1628 Marcello Malpighi - Italian physician who was a pioneer in working with the microscope
1796 Julia Hart - Canadian novelist (St. Ursula's Convent, or The Nun in Canada) She was the first native-born Canadian to write a novel published in Canada
1861 Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) - Canadian lecturer and poet (The Song My Paddle Sings, The Pilot of the Plains, The Wolf) The daughter of Mohawk Chief Henry Martin and British wife Emily Howells, she is best known for her poetry celebrating her aboriginal heritage
1888 Barry Fitzgerald - Irish actor (Bringing Up Baby, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man, Going My Way) His brother was actor Arthur Shields
1891 Sam Jaffe - Actor (Gunga Din, Ben Casey, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Ben Hur, The Tell-Tale Heart) He also appeared in the Batman episodes Walk the Straight and Narrow and Shoot a Crooked Arrow
1903 Bix Beiderbecke - US jazz cornetist (In a Mist)
1905 Richard Haydn – British actor (The Sound of Music, Young Frankenstein, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, The Lost World, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, And Then There Were None)
1918 Pamela Mason - Actress (Charade, Navy vs. the Night Monsters)
1920 Jethro (Kenneth Burns) - Entertainer and musician with Homer & Jethro (The Battle of Kookamonga, Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyeballs)
1928 James Earl Ray – Ex-convict who assassinated the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968
1937 Tommy Hunter - Canadian country singer and host (The Tommy Hunter Show)
1940 David Rabe - Playwright (Streamers, Casualties of War, I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can)
1940 Dean Torrence - Singer with Jan & Dean (The Little Old Lady From Pasadena, Dead Man's Curve, Surf City, Honolulu Lulu)
1940 Chuck Norris - Martial arts champion, actor (Code of Silence, Delta Force, Forced Vengeance, Lone Wolf McQuade, Missing in Action, Walker: Texas Ranger)
1945 Katharine Houghton - Actress (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Billy Bathgate, The Night We Never Met)
1947 Avril Kim Campbell - Canadian politician who became Canada's first female Prime Minister
1953 Paul Haggis – Canadian screenwriter (Due South, Quantum of Solace, The Black Donnellys, Casino Royale, Flags of Our Fathers, Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Walker Texas Ranger)
1956 Lesley Dunlop – British actress (May to December, My Uncle Silas, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thirteen at Dinner, The Elephant Man) She played Eileen Shaw in The Sweeney episode Taste of Fear
1957 Shannon Tweed – Newfoundland-born actress/reality TV personality (Gene Simmons: Family Jewels, Detroit Rock City, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, My Guide to Becoming a Rock Star, Electra, Indecent Behavior, Hot Dog…The Movie, Falcon Crest)
1958 Sharon Stone - Actress (The Quick and the Dead, Sliver, Basic Instinct, The Specialist, Total Recall, Casino)
1964 Prince Edward Anthony Richard Louis - Youngest child of Queen Elizabeth II. He is a documentary producer under the name of Edward Wessex (Of Crown and Country, Once Upon a Christmas, Varian's War, Edward on Edward)
1964 Jasmine Guy - Actress (A Different World, America's Dream, A Century of Women, Runaway, Harlem Nights, School Daze, Dead Like Me, The Vampire Diaries)
1964 Neneh Cherry – Swedish singer (Stop the War, Buffalo Stance, Kisses On the Wind)
1966 Edie Brickell – Singer (What I Am, Love Like We Do) She is married to singer/songwriter Paul Simon
1971 John Hamm – Actor (Mad Men, The Town, Howl, The Unit, What About Brian, The Division, We Were Soldiers, Providence)
1983 Carrie Underwood – Country singer (Before He Cheats, Don’t Forget to Remember Me, Jesus Take the Wheel, Cowboy Casanova, Some Hearts, Inside Your Heaven, Independence Day)
1983 Rafe Spall – British actor (Shaun of the Dead, A Good Year, Hot Fuzz, Pete Versus Life, Anonymous, The Shadow Line, Desperate Romatics, Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me) He is the son of actor Timothy Spall
1984 Olivia Wilde – Actress (House, TRON: Legacy, Cowboys & Aliens, Year One, The Black Donnellys, The O.C.)
Died this Day
1528 Balthasar Hubmaier - Austrian Anabaptist leader who was burned at the stake as an heretic
1921 Francis Upton - Assistant to Thomas Edison. He joined Edison in 1878, working at Edison's Menlo Park laboratory on mathematical problems relating to the development of the light bulb. He later became a partner and general manager of the Edison Lamp Company. Upton's articles for Scientific American and Scribner's Monthly introduced many of Edison's inventions to the public
1981 Sir Maurice Oldfield - British intelligence chief, considered to be the model for Ian Fleming's "M" in his James Bond novels
1986 Ray Milland, age 79 - Welsh born actor (Rich Man Poor Man, Ellery Queen, Frogs, The Man With Two Heads, Dial M For Murder, The Lost Weekend) He portrayed the Home Secretary in the movie Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death
1988 Andy Gibb - Singer and brother of the BeeGees, he died in Oxford, England, of heart inflammation, five days after his 30th birthday
1998 Lloyd Bridges, age 85 - Actor (High Noon, The Tall Texan, Sea Hunt, The Great Wallendas, Airplane!) He died in Westwood, California. He was the father of Beau and Jeff Bridges
On this Day
512 BC The rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem after the Jewish deportation by Nebuchadnezzar was completed this day with much celebrating
1496 Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere as he left Hispaniola for Spain
1629 King Charles I dissolved the British Parliament, leading to civil war
1785 Thomas Jefferson was appointed by the US as minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin
1793 A diary entry showed that Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe and his wife Elizabeth dined on boiled black squirrel, porcupine, roasted passenger pigeon, raccoon, fish, beef and veal, at a dinner in Toronto, Ontario
1792 John Stone patented the pile driver
1804 The US acquired control of the Louisiana Territory in a deal with France
1842 Queen's University was founded in Kingston, Ontario
1848 The Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war with Mexico and extending the boundaries of the US west to the Pacific Ocean
1862 After Congress passed the Legal Tender Act earlier in the year, the US Treasury issued the first paper money, in denominations of $5 $10 $20 $50 $100 $500 & $1000
1863 Prince Albert Edward, who would later become King Edward VII, married Princess Alexandra of Denmark
1864 Ulysses S. Grant became commander of the Union armies in the Civil War
1871 The opening of the first session of the first Legislative Council of Manitoba took place in Winnipeg
1876 Three days after receiving his telephone patent, Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful voice transmission when he used his invention to telephone his assistant. Thomas Watson, in an adjoining room in Boston, heard Bell say over the experimental device: "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you"
1880 Salvation Army Commissioner George Scott Railton and seven women officers of General William Booth's army arrived to start US operations
1896 Bob Fitzsimmons KO'd much larger Jim Corbett to win the world Heavyweight Boxing Championship, he then coined the phrase, "The bigger they come, the harder they fall"
1896 A device for tipping hats was patented in the US
1903 In Cleveland, Ohio, Harry C. Gammeter patented the multigraph duplicating machine
1906 London Underground opened the Baker Street to Waterloo section, and named it the Bakerloo line
1935 Nelson Eddy recorded the song Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life, from the film Naughty Marietta, for Victor Records
1964 The first Ford Mustang was produced, but it wasn't released to the public for a month
1965 Neil Simon's play, The Odd Couple, starring Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison and Art Carney as Felix Unger, opened on Broadway
1969 James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tennessee, to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
1971 The US Senate approved lowering the voting age to 18
1989 Twenty-four people were killed when an Air Ontario jet crashed just after taking off from Dryden, Ontario. Forty-five people survived. An inquiry later concluded ice on the wings caused the crash
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