1804 Franklin Pierce – 14th US President
1859 Billy the Kid – Notorious US outlaw. He was born in a poor Irish neighbourhood on New York City's East Side to Catherine and William McCarty
1869 Valdemar Poulsen – Danish engineer who invented the tape recorder which he patented in 1898, but the device, which recorded on piano wire, had limited applications
1887 Boris Karloff – British actor (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Treasure Island, Bikini Beach, The Raven, Die Monster Die!, The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Mummy, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Body Snatcher, The Lost Patrol) He narrated How the Grinch Stole Christmas and supplied the voice of the Grinch
1888 Harpo Marx – US comedian (Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, Animal Crackers) The second eldest of the Marx Brothers, his trademarks were his red wig, horn, harp and mime skills
1902 Victor Jory - Actor (Gone with the Wind, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Miracle Worker, Papillon)
1915 Ellen Drew - Actress (Hollywood Boulevard, China Sky, Christmas in July, Dark Mountain)
1917 Michael Gough – Malaya born British actor (The Boys From Brazil, The Go-Between, QB VII, Smiley’s People, Brideshead Revisited, Top Secret!, Out of Africa, The Age of Innocence, Sleepy Hollow, The Dresser) He played Mr. Partridge in the 1955 Sherlock Holmes TV series episode The Case of the Perfect Husband He also played Philip Ogleby in the Inspector Morse episode The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn And… he also portrayed Alfred Pennyworth in the Batman series of movies
1928 Jerry Bock – Broadway composer (Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello)
1940 Betty Everett - Singer (Shoop Shoop Song: It's in His Kiss)
1940 Freddy Marsden – Drummer and singer with Gerry and the Pacemakers (Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying, Ferry Cross the Mersey, How Do You Do It?, I Like It)
1945 Steve Landesberg - Actor (Barney Miller, Friends and Lovers, Dean Martin Presents, Sodbusters, Mission of the Shark, Final Notice, Leader of the Band)
1946 Diana Quick – British actress (Poirot: Sad Cypress, Aristocrats, Heat of the Sun, Rasputin, Brideshead Revisited) She played Hilary Stephens in the Inspector Morse episode Absolute Conviction
1954 Bruce Hornsby – Pianist & singer with Bruce Hornsby and the Range (The Way It Is, Mandolin Rain, Every Little Kiss)
Died this Day
1499 Perkin Warbeck - Accused pretender to the English Throne, was hanged in the Tower of London, after twice attempting to escape. The so-called Warbeck, who allegedly impersonated the younger of the two sons of King Edward IV, was executed by order of King Henry VII. According to Tudor accounts, Warbeck, born in Tournai, Holland, was persuaded by enemies of King Henry VII to impersonate Richard, Duke of York, who was apparently killed along with his older brother Edward by King Richard III. Richard III ascended to the throne after the death of his brother, King Edward IV, imprisoned Edward's sons in the Tower of London, and in an attempt to secure the throne, allegedly murdered his two nephews, popularly known as the Princes in the Tower. After only two years as king, Richard III himself was killed on Bosworth Field during a battle with his rival, Henry Tudor, the future King Henry VII. Beginning in 1495, Warbeck, claiming to be Richard, Duke of York, launched the first of three unsuccessful invasions of England, aided by supporters in England, Scotland, and Ireland. During the third attempt, he was captured at Beaulieu and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was eventually executed after reportedly trying to escape. Whether Warbeck was yet another in a long line of pretenders to the British throne as the Tudor historians claimed, or if he was in fact young Richard, spared by a less ruthless Richard III, as many revisionists now believe, has yet to be determined
1809 Edward Jordan – Pirate, who was convicted in Canada's first piracy trial. He was hanged in Halifax, and his tarred and chained corpse was hung on a gibbet at the entrance to Halifax Harbour
1910 Hawley Harvey Crippen - US-born British physician, hanged at London's Pentonville Prison for murdering his wife after falling in love with his receptionist, Ethel Le Neve. He was the first criminal brought to justice by the use of radio when the pair attempted to sail to Canada on the SS Montrose, with Le Neve disguised as a young man. The captain of the vessel became suspicious and radioed for detectives to intercept the ship. Crippen was arrested near Rimouski, Québec. Le Neve was tried separately and found not guilty
1979 Merle Oberon, age 68 – Tasmanian born actress (Wuthering Heights, Stage Door Canteen, Deep in My Heart, Hotel, The Oscar, Interval)
On this Day
1617 Anne Hébert married Étienne Jonquet at Québec. It was the first marriage on record in the colony
1815 Canada's first street lamps, fuelled by whale oil, were installed in Montréal. Exactly 22 years later, in 1837, Montréal shops were first lit by coal gas, replacing whale oil
1852 The first pillar boxes were erected in St Helier, in the Channel Islands where, according to a British Post Office surveyor sent over to inspect postal facilities, “there were no receiving offices for people in distant parts of the town”. The surveyor, Anthony Trollope, later became known as an author
1874 Thomas Hardy's novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, was first published. In the novel, farm owner Bathsheba Everdene is courted by three suitors, each showing a different face of love and human nature. Although the book ends happily, it contains many of the tragic elements, grim view of human nature, and pessimistic outlook that characterise Hardy's later work
1876 William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, leader of New York City's corrupt Tammany Hall political organisation during the 1860s and early 1870s, was delivered to authorities in New York City after his capture in Spain. Tweed, one of the most notorious of all late nineteenth-century corrupt politicians, first became a powerful figure in Tammany Hall, New York City's Democratic political machine, in the late 1850s. By the mid 1860s, he had risen to the top position in the organisation and formed the Tweed Ring, which openly bought votes, encouraged judicial corruption, extracted millions from city contracts, and dominated New York City politics. The Tweed Ring reached its peak of fraudulence in 1871 with the remodelling of the City Court House, a blatant embezzlement of city funds that was exposed by The New York Times. Tweed and his associates hoped the criticism would blow over, but thanks to the efforts of opponents such as Harper's Weekly political cartoonist Thomas Nast, virtually every Tammany Hall member was swept from power in elections in November 1871. All of the Tweed Ring were subsequently tried and sentenced to prison, but "Boss" Tweed himself escaped to Spain, where, five years later, Spanish police reportedly recognised him from a famous Nash cartoon depiction. After Tweed's extradition to the US, he was sent to serve out his sentence in a New York prison, where he died two years later
1877 The US paid Canada 5.5-million dollars for fishing rights and free navigation of the St. Lawrence River in perpetuity
1889 The first juke box, created by Louis Glass, was installed the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco by the Pacific Phonograph Company. The contraption consisted of an Edison tinfoil phonograph with four listening tubes and a coin slot for each tube. Glass called his innovation a Nickel-in-the-Slot machine
1903 Italian tenor Enrico Caruso made his US debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, appearing in Rigoletto
1915 The World War I song, Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, was first published. It was written by two brothers from Wales, Felix Powell and George Asaf
1921 US President Harding signed a law prohibiting the consumption of beer
1923 A patent for the world's first practical electric shaver was granted to Colonel Jacob Schick
1936 Life magazine, created by Henry R. Luce, was first published
1945 Most US wartime rationing of foods, including meat and butter, ended
1959 Robert Stroud, the famous Birdman of Alcatraz, was allowed a small taste of freedom, and released from solitary confinement for the first time since 1916. Stroud gained widespread fame and attention when author Thomas Gaddis wrote a biography that trumpeted Stroud's ornithological expertise. Stroud was first sent to prison in 1909 after he killed a bartender in a brawl. He had nearly completed his sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas when he stabbed a guard to death in 1915. Though he claimed to have acted in self-defence, he was convicted and sentenced to hang. A hand-written plea by Stroud's mother to President Woodrow Wilson earned Stroud a commuted sentence of life in permanent solitary confinement. For the next 15 years, Stroud lived amongst the canaries that were brought to him by visitors, and became an expert in birds and ornithological diseases. But after being ordered to give up his birds in 1931, he redirected his energies to writing about them and published his first book on ornithology two years later. When the publisher failed to pay Stroud royalties because he was barred from filing suit, Stroud took out advertisements complaining about the situation. Prison officials retaliated by sending him to Alcatraz, the federal prison with the worst conditions
1963 The first episode of the BBC serial, Dr. Who, was screened in Britain. The producer, Sydney Newman, thought the Daleks were “bug-eyed monsters” and totally wrong for the series
1964 Latin was used as the official liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church for the last time
1969 The first space-to-ground news conference was telecast. Reporters in Houston submitted written questions to a lieutenant at the Houston NASA base, who read them to astronauts aboard Apollo 12. The space capsule returned to Earth the next day
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