1778 Pierre-Fidele Bretonneau - French epidemiologist. He performed the first successful tracheotomy
1783 Washington Irving - US author (Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Life of Washington)
1884 Bud Fisher - US comic strip artist (Mutt and Jeff)
1885 Allan Dwan – Canadian director (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Heidi, Escape to Burma, The Sands of Iwo Jima)
1893 Leslie Howard - British actor (Of Human Bondage, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Gone with the Wind) He was the father of British actor Ronald Howard, who played Sherlock Holmes in the 1954 TV series
1898 Henry R. Luce - US magazine publisher who created Time, Fortune, Life and Sports Illustrated. He was born in China
1898 George Jessel - Comedian, actor (Valley of the Dolls, Diary of a Young Comic)
1907 Espera DeCorti (Iron Eyes Cody) – Actor (A Man Called Horse, Grayeagle, How The West Was Won, Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County, The Great Sioux Massacre, Sitting Bull, The Paleface)
1921 Jan Sterling - Actress (The Harder They Fall, Pony Express, High School Confidential, The Incident, Split Second)
1922 Doris Day - Actress (Young at Heart, Pillow Talk, April in Paris, Lullaby of Broadway, Calamity Jane, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, The Glass Bottom Boat, With Six You Get Eggroll, The Man Who Knew Too Much)
1924 Marlon Brando - Actor (On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Last Tango in Paris, One-eyed Jacks, Roots: Next Generation, A Streetcar Named Desire)
1926 Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom - US astronaut. He was one of the three who died in the Apollo I fire
1928 Don Gibson - Singer (Oh Lonesome Me, Blue Blue Day, Just One Time, Sea of Heartbreak)
1929 Miyoski Umeki - Actress (Flower Drum Song, The Horizontal Lieutenant, Sayonara)
1934 Jane Goodall – British primatologist and authority on chimpanzees
1936 Reginald Hill – British author (A Clubbable Woman, On Beulah Height, Child's Play, Deadheads, An Advancement of Learning, Singing the Sadness, Killing the Lawyers, Bones and Silence) He has also written under the pseudonym, Patrick Ruell (The Only Game, Death of a Dormouse)
1937 William Gaunt - British actor (The Champions, No Place Like Home, Next of Kin, GBH) He received his BA in drama at Waco University in Texas
1941 Eric Braeden – German-born actor (The Young and the Restless, Titanic, How the West Was Won, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Rat Patrol) He played David Morrison in the Perry Mason Mystery The Case of the Wicked Wives He also played the Werewolf in Kolchak: The Night Stalker
1941 Jan Berry - Songwriter and singer with the group Jan and Dean (The Little Old Lady from Pasadena, Dead Man's Curve, Heart and Soul, Linda, Baby Talk, Surf City)
1942 Marsha Mason - Actress (The Goodbye Girl, Cinderella Liberty, Blume in Love, Chapter Two, Heartbreak Ridge, The Middle)
1942 Wayne Newton - Singer (Danke Shoen, Red Roses for a Blue Lady, Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast)
1944 Tony Orlando - Singer with his group Tony Orlando and Dawn (Knock Three Times, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, Candida)
1958 Alec Baldwin - Actor (The Hunt for Red October, Beetlejuice, The Getaway, Married to the Mob, Talk Radio, Working Girl, Glengarry Glen Ross, 30 Rock) He is the brother of William, Stephen and Daniel Baldwin
1959 David Hyde Pierce - Actor (Frasier, Addams Family Values, Nixon, Wolf, Crossing Delancy)
1961 Eddie Murphy - Comedian and actor (Saturday Night Live, 48Hrs., Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places, Coming to America)
1965 Angela Featherstone – Canadian actress (Providence, The Wedding Singer, Zero Effect, British Cracker, Con Air, Family of Cops)
1968 Charlotte Coleman – British actress (Freddie and Max, Double Act, Gayle's World, Oliver's Travels, Four Weddings and a Funeral) She played Jessica White in the Inspector Morse episode Happy Families
1972 Jennie Garth – Actress (Beverly Hills 90210, The Last Cowboy, What I Like About You)
1973 Jamie Bamber – British actor (Law & Order: UK, Battlestar Galactica, Ultimate Force, Daniel Deronda, Hornblower, Poirot: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Lady Audley’s Secret)
Died this Day
1862 Sir James Clark Ross - British polar explorer who has the Ross Barrier, Sea and Island named after him. He died two weeks before his 62nd birthday
1882 Jesse James, age 34 - Infamous US outlaw, shot to death in St. Joseph, Missouri. Robert Ford, his cousin and a member of his own gang, shot him in the back, hoping to collect the bounty on Jesse's head. For 16 years, Jesse and his brother, Frank, robbed and murdered throughout the Midwest. Detective magazines and pulp novels glamorised the James gang, turning them into mythical Robin Hoods who were driven to crime by unethical landowners and bankers. In reality, Jesse James was a ruthless killer who stole only for himself. The teenage James brothers joined up with Southern guerrilla leaders when the Civil War broke out. Both participated in massacres of settlers and troops affiliated with the North. After the war was over, Jesse robbed his first bank in Lexington, Missouri. Over the next couple of years, the James brothers became the suspects in several bank robberies throughout western Missouri, and in 1873, they began robbing trains. The James gang suffered a setback in 1876 when they raided the town of Northfield, Minnesota. The Younger brothers, cousins of the James brothers, were shot and wounded during their brazen midday robbery. After running off in a different direction from Jesse and Frank, the Younger brothers were captured by a large posse and later sentenced to life in prison. Jesse and Frank, the only members of the gang to escape successfully, headed to Tennessee to hide out. After spending a few quiet years farming, Jesse organised a new gang. Charlie and Robert Ford were on the fringe of the new gang, but they disliked Jesse intensely and decided to kill him for the reward money. On April 3rd, the Ford brothers came to hear Jesse's plan for the next robbery. When Jesse turned his back to adjust a picture on the wall, Bob Ford shot him several times in the back. Jesse's wife and children were in the house at the time. His tombstone reads, "Jesse W. James, Died April 3, 1882, Aged 34 years, 6 months, 28 days, Murdered by a traitor and a coward whose name is not worthy to appear here"
1901 Richard d'Oyly Carte - British impresario who built the Savoy Theatre. He is best remembered as the man behind Gilbert and Sullivan. He died a month before his 57th birthday
1936 Bruno Hauptmann - Electrocuted in Trenton, New Jersey for the kidnap-murder of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh
1946 Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma - Japanese commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, executed in the Philippines
1988 Milton Caniff - Comic strip artist (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon) His work was syndicated in more than 400 papers
1990 Sarah Vaughan - Jazz singer who was known as The Divine One (Misty, Tenderly, It's Magic, Broken Hearted Melody) She died of lung cancer, in suburban Los Angeles the week after her 66th birthday
On this Day
1669 King Louis XIV of France ordered a permanent militia for Canada
1756 The Marquis de Montcalm sailed from France for Canada, where he would die at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759
1776 George Washington received an honorary doctor of law degree from Harvard College
1860 The Pony Express began, as mail simultaneously left St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, carried by Henry Wallace riding west and John Roff riding east. During the 1,800-mile journey, the riders changed horses dozens of times, and on April 13, the westbound packet arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet's arrival in St. Joseph by two days. Operating on a semi-weekly basis for nearly two years, the route followed a pioneer trail across the present-day states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada to California, taking 10 days at a speed of about 8 mph. The service carried mail as well as some small freight for the young Wells Fargo Company. The Pony Express Company, a private enterprise, charged five dollars for every half-ounce of mail. Although short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated the US imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland mail service. The Pony Express also contributed to the economy of the towns on its route, and served the mail service needs of the US West in the days before the telegraph and an efficient transcontinental railroad. Pony Express mail service was discontinued on October 24, 1861, the same day the transcontinental telegraph service was initiated
1865 Union forces occupied the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia
1898 In Canada’s Yukon, the Chilkoot Pass avalanche killed 88 men during the Klondike gold rush
1907 A bill establishing the University of Saskatchewan was passed
1946 Canada paid the US $108-million for its portion of the Alaska Highway. The sum covered telephone systems, buildings and other assets, but it did not include highway construction itself, which was paid for by the US. It cost about US $140-million to build the 1,500-mile highway, which was intended as a wartime supply route in case of Japanese invasion of North America
1948 US President Harry Truman signed the Marshall plan, which allocated more than five-billion dollars in aid for 16 European countries
1959 Actress Ingrid Bergman returned to Hollywood after an absence of nearly 10 years. A scandal over her affair with director Roberto Rossellini had driven her from the movie town
1968 Less than 24 hours before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "mountaintop" speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers
1982 Britain dispatched a naval task force to the south Atlantic to reclaim the Falkland Islands from Argentina
1985 The landmark Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood closed its doors after 56 years in business
15
Responses