1818 August Wilhelm Hoffmann - German chemist who discovered formaldehyde and extracted aniline from coal products
1842 Elizabeth Bacon Custer - Wife of George Custer and author who chronicled the West (Boots and Saddles, Tenting on the Plains, Following the Guidon) Elizabeth Custer is best known today for her decades-long effort to celebrate her husband's life and exonerate him for the massacre of the Seventh Cavalry at Little Bighorn in 1876. Today her writings provide a rare female perspective on military life in the West of the mid-19th century. She graduated as valedictorian from the Young Ladies' Seminary and Collegiate Institute in Monroe, Michigan, and not long after, she met Captain George Custer. After Custer's bravery in several Civil War battles made him a national hero, Elizabeth's father accepted Custer as a fit suitor for his daughter's hand, and the couple married in 1864. After the war, George Custer remained in the military, taking his young wife along on his many assignments around the nation. Long interested in writing, Elizabeth found that her life as an army wife provided her with excellent material, and her diaries, recording the often harsh living conditions, later became the basis for some of her books. Following her husband's death at Little Bighorn in 1876, Elizabeth learned that President Ulysses Grant and several other senior officers blamed Custer for the Indian massacre of his men. Determined to defend Custer from what she believed were malicious attacks, Elizabeth wrote several books recounting the couple's life on the Plains. Elizabeth provided a biased portrait of her husband as an exemplary son, a loving husband and father, and a conscientious commanding officer. The books also offered a rare view of the Plains Indian wars from the perspective of a Victorian Era woman. Applying her own cultural standards to Native Americans, Elizabeth believed that Indian braves were exploitative of their wives and deserved to be conquered and removed to reservations. However, many people who had known her husband did not share her admiring view of him. Reluctant to challenge a devoted widow, many critics remained silent during her lifetime. A year after she died in 1933 at the age of 90, however, the first critical reappraisal of Custer's career appeared with Frederic Van de Water's book The Glory Hunter
1850 William Welch - US pathologist who modernised medical practices in the US
1869 Harvey Cushing - US surgeon who pioneered important neurosurgery techniques
1892 Mary Pickford - Canadian born silent film actress who was known as America's Sweetheart (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Coquette, Stella Maris, The Taming of the Shrew, Pollyanna, A Poor Little Rich Girl) Pickford made her theatrical debut in 1898 at the Silver King in Toronto. She entered the silent movie business when stars were not given billing or clearly identified, for fear they would want high fees. A clever businesswoman, she progressed from studio to studio, securing ever more lucrative contracts before forming her own company in 1919. United Artists Corporation was formed with her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, along with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith
1912 Sonja Henie - Norwegian-born US skater ice skater and Olympic Gold medallist in 1928, 1932 and 1936. She was also World Champion from 1927 through 1936
1921 Alfie Bass British actor (Are You Being Served?, Danger UXB, Revenge of the Pink Panther, Moonraker, Till Death Us Do Part, Vacant Lot, Bootsie and Snudge, The Lavender Hill Mob)
1922 Carmen McRae - Jazz singer (The Next Time It Happens, Skyliner)
1923 Edward Mulhare - Irish born actor (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Knight Rider, Megaforce, Our Man Flint, Von Ryan's Express)
1926 Shecky Greene - Comedian
1928 Eric Porter - British actor (The Forsythe Saga, Nicholas and Alexandra, The Day of the Jackal, The Jewel in the Crown) He played Professor James Moriarty in the Granada TV series Sherlock Holmes
1928 Monty Sunshine - Jazz musician on the clarinet (Petite Fleur) He also played in the film Look Back in Anger
1929 Jacques Brel - French singer, songwriter (Jackie, Next, If You Go Away, I'm Not Afraid)
1931 John Gavin - Actor (Psycho, Spartacus, A Time to Love & a Time to Die, Sophia Loren: Her Own Story, Thoroughly Modern Millie) He served as the US Ambassador to Mexico from 1981 to 1986
1941 Peggy Lennon - Singer with her family group The Lennon Sisters (The Lawrence Welk Show)
1944 Hywel Bennett - Welsh actor (Shelley, The Family Way, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Malice Aforethought, Deadly Advice, Karaoke)
1951 Mel Shacher - Musician, bass guitarist with the Grand Funk Railroad (Closer To Home, We're An American Band, The Loco-motion, Some Kind of Wonderful)
1960 John Schnieder Actor (The Dukes of Hazzard, Smallville, October Baby, The Secret Life of an American Teenager)
1963 Julian Lennon - British singer (Valotte, Too Late for Goodbyes) He is the son of John and Cynthia Lennon
1966 Robin Wright - Actress (The Princess Bride, Moll Flanders, Forrest Gump, Beowulf, Empire Falls, State of Play)
1968 Patricia Arquette - Actress (Medium, Ethan Frome, Ed Wood, Wildflower) She is the sister of actress Rosanna Arquette and the grand-daughter of Cliff Arquette (Charlie Weaver)
1980 Katee Sackhoff Actress (Longmire, Battlestar Galactica, 24, The Education of Max Bickford, Halloween: Resurrection)
1981 Taylor Kitsch Actor (Friday Night Lights, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Gospel Hill, The Covenant, Snakes on a Plane)
Died this Day
1492 Lorenzo de Medici, age 43 - Florentine statesman and ruler
1861 Elisha Graves Otis, age 49 - US inventor of the safety lift, or elevator
1899 Martha Place - The first woman to be executed in the electric chair, which had been first used in 1890. The use of electricity as a means of capital punishment had arisen in the 1880s after the governor of New York claimed that hanging was a method from the dark ages and that electricity was the modern, scientific way to kill people. People were beginning to feel squeamish about the public spectacle of hangings at that time. The electric chair also had the advantage of taking up less space than the gallows. As electricity was being developed and touted by early supporters for commercial uses in the US, its energy-source competitors attempted to raise questions about its safety. They hoped in vain that its association with executions would scare the public away from using electricity
1925 Frank Baldwin - Inventor of the arithmometer, or desktop calculating machine. Although economic factors made it impractical to manufacture Baldwin's apparatus, his later inventions became standard business machines until the dawn of the electronic computer. He died two days before his 87th birthday
1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, age 39 - Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the liberation of the POW camp. Two days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Bonhoeffer, a lecturer at Berlin University, took to the radio and denounced the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip, the leadership principle that was merely a synonym for dictatorship. Bonhoeffer's broadcast was cut off before he could finish. Bonhoeffer's continued vocal objections to Nazi policies resulted in his losing his freedom to lecture or publish, and he soon joined the German resistance movement. In April 1943, shortly after becoming engaged to be married, Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo. Evidence implicating him in the plot to overthrow the government came to light and he was court-martialed and sentenced to die. While in prison, he acted as a counsellor and pastor to prisoners of all denominations. The last words of the brilliant and courageous opponent of Nazism were "This is the end - for me, the beginning of life"
1950 Vaslav Nijinsky - Russian ballet dancer, died in London after many years of insanity
1973 Pablo Picasso, age 91 - Spanish painter and sculptor who pioneered Cubism and was still working before his death at his home near Mougins, France
On this Day
1751 In Halifax, Nova Scotia, William Pigott opened the first inn in English Canada
1838 The 236 foot steamship, Great Western, sailed from Bristol on her maiden voyage to New York. She would become the first steamship to make regular Atlantic crossings
1858 The hour bell of London's Big Ben was cast
1875 The Canadian Parliament passed the Northwest Territories Act. The act appointed a lieutenant-governor and a Northwest Territories council, making the Territories a political entity separate from Manitoba
1904 Britain and France signed a Convention to settle the French Shore question. French fishermen would lose landing rights on the Newfoundland coast in return for cash and concessions in Africa
1915 Ontario created a board to handle liquor distribution. It is now the Liquor Control Board of Ontario
1918 Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sold war bonds on the streets of New York City's financial district. Thousands of people turned out to see the stars
1952 President Truman seized the steel industry to avert a nation-wide strike
1985 The government of India filed suit against Union Carbide, charging that negligence led to the chemical leak in Bhopal that claimed about two thousand lives
1988 Jimmy Swaggart was defrocked as a minister of the Assemblies of God after he rejected an order from the church's national leaders to stop preaching for a year
1988 Britain's first self-extinguishing armchair was unveiled with its own heat detector activated sprinkler system
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