1781 Dr. René Laënnec - French army doctor and inventor of the stethoscope
1856 Frederick Eugene Ives - US inventor of the half-tone printing process which enabled pictures and photographs to be printed
1864 Andrew Barton "Banjo" Patterson - Australian folk poet and journalist. He was a war correspondent for Australian newspapers during the Boer War. His popular verses included Waltzing Matilda, which he adapted from a traditional source
1867 William Cadbury - British chocolate manufacturer
1902 Marian Anderson - US contralto opera singer, who was the first black singer at the New York Metropolitan. She also sang at the inauguration of President JF Kennedy
1907 Buster Crabbe – Actor (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, King of the Jungle, To the Last Man, Arizona Raiders, Hold 'Em Yale, Billy the Kid Wanted)
1925 Hal Holbrook - Actor (Mark Twain, All the President's Men, Sorry Wrong Number, Midway, Our Town, The Firm, Wall Street, Evening Shade, Designing Women, North & South: Books 1 & 2, The Star Chamber, The Fog, Capricorn One, Lincoln, Magnum Force)
1929 Patricia Routledge – British actress (Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, Keeping Up Appearances, Marjorie and Men, If It's Tuesday This Must Be Belgium, To Sir With Love)
1930 Ruth Rendell – British author (A Judgement in Stone, Unkindness of Ravens, Murder Being Once Done, Best Man to Die, A Sight for Sore Eyes) She is Baroness Rendell of Babergh, and has also written under the pseudonym Barbara Vine (A Dark-Adapted Eye, King Solomon's Carpet, The Brimstone Wedding)
1934 Barry Humphries - Australian actor and comedian. He is best known for creating the character of Dame Edna Everidge, international celebrity and chat show hostess
1934 Alan Bates - British actor (An Unmarried Woman, Women in Love, Zorba the Greek, The Go-Between, Oliver's Travels, Gosford Park, Love in a Cold Climate)
1935 Christina Pickles – British-born US actress (The Wedding Singer, Legends of the Fall, St. Elsewhere, Friends)
1936 Jim Brown – Actor (The Dirty Dozen, The Running Man, Mars Attacks!, Any Given Sunday, Ice Station Zebra)
1939 Mary Ann Mobley - Actress (Girl Happy, Harum Scarum, Circus of the Stars, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Untold Story) She is married to Gary Collins, and was Miss America in 1959. Also, she was cast as the original Batgirl on the Batman series, but was replaced by Yvonne Craig. She was in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Misguided Model and The Case of the Blonde Bonanza
1941 Gene Pitney - Singer (Town Without Pity, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Only Love Can Break A Heart, It Hurts To Be In Love) and songwriter (Hello Mary Lou, He's a Rebel)
1941 Julia McKenzie – British actress (Marple, Fresh Fields, Shirley Valentine, French Fields, Cranford, Notes on a Scandal, The Old Curiosity Shop)
1945 Brenda Fricker - Irish actress (My Left Foot, The Brides of Christ, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Deadly Advice, Moll Flanders)
1954 Rene Russo - Actress (Get Shorty, Lethal Weapon 3, Tin Cup, Ransom, The Thomas Crown Affair)
1956 Richard Karn - Actor (Home Improvement, The Legend of the Mummy)
1957 Loreena McKennitt – Canadian musician and singer (The Mummer’s Dance, The Highwayman, The Mystic’s Dream, Bonny Portmore, The Lady of Shallot, The Bonny Swans, All Souls Night)
1962 Lou Diamond Phillips - Actor (La Bamba, Young Guns, Shadow of the Wolf, Supernova, Wolf Lake, SGU: Stargate Universe, Numb3rs, Courage Under Fire)
1963 Michael Jordan – Basketball star and actor (Space Jam)
1974 Jerry O'Connell - Actor (Stand By Me, My Secret Identity, Sliders, Jerry Maguire, Crossing Jordan)
1974 Dakota House – Canadian actor (North of 60, DreamKeeper, The Diviners)
1981 Joseph Gordon-Levitt – Actor (3rd Rock From the Sun, Inception, 500 Days of Summer, A River Runs Through It)
Died this Day
1405 Tamerlane the Great - Mongol leader
1673 Jean Baptists Molière - French playwright and actor (The Affected Young Ladies, The School for Wives, Don Juan, The Misanthrope) He collapsed on stage the third night of his play Le Malade Imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid) and died at his home the same night from a brain haemorrhage as a result of a burst blood vessel. He died a month after his 51st birthday
1890 Christopher Latham Scholes - US inventor of the modern typewriter. He died three days after his 71st birthday
1909 Geronimo, age 79 - The last Apache Chief to surrender to US forces. He died in custody at Forest Still, Oklahoma
1919 Sir Wilfrid Laurier, age 77 - The first Canadian prime minister of French ancestry, he died of a stroke in Ottawa. Laurier spent 45 uninterrupted years in the House of Commons. He served as prime minister from 1896 to 1911, the longest unbroken tenure in Canadian history
1932 Albert Johnson - Canadian trapper known as the Mad Trapper of Rat River. He was shot and killed by RCMP officers following a fierce gun battle in the northern Yukon. Johnson had been charged with killing one Mountie, Constable Edgar Millen and wounding two others. The Mounties enlisted World War I flying ace and bush pilot Wop May to help them track Johnson during a 48 day, 150 mile manhunt in -40°F weather
1982 Lee Strasburg, age 80 - Austrian born US actor, drama coach, and founder of the Actor's Studio. He taught "method acting", requiring actors to draw on their own intense memories of emotion in order to generate the required feeling onscreen. His students have won or been nominated for more than 100 Oscars, Tonys, and Emmys
On this Day
1817 A street in Baltimore became the first US street to be lighted with gas from America's first gas company
1820 The US Senate passed the Missouri Compromise, an attempt to deal with the divisive issue of extending slavery into the western territories. As the nation expanded westward, Congress adopted relatively liberal procedures by which western territories could organise and join the union as full-fledged states. Southern slaveholders, eager to replicate their plantation system in the West, wanted to keep the new territories open to slavery. Abolitionists, concentrated primarily in the industrial North, wanted the West to be exclusively a free labour region and hoped that slavery would gradually die out if confined to the South. Both factions realised their future congressional influence would depend on the number of new "slave" and "free" states admitted into the union, and the West became the first political battleground over the slavery issue. In 1818, the Territory of Missouri applied to Congress for admission as a slave state. Early in 1819, a New York congressman introduced an amendment to the proposed Missouri constitution that would ban importation of new slaves and require gradual emancipation of existing slaves. Southern congressmen reacted with outrage, and a nation-wide debate on the future of slavery ensued, with southerners threatening secession and civil war. To avoid this disastrous possibility, key congressmen hammered together an agreement that became known as the Missouri Compromise. In exchange for admitting Missouri without restrictions on slavery, the Compromise called for bringing in Maine as a free state. The Compromise also dictated that slavery would be prohibited in all future western states carved out of the Louisiana Territory that were higher in latitude than the northern border of Arkansas Territory
1864 Confederate States ship H.L. Hunley, a hand-propelled submarine armed with a ram torpedo, sunk the Union's Houstanic in harbour at Charleston, South Carolina. It was the first successful attack by a submarine warship
1870 In South Pass, Wyoming Territory, Esther Hobart Morris was appointed the first female justice of the peace in US history by her county's commissioners. As justice of the peace, Hobart had the authority to act upon minor offences, commit cases for trial, perform marriages, and administer legal oaths
1870 The last local resistance to Louis Riel's Metis government of Manitoba ended when Major Charles Boulton and his force of 47 men were captured. At the time, the Hudson's Bay Company's sovereignty over the territory had expired and negotiations for union with Canada were incomplete
1876 Julius Wolff of Eastport, Maine became the first person to can sardines
1883 Mr. A. Ashwell of south London, patented "Vacant/Engaged" signs for toilet doors
1904 Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly was poorly received during its world première at La Scala in Milan, it was booed off the stage
1911 The first self-starter, based on patented inventions created by GM engineers Clyde Coleman and Charles Kettering, was installed in a Cadillac. In the early years of fierce competition with Ford, the self-starter would play a key role in helping GM to keep pace. The Ford Model T's crank starter caused its share of broken jaws and ribs
1927 Several major studios, including MGM, Paramount, and Universal, agreed to postpone their decision to produce talkies. Competing sound technologies threatened to cause confusion in the industry, and the studios agreed to adopt the same technology when and if they decided to produce talking pictures. However, Warner Brothers, not part of the agreement, released The Jazz Singer, the first picture with sound, in October
1933 Newsweek was first published
1933 Dagwood married Blondie in the Blondie comic strip
1934 The US's first driving course was offered at State College High School in State College, Pennsylvania, giving birth to the US tradition of driver's education. The course, like today's courses, provided both classroom and behind-the-wheel instruction. Students who completed Amos Neyhart's course received State of Pennsylvania driver's licenses
1968 In Springfield, Massachusetts the James Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opened. It was named in honour of the Canadian inventor of the game
1972 President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China
1972 The British Parliament voted to join the European Common Market
1972 Volkswagen Motor Cars broke the record held by the Model T Ford by selling the 15,007,034th production model of the Beetle. The car was the brainchild of Ferdinand Porsche, who developed the Volkswagen on orders from the German government to produce an affordable car for the people. Developed before World War II, the Beetle did not go into full-scale production until after the war. It became a counter-culture icon in the US during the 1960s largely because it offered an alternative to the extravagant US cars of the time. In 1998 Volkswagen released the New Beetle
1973 In Newfoundland, Canada, temperatures hit a record low of -60°F
1979 The Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor's popular radio variety show, was first broadcast nationally as part of National Public Radio's Folk Festival America. The show had been running locally on Minnesota Public Radio since 1974
36
Responses