1649 James Scott - Duke of Monmouth and claimant to the English Throne. He led a failed rebellion against King James II which cost him his head. His 320 accomplices were sentenced to death by Judge Jeffreys
1806 Isambard Kingdom Brunel - British engineer who built the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol and the Great Western steam ship
1875 Jacques Futrelle – US journalist and author of detective fiction who created Professor Augustus S.F.X van Dusen, the Thinking Machine (The Tragedy of the Life Raft, The Case of the Golden Plate, The Diamond Master, The Haunted Bell)
1898 Paul Robeson - Singer (Ol' Man River) and actor (The Emperor Jones, Show Boat, Othello)
1903 Ward Bond - Actor (Wagon Train, Gone with the Wind, It's a Wonderful Life, The Maltese Falcon, Mister Roberts, Rio Bravo)
1926 Hugh Hefner - Publisher (Playboy magazine)
1932 Carl Perkins - Singer (Blue Suede Shoes, Your True Love, Pink Pedal Pushers)
1933 Jean-Paul Belmondo - French actor (Breathless, Casino Royale, Is Paris Burning, Swashbuckler)
1935 Avery Schreiber - Comedian who was half of the comedy duo Burns & Schreiber
1939 Michael Learned - Actress (The Waltons, Nurse, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, A Christmas Without Snow, General Hospital)
1942 Brandon De Wilde – Actor (Shane, Hud, In Harm’s Way, The Tenderfoot, Jamie)
1949 Sorcha Cusack – Irish born actress (Father Brown, Casualty, Napoleon and Love, Jane Eyre, Snatch, Middletown, Lewis: Wild Justice) She’s the daughter of Cyril Cusack and the sister of Sinéad Cusack, Niamh Cusack and Catherine Cusack. She appeared in Plastic Man, with John Thaw. She also played Joyce Garrett in the Inspector Morse episode Cherubim And Seraphim
1954 Dennis Quaid - Actor (Wyatt Earp, The Big Easy, Great Balls of Fire!, Innerspace, Enemy Mine, The Day After Tomorrow, Traffic, Caveman, Postcards from the Edge, Cold Creek Manor, Vegas)
1965 Mark Pellegrino – Actor (Lost, The Big Lebowski, National Treasure, An American Affair, Dexter, Capote, Mulholland Dr., The Cherokee Kid, Supernatural, Quantico, The Tomorrow People, The Closer)
1966 Cynthia Nixon - Actress (Sex and the City, Amadeus, The Manhattan Project, Addams Family Values, The Big C, Hannibal)
1979 Keshia Knight Pulliam – Actress (The Cosby Show, House of Payne, Madea Goes to Jail, The Gospel, A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court)
1981 Moran Atias – Israeli actress (Tyrant, 24: Legacy, Crash, Mother of Tears)
1990 Kristen Stewart – Actress (Twilight, New Moon, Adventureland, Fierce People, Cold Creek Manor, Panic Room)
1998 Elle Fanning – Actress (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Super 8, Reservation Road, Phoebe in Wonderland) She is the sister of actress Dakota Fanning
Died this Day
1483 Edward IV - King of England, he died suddenly, as a result of excessive debauchery. He was succeeded by young Edward V, but the boy was murdered in the Tower of London 75 days later
1626 Sir Francis Bacon - Viscount St. Albans and British statesman and writer (The Advancement of Learning, The Wisdom of the Ages, The New Atlantis). He reportedly died as a result of stuffing a fowl with snow in order to observe the effect on its flesh. The early experiment in deep-freezing brought on a severe cold and he died soon after
1747 Lord Lovat the Jacobite - He was the last prisoner to be beheaded in England, a form of execution which had been reserved for the nobility
1959 Frank Lloyd Wright, age 89 - Influential US architect who designed over 600 buildings in a career that spanned over 66 years. He developed the Prairie Style of architecture, and re-introduced the philosophy of Naturalism to design in the 1940's. Many of his most famous designs were for residences: his own home, Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin (1911), Robie House in Chicago (1909) and Falling Water in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (1937). Among his many non-residential buildings is the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (1959)
On this Day
1682 The French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle reached the Mississippi River, erected a cross and proclaimed the Mississippi delta the property of Louis XIV. He called the territory Louisiana, and the Mississippi River was named la Rivière Colbert after the administrator of France
1799 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas
1833 The US's first tax-supported public library was founded in Peterborough, New Hampshire
1859 A twenty-three-year-old Missouri youth, named Samuel Langhorne Clemens, received his steamboat pilot's license. Clemens had signed on as a pilot's apprentice in 1857 while on his way to Mississippi. He had been commissioned to write a series of comic travel letters for the Keokuk Daily Post, but after writing five, decided he'd rather be a pilot than a writer. He piloted his own boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term "Mark Twain," a boatman's call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by "Mark Twain." He continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years
1881 After a one-day trial, William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, was found guilty of murdering Sheriff William Brady of Lincoln County, New Mexico, and was sentenced to death by hanging. Billy the Kid had shot Brady as a revenge killing for his part in the murder of Billy’s former boss, rancher John Tunstall, who was murdered before his eyes in February 1878. After three years on the run and several other murders, Pat Garrett finally arrested Billy in early 1881, and after the trial, imprisoned him in Lincoln's county jail to await the building of the gallows. Billy managed to escape, but Garrett formed a posse and set off to recapture the outlaw. In July 1881, Garrett surprised Billy in a darkened room not far from Lincoln and shot him dead
1865 Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his twenty-eight thousand troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War, which was the bloodiest conflict in US history
1869 The Hudson Bay Company agreed to cede its considerable territorial rights to Canada, accepting the terms of the Rupert's Land Act of 1868
1870 German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann began excavations in Turkey, where he found the ruins of Troy
1905 The first aerial car ferry was put in operation over the ship canal from Lake Avenue, Duluth, Minnesota, to Minnesota Point, Minnesota. The car was suspended in the air from a super structure that loomed 135 feet clear of Lake Superior. The truss in the centre of the structure was fifty-one feet high, placing the highest point of the superstructure 186 feet off of the surface of Lake Superior. The aerial ferry spanned 393 feet in length, while its car platform measured thirty-four feet by fifty feet. The ferry could accommodate six cars and two glassed-in passenger cabins with a carrying capacity of 125,000 pounds. The platform itself hung twelve feet above the water line. A round trip on the aerial car ferry from Duluth to Minnesota Point lasted ten minutes
1917 Canadian troops in the First World War captured Vimy Ridge during a horrible snowstorm. It was the first time in the Great War that all four Canadian divisions fought together on the same battlefield. The goal of the battle of Vimy Ridge was to break through the heavily fortified German Hindenburg Line. Vimy Ridge was a formidable barrier for the Allies to breach. A natural hill and barren slope provided little cover for attacking troops and gave a good vantage point for fortified machine guns and artillery to fire on invaders. Early that morning, the first wave of soldiers attacked in the in the battle of Vimy Ridge. The Canadians were extremely successful and took the ridge by afternoon. The battle was considered a strategic victory for the Allies, and Canadian skill and bravery were commended. In 1922, France offered Canada land from the battle site in recognition of the bravery and sacrifices Canadian troops made. Fourteen years later, King Edward VIII presented Canada with the Vimy Memorial designed by Canadian architect and sculptor Walter Seymour Allward. The towering white monument bears the names of the 11,285 Canadians killed in France during the war whose remains were never found. Deemed one of the defining moments in Canada's development as an independent nation, the victory saw Canadian soldiers succeed where British and French had failed. But the Vimy victory came at a cost, as Canadian troops suffered more than 10,000 casualties, including 3,598 deaths
1939 75-thousand people gathered at Washington's Lincoln Memorial to hear black singer Marian Anderson perform. She had been denied use of Constitutional Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution
1947 A series of tornadoes in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas claimed 169 lives
1959 NASA announced the selection of seven astronauts for the Mercury space program: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton
1963 Sir Winston Churchill, at the age of 88, became the first person to be given honorary US citizenship
1965 The newly built Houston Astrodome featured its first baseball game, an exhibition between the Astros and the New York Yankees
1966 In Paris, Sophia Loren married Carlo Ponti, who was still married to his wife in Italy
1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was buried in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. The slain US civil rights leader was laid to rest during a ceremony attended by one hundred thousand people
1970 Paul McCartney issued a writ in Britain's High Court to dissolve the Beatles' business partnership
1987 The Supreme Court of Canada ruled the right to strike was not guaranteed by the constitution
1992 Former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega was convicted in Miami of eight drug and racketeering charges
2002 The Funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother took place in Westminster Abbey, London. The service was broadcast on loudspeakers outside the abbey, giving thousands of people the opportunity to join in the hymns and prayers. As many as one million people lined the 20-mile route her coffin took to its resting place in Windsor Castle, where it was interred beside King George VI in the King George VI Memorial Chapel, during a private Committal Service
2005 Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles. Their wedding took place at a civil ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor, followed by a service of prayer and dedication in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
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