan Sullivan - Actress (Castle, Falcon Crest, The George Carlin Show, The Dark Ride, The Incredible Hulk, Deadman's Curve, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Dharma & Greg, Another World) She played Twyla Cooper in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Ruthless Reporter
1947 Jameson Parker - Actor (Simon & Simon, A Small Circle of Friends, American Justice, Anatomy of a Seduction, The Bell Jar)
1953 Kevin Nealon - Comedian (Saturday Night Live, All I Want for Christmas, Roxanne)
1960 Elizabeth Perkins – Actress (Big, Must Love Dogs, Hercules, The Flintstones, He Said She Said)
1968 Owen Wilson – Actor (Drillbit Taylor, Marley & Me, Wedding Crashers, Meet the Fockers, Around the World in 80 Days, Shanghai Knights, The Haunting, Behind Enemy Lines)
Died this Day
1886 Chester A. Arthur, age 56 - The 21st US President. He died in New York
1922 Marcel Proust, age 51 – French novelist (Remembrance of Things Past)
1962 Niels Henrik Bohr – Danish physicist and Nobel prize winner for his work on the quantum theory and atomic structures
1969 Joseph P. Kennedy, age 81 – US financier-diplomat. He died in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts
1994 Cab Calloway, age 86 – US bandleader (Minnie the Moocher, Blues in the Night, The Scat Song) and actor (The Blues Brothers, The Cotton Club)
On this Day
1477 William Caxton completed the Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres at his wooden press in Westminster. It was the first book to be printed in England. During the early 1470s, the English-born Caxton learned the art of printing in Cologne, Germany, and in 1475, produced the first book ever printed in English, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. In 1476, he returned to England to set up his press in Westminster. Caxton's press, like other early presses in Germany, used printing types that imitated handwriting. Artistically, Caxton was the finest printer of his day, using his famed Black Letter type that imitated the calligraphy of Haarlem monks. During his career as a printer, Caxton went on to print almost one hundred books in England, including the Canterbury Tales, the late fourteenth-century masterpiece by English poet Geoffrey Chaucer
1626 St. Peter’s in Rome was consecrated
1852 The state funeral of the Duke of Wellington took place, one of the biggest ever held in London, with the procession making its way to St. Paul’s Cathedral
1883 The first operation of Standard Time in North America began at midnight Atlantic Time in eastern Nova Scotia, as the US and Canada adopted a system of Standard Time zones. Scottish-born Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming played a major role in introducing the concept around the world. Fleming, who was also Canada's foremost railway surveyor and construction engineer of the 19th century, first proposed the international standard time measurement at Toronto in 1879. The need for time zones stemmed directly from the problems of moving passengers and freight over the thousands of miles of rail line that covered North America by the 1880s. Since human beings had first begun keeping track of time, they set their clocks to the local movement of the sun. Even as late as the 1880s, most towns had their own local time, generally based on "high noon," or the time when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. As railroads began to shrink the travel time between cities from days or months to mere hours, however, these local times became a scheduling nightmare. Railroad timetables in major cities listed dozens of different arrival and departure times for the same train, each linked to a different local time zone. Most people embraced their new time zones, since railroads were often their lifeblood and main link with the rest of the world. Other world nations would endorse the Canadian engineer's idea at an 1884 Washington conference
1916 Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I, called off the Battle of the Somme in the Somme River region of France after nearly five months of mass slaughter. The offensive amounted to a total gain of just 125 square miles, at a cost of over 600,000 British and French soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action. German casualties were over 650,000. Although Haig was severely criticised for the costly battle, his willingness to commit massive amounts of men and resources to the stalemate along the Western Front eventually contributed to the collapse of an exhausted Germany in 1918
1928 Mickey Mouse made his debut in Steamboat Willie. He had appeared under the name of Mortimer Mouse in a silent film called Plane Crazy before being renamed for his first sound film. It was the first sound-synchronised animated cartoon
1929 A Cape Breton earthquake sent a 50 foot tidal wave to Newfoundland, killing 27 people on the Burin Peninsula, and causing $2 million in damages
1963 Bell Telephone introduced push button telephones. The phone was available as an option for an extra charge and had ten buttons
1966 US Roman Catholic bishops did away with the rule against eating meat on Fridays
1976 Spain's parliament approved a bill to establish a democracy after 37 years of dictatorship
1978 US Representative Leo Ryan, of California, and four other Americans were massacred by members of the People's Temple Commune in Guyana. Ryan had travelled to Guyana to investigate the People's Temple in Jonestown, a religious sect founded by Jim Jones, a US pastor. Jones was a charismatic churchman who founded the People's Temple in Indianapolis in the 1950s. In 1965, he moved the group to northern California, settling in Ukiah and after 1971 in San Francisco. In the 1970s, his church was accused by the press of financial fraud, physical abuse of its members, and mistreatment of children. In response to the mounting criticism, Jones led several hundred of his followers to South America in 1977 and set up a utopian agricultural settlement called Jonestown in the jungle of Guyana. A year later, a group of ex-members convinced US Congressman Leo Ryan, a Democrat of California, to travel to Jonestown and investigate the commune. On November 17th, Ryan arrived in Jonestown with a group of journalists and other observers. At first the visit went well, but the next day, as Ryan's group was about to leave, several People's Church members approached members of the group and asked them for passage out of Guyana. Jones became distressed at the defection of his members, and one of Jones' lieutenants attacked Ryan with a knife. Ryan escaped from the incident unharmed, but Jones then ordered Ryan and his companions ambushed and killed at the airstrip as they attempted to board their chartered planes. Back in Jonestown, Jones directed his followers in a mass suicide in a clearing in the town. With Jones exhorting the "beauty of dying" over a loudspeaker, hundreds drank a lethal cyanide and Kool-Aid drink. Those who tried to escape were chased down and shot by Jones' lieutenants. Jones died of a gunshot wound in the head, which was believed to be self-inflicted. Guyanese troops, alerted by a cult member who escaped, reached Jonestown the next day. Only a dozen or so followers survived, hidden in the jungle. The final toll was 913 dead, including 276 children.
1987 The US Congressional Iran-Contra committee issued its final report, saying President Reagan bore "ultimate responsibility" for wrongdoing committed by his aides
1987 An horrific fire in the London Underground killed thirty people. The blaze began in the machinery below a wooden escalator in King’s Cross Underground station and soon filled the tunnels with dense, choking smoke and intense heat
1992 Church of England envoy Terry Waite was released by Lebanese captors after being taken hostage in 1987. A US professor, Thomas Sutherland, kidnapped in 1985, was also released
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