1633 Samuel Pepys - British diarist and naval administrator
1685 George Frederick Handel - German composer (Messiah, Rinaldo, Water Music)
1744 Mayer Amschel Rothschild - German founder of the banking House of Rothschild
1850 Cesar Ritz - French founder of the Ritz hotel in Paris
1868 William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) DuBois - US civil rights leader and author (The Souls of Black Folk, Dusk at Dawn)
1883 Victor Fleming - US motion-picture director (The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Captains Courageous, The Good Earth)
1884 Casimir Funk - Polish-born US biochemist who coined the term "vitamine"
1904 William L. Shirer - US historian (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)
1929 Leslie Halliwell - British film and TV writer and critic
1939 Peter Fonda - Actor (Easy Rider, Futureworld, The Trip, The Wild Angels, Ulee’s Gold, A Thief of Time) He's the son of Henry, brother to Jane and father of Bridget
1939 Majel Barrett - Actress (Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, West World, The Domino Principle) She was the wife of Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek. She provided the voice of the computer in all the Star Trek TV series and Star Trek films, except Enterprise
1944 Johnny Winter - Blues guitarist and musician (Still Alive and Well, Second Winter, Saints and Sinners)
1946 Rusty Young - Musician with the group Poco (Keep on Tryin', Crazy Love, Heart of the Night)
1949 Marc Garneau - Canadian engineer, soldier and astronaut. He was the first Canadian in space, serving as a payload specialist on both the Challenger and the Endeavour logging over 437 hours in space. Garneau has since served as spacecraft communicator in Mission Control during Shuttle flights and is currently a Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons
1951 Patricia Richardson - Actress (Home Improvement, Eisenhower & Lutz, Hands of a Stranger, Ulee's Gold)
1965 Kristin Davis - Actress (Melrose Place, Sex and the City, Murder in Mind)
1976 Kelly Macdonald – Scottish actress (No Country for Old Men, Trainspotting, Finding Neverland, Boardwalk Empire, Nanny McPhee, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Gosford Park)
1983 Emily Blunt – British actress (The Young Victoria, The Devil Wears Prada, The Adjustment Bureau, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Jane Austen Book Club, Poirot: Death on the Nile)
1994 Dakota Fanning – Actress (Hide and Seek, The Cat in the Hat, Hansel & Gretel, Taken, War of the Worlds, New Moon, The Secret Life of Bees, Charlotte’s Web)
Died this Day
1812 Étienne-Louis Malus, age 36 - French physicist who researched optics. Malus served in Napoleon's corps of engineers, fought in Egypt, and contracted the plague during Napoleon's aborted campaign in Palestine. In 1808, he discovered that light rays may be polarised by reflection, while looking through a crystal of Iceland spar at the windows of a building reflecting the rays of the sun. Malus noticed that on rotating the crystal the light was extinguished in certain positions. He argued that light particles have sides or poles, and coined the word "polarisation"
1821 John Keats, age 25 - British romantic poet (On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, Endymion, On a Grecian Urn, To a Nightingale, On Melancholy, To Autumn) In 1818, a strenuous walking tour of England's Lake District had weakened his health, and in early 1820, Keats coughed up blood, realising immediately he had tuberculosis. He travelled to Italy hoping the climate might ease his condition, but he died in Rome
1848 John Quincy Adams, age 80 - The 6th US president. He died of a stroke
1855 Karl Frederick Gauss, age 77 - German mathematician and astronomer who developed new theories about numbers, as well as work in the field of magnetism and electricity. The term "degauss", for countering magnetic mines, originated from his name, and was later used in electronic equipment
1922 Henri Landru - Executed in France for the crime of having 11 wives
1924 Thomas Woodrow Wilson, age 67 - 28th US president, who asked Congress to declare war on Germany in 1917
1944 Leo Henrick Baekland, age 80 - Belgian-born US chemist who helped found the modern plastics industry through his invention of Bakelite, the first thermosetting plastic, a plastic that does not soften when heated
1948 John Robert Gregg, age 80 - Irish-born US inventor of a shorthand system named for him
1965 Stan Laurel, age 74 - The skinny half of the Laurel and Hardy comedy team, died in Santa Monica, California. Laurel and Hardy made more than 100 films, 27 of them feature length, during their three decades working together. After Hardy's death eight years earlier, Laurel vowed never to perform again, although he continued to write comedy sketches until his death
1995 James Herriott, age 78 – British veterinarian and author (All Creatures Great and Small) He was fifty when he began writing his series of novels based on the experiences of a Yorkshire vet
On this Day
AD 303 In Rome, Italy, Emperor Diocletian ordered the general persecution of Christians
1822 Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city
1836 The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas, when several thousand Mexican troops under General Santa Ana attacked, and eventually wiped out, the US garrison
1841 The Chemical Society of London held its first organisational meeting. It was the first association for chemists that lasted 100 years
1861 President-elect Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington to take office after an assassination plot was foiled in Baltimore
1863 Captains Speke and Grant announced the discovery of the source of the Nile
1870 Mississippi was readmitted to the Union
1874 Lawn tennis was patented by W.C. Wingfield of England
1875 Hull, Quebec was incorporated as a city
1885 In Devonshire, England, nineteen-year-old John Lee became the only man to survive hanging three times. Lee was sent to the gallows in Exeter, England after being convicted of murder, despite insisting on his innocence. He had been found guilty of killing Ellen Keyse, a rich older woman for whom he had worked. The previous November, Keyse, who had been a maid to Queen Victoria, was found dead in a pantry next to Lee's room. Her head was severely battered and her throat cut. There was no direct evidence of Lee's guilt, and the case was made solely on circumstantial evidence. The alleged motive was Lee's resentment at Keyse's mean treatment. On the day of his execution the noose was brought around his neck and the lever was pulled, but something malfunctioned and Lee was not dropped. The equipment was tested repeatedly and seemed to be in working order. Weights that were used in test runs plunged to the ground as expected. But each time the lever was pulled when Lee stood over the trap door, nothing happened. Two more execution attempts were made without success, and Lee was returned to prison. The authorities, mystified at the gallows' inexplicable malfunction, decided to ascribe it to an act of God. Lee was removed from death row, his sentence commuted, and he spent the next 22 years in prison. After he was released, he emigrated to the US
1893 Rudolf Diesel received a German patent for the diesel engine. The diesel engine burns fuel oil rather than gasoline and differs from the gasoline engine in that it uses high compression in the cylinder rather than a spark to ignite the fuel
1893 The Tootsie Roll was introduced by Leo Hirshfield
1904 The US acquired control of the Panama Canal Zone for $10 million
1905 The Rotary Club International was founded in Chicago
1906 In San Francisco, Tommy Burns of Hanover, Ontario, at just 5'7" and 175 lb., defeated the title holder Marvin Hart in a gruelling 20 rounds to claim the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship
1909 Baddeck, Nova Scotia pilot John McCurdy made the first flight in the British Empire of an airplane under its own power. He flew the Silver Dart more than half a mile over the frozen Baddeck Bay at an altitude of about 33 feet
1910 The United Wireless Telegraph Company in Philadelphia sponsored the first-ever Morse code radio contest. Participants from telegraph companies competed to send and receive Morse code messages, and the contestants were judged on speed and accuracy
1914 In British Columbia, a Fraser River rockslide nearly wiped out the area's salmon fishing industry
1927 President Coolidge signed a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission. The Federal Radio Commission was a temporary body established to assign radio frequencies and to issue rules and regulations to prevent interference between stations. The Federal Communications Commission superseded the Radio Commission in 1934
1940 Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote one of his best-known songs, This Land is Your Land
1945 During World War II, US Marines took the Japanese island of Iwo Jima 750 miles south of Tokyo after severe fighting. A bronze statue in Arlington Cemetery depicts troops raising the US flag on the summit of Mount Suribachi on the island
1954 The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1991 US President Bush announced that the allied ground offensive against Iraqi forces had begun. Due to the time difference, it was the early morning of February 24th in the Persian Gulf
1997 Scientists in Scotland announced they had succeeded in cloning an adult mammal, producing a female lamb named "Dolly." She was the first mammal ever successfully cloned from a cell from an adult animal
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