1133 King Henry II - The first Plantagenet king of England. He was born in France
1512 Gerardus Mercator - Flemish cartographer who devised the Mercator system of mapping the world, which is still widely used today
1574 William Oughtred - British mathematician and inventor of the slide rule
1658 Antoine de la Mothe, Le Sieur de Cadillac - French soldier, explorer, and French colonial Governor. Cadillac arrived in Canada in 1683 and was the explorer responsible for mapping the Great Lakes region of North America for the French crown. He founded the city of Detroit in 1701 and served as Governor of Louisiana from 1710 to 1717. He is also the namesake of Cadillac cars
1824 James Merritt Ives - Lithographer (Currier & Ives)
1852 Lady Augusta Gregory - Irish writer and playwright (The Rising of the Moon, The Workhouse Ward) She was an associate of Yeats, with whom she founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin
1874 Henry Travers - British actor (Bells of St Mary, High Sierra, The Primrose Path)
1893 Emmett Culligan - US inventor of the method to soften water. He was the founder of Culligan Water, the water-treatment company
1908 Sir Rex Harrison - British actor (My Fair Lady, Cleopatra, Dr. Dolittle, The Agony and the Ecstasy)
1922 James Noble - Actor (Benson, The Nude Bomb, Chances Are) He played Leonard Weeks in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Murdered Madam
1927 Jack Cassidy - Actor (The Eiger Sanction, The Andersonville Trial) He was the father of David and Shaun Cassidy and was Shirley Jones' husband
1928 Lou Levy - Pianist with the band Supersax. He recorded with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson and Anita O'Day among others
1934 James B. Sikking - Actor (Hill Street Blues, The Star Chamber, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Doogie Howser MD)
1936 Dean Stockwell - Actor (Quantum Leap, Gentlemen's Agreement, Dune, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Long Day's Journey into Night, Married to the Mob, Air Force One, To Live and Die in L.A., Paris Texas, Compulsion, The Boy With the Green Hair, Song of the Thin Man, Anchors Aweigh) He was the brother of actor Guy Stockwell
1939 Samantha Eggar - British actress (Doctor Dolittle, The Collector, The Wild and the Willing) She portrayed Mary Watson in the 1976 Sherlock Holmes movie, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
1946 Michael Warren - Actor (Hill Street Blues, Butterflies are Free, Sweet Justice, Sierra)
1946 Murray Head – British singer (One Night in Bangkok, Some Day Soon, Say It Ain't So Joe) and stage and screen actor (Jesus Christ Superstar, Sunday Bloody Sunday) He is the brother of actor Anthony Head
1948 Eddy Grant - Singer (Electric Avenue, Living on the Frontline, I Don't Wanna Dance, Romancing the Stone)
1954 Marsha Warfield - Comedienne, actress (Night Court, The Richard Pryor Show, Empty Nest)
1955 Penn Jillette - Magician-comedian who is half of the comedy/magic team with his partner Teller
1958 Andy Gibb - British born, Australian raised singer (Love is Thicker than Water, I Just Want to be Your Everything, Shadow Dancing) He was the brother of Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb, who formed the group, the BeeGees
1969 Paul Blackthorne – British actor (Holby City, 24, Four Corners of Suburbia, The Dresden Files, Lipstick Jungle, The Gates, The River)
1974 Kevin Connolly – Actor (Entourage, The Notebook, John Q, Secretariat, He’s Just Not That Into You, Unhappily Ever After)
1989 Jake Lloyd – Actor (Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Jingle All the Way, Madison, Unhook the Stars)
Died this Day
1778 Thomas Arne - British composer (Rule Britannia) He died the week before his 68th birthday
1790 Flora Macdonald - Scottish heroine who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie after the Battle of Culloden
1815 Friedrich Anton Mesmer, age 80 - Austrian physician who pioneered the medical field of hypnotic therapy. Mesmer believed that invisible magnetic fields (animal magnetism) existed around living beings, and that if this invisible magnetic flow was upset, sickness could occur. Despite obvious errors in Mesmer's scientific theories, his process of mesmerism, as it became to be known, produced hypnotic states in his patients that had an extraordinary influence on their physical illnesses
1827 Count Alessandro Volta - Italian physicist and inventor who made the first battery and gave his name to the measure of the power of electricity (volt). He died two weeks after his 82nd birthday
1953 Sergei Prokofiev, age 62 - Russian composer (Peter and The Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, War and Peace)
1953 Josef Stalin, age 73 - Soviet dictator responsible for 11 million deaths. He died of a massive heart attack, after 29 years in power
1963 Patsy Cline, ''Cowboy'' Copas and ''Hawkshaw'' Hawkins - All three country music performers died in a private plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, after returning from a benefit performance
1967 Georges Vanier, age 78 - Canada's 19th Governor-General. He was the first French Canadian to hold the position
1980 Jay Silverheels (Harold J. Smith), age 67 - Canadian lacrosse player, boxer and actor (The Lone Ranger, Broken Arrow, Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, Laramie, Saskatchewan, Key Largo) He was born at the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, the son of a Mohawk chief. He worked in a movie called The Cowboy and the Indians with Clayton Moore, and was offered the role of Moore's faithful Indian sidekick, Tonto, in the TV series The Lone Ranger. The word kemosabe, or giimoozaabi, means scout in the Ottawa Ojibway dialect. In 1963 Silverheels founded the Indian Actors Workshop. He died of a stroke in California
1982 John Belushi, age 33 - Comedian (The Blues Brothers, Saturday Night Live, National Lampoon's Animal House)
1984 William Powell, age 91 - Actor (How To Marry a Millionaire, Mister Roberts, The Treasure of the Lost Canyon, Dancing in the Dark, Beau Geste) He was best known as Nick Charles in the Thin Man movies. He also appeared as Foreman Wells in the 1922 silent film, Sherlock Holmes
On this Day
1766 Spanish official Don Antonio de Ulloa arrived in New Orleans to take possession of the Louisiana Territory from the French. Although a brilliant scientist and explorer, de Ulloa's political talents proved far less impressive, and he faced a difficult situation when he tried to take control of the formerly French territory of Louisiana. In 1763, the French transferred the territory to Spain under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, as a reward for having been an ally in the French war with England. The French colonists of Louisiana, however, had not agreed to the treaty, and many were hostile to any attempt by the Spanish to assert control over their home. The resistance strengthened when the Spanish failed to immediately dispatch a new governor for the territory, leaving the administration in the hands of the acting French Governor Philippe Aubry for the first three years of Spanish rule. Arriving in New Orleans, de Ulloa faced widespread antagonism to his rule. Before coming to Louisiana, he had led a brilliantly successfully exploration of Peru, and had also gained fame among European scientists by founding an astronomical observatory and a mineralogical laboratory. However, these accomplishments did not impress the French inhabitants of Louisiana, and de Ulloa proved a timid and ineffective governor. When the French troops of Louisiana refused to recognise his authority, de Ulloa did not even attempt to stage a public ceremony marking the formal transfer of power to the Spanish crown. Instead, he decided to execute his orders through Aubry, preserving the appearance of continued French rule. His attempts to force the French colonists to use the handful of Spanish-dominated ports in the territory further alienated his subjects, as did his refusal to honour old French promissory notes held by many of the colonists. In 1768, the French political leaders revolted, forcing de Ulloa to flee to Havana, Cuba. Although subsequent Spanish officials were better able to control the French residents, Spanish control over Louisiana continued to remain tenuous. In 1800, Spain finally abandoned its claim to the territory and handed it back to the French. Three years later, Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the US in the Louisiana Purchase. Unlike their Spanish predecessors, the US eventually succeeded in winning the loyalty of the Louisianians
1770 The Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers, who had been taunted by a crowd of colonists, opened fire, killing five people. Two British soldiers were later convicted of manslaughter
1839 Charlotte Brontë wrote to the Reverend Henry Nussey, declining marriage. The 23-year-old Brontë told him that he would find her "romantic and eccentric" and not practical enough to be a clergyman's wife. In later life, after the death of her brother and sisters, Charlotte married a curate, Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte died in 1855, during a pregnancy shortly after the marriage
1844 The first issue of the Globe, edited and published by George Brown, appeared in Toronto
1856 The original Covent Garden Theatre in London was destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt and opened two years later
1872 The Toronto Typographical Union went on a 17 week strike against the Globe newspaper. They were striking for a shorter, nine-hour, workday. Twenty-four union members were arrested for 'conspiracy to restrain trade'
1874 The Prince Edward Island legislature opened its first session
1910 An avalanche killed sixty-two railroad workers in the Rogers Pass, of British Columbia's Rocky Mountains
1929 Fire destroyed the Los Angeles Automobile Show. Over 320 new cars, including the Auburn Motor Company's only Auburn Cabin Speedster, were lost in the flames
1936 The Spitfire fighter plane was unveiled for the first time, and made its first flight from Eastleigh aerodrome, Southampton, England
1946 Winston Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, saying "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent"
1960 Elvis Presley was discharged from the US Army after a two-year stint, having completed his service with the US forces in Germany
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