1512 James V - King of Scotland, who was still an infant when he inherited the crown
1755 Christian Friederich Samuel Hahnemann - German physician who founded homeopathic medicine
1810 Benjamin H. Day - US printer and journalist who founded The New York Sun
1827 Lewis Wallace - US soldier, lawyer and author (Ben-Hur, The Fair God, The Boyhood of Christ)
1829 William Booth - British minister and founder of the Salvation Army, which he began in 1865 while performing mission work to the poor in London's East End. It was only named The Salvation Army in 1878, when he took the title General
1838 Frank Baldwin - US inventor of the arithometer. In 1875, Baldwin patented the arithmometer, a desktop calculating machine. In 1912, working with business partner Jay Monroe, Baldwin perfected a data processing machine called the Monroe calculator, which was patented in 1913. The Monroe calculator was a popular office tool until personal computers entered the office. Baldwin served as research director of the Monroe Calculating Machine Company until he died in 1925
1847 Joseph Pulitzer - Influential 19th-century US newspaper editor and publisher who established the Pulitzer prizes in 1917. He was born in Mako, Hungary
1870 Nikolai Vladimir Lenin - Russian Communist leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917
1885 Bernard Gimbel - Merchant who founded Gimbel's Department Stores
1903 Clare Boothe Luce - US politician, playwright (The Women, Kiss the Boys Goodbye, Margin of Error) and editor (Vogue, Vanity Fair) She was married to Time/Life publisher Henry Luce. She was elected to the House of Representatives, and in 1952, was the US Ambassador to Italy
1915 Harry Morgan - Actor (M*A*S*H, Dragnet, You Can't Take It with You, Pete and Gladys, HEC Ramsey, December Bride, The D.A., Aftermash)
1921 Chuck Connors - Actor (The Rifleman, Roots, The Yellow Rose, Werewolf, Cowboy in Africa, Branded)
1921 Sheb Wooley - Singer, songwriter (The Purple People Eater, Are You Satisfied, Hee Haw theme) and actor (Rawhide, High Noon, Rocky Mountain, Giant, Hoosiers)
1926 Junior Samples - Comedian (Hee Haw)
1929 Max Von Sydow - Swedish actor (Dune, The Emigrants, Flash Gordon, Hannah and Her Sisters, Hawaii, Steppenwolf, Never Say Never Again, The Quiller Memorandum, Quo Vadis, Three Days of the Condor)
1929 Liz Sheridan - Actress (Seinfeld, ALF, A Year in the Life)
1932 Omar Sharif - Egyptian born actor (Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, Funny Girl, Funny Lady, Peter the Great, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, Beyond Justice, Crime & Passion, Hildago, Gulliver’s Travels)
1932 Hari Rhodes – Actor (Daktari, The Bold Ones: The Protectors, Sharky's Machine, Backstairs at the White House, Coma, Roots, Matt Helm)
1941 Paul Edward Theroux - Author (The Mosquito Coast, Millroy the Magician)
1951 Steven Seagal - Actor (Under Siege, Hard to Kill, Executive Decision, Above the Law)
1954 Peter MacNicol - Actor (Ally McBeal, Sophie's Choice, Addams Family Values, Bean, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Numb3rs, 24)
1960 Olivia Brown – Actress (Miami Vice, Dear John, Throw Momma from the Train)
1974 David Harbour – Actor (Quantum of Solace, Pan Am, The Green Hornet, State of Play, Awake, Brokeback Mountain)
1980 Charlie Hunnam – British actor (Sons of Anarchy, Cold Mountain, Undeclared, Nicholas Nickleby, Abandon)
1988 Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense, Secondhand Lions, Pay it Forward, Cab to Canada, Forrest Gump)
Died this Day
1919 Emiliano Zapata, age 39 – Mexican revolutionary who lead peasants and indigenous people during the Mexican revolution. Born a peasant, Zapata was forced into the Mexican army in 1908 following his attempt to recover village lands taken over by a rancher. After the revolution began in 1910, he raised an army of peasants in the southern state of Morelos under the slogan "Land and Liberty." Demanding simple agrarian reforms, Zapata and his guerrilla farmers opposed the central Mexican government. Zapata and his followers never gained control of the central Mexican government, but they redistributed land and aided poor farmers within the territory under their control. Zapata was ambushed and shot to death in Morelos by government forces
1954 Auguste Lumière, age 91 - French cinema pioneer, who with his brother Louis, developed a motion picture camera and projector called Cinématographe, which is where the word “cinema” came from. They made the first film, Lunchbreak at the Lumière Factory, in 1895
1962 Michael Curtiz, age 73 - Hungarian born film director (Casablanca, White Christmas, Captain Blood, Mildred Pierce)
1962 Stu Sutcliffe - Original bassist with John Lennon's "Silver Beatles". He died of a brain haemorrhage in Hamburg, Germany
1966 Evelyn Waugh, age 63 - British author (Brideshead Revisited, The Life of Ronald Knox, Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, A Tourist in Africa)
1975 Marjorie Main, age 85 – Actress (The Egg and I, Barnacle Bill, Feudin' Fussin' and A-Fightin', Big Jack, The Harvey Girls, Friendly Persuasion, Dead End, Another Thin Man) She was the "Ma" of Ma and Pa Kettle fame
1991 Natalie Schafer, age 90 – Actress (Gilligan's Island, The Survivors, Forever Darling, The Time of Your Life, The Day of the Locust) She played Mrs. Chelton in the 1954 Sherlock Holmes series episode The Case of the Shy Ballerina
1991 Kevin Peter Hall – Actor (Harry and the Hendersons, Predator, 227, Misfits of Science) He was 7’ 2-1/2” tall. He died a month before his 36th birthday
1992 Sam Kinison, age 38 - Comedian, died in a car crash outside Needles, California
2000 Larry Linville, age 60 – Actor (M*A*S*H, Earth Girls Are Easy, Misfits of Science, Paper Dolls, The Night Stalker)
On this Day
1633 Bananas were displayed in the London shop window of Thomas Johnson. The fruit had never before been seen in Britain
1684 A royal ordinance prohibited emigration from French Canada to the English colonies in the south
1710 The Copyright Act of 1709 came into effect in Britain, allowing the author (and their estate) to hold exclusive rights to his or her work for up to 50 years after their death
1790 The Spanish started building forts in Nootka Sound, BC, to harvest sea otters, and to try to head off English traders after the recent visit by Captain Cook
1812 The US called out the militia in preparation for the war against Canada that would begin on June 18th
1841 The New York Tribune was first published. It later became the Herald Tribune
1841 Halifax, Nova Scotia, was incorporated as a city
1849 The safety pin was patented in the US by Walter Hunt of new York, but he later sold the rights for $400. In October of that year, a British inventor, Charles Roweley, also patented his safety pin in Britain, unaware of the earlier US patent
1860 The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, was first published
1864 The Archduke Maximilian of Austria became the Emperor of Mexico
1866 The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was incorporated
1866 Irish American Fenians attacked Campobello Island, New Brunswick, from Eastport, Maine. They were persuaded to leave by British warships and US agents
1875 The Northwest Mounted Police received permission to build a post, which was to become the city of Calgary
1906 O. Henry's second short story collection, The Four Million, was published. The collection included one of his most beloved stories, The Gift of the Magi, about a poor but devoted couple who each sacrifice their most valuable possession to buy a gift for the other
1912 The luxury liner Titanic set sail from Southampton, England on its ill-fated maiden voyage. While leaving port, the massive ship came within a couple feet of the steamer New York, but passed safely by, causing a general sigh of relief from the passengers massed on the ships' decks. The Titanic, thought to be the world's fastest ship afloat and almost unsinkable, spanned 883 feet from stern to bow. On its first journey across the highly competitive Atlantic ferry route, the ship carried some twenty-two hundred passengers and crew. After stopping at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, to pick up some final passengers, the massive vessel set out at full speed for New York City
1924 The first crossword puzzle book was published in New York
1925 The novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published by Scribner's of New York
1937 An act of Parliament created the Trans-Canada Airlines, now Air Canada. The airline was created by the federal government to provide countrywide air service. The company had just two passenger planes and a biplane when its first scheduled flight took off that September
1942 The Bataan Death March began the day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese. The seventy-five thousand US and Filipino troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula began a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the Bataan Death March, the prisoners were forced to march eighty-five miles in six days with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. By the end of the march, over five thousand Americans and many more Filipinos died
1952 The MGM movie musical, Singin' in the Rain, starring Gene Kelly, was first released
1953 The first feature length 3-D movie in colour, House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, premiered in New York
1960 The US Senate passed the Civil Rights Bill
1963 The nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher failed to surface off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in a disaster that claimed 129 lives
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