1835 Andrew Carnegie – Scottish born US industrialist and philanthropist who devoted his vast wealth to libraries and universities, and Carnegie Hall which opened in 1891 in New York
1844 Karl Friedrich Benz – German engineer and motor car pioneer who built the world’s first practical internal combustion vehicle in 1885
1846 Carrie Nation – US crusader who helped to form the Wormen's Christian Temperance Union. She was known attacking saloons with her hatchet, and smashing them to pieces
1881 Angelo Roncalli – Pope John XXIII, was born near Bergamo, Italy
1914 'Joltin' Joe Dimaggio - Baseball Hall of Famer, and a husband of Marilyn Monroe
1920 Ricardo Montalban – Mexican-born actor (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Fantasy Island, The Singing Nun, Sweet Charity, The Naked Gun)
1944 Bev Bevan – British drummer with the Electric Light Orchestra (Evil Woman, Strange Magic, Can’t Get It Out of My Head)
1947 John Larroquette -Actor (Night Court, Stripes, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Altered States, Cat People, Summer Rental, Blind Date, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
1960 John F. Kennedy Jr. – Son of US President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy
1965 Dougray Scott – Scottish actor (Heist, Desperate Housewives, To Kill a King, Enigma, Mission Impossible II)
1966 Billy Burke – Actor (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Ladder 49, Wonderland, 24, Revolution, Zoo, Major Crimes)
1968 Jill Hennessy – Canadian actress (Crossing Jordan, Law & Order, Exit Wounds, Nuremberg, Dead Ringers)
1971 Christina Applegate – Actress (Married with Children, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Wild Bill, Samantha Who?, Up All Night)
Died this Day
1937 Dame Lilian Baylis – Founder of London’s Old Vic Theatre
1949 Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, age 71 – US tap dancer and entertainer. He was considered one of the world’s greatest tap dancers, and appeared in many films (The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Stormy Weather, Cotton Club Revue, In Old Kentucky)
On this Day
2348 BC This the day that some Biblical scholars calculated The Flood began
1542 The Scottish forces were routed at the battle of Solway Moss, the second of Henry the Eighth's repeated punitive expeditions
1715 A patent was granted to Thomas Masters for his wife's invention to clean and cure corn. Sybilla Masters thus became the New World's first female inventor
1735 The Tsar Kolokol bell was cast. Weighing nearly 200 tonnes, it is probably the heaviest bell in the world. During a great fire a few years after casting, firemen poured water onto it, causing an 11-tonne section to split off. It stands on a platform in the Kremlin
1743 Religious communities in New France were forbidden to acquire land without royal permission
1758 In the French and Indian War, the British captured Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh
1783 Nearly three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris ending the American War for Independence, the last British soldiers evacuated New York City, their last military position in the US. Following the withdrawal of the last British soldier, US General George Washington entered the city in triumph. The British captured New York City in September of 1776, and it remained in their hands for the next seven years. Four months after the city was returned to the US, New York was declared the capital, a distinction it held until the end of 1790, when Philadelphia became the second capital of the US under the US Constitution
1834 A three-course meal at Delmonico's Hotel in New York cost 12˘
1851 The first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in America opened
1876 US Army troops under the leadership of General Ranald Mackenzie destroyed a village of Cheyenne who were living with Chief Dull Knife on the headwaters of the Powder River. The attack was in retaliation against some of the Indians who had participated in the massacre of Custer and his men at Little Bighorn. Although the Sioux and Cheyenne won one of their greatest victories at Little Bighorn, the battle actually marked the beginning of the end of their ability to resist the US government. News of the massacre of Custer and his men reached the East Coast in the midst of nation-wide centennial celebrations on July 4, 1876. Outraged at the killing of one of their most popular Civil War heroes, many demanded an intensified military campaign against the offending Indians. The government responded by sending one of its most successful Indian fighters to the region, General Ranald Mackenzie, who had previously been the scourge of Commanche and Kiowa Indians in Texas. Mackenzie led an expeditionary force up the Powder River in central Wyoming, where he located a village of Cheyenne living with Chief Dull Knife. Although Dull Knife himself does not appear to have been involved in the battle at Little Bighorn, there is no question that many of his people were, including one of his sons. At dawn, Mackenzie and over 1,000 soldiers and 400 Indian scouts opened fire on the sleeping village, killing many Indians within the first few minutes. Some of the Cheyenne, though, managed to run into the surrounding hills. They watched as the soldiers burned more than 200 lodges, which contained all their winter food and clothing, and then cut the throats of their ponies. When the soldiers found souvenirs taken by the Cheyenne from soldiers they had killed at Little Bighorn, the assailants felt justified in their attack. The surviving Cheyenne, many of them half-naked, began an 11-day walk north to the Tongue River where Crazy Horse's camp of Oglalas took them in. However, many of the small children and elderly did not survive the frigid journey. Devastated by his losses, the next spring Dull Knife convinced the remaining Cheyenne to surrender. The army sent them South to Indian Territory, where other defeated survivors of the final years of the Plains Indian wars soon joined them
1884 Evaporated milk was patented by John Mayenberg of St. Louis, Missouri
1896 William Marshall became the first person in Britain to receive a parking summons after leaving his car in Tokenhouse Yard in the City of London. The case was later dismissed
1923 US listeners heard the first program transmitted from Great Britain. It was a piano concert broadcast from London, and greeted listeners in New York and Massachusetts with "Hello, America!" All US radio stations ceased broadcasting from 10:00 to 10:30 PM to reduce interference with the transmittal
1952 Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. Four-hundred and fifty-three attended the premiere of the crowd-pleasing whodunit, which would go on to become the longest continuously running play in history, with more than 10 million people attending its more than 20,000 performances in London's West End. Christie, already a hugely successful English mystery novelist, originally wrote the drama for Queen Mary, wife of the late King George V. Initially called Three Blind Mice, it debuted as a 30-minute radio play on the queen's 80th birthday in 1947. Christie later extended the play and renamed it The Mousetrap, a reference to the play-within-a-play performed in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The drama is played out at Monkswell Manor, whose hosts and guests are snowed in among radio reports of a murderer on the loose. Soon a detective shows up on skis with the terrifying news that the murderer, and probably the next victim, are likely both among their number. Soon the clues and false leads pile as high as the snow. At every curtain call, the individual who has been revealed as the murderer steps forward and tells the audience that they are "partners in crime" and should "keep the secret of the whodunit locked in their heart." Richard Attenborough and his wife, Sheila Sim, were the first stars of The Mousetrap, and more than 300 actors and actresses have appeared in the roles of the eight characters. David Raven, who played Major Metcalf for 4,575 performances, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most durable actor, while Nancy Seabrooke is noted as the world's most patient understudy for 6,240 performances, or 15 years, as the substitute for Mrs. Boyle. Asked about its enduring appeal, Christie said, "It is the sort of play you can take anyone to. It is not really frightening. It is not really horrible. It is not really a farce, but it has a little bit of all these things, and perhaps that satisfies a lot of different people." In 1974, after almost 9,000 shows, the play was moved to St. Martin's Theatre
1960 The Amos n' Andy radio show went off the air
1963 Three days after his assassination in Dallas, Texas, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the US, was laid to rest with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. A million people lined the route as a horse-drawn caisson bore the body to St. Matthew's Catholic Cathedral for a requiem mass, before continuing on to Arlington National Cemetery where leaders of ninety-two nations gathered for the state funeral. Millions also watched the solemn ceremonies on television. Kennedy was buried on a slope below Arlington House, with an eternal flame, lighted by his widow, marking the grave
1973 In response to the 1973 oil crisis, President Richard M. Nixon called for a Sunday ban on the sale of gasoline to consumers. The crisis began in mid-October, when eleven Arab oil producers increased oil prices and cut back production in response to the support of the US and other nations for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Almost overnight, gasoline prices quadrupled, and the US economy suffered greatly as a result. The Sunday gasoline ban lasted until the crisis was resolved in March of the next year
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