1773 William Henry Harrison - Ninth US President. He was the first president to die in office, and had the shortest term at 32 days
1863 Anthony Hope - British novelist (The Prisoner of Zenda, Rupert of Hentzau, The Dolly Dialogues)
1891 Ronald Colman - British actor (A Tale of Two Cities, Lost Horizon, The Prisoner of Zenda, Around the World in 80 Days, Romola)
1899 Brian Donlevy - Actor (Destry Rides Again, Wake Island, Arizona Bushwackers, Five Golden Dragons, Jesse James, Dangerous Assignment)
1914 Carmen Miranda - Singer, dancer and actress known as The Brazilian Bombshell (Copacabana, Something for the Boys, Springtime in the Rockies)
1914 Ernest Tubb - Country Music Hall of Famer (Walking the Floor Over You, Thanks a Lot, Waltz Across Texas, Soldier's Last Letter, It's Been So Long Darlin') He headlined the first country music show at Carnegie Hall
1923 Kathryn Grayson - Actress (Kiss Me Kate, Show Boat, The Kissing Bandit, It Happened in Brooklyn, Anchors Aweigh)
1936 Clive Swift – British actor (Keeping Up Appearances, Peak Practice, A Passage to India, Excalibur, Born & Bred) He played Doctor Thomas Bartlett in the Inspector Morse episode The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn
1939 Janet Suzman - South African actress (Nuns on the Run, A Dry White Season, Nicholas and Alexandra) She played Claire Brewster in the Inspector Morse episode Deadly Slumber
1941 Carole King - Singer & songwriter (Loco-motion, It Might as Well Rain Until September, It's Too Late, Jazzman, Tapestry)
1942 Barry Mann - Singer (Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)
1943 Joe Pesci - Actor (My Cousin Vinnie, Goodfellas, Lethal Weapons 2, 3 & 4, JFK, Casino)
1944 Alice Walker - US author and poet (Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, The Color Purple, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful: Poems)
1944 Barbara Lewis - Singer (Make Me Your Baby, Hello Stranger, Baby I'm Yours)
1945 Mia Farrow - US actress (Peyton Place, Hannah and Her Sisters, Widow's Peak, Purple Rose of Cairo)
1949 Judith Light – Actress (Ugly Betty, Who’s the Boss?, Law & Order: SVU, Phenom, The Ryan White Story)
1953 Ciarán Hinds – Irish actor (Rome, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Road to Perdition, Jane Eyre, Persuasion, Excalibur) He played Jim Browner in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Cardboard Box
1955 Jim J. Bullock – Actor (Too Close for Comfort, Spaceballs, ALF)
1955 Charles Shaughnessy – British actor (The Nanny, The Bay, Mad Men, Saints & Sinners)
1963 Travis Tritt - Country singer (Help Me Hold On, Drift Off to Dream, Foolish Pride)
1981 Tom Hiddleston – British actor (Wallander, Thor, Midnight in Paris, Miss Austin Regrets, Cranford, Suburban Shootout, The Avengers, The Night Manager, Muppets Most Wanted)
Died this Day
1811 Nevil Maskelyne - British astronomer royal
1881 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, age 59 - Russian author (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Poor Folk, Ten Years in a Dead House)
1966 Sophie Tucker - US entertainer who was known as "the last of the red hot mamas"
1973 Max Yasgur - Owner of the 600-acre farm where the original Woodstock took place in August 1969. More than 400,000 people attended the three-day festival. Concert organisers had expected only 50,000 to show up
1981 Bill Haley, age 56 - Rock'n'Roll pioneer with his band The Comets (Rock Around the Clock, Candy Kisses, Rock the Joint, Crazy Man Crazy, See You Later Alligator, Skinny Minnie) He died of a heart attack
1984 Yuri V. Andropov, age 69 - Soviet leader who died less than 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev. He was succeeded by Konstantin U. Chernenko
1995 David Wayne, age 82 - Actor (The Tender Trap, The Last Angry Man, The Three Faces of Eve, The Andromeda Strain, Adam's Rib, Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie, The Good Life, Dallas) He played The Mad Hatter/Jervis Tetch in the Batman TV series
2002 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, age 71 – Younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II. She died peacefully in her sleep, in London
On this Day
1801 The Holy Roman Empire came to an end with the signing of the Peace of Luneville between France and Austria
1825 The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes
1830 Explorer Charles Sturt discovered the termination of the Murray, Australia's longest river
1855 People in snow-covered Cornwall, England awoke to a strange trail of single-track cloven hooves that ran for 100 miles over roofs, through walls and under bushes
1861 The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America elected Jefferson Davis president and Alexander H. Stephens vice president
1864 George Custer and Elizabeth Clift Bacon were married
1870 The US Weather Bureau was established
1883 Ontario's first free public library opened at Guelph
1893 What has been described as the world's first striptease took place at the Moulin Rouge. An artist's model named Mona gradually disrobed as part of an impromptu beauty competition with another woman. Her subsequent arrest and 100-franc fine sparked a riot in the French capital. The first professional stripper started gyrating over a year later
1893 Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, was first performed, in Milan, Italy
1909 The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation incorporated with Carl G. Fisher as president. The first race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway took place on August 19th, only a few months after the formation of the corporation. Fisher and his partners had scrambled to get their track together before the race, and their lack of preparation showed. Not only were lives lost on account of the track, but the surface itself was left in shambles. Instead of cutting losses on his investment in the Speedway, Fisher dug in and upped the stakes. He built a brand new track of brick, which was the cheapest and most durable appropriate surface available to him. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway would later be affectionately called "the Brickyard." Fisher's track filled a void in the international racing world, as there were almost no private closed courses in Europe capable of handling the speeds of the cars that were being developed there. Open course racing had lost momentum in Europe due to the growing number of fatal accidents. Recognising the supremacy of European car technology, but preserving the US tradition of oval track racing, Fisher melded the two hemispheres of car racing into one extravagant event, a five-hundred mile race to be held annually. To guarantee the attendance of the European racers, Fisher arranged to offer the largest single prize in the sport. By 1912, the total prize money available at the gruelling Indy 500 was $50,000, making the race the highest paying sporting event in the world. However, the Brickyard almost became a scrap yard after World War II, as it was in deplorable condition after four years of disuse. The track's owner, Eddie Rickenbacher, even considered tearing it down and selling the land. Fortunately, in 1945, Tony Hulman purchased the track for $750,000. Hulman and Wilbur Shaw hastily renovated the track for racing in the next year, and launched a long-term campaign to replace the wooden grandstand with structures of steel and concrete. In May of 1946, the American Automobile Association ran its first post-war Indy 500, preserving a US tradition. Today, the Indy 500 is the largest single day sporting event in the world
1933 She Done Him Wrong, starring Mae West and Cary Grant, opened. The movie featured West as "one of the finest women who ever walked the streets." The racy film provoked demand for more conservative movie censorship
1942 Daylight saving time was instituted in the US, as Congress pushed ahead standard time by one hour in each time zone, imposing daylight saving time, called at the time "war time." Daylight saving time was imposed to conserve fuel, and could be traced back to World War I, when Congress imposed one standard time on the US to enable the country to better utilise resources, following the European model. The 1918 Standard Time Act was meant to be in effect for only seven months of the year, and was discontinued nationally after the war. But individual states continued to turn clocks ahead one hour in spring and back one hour in fall. The World War II legislation imposed daylight saving time for the entire nation for the entire year. It was repealed at the end of September 1945, when individual states once again imposed their own "standard" time. It was not until 1966 that Congress passed legislation setting a standard time that permanently superseded local habits
1949 Robert Mitchum was jailed in Los Angeles for two months for smoking marijuana
1964 The Beatles made their North American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, which was watched every Sunday night in the US and Canada
1966 A hockey era came to an end with the announcement that the National Hockey League would double to 12 teams the following season. The six new teams California Seals, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins and St. Louis Blues, would play in the West Division. The original teams Toronto Maple Leafs, Montréal Canadiens, New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins, would play in the East Division
1970 The first traffic lights in the Northwest Territories were switched on in Yellowknife, replacing four-way stop signs at the city's main intersection, and becoming Canada's most northern traffic lights
1971 The Apollo 14 spacecraft returned to Earth after man's third landing on the moon
1989 Polish archaeologists claimed to have unearthed the world's oldest boomerang, thought to be 23,000 years old
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