1840 George Smith - British Assyriologist who studied cuneiform inscriptions at the British Museum. He eventually deciphered the Chaldean account of the Deluge, which happened about the time of Noah
1850 Edward Bellamy - US author (The Blind Man's World and Other Stories, The Duke of Stockbridge, Miss Ludington's Sister) In 1888, he wrote a novel entitled Looking Backward: 2000-1887
1859 Alfred Edward Housman - British poet (A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, More Poems, Collected Poems, Manuscript Poems) He also wrote the poem, The Remorseful Day, which was taken as the title of the last Inspector Morse book
1874 Robert Frost - US poet (Birches, Mending Wall, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, A Witness Tree)
1879 Othmar Ammann - Swiss-born US engineer and designer of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
1880 Duncan Hines - Restaurant guide author. His high standards made his guidebooks very popular, and he was much trusted by travellers. In the 1950s he sold the rights to his name for use on grocery items, including cake mix. Products with his name on it sold very well, as he had amassed a reputation for quality over the years
1897 David McCallum Sr – Renown Scottish concertmaster violinist (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham's Symphony Orchestra, Scottish National Orchestra) He was the father of actor David McCallum
1909 Chips Rafferty - Actor (The Desert Rats, The Sundowners, Wackiest Ship in the Army, Skullduggery)
1911 Tennessee Williams - US playwright (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, Night of the Iguana, Summer and Smoke)
1914 William Westmoreland - US Army General and head of the US forces in Vietnam
1916 Sterling Hayden - Actor (The Asphalt Jungle, Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, 9 to 5, The Blue and the Grey, Zero Hour!)
1917 Rufus Thomas - Singer (Bear Cat, Walking the Dog, Do the Funky Chicken, The Breakdown)
1919 Strother Martin - Actor (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, McLintock, Rooster Cogburn, Slap Shot, The Wild Bunch)
1923 Bob Elliott - Comedian who is half of the comedy team, Bob & Ray
1925 Pierre Boulez - French conductor and composer (Pierre Boulez and his Ensemble Intercontemporain) He also played for Frank Zappa
1930 Sandra Day O'Connor – The first woman to be named to a seat on the US Supreme Court, in 1981
1931 Leonard Nimoy - Actor (Star Trek, Them!, In Search of…, Marco Polo, David, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Mission: Impossible, Fringe) director (Three Men and a Baby, The Good Mother) author (I Am Not Spock, I Am Spock) He also played Pete Chenery in the Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe
1934 Alan Arkin - Actor (Catch-22, The Russians are Coming The Russians are Coming, The Inlaws, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, 100 Centre Street) He is the father of Adam Arkin
1940 James Caan – Actor (Misery, Rollerball, The Godfather, Honeymoon in Vegas, Brian's Song, Dick Tracy, Alien Nation, Freebie and the Bean, Las Vegas, El Dorado, Funny Lady) He is the father of actor Scott Caan
1942 Erica Jong – Author (Fear of Flying, Of Blessed Memory, Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice)
1943 Bob Woodward - US journalist who was instrumental in breaking the Watergate story with Carl Bernstein
1944 Diana Ross - Singer with The Supremes, and solo (Love Child, Someday We'll be Together, River Deep-Mountain High, I Hear a Symphony, Come See About Me, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Theme from Mahogany, Love Hangover) actress (Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, The Wiz)
1948 Steve Tyler - Rock singer with Aerosmith (Dream On, Walk this Way, Dude Looks Like a Lady, Janie's Got a Gun) He’s the father of actress Liv Tyler
1949 Vicki Lawrence - Actress (The Carol Burnett Show, Vicki!, Mama's Family) singer (The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia)
1950 Teddy Pendergrass - Singer (I Don't Love You Anymore, Close the Door, Turn off the Lights, Hold Me)
1950 Martin Short - Canadian comedian and actor (Three Amigos, Three Fugitives, Innerspace, SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Maniac Mansion, Primetime Glick, Captain Ron)
1957 Leeza Gibbons – TV host (Extra, Leeza, Entertainment Tonight)
1960 Jennifer Grey - Actress (Dirty Dancing, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Cotton Club) She is Joel Grey's daughter
1966 Michael Imperioli – Actor (The Sopranos, Detroit 1-8-7, Goodfellas, The Inner Life of Martin Frost, Last Man Standing, Lean on Me)
1985 Keira Knightley – British actress (Pirates of the Caribbean, King Arthur, Love Actually, Doctor Zhivago, Bend It Like Beckham, Oliver Twist, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace)
Died this Day
1827 Ludwig von Beethoven, age 56 - German composer, died in Vienna, Austria. He had been deaf for the latter part of his life, but said on his death bed "I shall hear in heaven." It was later determined that he suffered from lead poisoning
1892 Walt Whitman - US poet (Drum Taps, Leaves of Grass, O Captain My Captain, Two Rivulets, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry) He died in Camden, NJ
1902 Cecil Rhodes, age 48 - British born South African statesman, and gold and diamond mine chairman. He was buried in Rhodesia which had been named after him, and is now Zimbabwe
1923 Sarah Bernhardt, age 78 - Legendary French stage actress. She died of kidney failure, in Paris
1945 David Lloyd George, age 82 – British Prime Minister during World War I
1959 Raymond Chandler, age 70 - US author and creator of Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, The High Window, The Long Goodbye, The Little Sister) He only turned to writing when he was 44, after being fired from an oil company for his alcoholic excesses during the Depression
1973 Sir Noël Coward, age 73 - British poet, playwright and songwriter (The Vortex, Private Lives, Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever, In Which We Serve) and actor (The Italian Job, Our Man in Havana, Around the World in 80 Days)
On this Day
1616 William Baffin sailed from Bristol, England for his fifth voyage on the Discovery. This trip would take him past the Greenland coast, and north for another 300 miles
1663 Bishop François de Laval received a royal grant to found a seminary at Quebec
1780 The first Sunday newspaper in Britain was published, The British Gazette & Sunday Monitor
1804 The Louisiana Purchase was divided into the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana
1821 The Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company amalgamated, under the name Hudson's Bay Company
1832 The steamboat Yellowstone headed for Montana, as the mighty American Fur Company adopted the latest in transportation technology. Departing from St. Louis, the Yellowstone reached Fort Union in June, where it was to pick up furs. A decade earlier, John Jacob Astor had formed the Western Department of his American Fur Company to begin exploiting the fur trade in the western reaches of the continent. In 1828, Astor established a large trading post called Fort Union at the strategically important point where the Yellowstone River merged with the Missouri, near what would later be the Montana-North Dakota state line. Fort Union allowed Astor to dominate the fur trade of the US northern plains and Rockies. With ruthless efficiency, Astor steadily undercut and eliminated competitors. The company had the financial resources to invest in competitive advantages that smaller companies like the Rocky Mountain Fur Company could not afford. Far from being a rustic backwoods operation, Astor's company was one of the most modern and progressive corporations of its day, and in 1830, Astor saw an opportunity to use the steamboat to further consolidate his stranglehold over the US western fur trade. The company hired a Louisville shipyard to build a boat specially designed for the treacherous currents of the Missouri. Christened The Yellowstone, it was a sturdy craft with a large cargo deck to carry furs and trade goods. It had a high wheelhouse from which the pilot could see to avoid the many snags and shoals, or sandbars, of the Missouri. While the American Fur Company modernised with steamboats, its less affluent competitors continued to rely on small, man-powered keelboats to move their furs and trade goods. By the mid-1830s, boats like the Yellowstone had helped Astor eliminate lesser fur companies and the American Fur Company enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the US's far Western fur trade
1885 In Woking, Surry, The Cremation Society performed the first official cremation in Britain. The only clue The Times gave to the identity of the deceased was "A lady well-known in literary and scientific circles"
1885 The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company of Rochester, NY, manufactured the first commercial motion picture film
1908 Canada's Prince Edward Island passed a law to ban all automobiles from its roads. The ban was lifted in 1919
1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published, immediately launching the 23-year-old author to fame and fortune
1921 The racing schooner Bluenose was launched at Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. The 130 foot-long schooner was built at a cost of $35,000, and was designed by William J. Roue of Halifax, both for fishing and racing. She was built entirely of Nova Scotian materials, except for the masts. Captained by Angus Walters, she raced five times for the North Atlantic fishermen's championships and was never beaten. The Bluenose was also a fishing boat. She returned from her first trip to the Grand Banks as highliner of the Lunenberg fleet, having caught more than the other ships. Sold during the Second World War, the Bluenose was wrecked on a reef off Haiti in 1946. The schooner, a member of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, is commemorated on the Canadian dime
1937 Crystal City, Texas unveiled a statue of Popeye at its annual Spinach Festival
1953 A polio vaccine was announced by US scientist Dr. Jonas Salk
1958 The US Army launched the US's third successful satellite, Explorer 3
1964 The musical Funny Girl opened on Broadway, establishing Barbra Streisand as a star
1971 East Pakistan proclaimed its independence, taking the name Bangladesh
1979 The Camp David Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel was signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menacham Begin in Washington, witnessed by President Jimmy Carter
1982 Groundbreaking ceremonies took place in Washington, DC, for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
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