1394 Prince Henry the Navigator - Sponsor of the Portuguese voyages of discovery
1678 Antonio Vivaldi - Italian baroque violin virtuoso and composer (The Four Seasons)
1782 Johann Wyss - Swiss folklorist and author (The Swiss Family Robinson)
1835 Giovanni Schiaparelli - Italian astronomer who discovered the canals of Mars
1888 Knute Rockne - Norwegian born US college football coach (Notre Dame)
1889 Pearl White – Actress (The Perils of Pauline, Plunder, A Lady in Distress, Homlock Shermes)
1895 Shemp Howard – Actor (Commotion on the Ocean, Murder Over New York, Jerks of All Trades, Shivering Sherlocks , Hold That Lion, Three of a Kind, Hellzapoppin, Too Many Blondes, The Bank Dick, Soup to Nuts, Spring Fever, Hold that Ghost, Another Thin Man, Arabian Nights) He was the brother of fellow Stooges Moe & Curly
1901 Charles Goren - Card game expert and inventor of contract bridge
1913 John Garfield - Actor (Destination Tokyo, Gentlemen's Agreement, The Postman Always Rings Twice)
1921 Joan Greenwood - British director (The Amorous Mr Prawn) and actress (Little Dorritt series, Tom Jones, Importance of Being Earnest, Frenzy) She also played Beryl Stapleton in the 1978 Peter Cook & Dudley Moore spoof of The Hound of the Baskervilles
1928 Alan Sillitoe - British writer (Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Lost Flying Boat)
1934 Barbara McNair – Singer (Bobby) and actress (They Call Me Mister Tibbs, The Barbara McNair Show, Change of Habit)
1939 Paula Prentiss - Actress (What's New Pussycat, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Where the Boys Are)
1944 Bobby Womack - Singer (That's the Way I Feel About 'Cha, Woman's Got to Have It, If You Think You're Lonely Now) songwriter (Trust Me, Breezin', I'm a Midnight Mover, I'm in Love)
1953 Kay Lenz - Actress (Rich Man Poor Man, Death Wish 4)
1954 Catherine O'Hara - Canadian comedy writer, actress (Second City TV, Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Dick Tracy, A Simple Twist of Fate, Wyatt Earp, Schitt’s Creek, Temple Grandin)
1954 Adrian Zmed – Actor (T.J. Hooker, Bachelor Party, Grease 2)
1958 Patricia Heaton – Actress (Everybody Loves Raymond, Women of the House, Beethoven, The Middle)
1960 Mykelti Williamson – Actor (Boomtown, Forrest Gump, Waiting to Exhale, Heat, Con Air, Justified, 24, Lucky Number Slevin)
1961 Steven Weber – Actor (Wings, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Leaving Las Vegas, Pudd'nhead Wilson)
1965 Stacy Edwards - Actress (Chicago Hope, Wolf Lake, The Cottonwood)
1968 Patsy Kensit - British actress (Lethal Weapon 2, The Turn of the Screw, Luna)
1969 Chastity/Chaz Bono – Daughter/son of Sonny & Cher
1987 Tamzin Merchant – British actress (The Tudors, Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, Radio Cape Cod, Red Faction: Origins)
1988 Joshua Bowman – British actor (Revenge, Prowl, Make It or Break It, Betwixt, Holby City)
Died this Day
1832 Jean-François Champollion, age 41 - French Egyptologist who deciphered the Rosetta Stone by recognising that the Egyptian symbols were not just alphabetic or syllabic, but could express an entire idea
1868 Jesse Chisholm - US frontier trader who blazed one of the West's most famous trails. He died in Oklahoma of food poisoning. He was born in the Hiwassee region of Tennessee, in 1805 or 1806, of a Scottish father and a Cherokee mother. Chisholm was among the early pioneers who moved west into what is now the state of Arkansas. In his 20s, he joined a community of Cherokee Indians in north-western Arkansas and became a frontier trader. His familiarity with both Anglo and Native American culture and language (he could reportedly speak 14 different Indian dialects) helped him build a thriving trade with the Osage, Wichita, Kiowa, and Commanche. It also made him useful to government officials, and he served as a liaison between tribal leaders and federal officials at several important councils. Chisholm's vast knowledge of south-western geography was invaluable in trailblazing. He led several important expeditions into the Southwest during the 1830s and 1840s, and during the Civil War opened a trading post near present-day Wichita, Kansas. Following the war, he blazed one of the first trading routes south down from Wichita to the southern Red River, in central Texas. Eventually extended all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico, the trading route became known as the Chisholm Trail. A straight wagon road with easy river crossings and few steep grades, Chisholm designed his trail for the lumbering heavy freight wagons used for commerce. In the year before Chisholm died, his trail also began to be used for a different purpose: cattle drives. The rapidly growing Texas cattle industry needed to move its herds north to the railheads in Kansas, and Chisholm's gentle trail provided an ideal route. During the next five years, more than a million head travelled up the road, trampling down a path that was in some places 200 to 400 yards wide. Hooves and the erosion of wind and water eventually cut the trail down below the level of the plains it crossed, permanently carving Chisholm's Trail into the face of the earth and guaranteeing its lasting fame. Traces of the trail may still be seen to this day
1927 Ira Remsen – US chemist and co-discoverer, with Constantine Fahlberg, of saccharin, the artificial sweetener
1944 Louis "Lepke" Buchalter - A leader of US organised crime during the 1930s, he was executed for murder at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, in the prison's electric chair. In the early 1930s, Lepke joined with fellow crime boss "Lucky" Luciano in forming the Syndicate, a tight interstate criminal organisation that recognised the value of strong political connections and the shortcomings of excessive gang warfare. The Syndicate established "Murder, Inc.," which was headed by Lepke. It was a troop of hired guns that punished those who violated the Syndicate's decrees
1994 John Candy, age 43 - Canadian actor (Second City TV, Splash, Planes Trains and Automobilies, Stripes, National Lampoon's Vacation, Summer Rental, JFK, Uncle Buck)
1996 Minnie Pearl (Sarah Ophelia Colley), age 83 - US comedienne (Hee Haw, Grand Ole Opry) and singer (Giddyup Go-Answer)
On this Day
1634 Samuel Cole opened the US’s first tavern, in Boston. Just over twenty years later, in 1656, Massachusetts passed a law that required every town in the colony to have a tavern or to be fined. Taverns provided a place to meet, to drink and to exchange news. Saturdays were military training days in the colonies. After marching and drilling, both the officers and men headed for the taverns to relax and sample the innkeepers' food and drink
1675 King Charles II appointed John Flamsteed the first Astronomer Royal of England
1681 England's King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn for an area of land that later became Pennsylvania
1789 The Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York City. Lawmakers then adjourned for the lack of a quorum
1791 Vermont became the 14th state of the Union, the first addition to the original thirteen colonies
1791 The Constitutional Act dividing Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada was introduced in the British House of Commons
1824 Britain's Royal National Lifeboat Institution was founded
1837 The Fort Erie Canal Company was incorporated
1837 The Illinois state legislature granted a city charter to Chicago
1861 Abraham Lincoln took office as president of the US
1871 Sir Sandford Fleming was appointed the engineer in charge of the Canadian Pacific Railway survey. Fleming went on to devise the system of Universal Standard Time by dividing the world into 24 equal time zones, with one standard time within each zone, and played a major role in introducing the concept around the world
1873 The New York Daily Graphic became the first illustrated daily newspaper
1877 Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky premiered his ballet Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow
1882 The first electric trams in Britain ran from Leytonstone, East London
1902 The American Automobile Association (AAA) was organised in Chicago
1917 Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives
1924 The song, Happy Birthday To You, was published by Clayton F. Summy
1933 In his inaugural address, US President Franklin Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
1933 The start of President Roosevelt's first administration brought with it the first woman to serve in the Cabinet, Labour Secretary Frances Perkins
1936 The maiden flight of the airship Hindenburg took place in Germany
1938 The movie serial, The Lone Ranger, was first released. The movies were based on the radio program, which premiered in 1933 and ran for more than two decades
1952 Then actor Ronald Reagan married actress Nancy Davis in California
1958 The US nuclear submarine Nautilus became the first to travel under the North Pole ice cap
1961 John Diefenbaker became the first Canadian Prime Minister to officially visit Belfast and Dublin
1966 In Ottawa, the Canadian Justice Minister broke the news of the Munsinger Affair scandal, which involved the former Associate Minister of National Defence and his relationship with Gerda Munsinger, who was known to the RCMP as a prostitute with East German contacts
1969 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police decided to replace all their remaining dog sled teams with snowmobiles
1971 Pierre Trudeau became the first Canadian Prime Minister to wed in office. He married Margaret Sinclair, the daughter of a former Liberal cabinet minister, in a secret Vancouver ceremony. The sometimes publicly tempestuous marriage ended in separation in 1977 and divorce in 1984, with Pierre Trudeau retaining custody of their three sons
1975 Charles Chaplin was knighted at Buckingham Palace in London
1978 The Chicago Daily News, founded in 1875, published its last issue
1979 The Jet Propulsion Lab released the US Voyager I photo, revealing Jupiter's rings
1982 Judge Bertha Wilson became the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada
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