1732 Frederick North - The Second Earl of Guildford. He levied the tax on tea that so incensed the colonists that it provoked the Boston Tea Party
1743 Thomas Jefferson – The 3rd US President. He drafted the Declaration of Independence
1771 Richard Trevithick - British engineer and mechanic who developed the first practical steam locomotive in his native Cornwall, where he started as a mining engineer. He developed the first steam carriage, which he demonstrated in London. He also developed the first steam locomotive to successfully run on rails
1772 Eli Terry - US clockmaker and an innovator in mass production
1852 Frank W. Woolworth - US merchant who created the five and dime store. A former farm labourer and shop assistant, he persuaded his employers to back his idea for a store that would sell everything for 5˘ or less. When it failed, he tried again offering items up to 10˘. It succeeded famously, setting off a chain with over 1,000 stores. He also funded New York's Woolworth Building
1866 Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy) - Old west outlaw and leader of The Wild Bunch gang. Born in Beaver, Utah Territory, he was the son of Mormon parents who had answered Brigham Young's call for young couples to help build communities of Latter Day Saints on the Utah frontier. Robert was the first of 13 children born to Max and Annie Parker. When he was 13 years old, the family moved to a ranch near the small Mormon community of Circleville, where he became an admirer of a local ruffian named Mike Cassidy, who taught him how to shoot, and gave him a gun and saddle. With Mike Cassidy's encouragement, the young man began rustling, and was eventually forced to leave home during his mid-teens under a cloud of suspicion. For several years, he drifted around the West using the name Roy Parker. In 1889 he committed his first serious crime, robbing a bank in Telluride, Colorado, for more than $20,000. As a fugitive, he took to calling himself George Cassidy, a nod to his first partner in crime back in Utah. Wishing to lay low, for a time he worked in a Rock Springs, Wyoming, butcher shop, earning the nickname Butch. In 1894, Butch Cassidy was arrested for horse theft in Wyoming. After serving two years in the Wyoming Territorial Prison at Laramie, he was pardoned, but immediately returned to a life of crime, this time gathering around him a local band of carousing outlaws that became known as the Wild Bunch. Cassidy's most famous partner was Harry Longbaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid. By 1897, Cassidy was solidly in control of a sophisticated criminal operation that was active in states and territories from South Dakota to New Mexico. The Wild Bunch specialised in holding up railroad express cars, and held unruly vacations in Denver, San Antonio, and Fort Worth. By the turn of the century, however, the wild days of the West were rapidly fading. Once deserted lands were being tamed and settled, and western states and territories were creating an increasingly effective law-enforcement network. Tired of his robberies, railroad executives hired detectives to catch Cassidy and began placing mounted guards in railcars to pursue the Wild Bunch. In 1901, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fled the US for Argentina and homesteaded a ranch at Cholila. In 1904, Cassidy and Sundance learned that detectives had tracked them to South America. They abandoned the Cholila ranch and resumed a life of robbery in Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. Though there is no evidence definitely to confirm it, Bolivian troops reportedly killed the partners in the village of San Vicente in 1908. The families of both men insist, however, that the men survived and returned to live into old age in the US
1888 John Hays Jr. - US inventor who developed radio remote control
1892 Sir Robert Watson-Watt - Scottish physicist who was knighted for his role in the development of radar
1899 Alfred M. Butts - Architect and inventor of Scrabble
1906 Samuel Beckett - Irish born author, critic, playwright (Waiting for Godot, The Unnamable, Eleutheria, Malone Dies, Malloy, Endgame) He worked as James Joyce's secretary in Paris
1906 Bud Freeman - Jazz musician on the tenor sax (China Boy, Easy to Get, I've Found a New Baby, The Eel, Mr. Toad)
1909 Eudora Welty - US author and poet (The Optimist's Daughter, Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, Delta Wedding, The Robber Bridegroom)
1919 Howard Keel - Actor and singer (Dallas, Oklahoma, Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat, Lovely to Look At, Kiss Me Kate, Calamity Jane, Rose-Marie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Deep in My Heart, Saratoga, No Strings)
1922 John Braine - British novelist (The Crying Game, Room at the Top, Life at the Top, The Two of Us) He wrote his first novel while recovering from tuberculosis
1923 Don Adams - Actor (Get Smart, Back to the Beach, The Nude Bomb, Jimmy the Kid, The Bill Dana Show)
1924 Stanley Donen - US director (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Lucky Lady, Arabesque, Charade, Damn Yankees!, The Pajama Game, Funny Face, Kismet)
1935 Lyle Waggoner - Actor (The Carol Burnett Show, The Jimmie Rodgers Show, Wonder Woman)
1937 Edward Fox - British actor (Force 10 From Navarone, The Mirror Crack'd, Never Say Never Again, The Dresser, The Bounty, Marple: The Secret of Chimneys, Poirot: The Hollow, Nicholas Nickleby, Shaka Zulu, Edward & Mrs. Simpson) He is the brother of actor James Fox, was the husband of Joanna David, and is the father of Emilia Fox
1939 Paul Sorvino - Actor (Law & Order, Reds, Oh! God, The Day of the Dolphin, Dick Tracy, Goodfellas, A Touch of Class) He is the father of Mira Sorvino
1940 Lester Chambers - Singer and musician, on the harmonica, with the group The Chamber Brothers (Time Has Come Today)
1942 Bill Conti – Movie and TV composer (Rocky, The Right Stuff, For Your Eyes Only, Dynasty, Cagney & Lacey)
1945 Tony Dow - Actor (Leave it to Beaver)
1945 Charles Robinson – Actor (Night Court, Beowulf, Buddy Faro, Buffalo Bill, Roots: The Next Generations, The Interns)
1946 Al Green - Singer, songwriter (Tired of Being Alone, Let's Stay Together, You Ought to be with Me, Here I Am)
1950 Ron Perlman - Actor (Beauty and the Beast, Alien: Resurrection, Romeo is Bleeding, Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy, Enemy at the Gates)
1950 William Sadler – Actor (Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Die Hard 2, The Shawshank Redemption, Roswell, Hawaii Five-0, Jesse Stone, Wonderfalls)
1951 Peter Davison – British actor (The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, Campion, Doctor Who, At Home with the Braithwaites, All Creatures Great and Small, Miss Marple: A Pocketful of Rye, The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Law & Order: UK, Distant Shores, The Last Detective)
1951 Peabo Bryson - Singer (Tonight I Celebrate My Love, If Ever You're In My Arms Again, Minute by Minute, I Can Make It Better)
1951 Max Weinberg - Drummer with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band (Born to Run, Rosalita, Thunder Road, Hungry Heart, Dancing in the Dark, Jungleland)
1954 Jimmy Destri - Rock musician, on keyboards, with Blondie (Heart of Glass, The Tide is High, My T-Bird, Call Me, Rapture)
1957 Saundra Santiago - Actress (Miami Vice, Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan, Damages, The Sopranos)
1965 Caroline Rhea – Canadian comedienne and actress (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Caroline Rhea Show, Christmas with the Kranks)
1970 Rick Schroder - Actor (The Champ, Silver Spoons, Lonesome Dove, Crimson Tide, NYPD Blue, 24)
1980 Kelli Giddish – Actress (Law & Order: SVU, Chase, Past Life, The Burg)
Died this Day
1605 Boris Feodorovich Godunov - Tsar of Russia
1695 Jean de La Fontaine, age 73 – French writer of fables
1938 Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (Grey Owl), age 49 – British-born naturalist, pseudo-Indian and author (Men of the Last Frontier, Pilgrims of the Wild, The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People, Tales of an Empty Cabin) He was born at Hastings, England, and had an unhappy childhood, being raised by maiden aunts and a stern grandmother. He fantasised about the Indians he read about in boys' magazines, and at age 17, left England for Northern Ontario. There, he lived with the Ojibway, took the name Grey Owl, and claimed he was the son of an Apache woman and a Scots fur trader. With his Iroquois wife, Anahareo, he managed a beaver conservation program in Prince Albert National Park, and gave popular lectures on wildlife. He died in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in 1938
1966 Abdul Salam Arif - President of Iraq, he was killed in a helicopter crash
On this Day
AD 193 Marcus Diderius Salvius Julianus was proclaimed Emperor of Rome, but 49 days later he was put to death by order of the Senate
1598 King Henry IV of France signed the Edict of Nantes, granting rights to the Protestant Huguenots
1668 John Dryden was appointed Britain's first Poet Laureate and Royal Historiographer
1742 George Frideric Handel's Messiah was first performed publicly, in Dublin, Ireland
1858 In Toronto, Ontario John Quinn's Peninsula Hotel was destroyed when a storm cut a channel through the peninsula, creating the Toronto Island
1859 The University of New Brunswick was incorporated
1869 George Westinghouse patented the air-brake
1870 The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in New York City
1877 A US newspaper, the Fort Benton Record of Montana, coined the slogan for the RCMP: “They always get their man”
1900 Ottawa became the first Canadian city to receive telephone service with a common battery system that did not require batteries on home sets
1912 Ontario announced that it would restrict the use of French in schools, making English the only language of instruction
1912 Britain's Royal Flying Corps was founded
1919 The Amritsar massacre took place in the Punjab when British troops led by Brigadier-General Dyer opened fire on an unlawful demonstration on an open wasteland in the Holy City of the Sikhs
1925 Women in Newfoundland were granted the right to vote in provincial elections
1935 Imperial Airways and Quantas inaugurated their London to Australia air service
1939 Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, and David Niven, had its premiere
1943 President Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth
1945 Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, two concentration camps in Germany, were liberated by Allied forces
1958 Van Cliburn became the first American to win the Tchaikovsky International Piano Contest in Moscow
1970 Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst
1981 A Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke for her article about an eight-year-old heroin addict. She relinquished the prize and resigned from the paper two days later after admitting she had fabricated the story
1986 Pope John Paul II visited a Rome synagogue in the first recorded papal visit of its kind
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