1802 Victor Hugo - French poet, novelist and dramatist (Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Cromwell) He was the son of one of Napoleon's officers
1829 Levi Strauss - The developer of blue jeans. Born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, the young Levi Strauss emigrated to the US in 1847. Strauss initially went into business selling dry goods along the East Coast, but in 1852, his brother-in-law encouraged him to relocate to the booming city of San Francisco. He arrived in San Francisco in 1853 with a load of merchandise that he hoped to sell in the California mining camps. Unable to sell a large supply of canvas, Strauss hit on the idea of using the durable material to make work pants for miners. Strauss' canvas pants were an immediate success among hardworking miners who had long complained that conventional pants wore out too quickly. In 1872, Strauss received a letter from Jacob Davis, a customer and tailor who worked in the mining town of Reno, Nevada. Davis reported that he had discovered canvas pants could be improved if the pocket seams and other weak points that tended to tear were strengthened by copper rivets. Davis' riveted pants had proven popular in Reno, but he needed a patent to protect his invention. Intrigued by the copper-riveted pants, Strauss and his partners agreed to undertake the necessary legal work for the patent and begin large-scale production of the pants. In exchange for his idea, Strauss made the Reno tailor his production manager. Eventually, Strauss switched from using canvas to heavyweight blue denim, and the modern "blue jeans" were born. By the turn of the century, people outside of the mining and ranching communities had discovered that "Levi's" were both comfortable and durable. Eventually, the jeans lost most of their association with the West and came to be simply a standard element of the casual wardrobe
1846 William Frederic Cody - US frontiersman and showman known as Buffalo Bill. He was born in Scott County, Iowa
1852 John Harvey Kellogg - US physician who pioneered the flaked cereal industry
1866 Herbert H. Dow - US founder of Dow Chemical Company
1877 Rudolph Dirks - Cartoonist who created the Katzenjammer Kids
1887 William Frawley – Actor (I Love Lucy, My Three Sons, The Lemon Drop Kid, Miracle on 34th Street, One Night in the Tropics, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Invisible Man)
1905 Arthur Brough – British actor (Are You Being Served?, Royal Flash, The Green Room, Barnaby Rudge, Death of a Ghost, The Challenge)
1914 Robert Alda – Actor (Rhapsody in Blue, Cloak and Dagger, Nora Prentiss, Tarzan and the Slave Girl) He was the father of Alan Alda
1916 Jackie Gleason - Comedian, actor (The Honeymooners, The Hustler, Smokey and the Bandit, The Life of Riley)
1919 Mason Adams - Actor (Lou Grant, F/X, Houseguest) He was also in the Perry Mason TV movie, The Case of the Maligned Mobster
1920 Tony Randall - Actor (The Odd Couple, Pillow Talk, Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, Fatal Instinct, The Alphabet Murders)
1921 Betty Hutton - Actress (Annie Get Your Gun, The Greatest Show on Earth, Hollywood Clowns)
1928 Fats Domino - Pianist, songwriter, singer (Ain't That a Shame, Goin' Home, I'm in Love Again, Blue Monday, I'm Walkin', Blueberry Hill)
1932 Johnny Cash - Country singer, guitarist (Folsom Prison Blues, I Walk the Line, Don't Take Your Guns to Town, A Boy Named Sue, Ring of Fire, I Hear the Train Coming)
1939 Josephine Tewson – British actress (Keeping Up Appearances, Last of the Summer Wine, Shelley, The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It) She’s the cousin of John Inman from Are You Being Served?
1943 Bill Duke - Actor (Predator, Bird on a Wire) director (The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery, The Cemetery Club, A Rage in Harlem)
1945 Mitch Ryder - Singer with the group Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels (Devil with a Blue Dress On, Little Latin Lupe Lu)
1947 Sandie Shaw - Singer (There's Always Something There to Remind Me, Puppet on a String, Long Live Love, Girl Don't Come)
1964 Mark Dacascos – Actor and TV host (Iron Chef America, Hawaii Five-0, Shadows in Paradise, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Instinct to Kill, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Drive, Crying Freeman)
Died this Day
1834 Aloys Senefelder - Bavarian author and inventor of lithography
1857 Émile Coué - French psychologist and author (Suggestion and Autosuggestion)
1903 Richard Jordan Gatling, age 84 - US inventor of the Gatling gun, precursor of the modern machine gun
1986 Robert Penn Warren, age 84 - Author and poet (All the King's Men, Promises: Poems, Now and Then: Poems) He was the first official poet laureate of the US
1986 Jacques Plante, age 57 - Hockey goaltending great with the Montréal Canadiens. He died at his home near Geneva, Switzerland. Plante introduced the protective goalie mask to hockey after being hit in the face in New York Nov 1, 1959
On this Day
1531 In Portugal, the Great Lisbon Earthquake killed up to 30,000 people
1797 The Bank of England issued the first £1 notes
1798 David Thompson set off up the Red River, from what is now Manitoba, to explore the headwaters of the Mississippi
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the Island of Elba with 1,200 supporters to begin his second conquest of France
1838 Rensselaer Van Rensselaer invaded Pelee Island in Lake Erie with 500 US sympathisers of the Canadian rebels
1839 The running of the first Grand National horse race in England took place
1848 The Second French Republic was proclaimed
1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in London, England
1851 George Brown helped found the Toronto Anti-Slavery Society
1870 New York City's first pneumatic-powered subway line was opened to the public
1914 The first long-distance call over underground cables took place between Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC
1920 The Canadian Parliament opened in the newly rebuilt Centre Block. Previous sessions were held in the Museum of Nature after the disastrous 1916 fire that destroyed most of the building with the exception of the Parliamentary Library
1929 President Coolidge signed a measure establishing Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, home to some of the most stunning alpine scenery in the US. French-Canadian trappers gave the mountain range the bawdy French name of "Grand Tetons." For decades trappers, outlaws, traders, and Indians passed through the valley at the base of the Tetons, Jackson Hole, but it was not until 1887 that settlers established the first permanent habitation. The high northern valley with its short growing season was ill suited to farming, but the settlers found it ideal for grazing cattle. Tourists started coming to Jackson Hole not long after the first cattle ranches. Some of the ranchers supplemented their income by catering to "dudes," eastern tenderfoots yearning to experience a little slice of the Old West in the shadow of the stunning Tetons. The tourists began to raise the first concerns about preserving the natural beauty of the region. The vast acres of Yellowstone Park, the US's first national park founded in 1872, were just north of Jackson Hole, and the tourists asked that the spectacular Grand Tetons receive similar protection. In 1916, Horace M. Albright, the director of the National Park Service, was the first to seriously suggest that the region be incorporated into Yellowstone. The controversial move inspired charges of eastern domination over the West. The ranchers and businesses catering to tourists strongly resisted the suggestion that they be pushed off their lands to make a "museum" of the Old West for eastern tourists. Finally, after more than a decade of political manoeuvring, Grand Teton National Park was created in 1929. As a concession to the ranchers and tourist operators, the park only encompassed the mountains and a narrow strip at their base. Jackson Hole itself was excluded from the park and designated merely as a scenic preserve. Albright, though, had persuaded the wealthy John D. Rockefeller to begin buying up land in the Jackson Hole area for possible future incorporation into the park. This semi-secret, private means of enlarging the park inspired further resentment among the residents, and some complained that it was a typical example of how "eastern money interests" were dictating the future of the West. By the late 1940s, however, local opposition to the inclusion of the Rockefeller lands in the park had diminished, in part because of the growing economic importance of tourism. In 1949, Rockefeller donated his land holdings in Jackson Hole to the federal government. They were then incorporated into the national park
1933 In San Francisco, California, the Golden Gate Bridge ground-breaking ceremony was held at Crissy Field
1935 At Daventry, England, Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated Radar (Radio Detection and Ranging)
1940 The US Air Defence Command was created
1945 A midnight curfew on night-clubs, bars and other places of entertainment was set to go into effect across the US
1951 The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two terms of four years in office, was ratified
1957 The last radio episode of Dragnet aired. Before Dragnet went on the air in 1949, most radio police shows focused on melodramatic stories starring private investigators. After working with a Los Angeles police sergeant who was advising a movie he worked on, producer and writer Jack Webb decided that real-life, day-to-day police work was more compelling material than melodrama. He proceeded to learn as much as he could about the police force, even attending police academy classes. He tried to make the show as realistic as possible, using real police files. (Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent)
1973 The Triple Crown champion horse Secretariat sold for a record $5.7 million
1993 A bomb exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people died and 1,000 were injured by the blast
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