1588 Thomas Hobbes - British philosopher whose political philosophy, that absolute authority should be vested in the government, was expounded in his masterpiece Leviathan in 1651. He was born prematurely when his mother heard the Spanish Armada was coming. Also, he is the namesake of Calvin's stuffed tiger
1649 Elihu Yale - US born British official who became the Governor of Madras. In 1701 he sold some of his US effects and stipulated that the money should go towards the establishment of a collegiate school, which eventually became Yale University in 1887
1827 Baron Joseph Lister - British surgeon and scientist who pioneered antiseptics, which revolutionised modern surgery
1856 Booker T. Washington - US educator and reformer who became an important spokesperson for African-Americans at the turn of the 20th century. He was born in Franklin County, Virginia
1858 W. Atlee Burpee - Canadian horticulturist, born at Sheffield, New Brunswick. Burpee founded the world's largest mail-order seed company
1883 Walter Huston - Canadian born US actor (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Duel in the Sun, December 7th: The Movie, The Maltese Falcon) He was the father of John Huston and the grandfather of Anjelica Huston
1900 Spencer Tracy - Actor (Captains Courageous, Boys Town, Adam's Rib, Desk Set, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Northwest Passage)
1901 Melvyn Douglas - Actor (Hud, Being There, Hotel, Arsène Lupin Returns, Ninotchka, Frontier Justice)
1908 Bette Davis - Actress (Dangerous, All About Eve, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Of Human Bondage, Jezebel, The Little Foxes, Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte, Death on the Nile, Murder with Mirrors) She played Constant Doyle in the Perry Mason episode The Case of Constant Doyle
1916 Gregory Peck - Actor (To Kill A Mockingbird, Spellbound, David and Bathsheba, Moby Dick, The Guns of Navarone, Arabesque, Roman Holiday, Cape Fear, The Boys from Brazil, MacArthur) He was also in Mackenna’s Gold with Julie Newmar
1920 Arthur Hailey - British born author (Hotel, Airport, The Final Diagnosis)
1921 Christopher Hewett – British actor (Mr. Belvedere, The Producers, The Lavender Hill Mob)
1922 Gale Storm - Actress (My Little Margie, The Gale Storm Show, The NBC Comedy Hour, The Texas Rangers, Sunbonnet Sue) and singer (Ivory Tower)
1928 Tony Williams - Singer with the group The Platters (Only You, The Great Pretender, Twilight Time, My Prayer, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Harbour Lights)
1929 Sir Nigel Hawthorne - British actor (Yes Minister, Yes Prime Minister, The Madness of King George, Amistad, The Hiding Place, Firefox, Dead on Time, Demolition Man, The History of the World: Part I, The Barchester Chronicles) He was in Sweeney II with John Thaw
1932 Billy Bland - Singer (Let the Little Girl Dance, My Heart's on Fire)
1934 Frank Gorshin - Impressionist, actor (The Great Impostor, That Darn Cat, Death Car on the Freeway, All Shook Up) He also played The Riddler on Batman
1940 Tommy Cash - Songwriter (You Don't Hear) country singer (Six White Horses, Rise and Shine, One Song Away, I Recall a Gypsy Woman) He’s the brother of Johnny Cash
1941 Michael Moriarty - Actor (Law & Order, Bang the Drum Slowly, The Last Detail, Windmills of the Gods, Along Came a Spider, Pale Rider)
1943 Max Gail - Actor (Barney Miller, Pearl, Mortal Fear, D.C. Cab, Sons & Daughters, General Hospital)
1946 Jane Asher - British actress (Brideshead Revisited, Alfie, Dreamchild, The Winter’s Tale, The Choir, Paris by Night, Marple: The Murder At the Vicarage, The Masque of the Red Death, Holby City)
1949 Dr. Judith A. Resnik - Electrical engineer and astronaut. She was a mission specialist on the ill-fated Space Shuttle Challenger
1950 Agnetha Faltskög - Swedish singer with ABBA (Fernando, Dancing Queen, Take a Chance on Me, Waterloo)
1952 Mitch Pileggi - Actor (The X-Files, Takedown, Raven Hawk, Pointman, Basic Instinct, Return of the Living Dead Part II, Sons of Anarchy, Stargate: Atlantis, Day Break, Dallas)
Died this Day
1649 John Winthorp - The Puritan governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
1811 Robert Raikes, age 74 - British philanthropist and founder of the Sunday School movement
1946 Vincent Youmans, age 47 - US musician and composer (Hit the Deck, Great Day!, No No Nanette, I Know that You Know, More than You Know, Rise 'n' Shine, Flying Down to Rio, The Carioca, Tea for Two)
1964 Douglas MacArthur, age 84 - US Army General and WWII Commander in the Pacific. He died in Washington, DC
1974 A.Y. (Alexander Young) Jackson, age 91 - Canadian painter, storyteller, and a leading member of the influential Canadian art group, the Group of Seven
1975 Chiang Kai-shek, age 88 – The first constitutional President of the Republic of China, whose regime collapsed to the Communists in 1949
1976 Howard Hughes, age 70 - Reclusive billionaire, pilot, industrialist (Hughes Aircraft, the Spruce Goose) and Hollywood producer (The Front Page, Hell’s Angels, Scarface, The Outlaw) He died in his airplane en route from Acapulco to Houston
1992 Samuel Moore Walton – US entrepreneur and Wal-Mart founder. He died in Little Rock, Arkansas, a week after his 74th birthday
1994 Kurt Cobain, age 27 - Lead singer for the grunge band Nirvana (Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come As You Are, All Apologies) He was found dead in Seattle from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound
1997 Allen Ginsberg, age 70 - US poet (Howl and Other Poems, Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, White Shroud: Poems) He died in New York City
On this Day
1614 In Virginia, Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan, chief of the Algonquian Indian confederacy, married John Rolfe, a Jamestown tobacco planter
1621 The Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, Massachusetts, on a return trip to England
1669 In Québec City, Jean Talon granted a royal bounty to the large families of New France in the name of Louis XIV. It was Canada's first baby bonus, with the Crown giving 300 livres to families with 10 children and 400 to families with 12
1792 George Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states
1859 Charles Darwin sent the first three chapters of The Origin of Species to his publisher. It would become one of the most influential books ever published. Knowing the fates of scientists who had published radical theories and been ostracised or worse, Darwin held off publishing his theory of natural selection for years. He secretly developed his theory during two decades of surreptitious research following his return from a five-year voyage to South America on the HMS Beagle as the ship's unpaid botanist. Darwin, the privileged and well-connected son of a successful English doctor, had been interested in botany and natural sciences since his boyhood, despite the discouragement of his early teachers. At Cambridge, he found professors and scientists with similar interests and with their help began participating in scientific voyages, including the HMS Beagle's trip. By the time Darwin returned, he had developed an outstanding reputation as a field researcher and scientific writer, based on his many papers and letters dispatched from South America and the Galapagos Islands, which were read at meetings of prominent scientific societies in London. Darwin began publishing studies of zoology and geology as soon as he returned from his voyage, while secretly working on his radical theory of evolution. He finally published The Origin of Species after another scientist began publishing papers with similar ideas. When the book appeared in November 1859, it sold out immediately, and by 1872, six editions had been published. The theories he put forth in his book laid the groundwork for modern botany, cellular biology, and genetics
1875 An act of Parliament created the Supreme Court of Canada, which sat for the first time the following January
1887 In Tuscumbia, Alabama, teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the meaning of the word "water" as spelled out in the manual alphabet
1887 British historian Lord Acton wrote, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
1895 Playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the 8th Marquess of Queensberry (originator of boxing's Queensbury Rules), who had accused the writer of homosexual practices. Following the loss, Wilde was arrested at the Cadogan Hotel in London for offences arising from his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the Marquess's son. Even before the trial started, Wilde was ruined. Shops withdrew his books, and his plays at the St. James and Haymarket Theatres closed
1908 The first dial telephones in Canada for general use were put into service in Edmonton, Alberta
1910 Kissing was banned on French railways because it could cause delays
1931 The Fox Film Corporation dropped John Wayne from its roster of actors. Wayne had started playing bit parts at the studio in 1928 after working on the lot as a labourer, but his performances failed to impress the studio, and Wayne spent the next eight years playing mediocre parts in 80 films. While there, however, he befriended rising director John Ford. After leaving Fox, Wayne went to work for LoneStar/Monogram, where he starred in 16 mediocre westerns between 1933 and 1935. In 1939, Wayne finally had his breakthrough when his friend Ford cast him in Stagecoach. Wayne went on to play larger-than-life heroes in dozens of movies
1955 Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British prime minister who helped guide Great Britain and the world through the crisis of World War II, retired as the leader of Great Britain
1971 Canadian Frances Phipps became the first woman to reach the North Pole. She was the wife of Canadian pilot Weldy Phipps
1971 The Gentilly nuclear power station started service near Trois-Rivières, Québec. It was the world's first nuclear plant to use the Candu system, with a reactor fuelled by natural uranium and cooled by ordinary water
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