1544 Torquato Tasso - Italian poet (Jerusalem Delivered)
1819 Sir Henry Tate - British sugar refiner and endower of the Tate Gallery in London
1885 Malcolm Campbell - British auto and boat racer. He was the first to travel 300 mph in a car
1898 Dorothy Gish - US silent film and stage actress (Nell Gwynne, Madame Pompadour, Wolves) She was the sister of Lillian Gish
1903 Lawrence Welk - US bandleader (Calcutta, Tonight You Belong to Me, Weary Blues, Moritat, The Lawrence Welk Show)
1919 Mercer Ellington - Bandleader and songwriter (Blue Serge, Things Ain't What They Used to Be) He owned the Mercer record label and led his brother's band after Duke Ellington's death
1923 Terence Alexander - British actor (Bergerac, The Forsyte Saga, The Magic Christian, The Day of the Jackal)
1931 Rupert Murdoch – Australian-born US media mogul (Fox, HarperCollins Publishers, New York Post, The Times of London, BSkyB)
1932 Leroy Jenkins - Jazz musician with the trio Three Compositions of New Jazz
1934 Sam Donaldson - Newsman (ABC News)
1935 Nancy Kovack - Actress (Diary of a Madman, Frankie and Johnny, Ellery Queen) She has been married to world-renowned maestro Zubin Mehta since 1969. She was in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Golfer's Gambit and The Case of the Badgered Brother She also appeared in the Batman episodes The Joker Is Wild, and Batman Is Riled
1950 Jerry Zucker - Director (Ghost, Ruthless People, Top Secret!, Police Squad!, Airplane!, Naked Gun movies)
1950 Bobby McFerrin - Pianist, jazz musician, songwriter, and singer who specialises in improvisational solo of all voices and imitates instruments (Don't Worry Be Happy)
1952 Susan Richardson - Actress (Eight is Enough, American Graffiti)
1952 Douglas Adams - British author (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life the Universe & Everything, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, Mostly Harmless)
1955 Jimmy Fortune - Country singer with The Statler Brothers (Flowers on the Wall, Bed of Roses)
1960 Robert Glenister – British actor (Hu$tle, Spooks/MI-5, The Ruby in the Smoke, A Touch of Frost, Persuasion, Prime Suspect: The Lost Child, Sink or Swim) He portrayed Clive Pendle in the Kavanagh QC episode Heartland . He is the brother of actor Philip Glenister
1961 Bruce Watson - Canadian musician with the group Big Country (Harvest Home, Fields of Fire, In a Big Country, Chance, Wonderland, East of Eden, Where the Rose is Sown)
1961 Elias Koteas – Canadian actor (Combat Hospital, Shutter Island, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Skinwalkers, Collateral Damage, Thin Red Line, Gattica, Crash, Malarek)
1963 Alex Kingston - British actress (ER, The Knock, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, Crocodile Shoes, The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover, Doctor Who, Marchlands, Upstairs Downstairs, Hope Springs, Boudica, The Knock)
1965 Wallace Langham – Actor (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Social Network, Little Miss Sunshine, Daddy Daycare, Mission Hill, Veronica’s Closet, Daydream Believers: The Monkees’ Story, The Larry Sander’s Show)
1967 John Barrowman – Scottish-born U.S. actor (Torchwood, Doctor Who, Titans, Central Park West, Arrow)
1969 Terrence Howard – Actor (Iron Man, Hustle & Flow, Crash, The Brave One, Law & Order: Los Angeles, Winnie, Sparks, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Empire, Wayward Pines)
1981 David Anders – Actor (Alias, 24, The Vampire Diaries, Heroes)
1982 Thora Birch - Actress (Patriot Games, A Clear and Present Danger, American Beauty, Dungeons & Dragons)
Died this Day
1950 Arthur Jeffrey Dempster, age 63 - Canadian-born physicist who built the first mass spectrometer, a device that separates and measures the quantities of different charged particles, such as atomic nuclei or fragments of molecules. He died in Stuart, Florida
1955 Sir Alexander Fleming - Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin
1957 Admiral Richard Evelyn Bird - US aviator and explorer
1970 Erle Stanley Gardner, age 80 - US lawyer and author who wrote the Perry Mason series of books. Perry Mason first appeared in 1933 in The Case of the Velvet Claws. Gardner used to write 200,000 words a month, as well as devoting two days a week to his law practice. He wrote almost 100 mystery novels. He played a judge in the last Perry Mason episode The Case of the Final Fade-Out
1971 Philo T. Farnsworth, age 74 - US television pioneer. Farnsworth first imagined the principles of television during high school and later began researching image transmission at Brigham Young University. In 1927, at the age of twenty-one, he transmitted the first television image – ironically, a dollar sign, which was made up of sixty horizontal lines. He went on to patent 165 devices pertaining to the television, including cathode-ray tubes, amplifiers, vacuum tubes, and electrical scanners
1992 Richard Brooks, age 79 – US screenwriter (Key Largo, The Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood) He also directed many of the films he wrote. He was married to British actress Jean Simmons for over thirty years at the time of his death
On this Day
AD 537 The Goths lay siege to Rome
1682 Britain's Chelsea hospital for soldiers (Chelsea Pensioners), and venue for the famous Chelsea Flower Show, was founded
1702 The Daily Courant was launched near Fleet Street. It was Britain's first successful English daily newspaper
1779 The US Army Corps of Engineers was established
1810 Emperor Napoleon of France was married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria the year following his divorce from Josephine de Beauharnais
1818 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, then age 21, published her novel "Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus." The book is frequently called the world's first science fiction novel. In her tale, a scientist animates a creature constructed from dismembered corpses. The gentle, intellectually gifted creature is enormous and physically hideous. Cruelly rejected by its creator, it wanders, seeking companionship and becoming increasingly brutal as its creator fails to produce a mate. Shelley created the story on a rainy afternoon in 1816 in Geneva, where she was staying with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend Lord Byron. Byron proposed they each write a gothic ghost story, but only Mary Shelley completed hers. Although serving as the basis for the Western horror story and the inspiration for numerous movies in the 20th century, the book Frankenstein is much more than popular fiction. The story explores philosophical themes and challenges Romantic ideals about the beauty and goodness of nature. Mary Shelley led a life nearly as tumultuous as the monster she created. The daughter of free-thinking philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, she lost her mother days after her birth. She clashed with her stepmother and was sent to Scotland to live with foster parents during her early teens, eloping with the married poet Shelley when she was 17. After Shelley's wife committed suicide in 1817, the couple married but spent much of their time abroad, fleeing Shelley's creditors. Mary Shelley gave birth to five children, but only one lived to adulthood. Mary was only 24 years old when Shelley drowned in a sailing accident. She went on to edit two volumes of his works. Shelley lived on a small stipend from her father-in-law, Lord Shelley, until her surviving son inherited his fortune and title in 1844
1823 The Concord Academy in Concord, Vermont, opened the first normal school, or school for teachers, in US
1824 The US War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs
1835 In Toronto, George Kingsmill set up the first formal police force in Canada, and became the High Constable of Toronto
1845 Henry Jones invented self-rising flour
1850 Richard Blanshard arrived on Vancouver Island and read the proclamation establishing the new colony, with himself as the first governor
1861 The Confederate convention in Montgomery, Alabama, adopted a constitution for the Confederate States of America
1865 The Assembly of Canada voted 91-33 for Confederation
1879 Guelph, Ontario was incorporated as a city. The original settlement was founded by John Galt
1888 The famous "Blizzard of '88" swept most of the US eastern seaboard, claiming some 400 lives. In New York City, snowdrifts were 33 feet high. Thousands of people were marooned in their homes, the Stock Exchange shut down, telegraph communications were halted and rail travel ground to a standstill
1908 Sir Wilfrid Laurier created the Canadian National Battlefields Commission, largely to prevent the Plains of Abraham from falling into the hands of speculators. This was the site of the 1759 battle between England and France which decided control of New France, and ultimately Canada
1927 The Flatheads Gang staged the first armoured truck hold-up in US history. It took place on the Bethel Road, seven miles out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the way to Coverdale. The armoured truck, carrying $104,250 of payroll money for the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company, drove over a mine planted under the roadbed by the road bandits. The car blew up and five guards were badly injured
1931 Québec extended civil rights to women, although it still withheld the right to vote
1935 The Bank of Canada began operations
1942 As Japanese forces continued to advance in the Pacific during World War II, General Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia, vowing: "I shall return." He did, nearly three years later
1985 The Al-Fayed brothers won control of Britain's House of Fraser group, to become the owners of Harrods
1986 It was calculated that one million days had elapsed since the traditional foundation of Rome, April 21, 753 BC
1997 Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II
2004 In Spain, ten bombs planted on four Madrid trains exploded within minutes of each other, ripping through carriages crowded with commuters. The attacks killed 191 and left more than 1,800 injured
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