1808 Thomas Cook British travel agent who pioneered the touring business when he organised the first publicly advertised railway excursion to a temperance meeting in 1841. In the early 1860s he stopped running his own personal tours and became an agent for domestic and overseas travel tickets
1819 George Eliot British author and poet (The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Adam Bede, Middlemarch, The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems, The Spanish Gypsy) She was born Mary Ann Evans at Warwickshire, England. Eliot became involved with married journalist and writer George Henry Lewes, who was unable to obtain a divorce under strict Victorian statutes. Lewes and Eliot lived together, but never married, and her polite Victorian acquaintances refused to call on her. Fearful that her unconventional relationship would provoke unfair criticism of her work, she began publishing fiction under the pseudonym George Eliot
1859 Cecil James Sharp Founder of the English Folk Dancing Society, who collected and published many of the old English folk songs and dances
1890 Charles de Gaulle French President from 1958 to 1969
1899 Hoagy Carmichael US songwriter (Stardust, Lazy River, In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening)
1899 Wiley Post US aviator who was the first to fly solo around the world in 1931
1921 Rodney Dangerfield - Comedian, actor (Caddyshack, Natural Born Killers, Easy Money, Back to School)
1923 Arthur Hiller Canadian director (Love Story, The Out-of-Towners, The In-Laws, Man of La Mancha, Plaza Suite, The Silver Streak)
1924 Geraldine Page - Actress (The Trip to Bountiful, The Beguiled, The Day of the Locust, The Dollmaker)
1932 Robert Vaughn Actor (The Man From UNCLE, Hustle, Superman III, Centennial, The Towering Inferno, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven) He played Jay Corelli in the Perry Mason movie, The Case of the Defiant Daughter
1940 Terry Gilliam US film animator, actor (Monty Pythons Flying Circus) and director (The Fisher King, Brazil, Time Bandits, Jabberwocky, Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
1941 Tom Conti Scottish actor (American Dreamer, The Norman Conquests, The Quick and the Dead, Saving Grace, Shirley Valentine)
1943 Floyd Chester Sneed - Rock drummer with Three Dog Night (Mama Told Me Not To Come, One is the Loneliest Number, Joy to the World)
1943 Billie Jean King Tennis player who beat Bobby Riggs in 1973
1950 Steve Van Zandt Musician with Bruce Springsteens E Street Band (Rosalita, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Born to Run, The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle) and actor (The Sopranos)
1958 Jamie Lee Curtis - Actress (A Fish Called Wanda, Trading Places, True Lies, Halloween, Freaky Friday, Scream Queens, Christmas With the Kranks) She is the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis
1960 Bruce Payne British actor (Passenger 57, Dungeons & Dragons, Ripper, Highlander: Endgame, Miss Marple: Nemesis, Privates on Parade, End of Innocence)
1961 Mariel Hemingway - Actress (Delirious, Falling from Grace, Lipstick, Personal Best, Superman 4: The Quest for Peace) She is the granddaughter of Ernest Hemmingway
1966 Nicholas Rowe Scottish actor (Longitude, Dalziel & Pascoe: An Autumn Shroud, Poldark, Enigma) He played Sherlock Holmes in the movie Young Sherlock Holmes
1967 Mark Ruffalo Actor (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, My Life Without Me, Collateral, Windtalkers)
1984 Scarlett Johansson Actress (Lost in Translation, The Prestige, Eight Legged Freaks, The Horse Whisperer, The Other Boleyn Girl, Iron Man 2)
Died this Day
1594 Martin Frobisher British explorer who searched for the North West Passage and made discoveries in the Arctic for England
1718 Edward Teach English pirate who was also known as Edward Thatch and Blackbeard the Pirate. He was killed on North Carolina's Outer Banks during a bloody battle with a British Royal Navy force sent from Virginia. He is believed to have begun his pirating career in 1713, when he became a crewman aboard a Caribbean sloop commanded by pirate Benjamin Hornigold. In 1717, after Hornigold accepted an offer of general amnesty by the British Crown and retired as a pirate, Teach took over a captured twenty-six-gun French guineyman, increased its armament, and renamed it the Queen Anne's Revenge. Over the next six months, the Queen Anne's Revenge served as the flagship of a pirate fleet featuring up to four vessels and more than two hundred men. During this time, Teach became the most infamous pirate of his day, winning the popular name of Blackbeard for his long, dark beard that he was rumoured to light on fire during battles. Blackbeard's pirate forces, who became notorious for their cruelty, terrorised the Caribbean and the southern coast of North America. In May of 1718, the Queen Anne's Revenge and another vessel were shipwrecked. Blackbeard then deserted a third ship and most of his men because of a lack of supplies. With the single remaining ship, Blackbeard sailed to Bath, the capital of North Carolina, to meet with Governor Charles Eden, who agreed to pardon the pirate in exchange for a share of his sizeable booty. However, in November of the same year, Governor Alexander Spottswood of Virginia, whose colony suffered significant losses from Blackbeard's piracy, sent a British Royal Navy fleet to North Carolina where Blackbeard was killed in a bloody battle at Oracoke Inlet. Legend has it that Blackbeard, who captured over thirty ships in his brief pirating career, received five musketball wounds and twenty sword lacerations before dying
1774 Robert Clive British soldier and administrator in India, who avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta deaths. He died from an overdose of opium
1900 Sir Arthur Sullivan, age 58 British composer and writing partner of Sir WS Gilbert (HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, The Gondoliers)
1916 Jack London, age 40 US author (The Call of the Wild, The Son of the Wolf, The Daughter of the Snows, South Sea Tales, The Sea-Wolf, The People of the Abyss, White Fang, John Barleycorn) Plagued by illnesses from an early age, London developed a kidney disease of unknown origin and died from kidney failure in Glen Ellen, California
1943 Lorenz Hart, age 48 Composer and lyricist who was half of the famous team of Rodgers & Hart (I Wish I Were in Love Again, Where or When, With a Song in My Heart, I Could Write a Book, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered, There's a Small Hotel, Little Girl Blue, The Lady is a Tramp, Blue Moon, My Funny Valentine)
1963 John F. Kennedy, age 46 35th US President, assassinated as he rode in a presidential motorcade in Dallas. He was pronounced dead thirty minutes later in hospital, and Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president. The Warren Commission was appointed to investigate Kennedy's murder, and it concluded Kennedy was killed by a single bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald
1963 C.S. Lewis Belfast born, Oxford educated theologian and author (The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, Surprised by Joy) He died a week before his 65th birthday
1963 Aldous Huxley, age 69 British philosopher, satirist and author (Brave New World, Chrome Yellow, Point Counter Point, Eyeless in Gaza)
1980 Mae West, age 87 Actress and show business legend (Sextette, Go West, Young Man, I'm No Angel, Every Day's a Holiday, Diamond Lil, Sex, She Done Him Wrong, My Little Chickadee, Myra Breckinridge)
On this Day
1497 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in his search for a route to India
1830 Container transport was introduced by Pickfords, by agreement with the Liverpool & Manchester Railway Company
1906 The SOS distress signal was adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin
1928 Bolero by Maurice Ravel made its debut in Paris
1935 A flying boat named the China Clipper took off from Alameda, California. It carried more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight
1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss measures for defeating the Japanese during the Second World War
1946 The first ballpoint pen went on sale. It was invented by Hungarian Laslo Biro and manufactured by a British company. Many British TV shows still refer to a ballpoint pen as a Biro
1955 Elvis Presley was signed by RCA Victor after the company purchased Presley's contract from Sam Phillips of Sun Records for the then-unheard of sum of $35,000. Another $5,000 went to Presley as a bonus for signing. Elvis used the money to buy his mother a pink Cadillac
1961 Film producer Cubby Broccoli and his colleague Harry Saltzman started a publicity campaign to make a star out of Sean Connery, their choice for James Bond
1969 A group of Harvard scientists chemically isolated a single gene for the first time
1975 Juan Carlos was proclaimed King of Spain, two days after the death of General Francisco Franco, the dictator of Spain since 1936. He was sworn in as the first ruling monarch of Spain in almost forty years. Juan Carlos's grandfather was Alfonso XIII, the last ruling monarch of Spain, who was forced into exile after he refused to abdicate the throne after Spain was declared a republic. Juan Carlos returned to Spain in 1955 under the invitation of Franco, and studied in Madrid before earning several commissions in the Spanish armed forces. In 1969, Franco named him his successor. However, after assuming power, King Juan Carlos I immediately began dismantling Franco's system of dictatorial government, and over the next decade presided over a period of extensive democratisation in Spain
1977 Regular passenger service between North American and Europe on the supersonic Concorde began on a trial basis as SST's from Air France and British Airways landed at Kennedy International Airport in New York
1990 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced her retirement. She failed to win re-election of the Conservative party leadership on the first ballot. Thatcher, the first female prime minister in British history, resigned after eleven years in Britain's top office. Thatcher's resignation marked the longest continuous tenure of a British prime minister in 150 years
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