1403 Charles VII - King of France from 1422 to 1461. He drove the English out of France
1732 George Washington - First US President. He was born on his parents' plantation in the Virginia Colony
1810 Frederic-François Chopin - Polish composer of more than 200 compositions for solo piano
1857 Heinrich Hertz - German physics professor and radio pioneer who discovered electromagnetic, or radio, waves. He was the first person to send and receive radio waves. His studies of electromagnetic waves led to a method of measuring the length and velocity of radio waves. The hertz, a unit of frequency measurement, was named for him
1857 Lord Baden-Powell - British army officer, and hero of the siege of Mafeking during the Boer War. His experiences led to the founding of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts
1892 Edna St. Vincent Millay - US poet (The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, Renascence, First Fig, Conversations at Midnight) One of three daughters of a divorced nurse, Millay learned independence and self-reliance early and infused those qualities into her poetry. She became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her work The Harp Weaver and Other Poems
1903 Morley Callaghan - Canadian journalist and writer (Such is My Beloved, The Loved and the Lost, A Time for Judas, That Summer in Paris)
1907 Sheldon Leonard – TV director, writer, producer (The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, My World and Welcome to It, The Don Rickles Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Danny Thomas Show/Make Room for Daddy, Colgate Theatre) and actor (The Brink's Job, Pocketful of Miracles, Guys and Dolls, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, If You Knew Susie, It's a Wonderful Life, Captain Kidd, To Have and Have Not, Tortilla Flat, Another Thin Man) He was married to Frances Babor for 66 years, until his death in 1997
1907 Robert Young - Actor (Father Knows Best, Marcus Welby MD, The Bride Wore Red, Crossfire, Honolulu, Northwest Passage)
1908 H.E. Todd - British author of children's books (Bobby Brewster stories)
1908 Sir John Mills - British actor (Great Expectations, Ryan's Daughter, Hobson's Choice, The Big Sleep, King Rat ,War and Peace, Deadly Advice, Murder with Mirrors, Bean: The Movie) He was the father of actresses Juliet and Hayley Mills. He portrayed Dr John Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movie, The Masks of Death
1918 Don Pardo – Announcer (Saturday Night Live, Winner Take All, The Colgate Comedy Hour)
1925 Edward Gorey – US illustrator, designer and writer (The Doubtful Guest, Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Loathsome Couple, The Gilded Bat, The Haunted Tea-Cosy) He did the pen and ink opening credits for PBS’s Mystery!
1925 Guy Mitchell – Singer (Singing the Blues, Heartaches by the Number, My Heart Cries for You, My Truly Truly Fair, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, The Roving Kind) and actor (The Wild Westerners, Red Garters, Those Redheads from Seattle) He played Anthony Bardot in the The Ann Sothern Show episode Pandora. He also played Bill Ryder in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Guilty Clients
1926 Kenneth Williams - British comedy actor (Galloping Galaxies, Meanwhile on BBC2, Hancock's Half Hour) He appeared in numerous "Carry On" films. He also played Sir Henry Baskerville in the 1978 comedy version of The Hound of the Baskervilles 1929 James Hong – Actor (Blade Runner, Shanghai Kiss, Forbidden Warrior, The Art of War, Mulan, Tank Girl, Wayne’s World 2, Tango & Cash, Big Trouble in Little China, Airplane!, Chinatown, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan)
1930 Marni Nixon - Hollywood "ghost singer" who supplied the singing voices for Maria in West Side Story and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady
1933 Sheila Hancock - British actress (Bedtime, Hold Back the Night, Alice in Wonderland, The Buccaneers, Brighton Belles) She portrayed Sue in the Home to Roost episode, The Way We Were, which starred her husband, John Thaw
1940 Judy Cornwell – British actress (Keeping Up Appearances, Persuasion, Two for the Road, The Mayor of Casterbridge, David Copperfield, Miss Marple: The Mirror Crack’d, The December Rose)
1944 Jonathan Demme - Director (The Silence of the Lambs, Swing Shift, Married to the Mob, Philadelphia)
1948 John Ashton - Actor (Beverly Hills Cop, Breaking Away, Dallas, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzia Across the 8th Dimension, Curly Sue)
1950 Julie Walters - British actress (Educating Rita, GBH, Personal Services, Pat and Margaret, Jake's Progress, Oliver Twist)
1959 Kyle MacLachlan - Actor (Dune, Twin Peaks, Desperate Housewives, Blue Velvet, The Flintstones, The Doors)
1975 Drew Barrymore - Actress (ET The Extra-Terrestrial, Altered States, Batman Forever, Ever After, Charlie's Angels, The Wedding Singer)
1982 Dichan Lachman – Nepalese-born actress (Dollhouse, Neighbours, Being Human)
Died this Day
1512 Amerigo Vespucci, age 57 - Italian navigator who gave his name to the New World
1973 Elizabeth Bowen - Irish novelist (The Death of the Heart, Encounters, The Heat of the Day)
1987 Andy Warhol, age 58 - Pop artist, died in a New York City hospital
1989 Aldo Joseph Jacuzzi - US whirlpool pump manufacturer
2002 Chuck Jones, age 89 - Cartoonist who directed, produced and wrote many of the classic Warner Brother cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn….(The Rabbit of Seville, What's Opera Doc?, Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening) He also produced and directed the classic Christmas cartoon How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jones died of congestive heart failure at his home
On this Day
1630 In Massachusetts, the Indians introduced the pilgrims to their first taste of popcorn
1774 In London, England, the House of Lords ruled that authors do not have perpetual copyright
1813 Lieutentant Colonel 'Red George' Macdonnell led 400 Prescott regular militia and Glengarry Light Infantry in a pre-dawn raid across the frozen St. Lawrence River and captured the US Fort Ogdensburg. The raid, during the War of 1812, was in retaliation for a US attack on Brockville, Ontario six days earlier, in which 52 Canadians were taken hostage. Macdonell returned to Prescott, Ontario, with 74 US prisoners, 12 guns, 300 tents and a large quantity of food and ammunition
1819 US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Spanish Minister Don Luis de Onis signed the Treaty of Florida Blanca. Spain gave up claim to the Pacific Coast north of 42nd Parallel and ceded what is now the State of Florida to the US
1825 Britain and Russia set inland boundaries of the Alaska-British Columbia border at the first mountain range and the 141st meridian
1847 The Mexicans under General Santa Ana were defeated at the Battle of Buena Vista by the US forces under General Zachary Taylor
1865 Tennessee adopted a new constitution abolishing slavery
1879 Frank Winfield Woolworth opened a five-cent store in Utica, NY. The store failed. A few months later, he opened a five-and-dime store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the first in an international chain which would grow into Woolworths and Woolco
1886 The Times of London was the first British newspaper to put a personal column in its classified page, which was then on its front page. The personal columns were also called the "agony columns", and used extensively by Sherlock Holmes in his work
1888 In Yonkers NY, John Reid of Scotland first demonstrated the game of golf to Americans
1889 President Cleveland signed a bill to admit the Dakotas, Montana and Washington state to the Union
1892 Lady Windermere's Fan, by Oscar Wilde, was first performed, at London's St. James' Theatre
1893 The Quebec Legislature declared beer of not over 4% alcohol a 'temperance drink'
1918 Swept along by hysterical fears of treacherous German spies and domestic labour violence, the Montana legislature passed a Sedition Law that severely restricted freedom of speech and assembly. The roots of the Montana Sedition Law lay with the hyper-patriotic sentiments inspired by World War I and growing fears of labour unrest and violence in the state. A sizeable number of Montanans had resisted US entry in WWI, and the Montana congresswoman Jeanette Rankin had voted against US involvement in the Great War. Once the US did become involved, though, many pro-war Montanans viewed any further criticism of the war effort as treasonous. At the same time, the perceived need for wartime unity sharpened many Montanans' distrust of radical labour groups like the International Workers of the World (IWW). The Montana mining town of Butte had been rocked by labour violence in recent years, and an IWW leader named Frank Little had recently given speeches in Butte condemning US involvement in the war, claiming it was being fought for big business interests. Determined to silence both antiwar and radical union voices, the Montana legislature approved a Sedition Law that made it illegal to criticise the federal government or the armed forces during time of war, and disparaging remarks about the US flag could be grounds for prosecution and imprisonment. The Montana law led to the conviction and imprisonment of 47 people, some with prison terms of 20 years or more. Most were pardoned when the war ended and cooler heads prevailed
1923 The 1,000,000th Chevy was produced on this day
1924 Calvin Coolidge delivered the first presidential radio broadcast from the White House
1935 It became illegal for airplanes to fly over the White House
1945 A German U-Boat torpedoed the Royal Canadian Navy corvette Trentonian in the Atlantic Ocean
1946 Dr. Selman Wakeman announced his discovery of streptomycin
1977 In the first speech by a Canadian prime minister to the US Congress, Pierre Trudeau said Canada would remain united despite Québec's bid for separation
1984 A 12-year-old Houston boy known only as David died. David spent most of his life in a plastic bubble because he had no immunity to disease, and died 15 days after being removed from the bubble for a bone-marrow transplant
1994 A Health Canada project found traces of cigarette smoke compounds in the fetal hair of non-smoking mothers. It was the first biochemical proof that even offspring of non-smoking mothers are affected by passive smoke
35
Responses