1628 John Bunyan – British preacher and author (Pilgrim’s Progress, Grace Abounding, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman)
1667 Jonathan Swift - Irish cleric and author (Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of a Tub, Drapier’s Letters, A Modest Proposal)
1835 Samuel Langhorne Clemens – US author who wrote under the pseudonym of Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson) Born in Missouri, he was apprenticed to a printer at age 13 and later worked for his older brother, who established the Hannibal Journal. In 1857, he decided to become a steamboat captain, signing on as a pilot's apprentice. He received his pilot's license in 1859 and piloted boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term Mark Twain, a boatman's call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by Mark Twain and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years. He travelled the world writing accounts for newspapers. In 1870, Clemens married the daughter of a wealthy New York coal merchant and settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he continued to write travel accounts and lecture. In 1903, he and his family moved to Italy, where his wife died
1872 Dr. John McCrae – Canadian physician and poet, was born at Guelph, Ontario. McCrae won a scholarship to the University of Toronto, but had to take a year off due to severe asthma, which recurred throughout his life. In 1898 he graduated with his MD and received a gold medal. In 1910 he served as expedition physician in Manitoba when the Governor General, Lord Grey, journeyed by canoe from Norway House on Lake Winnipeg to Hudson Bay. He was appointed brigade-surgeon to the First Brigade of the Canadian Forces Artillery with the rank of Major during the First World War. He wrote the poem In Flanders Fields in memory of the death of one of his close friends. The poem is recited in Remembrance Day observances in Canada each November 11th. Because of the poem's popularity, the poppy was adopted as the Flower of Remembrance for the war dead of many allied countries, including Britain, Canada and other members of the Commonwealth
1874 Lucy Maud Montgomery – Canadian author (Anne of Green Gables series, Emily of New Moon series, Kilmeny of the Orchard, The Blue Castle) She was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island
1874 Sir Winston Churchill – British statesmen, journalist, Prime Minister and author (The Second World War, Marlborough: His Life and Times, My Early Life, Savrola, My African Journey) He was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. Churchill came from a prestigious family with a long history of military service and joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father's death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving in a number of important posts before being appointed Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns, and he was excluded from the war coalition government. He resigned, but in 1917 returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party. He was out of office from 1929 to 1939. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill was called back to his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and eight months later replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would "never surrender." He rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that eventually crushed the Axis. In 1953 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume historical study of World War II and for his political speeches
1900 Geoffrey Household – British author (Rogue Male, Watcher in the Shadows, Dance of the Dwarfs, Against the Wind)
1912 Gordon Parks - Director (Leadbelly, Shaft, The Learning Tree)
1918 Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. - Actor (77 Sunser Strip, The FBI, Who Is the Black Dahlia?, Remington Steele, Hotel, Cab to Canada, Hot Shots!) He is the father of Stephanie Zimbalist
1920 Virginia Mayo – Actress (The Princess and the Pirate, The Kid from Brooklyn, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)
1924 Allan Sherman - Comedian (Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh!)
1926 Richard Crenna - Actor (The Real McCoys, Breakheart Pass, Our Miss Brooks, Death Ship, Rambo, Wrongfully Accused, Judging Amy)
1927 Robert Guillaume - Actor (Soap, Benson, North and South) He played Harlan Wade in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel
1929 Dick Clark - TV host (American Bandstand, New Year's Rockin' Eve)
1930 G. Gordon Liddy – Former “plumber” under the Nixon Administration, radio host (The G-Man, The G. Gordon Liddy Show)
1936 Abbie Hoffman – Activist, 1960s cultural revolutionary
1937 Sir Ridley Scott – British director (Alien, Thelma & Louise, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, Gladiator, The Duellists)
1947 David Mamet – Playwright (The Verdict, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Untouchables, Hoffa, Hannibal, Glengarry Glen Ross)
1952 Mandy Patinkin – Stage and screen actor and singer (The Princess Bride, Chicago Hope, Yentl, Ragtime, Alien Nation, Dick Tracy, Dead Like Me, Criminal Minds)
1955 Billy Idol – Rock musician (White Wedding, Rebel Yell, Blue Highway, Mony Mony)
1957 Colin Mochrie – Scottish-born Canadian actor (This Hour has 22 Minutes, Whose Line is it Anyway?, She’s the Mayor, Seven Little Monsters, Blackfly
1959 Eamonn Walker – British actor (Oz, Kings, Lord of War, The Bill)
1965 Ben Stiller – Actor (Zoolander, Meet the Parents, The Royal Tenenbaums, There's Something About Mary, Zero Effect, Saturday Night Live) His parents are Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara
1982 Elisha Cuthbert – Canadian actress (24, The Girl Next Door, Happy Endings, Old School, Are You Afraid of the Dark?)
Died this Day
1900 Oscar Wilde, age 46 - Irish author and playwright (The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, An Ideal Husband, The Canterville Ghost) He died of acute meningitis in Paris
1977 Sir Terence Rattigan – British playwright (The Browning Version, The Winslow Boy, Ross, The Deep Blue Sea)
1979 Zeppo Marx - The youngest of the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, Animal Crackers, The Cocoanuts) He died in Palm Springs, California, of cancer
1996 Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury), age 64 - Ukulele playing, falsetto singer (Tiptoe Through The Tulips)
On this Day
1782 A preliminary peace treaty was signed between Britain and the US, ending the War of Independence
1824 Samuel Keefer began construction of the Welland Canal, joining Lake Erie and Lake Ontario
1840 Napoleon I’s remains were returned to Paris from St. Helena
1866 Work on the first underwater highway tunnel in the US began in Chicago, Illinois. Over a three-year period, workers and engineers tunnelled underneath the Chicago River, completing the 1,500-foot tunnel at a cost of over $500,000. The tunnel had two roadways, each eleven feet tall and thirteen feet wide, and a separate walkway ten feet wide and ten feet tall. In 1907, the tunnel was lowered to provide better air circulation, and for the first time it began to allow regular automobile traffic
1886 The Folies Bergère introduced an elaborate review featuring women in sensational costumes to Paris audiences. Several years later, the Folies followed the Parisian taste for striptease and quickly gained a reputation for spectacular nudie shows. The Folies spared no expense to stage reviews that often featured forty sets, 1,000 costumes, and an off-stage crew of some 200 people. The Folies originated as a hall for operettas, pantomime, and political meetings
1913 Charlie Chaplin made his film debut, without hat and cane, in Mack Sennett’s Making a Living
1936 London's famed Crystal Palace, constructed for the International Exhibition of 1851, was destroyed in a spectacular blaze that was seen miles away
1954 The first modern instance of a meteorite striking a human being occurred at Sylacauga, Alabama, when a meteorite crashed through the roof of a house and into a living room, bounced off a radio, and struck a woman on the hip. Elizabeth Hodges, was not permanently injured but suffered a nasty bruise along her hip and leg. The space rock was a sulphide meteorite weighing 8.5 pounds and measuring seven inches in length. Ancient Chinese records tell of people being injured or killed by falling meteorites, but the Sylacauga meteorite was the first modern record of this type of human injury. In 1911, a dog in Egypt was killed by the Nakhla meteorite
1956 Floyd Patterson became the youngest boxer to win the world heavyweight title, at age 21, when he knocked out Archie Moore in Round Five in Chicago
1966 At the request of island leaders, Barbados, a British crown colony in the West Indies, was granted independence by the British Parliament. The first British settlers arrived in Barbados in 1627, and in 1885 the island was designated a crown colony
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