1567 Thomas Campion - English poet and composer (Poemata, A Booke of Ayres, Observations in the Art of English Poesie) Educated at Cambridge, Campion studied law, became a physician, and became known as one of Renaissance England's most accomplished lyric poets and songwriters
1637 Jan Swammerdam - Dutch naturalist who was the first to observe and describe the red blood cells, in 1658. In the study of insects, he accurately described and illustrated the life histories and anatomy of many species. He demonstrated the presence of butterfly wings in caterpillars about to undergo pupation. He also devised improved techniques for injecting wax and dyes into cadavers, which had important consequences for the study of human anatomy. His ingenious experiments showed that muscles alter in shape but not in size during contraction
1663 Cotton Mather - US Puritan and Congregational minister associated with the Massachusetts witch trials
1809 Charles Darwin – British naturalist and author (On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex) He formed the theory of evolution by natural selection
1809 Abraham Lincoln - 16th president of the United States, born in present-day Larue County, Kentucky
1828 George Meredith - British poet and novelist (The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The Shaving of Shagpat, Modern Love, Beauchamp's Career, Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth)
1837 Thomas Moran - US artist and painter. His depictions of Western landscapes inspired his countrymen to conserve and cherish spectacular wilderness areas as part of their national heritage. In the summer of 1871, Moran joined the US Geological Survey of the Territories. Headed by Ferdinand V. Hayden, this scientific exploration of lands along the Yellowstone River in north-western Wyoming and south-eastern Montana included a painter and a photographer. Visual documentation not only served to verify textual reports but also stimulated public interest. Collaborating closely with William Henry Jackson, the expedition photographer, Moran took extensive notes and made numerous sketches of sulphur fields, hot springs, geysers, waterfalls, and evergreen mountain peaks. Returning East, Hayden carried many of Moran's sketches and Jackson's photographs to Washington, DC. These images helped convince Congress to set aside the Yellowstone area as a national park. Congress later purchased two of Moran's panoramic landscapes to embellish the US Capitol: The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872) and The Chasm of the Colorado (1873)
1881 Anna Pavlova – Russian prima ballerina. The meringue dessert "Pavlova" was created for her and named in her honour
1904 Ted Mack - TV host (The Original Amateur Hour, The Ted Mack Family Hour)
1914 Tex Beneke - Bandleader, singer and tenor sax, who played with the Glenn Miller Orchestra (Chattanooga Choo Choo, Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree)
1915 Lorne Greene - Canadian actor (Bonanza, The Trap, The Buccaneer, Earthquake, Roots, Battlestar Galactica) He first became known in Canada as the "Voice of Doom" for his radio reports for the CBC during the Second World War
1919 Forrest Tucker - Actor (Sands of Iwo Jima, The Yearling, Thunder Run, F Troop)
1923 Mel Powell - Pianist, composer (Mission to Moscow for Benny Goodman) He was the Dean of Music at California Institute of Arts
1923 Franco Zeffirelli - Italian director (The Champ, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, Endless Love, Jesus of Nazareth)
1934 Annette Crosbie – British actress (One Foot in the Grave, Calendar Girls, Murder Rooms: The White Knight Stratagem, Oliver Twist, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Doctor Finlay, Beyond the Pale, Hope Springs, Little Dorrit)
1935 Gene McDaniels - Singer (A Hundred Pounds of Clay, Tower of Strength, Chip Chip)
1936 Joe Don Baker - Actor (Cool Hand Luke, Walking Tall, The Natural, Fletch, Citizen Cohn, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, Ring of Steel, Mars Attacks)
1939 Ray Manzarek - Rock musician with The Doors (Riders on the Storm, Light My Fire, L.A. Woman)
1945 Maud Adams - Swedish actress (The Man With the Golden Gun, Octopussy, Rollerball, Tattoo, Emerald Point N.A.S) She played Shelly Talbot Morrison in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Wicked Wives
1950 Michael Ironside - Canadian actor (Total Recall, Highlander II: The Quickening, ER, Starship Troopers, Top Gun)
1952 Simon MacCorkindale – British actor (Falcon Crest, Death on the Nile, I Claudius, At the Midnight Hour, Wing Commander, Casualty) He was married to British actress Susan George
1953 Joanna Kerns – Actress (Growing Pains, Girl Interrupted, Coma, Mother Knows Best)
1954 Zach Grenier – Actor (The Good Wife, Fight Club, Donnie Brascoe, Swordfish, Deadwood, 24, Twister)
1955 Arsenio Hall - Actor and talk show host (The Arsenio Hall Show, Amazon Women on the Moon, Coming to America, Martial Law)
1968 Chynna Phillips – Singer (Hold On) and actress (Roxanne: The Prize Pulitzer) She is the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the group The Mama and Papas
1968 Josh Brolin – Actor (No Country for Old Men, American Gangster, True Grit, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Milk, Hollow Man, The Young Riders) He is the son of James Brolin
1979 Jesse Spencer – Australian actor (House, Neighbours, Swimming Upstream, Uptown Girls, Lorna Doone)
1980 Christina Ricci - Actress (The Addams Family, Mermaids, Casper, The Ice Storm, Pan Am, Sleepy Hollow)
1980 Sarah Lancaster - Actress (Chuck, Everwood, Saved By the Bell: The New Class)
Died this Day
1554 Lady Jane Grey - Queen of England for nine days, who was charged with high treason and beheaded in the Tower of London by her rival claimant to the throne, Mary. Her husband, Lord Dudley, was also beheaded for treason
1841 Sir Astley Paston Cooper, age 72 - British surgeon who, in 1816, was the first to tie the abdominal aorta as a means of treating an aneurysm. He performed a remarkable variety of successful operations, all of them accomplished before the days of antiseptic surgery
1929 Lillie Langtry, age 75 - British actress who was a vicar's daughter from the island of Jersey, and nicknamed The Jersey Lily because of her complexion. She was also the mistress of Queen Victoria's eldest son, the then Prince of Wales and the future King of England
1942 Grant Wood - US painter (American Gothic) He died in Iowa City, Iowa, a day before his 50th birthday
1976 Sal Mineo, age 37 - US actor (Start Movin', Lasting Love, The Gene Krupa Story) He was murdered on a street near his Los Angeles home
1983 Eubie Blake - Ragtime piano composer (Charleston, I'm Just Wild about Harry, Memories of You, Love Will Find a Way) He died five days after his 100th birthday. He performed regularly almost until his death and once said, "If I knew I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself"
1985 Nicholas Colasanto - Actor (Cheers, Toma, Raging Bull) He also directed numerous episodes of TV series (Bonanza, Hawaii Five-O, Alias Smith & Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, Hec Ramsey, Starsky & Hutch, CHiPs) He died a month after his 61st birthday
2000 Charles M. Schulz, age 77 – US cartoonist who created the comic strip Peanuts. The day he died was also the day the last original Peanuts strip ran, as he had a clause in his contract stipulating the Peanuts strip was to end with his death. He was buried with full military honours, and at his burial, four Sopwith Camel bi-planes flew overhead in the Missing Man formation
On this Day
1733 English colonists led by James Oglethorpe founded Savannah, Georgia
1816 St. John's, Newfoundland was nearly wiped out by a fire
1818 Chile's independence was declared in Santiago
1831 Rubber galoshes were first marketed in the US by J.W. Goodrich of Boston
1851 A discovery at Summerhill Creek in New South Wales, Australia set off the Australian gold rush
1870 Women in the Utah Territory gained the right to vote
1877 The first telephone news dispatch in the US was called into the Boston Globe in Boston from Salem, Massachusetts, a distance of sixteen miles. It was sent using equipment provided by Alexander Graham Bell
1878 Frederick W. Thayer, the captain of the Harvard University Baseball Club, patented the now familiar, baseball catcher's mask
1879 The first artificial ice rink in North America was installed at Madison Square Gardens in New York City
1892 President Lincoln's birthday was declared a national holiday
1900 J.W. Packard received his first automotive patent a year after forming his company with partner George Weiss. Packard became interested in building cars after purchasing a Winton horseless carriage. The Winton proved unreliable and after nearly a year of fixing up his horseless carriage, Packard decided he would manufacture his own automobile. Among Packard's necessary automotive innovations were the "H" gear-slot pattern and the gas pedal
1907 More than 300 people died when the steamer Larchmont collided with a schooner off New England's Block Island
1908 The first round-the-world automobile race began in New York. It ended in Paris the following August
1912 China became a republic with the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty
1915 The cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial was laid in Washington, DC
1917 Canadian Prime Minister Robert Laird Borden arrived in London, England, to sit as a member of the British, or Imperial, War Cabinet
1924 George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue premiered in New York City
1924 The first advertising-sponsored radio program debuted. The show, The Eveready Hour, was sponsored by the National Carbon Company
1935 The first US patent was issued for open-mesh steel flooring for a bridge to W.E. Irving
1940 The radio play, The Adventures of Superman, debuted on the Mutual network with Bud Collyer as the Man of Steel
1949 Ottawa announced that a vast radar network would be built across Northern Canada. It led to the creation of the Distant Early Warning Line, or DEW Line, which was an integral part of North American defence during the Cold War
1954 The operations of a black-market baby ring were disclosed by Montréal police. More than one-thousand illegitimate babies were said to have been smuggled from the Montréal area for adoption in the US
1954 The British Standing Advisory Committee on cancer claimed that the illness had a definite link with cigarette smoking
1973 The first release of US Prisoners of War from the Vietnam conflict took place
1973 Four metric road signs, the first in the US, were erected to post metric distance along Interstate 71 in Ohio. These new signs showed the distance in both miles and kilometres between Columbus and Cincinnati, and Columbus and Cleveland
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