1757 William Blake – British illustrator and poet (Songs of Innocence, The Visions of the Daughters of Albion, The Ghost of Abel) He engraved his own poems and drawings on copper plates
1820 Friedrich Engels – German born political thinker and author (Condition of the Working Classes in England) He settled in Britain and worked with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto
1837 John Wesley Hyatt – US inventor who discovered a process for making celluloid while trying to find a substitute for ivory billiard balls
1851 Albert Henry George, Earl Grey – British diplomat. He was born at St James's Palace, London. Grey served as Governor General of Canada from 1904 to 1911, and donated the Grey Cup for the best football team in Canada
1858 Sir Robert Abbott Hadfield, Baronet – British metallurgist who developed manganese steel, an alloy of exceptional durability, which he patented in 1884. It was hardened by quenching it in water from a temperature of a thousand degrees centigrade. The hard steel was used in the manufacture of tram wheels, railroad rails and rock-crushing machinery. The first World War provided new markets for manganese steel: spur armour plate and shells, tank treads and soldier's helmets. By 1919, Hadfields Steel Foundry Co. Ltd. were Sheffield's biggest employers
1904 Nancy Mitford – British author (Love In A Cold Climate, The Sun King, Highland Fling, Christmas Pudding)
1923 Gloria Grahame - Actress (Oklahoma!, It's a Wonderful Life, Not as a Stranger, Melvyn and Howard, Rich Man Poor Man)
1929 Berry Gordy Jr. – Founder of Motown Records who is credited with giving a start to many recording artists (Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Jackson Five, Lionel Ritchie, Stevie Wonder)
1931 Hope Lange - Actress (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Bus Stop, A Clear and Present Danger, Death Wish)
1943 Randy Newman - Composer of movie scores (Ragtime, The Natural, Toy Story) and singer (I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today, Living Without You) He also wrote and sang Monk’s theme song, It’s a Jungle Out There
1949 Alexander Godunov – Russian ballet dancer
1949 Paul Shaffer - Canadian born band leader (Late Show with David Letterman)
1950 Ed Harris - Actor (The Right Stuff, The Abyss, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Firm, Apollo 13, Nixon, The Rock)
1952 S. Epatha Merkerson – Actress (Law & Order, Jacob’s Ladder, Terminator 2: Judgement Day)
1959 Judd Nelson – Actor (St. Elmo’s Fire, The Breakfast Club, New Jack City, Airheads)
1961 Martin Clunes – British actor (Doc Martin, Men Behaving Badly, Reggie Perrin, William and Mary, Lorna Doone, Shakespear in Love, Jeeves & Wooster, The Russia House, No Place Like Home) He portrayed James Balcombe in the Inspector Morse episode Happy Families
1962 Jon Stewart – Comedian and actor (The Daily Show, Death to Smoochy, Playing by Heart, The Larry Sanders Show)
Died this Day
1698 Louis de Buade et de Palluau, Count Frontenac – French soldier and Governor of New France. Frontenac was largely responsible for opening up New France, despite orders from his superiors. He had been instructed to limit French settlement to areas with direct maritime links with France. Frontenac was also told to concentrate colonists in defensible communities and to occupy settlers in farming and manual trades. Instead, he sent out exploratory parties to establish forts to benefit his friends in the fur industry
1859 Washington Irving – US author (Rip van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Bracebridge Hall, Astoria, Adventures of Captain Bonneville)
1939 James A. Naismith – Canadian education instructor and inventor of the game of basketball, which he devised while working as the physical education director of the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. He died in Lawrence, Kansas, three weeks after his 78th birthday
1954 Enrico Fermi, age 53 - Italian-born physicist and Nobel Prize winner who helped develop the US's first atomic weapons
1968 Enid Blyton, age 71 – British author of children’s books (The Sea of Adventure, The Castle of Adventure, Little Noddy stories)
On this Day
1520 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan entered the Pacific Ocean after sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name. He was the first European explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. Magellan set out from Spain in September 1520, with five ships and 265 men, on a voyage to find a western passage to the Spice Islands in Indonesia. After passing through the Straits of Magellan, the fleet accomplished the first westward crossing of the Pacific Ocean in ninety-nine days, crossing waters so strangely calm that Magellan named the ocean Pacific, from the Latin word pacificus, meaning peaceful and tranquil. The expedition reached the island of Guam in March 1521, and then continued on to the Philippines, where Magellan was killed by the natives of Mactan Island in April 1521. His ships continued the voyage without him, and in 1522, one of the five original ships returned to Spain, thus completing the first successful circumnavigation of the world
1582 William Shakespeare, age 18, and Anne Hathaway, age 26, paid a £40 bond for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Six months later, Anne gave birth to their daughter, Susanna, and two years later, to twins
1660 The Royal Society was founded in London
1797 In Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the North West Company began construction on the Sault Ste. Marie Canal. It was completed in 1801, but destroyed by the US in the War of 1812
1893 New Zealand women voted for the first time
1885 In Ottawa, Ontario, the Cabinet ordered the creation of Banff Hot Springs Reserve, consisting of 10 square miles on the northern slopes of Sulphur Mountain surrounding three hot springs. Two years later, Rocky Mountains National Park, now Banff National Park, was created with the passing of the Rocky Mountains Park Act. It was Canada’s first national park
1895 The first automobile race took place between Chicago and Waukegan, Illinois. The winner, James Franklin Duryea, collected $2,000 from the Chicago Times-Herald. He maintained a speed of 12 miles per hour
1899 Curtis Brady received the first permit to drive a car in Central Park, New York
1905 Sinn Féin, a political party dedicated to independence for all of Ireland, was founded in Dublin by Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith. Sinn Féin is Gaelic for "we ourselves," but also for "ourselves alone." From its inception, the political party became the unofficial political wing of militant Irish groups, such as the Irish Volunteers, a prototype of the Irish Republican Army
1919 Lady Astor became the first woman in history to be elected to the British Parliament. She was US-born Nancy Astor, wife of Waldorf Astor, and succeeded her husband as MP for Plymouth in the House of Commons, as he moved up to the House of Lords. Her impassioned speeches on women's and children's rights, her modest black attire, and her occasional irreverence won her a significant following
1922 The first skywriting in the US was demonstrated over Times Square, in New York City, by Captain Cyril Turner of Britain’s Royal Air Force. Flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet, he wrote letters in white smoke a half-mile high. The smoke was formed by oil, which was controlled by levers and dropped on the plane's hot exhaust pipe. The message in the sky was, “Hello, USA Call Vanderbilt 7200.” In New York, Major Jack Savage had been trying to sell skywriting as advertising to a sceptical George W. Hill, head of the American Tobacco Company. Savage had invited Hill to the Vanderbilt Hotel, to see the results of the demonstration. Hill was convinced by the 47,000 telephone calls in less than 3 hours. Turner had first used skywriting for advertising for a newspaper's name over England in May 1922
1925 The Grand Ole Opry, one of the longest-lived and most popular showcases for western music, debuted. The show started as a country-music hour on WSM, a local Nashville radio station. Host George Dewey Hay loved authentic country music and invited an 83-year-old Civil War veteran to play fiddle for an hour one afternoon. Hay continued to encourage grassroots musicians to come to the studio and play, and soon audiences were flocking there as well. The show, previously called the "The WSM Barn Dance," was later dubbed "The Grand Ole Opry." Although the show lasted only an hour on the air, the live version often ran for four hours or more. The audience kept outgrowing the studio-from a small space, to a 500-seat studio, to a 2,000-seat auditorium in 1939. In 1974, the show moved to a new home, Opryland, which boasted a 4,400-seat theatre
1925 NHL goalie Georges Vézina collapsed in a game, and would die of tuberculosis 4 months later. Vézina tended goal for the Montréal Canadiens from 1910 to 1925 without missing a single game. The Canadiens donated the Vézina Trophy to the NHL in his honour
1942 Almost 500 people died in a flash fire at Boston's Coconut Grove night-club. Night-club singer Bill Payne saved 10 patrons by leading them into a huge icebox in the building's basement
1948 Dr. Edwin Land’s first Polaroid cameras went on sale in Boston
1964 The US launched the space probe Mariner 4 on a course to Mars
1967 The first pulsating radio source, or pulsar, was detected by graduate student, Jocelyn Bell, then working under the direction of Professor A. Hewish at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cambridge, England. They were using a special radio telescope, a large array of 2,048 aerials covering an area of 4.4 acres. The discovery of pulsars opened new horizons in studies as diverse as quantum-degenerate fluids, relativistic gravity and interstellar magnetic fields
1979 New York Islanders' Billy Smith became the first NHL goalie to score a goal. But it wasn't enough as his team lost 4-3 to the Colorado Rockies
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