1452 Leonardo da Vinci - Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, scientist and inventor (Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne)
1800 Sir James Clark Ross - British naval officer who carried out important magnetic surveys in the Arctic. He also discovered the Ross Sea and the Victoria Land region of Antarctica
1841 Joseph Seagram - Canadian entrepreneur, born near what is now Cambridge, Ontario. He founded Seagram's, which went on to become a leading producer of wine and liquor. He also owned and bred horses, fifteen of which were consecutive King's/Queen's Plate winners
1843 Henry James - US author (Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw, The Wings of the Dove, Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, Transatlantic Sketches) He was born in New York City. James’ father was a wealthy and eccentric philosopher, and his older brother William became the country's first distinguished psychologist and a well-known philosopher. During their teens, the brothers and their younger siblings were taken abroad by their parents for to study European culture. The family roamed England, Switzerland, and France, visiting galleries, museum, theatres, and libraries for four years. A back injury exempted James from serving in the Civil War, and he briefly attended Harvard Law School. He began writing fiction in his teens, and his first story was published when he was 21. He soon became a regular contributor of essays, reviews, and stories to periodicals, such as Atlantic Monthly. He later settled in England, continued his writing, and formed a close friendship with H.G. Wells
1892 Corrie Ten Boom – Dutch Christian and concentration-camp survivor who, with her family, hid Jewish people from the Nazis during WWII. Her book about her experiences, The Hiding Place, was made into a movie. In 1983 she died on her 91st birthday
1894 Bessie Smith - Blues singer known as the Empress of the Blues (My Man's Blues, Dixie Flyer Blues, I Ain't Got Nobody, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Poor Man's Blues) She also sang with Louis Armstrong in 1925 on an early version of St. Louis Blues
1917 Hans Conried - Actor (My Friend Irma, Bus Stop, Oh! God: Book 2, Tut & Tuttle, The Monster that Challenged the World, The 5000 Fingers of Dr. Terwilliker, Gilligan’s Island) He was also the voice of Snidely Whiplash in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
1922 Michael Ansara – Syrian-born actor (Broken Arrow, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Law of the Plainsman) He played Vince Kabat in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Antic Angel
1933 Elizabeth Montgomery - Actress (Bewitched, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan, Belle Starr, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Johnny Cool)
1933 Roy Clark - Country musician and singer (Tips of My Fingers, Through the Eyes of a Fool, Yesterday When I was Young) He co-hosted Hee Haw
1938 Claudia Cardinale – Tunisian-born actress (The Pink Panther, Once Upon a Time in the West, Jesus of Nazareth, Henry the IV, A Man in Love)
1940 Julie Sommers – Actress (Matlock, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, The Governor & J.J., The Great Sioux Massacre) She played Helen Kendall in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Careless Kitten and she also played Betty Farmer in the Perry Mason TV movie The Case of the Glass Coffin
1947 Lois Chiles – Actress (Dallas, The Babysitter, Broadcast News, Moonraker, Death on the Nile, Coma, The Great Gatsby, The Way We Were)
1959 Emma Thompson - British actress (Much Ado About Nothing, The Remains of the Day, Howard's End, Junior, Primary Colors, Sense and Sensibility, In the Name of the Father, Dead Again, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Nanny McPhee)
1982 Seth Rogan – Canadian actor (The Green Hornet, Pineapple Express, Superbad, Observe and Report, You Me and Dupree, Donnie Darko, Freaks and Geeks)
1990 Emma Watson – French-born British Actress (HarryPotter movies, My Week With Marilyn, Ballet Shoes)
Died this Day
1865 President Abraham Lincoln, age 56 – The 16th President of the US. He died after being shot the previous night at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth. He was the first President to be assassinated
1912 Jacques Futrelle – US journalist and author of detective fiction (The Problem of Dressing Room A, The Problem of Cell 13, The Haunted Bell, The Tragedy of the Life Raft) Four days after his 37th birthday, he went down with the RMS Titanic after putting his family on a life boat
1949 Wallace Beery - Actor (The Champ, Grand Hotel, We're in the Navy Now, Treasure Island, The Last of the Mohicans) He died 2 weeks after his 64th birthday
1980 Jean-Paul Sartre, age 74 - French existentialist philosopher, died in Paris
1982 Arthur Lowe, age 66 - British actor (Dad's Army, Bless Me Father, The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It, Man About the House, Coronation Street)
1990 Greta Garbo, age 84 - Swedish actress (Ninotchka, Anna Karenina, Camille, Mata Hari) She died in New York
2000 Edward Gorey, age 75 – US illustrator, designer and writer (The Doubtful Guest, Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Loathsome Couple, The Gilded Bat, The Haunted Tea-Cosy) He did the pen and ink opening credits for PBS’s Mystery!
On this Day
1672 A French royal edict prohibited fur traders from going to Indian villages. Indians had to bring their furs to the settlements
1750 Pierre Robineau de Portneuf started to build Fort Toronto near the Mississauga village of Teiaiagon on the orders of the Marquis de La Jonquière, Governor of New France. It took just over a month to complete the post, situated on the east bank of the Humber River up from Lake Ontario. Growing trade and a threat from the English at Oswego and in the Ohio valley soon convinced the French to build a larger, more secure post, Fort Rouillé, completed the following spring farther east on the site of what is now the foot of Dufferin Street in downtown Toronto
1755 Lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language. In it he defined lexicography as a "harmless drudge." The standardisation of English spelling had started as early as 1473, when printer William Caxton published the first book printed in English. The rapid proliferation of printing and the development of dictionaries resulted in increasingly standardised spellings by the mid-17th century. Coincidentally, Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language almost exactly 63 years later, on April 14th
1793 The Bank of England issued the first £5 notes
1817 The first US school for the deaf opened in Hartford, Connecticut
1850 The city of San Francisco was incorporated
1852 The first screw-top bottles were patented by François Joseph Belzung of Paris
1856 Construction was completed on Canada's first locomotive, the Toronto
1859 The first steamboat on the Red River, began operating, carrying freight and passengers between Fort Garry, Manitoba, and St. Paul, Minnesota. The trip took eight days and there was anxiety as the paddlewheeler worked its way down the river, carrying 100 kegs of gunpowder. It arrived at Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, in June and was followed by other steamboats carrying freight and passengers between Fort Garry and St. Paul
1861 Three days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln declared a state of insurrection and called out Union troops
1872 Canada held it’s first Thanksgiving as a country, giving thanks for the recovery of the future King Edward VII from a serious illness. The first North American thanksgiving event occurred in Newfoundland in 1578. In the 1600s, Samuel de Champlain and the French Settlers who came with him established an Order of Good Cheer. This group would hold huge celebrations marking the harvests and other events, sharing their food with Native American neighbours. Thanksgiving wasn’t celebrated regularly in Canada until 1879 when it was held on a Thursday in November. The date changed often over the years until 1957, when it was permanently fixed as the second Monday in October as "a day of general Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed”
1885 North West Mounted Police Inspector Francis Jeffrey Dickens abandoned Fort Pitt, Saskatchewan and withdrew to Battleford after settlers decided to surrender to Big Bear during the North West Rebellion. Dickens was the third son of novelist Charles Dickens
1901 A motor hearse was used for the first time at a British funeral. The special 6hp Daimler was used for a funeral in Coventry
1912 At about 2:20 AM, the British luxury liner RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland, less than three hours after striking an iceberg the previous evening. Only 711 survived, out of a total of 2,224 passengers and crew. Two-hundred and nine bodies were taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and 150 of them are buried in a Halifax cemetery. US multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor, Montreal industrialist Charles Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railway, and British journalist and editor William Thomas Stead, were among those who perished. Among the survivors was the wealthy Molly Brown, who had tried unsuccessfully to become a part of Denver’s exclusive high society. A flamboyant woman with a forceful personality, Brown abandoned the narrow social life of Denver to travel the world. Whereas the Denver elite had dismissed her as a coarse upstart, socially prominent eastern families like the Astors and Vanderbilts prized her frank western manners and her thrilling stories of frontier life. After the ship hit an iceberg and began to sink, Brown was tossed into a lifeboat. She took command of the little boat and helped rescue a drowning sailor and other victims. To keep spirits up, she regaled the anxious survivors with stories of her life in the Old West. When newspapers later learned of Brown's courageous actions, they promptly dubbed her "the unsinkable Mrs. Brown"
1923 Insulin was made available for general use
1924 Rand McNally released its first comprehensive road atlas
1927 Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Norma and Constance Talmadge became the first celebrities to leave their footprints in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The future Hollywood landmark was still under construction at the time
1937 Trade unions were legalised in Nova Scotia
1955 The McDonald's hamburger chain was founded by Ray Kroc, in Chicago
1970 The first hand-held electronic pocket calculator was announced by Canon Business Machines of Japan
1989 Ninety-six people died in a crush of soccer fans at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England
1989 Students in Beijing launched a series of pro-democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang. The protests culminated in the Tiananmen Square massacre later in the year
1992 William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk) was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in New York, along with his fellow Star Trek actors Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) and DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy)
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