1815 Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace – Mathematician and daughter of the poet Lord Byron. She was an important influence on Charles Babbage, who developed one of the first mechanical computers, and she is sometimes credited with the invention of computer programming. In June 1833, Lovelace first met Babbage at one of the mathematician's celebrated parties. A well-known figure whose frequent salons drew luminaries like Darwin, Longfellow, and Dickens, Babbage was hard at work on a calculating machine he called the Difference Engine. Lovelace, a mathematical prodigy, became fascinated by the machine and quickly befriended Babbage. They kept up a lively correspondence about the machine for many years, and Lovelace helped spread the ideas behind the Difference Engine by publishing scientific papers describing the machine. These papers were published anonymously, as women in nineteenth-century England rarely published under their own names
1830 Emily Dickinson – US poet (Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Fame Is a Fickle Food, I Cannot Live With You, I Felt A Funeral In My Brain, To Make A Prairie) Dickinson was a witty and popular student at Amherst Academy and at Mt. Holyoke but was viewed as somewhat unconventional. She made a few trips to Philadelphia and Boston but rarely left her home in Amherst, which she preferred. Her stern lawyer father, invalid mother, spinster sister, and domineering brother created a colourful, if oppressive, family life. In 1858, Dickinson began collecting the many short poems she wrote into small, hand-sewn books. In 1862, she wrote an editor at the Atlantic Monthly, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, to evaluate her work. He felt her work wasn't yet ready to publish but became her mentor, and the two corresponded for many years. Dickinson was increasingly reluctant to leave the house after 1862 and would often decline even to see visitors. Although she wrote 1,775 poems, only seven were published in her lifetime. In 1890, thanks to her sister's efforts, Poems by Emily Dickinson was published, followed by more volumes over the next 60 years
1851 Melvil Dewey – US librarian who devised the library cataloguing system which bears his name
1903 William Plomer – South African born poet and author (Dado, The Fivefold Screen, Visiting the Caves)
1906 Harold Adamson - Lyricist (Time on My Hands, Daybreak)
1913 Morton Gould - Composer (Fall River Legend, Billion Dollar Baby)
1914 Dorothy Lamour - Actress (Donovan’s Reef, The Greatest Show on Earth, Slightly French, St. Louis Blues, My Favorite Brunette) She appeared in numerous 'Road' movies with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby
1923 Harold Gould - Actor (Stuart Little, Patch Adams, The Sting, Rhoda)
1928 Dan Blocker – Actor (Bonanza, Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County, Cimarron City, Outer Space Jitters)
1928 John Colicos – Canadian actor (Anne of a Thousand Days, The National Dream, Battlestar Galactica, General Hospital, Star Trek Deep Space Nine)
1933 Mako – Japanese actor (Seven Years in Tibet, Conan the Barbarian, Pacific Heights, The Ugly Dachshund, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pearl Harbor, M*A*S*H, Hawaiian Heat, McHale’s Navy, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne)
1941 Tommy Kirk - Actor (Old Yeller, The Absent Minded Professor, The Swiss Family Robinson, Bikini Beach, Mars Needs Women, Son of Flubber)
1941 Fionnula Flanagan – Irish actress (The Others, To Have and To Hold, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Rich Man Poor Man, Waking Ned Devine, How The West Was Won, The Legend of Lizzie Borden)
1952 Susan Dey – Actress (The Partridge Family, LA Law, Love & War, Looker)
1957 Michael Clarke Duncan – Actor (The Green Mile, Sin City, Daredevil, The Finder, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby)
1960 Kenneth Branagh – Belfast born actor (Wallander, Much Ado About Nothing, Fortunes of War, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Othello, Hamlet) and director (Henry V, Dead Again)
1961 Nia Peeples - Actress (Fame, Return to Lonesome Dove, Terminal) She played Cathy Redding in the Perry Mason movie the Case of the Silenced Singer
1980 Sarah Chang - Violinist
Died this Day
1896 Alfred Bernhard Nobel, age 63 – Swedish chemist and industrialist who made much of his fortune from his invention of dynamite in 1867. Exactly five years after his death, the Nobel Prize awards were established under the terms of his will
1917 Mackenzie Bowell - Canada's 5th Prime Minister. He died 3 weeks before his 94th birthday
1946 Alfred Damon Runyon – US author (Guys and Dolls, Blue Plate Special, A Slight Case of Murder, Take It Easy)
1967 Otis Redding, age 26 – Singer (Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, These Arms of Mine, Mr. Pitiful) He, and four members of his band, the Bar-Kays, were killed when their twin-engine plane crashed into a lake near Madison, Wisconsin
1987 Jascha Heifetz – Lithuanian born US violin virtuoso
On this Day
1520 Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict demanding that he recant or face excommunication
1768 The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in London
1817 Mississippi became the 20th state of the Union
1845 English inventor R.W. Thompson received a British patent for his new carriage wheels, which had inflated tubes of heavy rubber stretched around their rims - the world's first pneumatic tires. They became popular on horse-drawn carriages, and later prevented the first motorcar passengers from being shaken to pieces
1868 Whitaker’s Almanac was published for the first time. It was featured in the Sherlock Holmes story The Valley of Fear
1898 The Spanish-American War ended as the Treaty of Paris was signed in France, granting the US its first overseas empire. The war erupted in April of 1898, when the US demanded the withdrawal of Spain from Cuba. The Spanish Empire was virtually dissolved by the Treaty of Paris. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded to the US, and Cuba became a US protectorate. Hawaii, an independent republic run by US expatriates since 1894, was also formally annexed during the Spanish-American War
1901 The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The awards were devised by Alfred Nobel, who regretted the damage he had done to the world through his inventions of dynamite and other explosives
1906 President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was given it for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War
1915 The one-millionth Model T Ford was produced, a triumph of Henry Ford's assembly-line innovations, and the dawn of a new era. The speed and efficiency of Ford's factories made automobiles cheaper than ever. Average families could afford their own cars. The modern motorised world was being born
1928 Piccadilly Circus Underground station in London opened
1938 British actress Vivien Leigh was chosen by producer David O. Selznick to play Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara in the film version of Gone With The Wind. The choice of Leigh ended a months-long search across the US for the perfect Scarlett. She was awarded an Oscar for her performance
1954 The three-quarter mile Canso Causeway, the deepest causeway in the world, was completed between mainland Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. The causeway created a year-round ice-free port for the major towns along the strait and helped establish the area as an important pulpwood centre. But it was also held partly responsible for the decline of the lobster fishery along the Atlantic coast because it cut off the supply of lobster larvae spawned in the gulf
1958 The first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the US as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York City to Miami
1963 Frank Sinatra Jr, who was kidnapped in Lake Tahoe, California, two days earlier, was allowed to talk to his father briefly. The 19-year-old Frank Jr was abducted at gunpoint from his hotel room at Harrah's Casino and taken to Canoga Park, an area of Southern California's San Fernando Valley. After the brief conversation between father and son, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of $240,000 in used bills. Barry Keenan, the young mastermind behind the scheme, had also considered abducting the sons of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. But he and his partners decided upon Frank Sinatra Jr because they thought he would be tough enough to handle the stress of a kidnapping. Although the crime was originally scheduled for November, President Kennedy's assassination delayed their plan. Immediately following his son's abduction, Frank Sr received offers of assistance from Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Sam Giancana, one of the country's most powerful organised crime leaders. But Frank Sr declined. Instead, he accepted aid from the FBI. After a series of phone calls, the kidnappers revealed the drop point for the ransom money and said that Frank Jr could be found on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. In an attempt to avoid a public scene, law enforcement officials picked the young Sinatra up and brought him home in the trunk of their car. Within a couple of days, John Irwin, one of Keenan's partners, turned himself in to the San Diego FBI field office and confessed to the crime. By December 14th, all the perpetrators had been located and arrested. During the trial, which took place in the spring of 1964, controversy erupted when the defendants claimed that Frank Jr had orchestrated the abduction as an elaborate publicity stunt. Gladys Root, a flamboyant Los Angeles attorney, pursued this line of defence, despite the fact that there was no evidence to support the accusation. Even after Keenan and the others were convicted, the rumours persisted. For his part, Keenan was sentenced to four years in prison
1964 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr received the Nobel Peace Prize during ceremonies in Oslo, Norway
1984 South African Bishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize
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