1837 J.P. (John Pierpoint) Morgan - US financier who formed US Steel
1880 Sir Leonard Woolley - British archaeologist who excavated the Sumerian city of Ur
1885 Isak (Karen) Dinesen, Baroness Blixen-Finecke – Danish author (Out of Africa, Babette's Feast, Seven Gothic Tales)
1896 Señor Wences (Wenceslao Moreño) – Spanish ventriloquist who often appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show with his character, Johnny, who was formed by one of his hands. Another character, Pedro, was a “head” in a box. Wences would ask Pedro "Are you alright?" to which Pedro would always reply "S'alright"
1897 Thornton Wilder - US Novelist (The Bridge of San Luis Rey) and playwright (Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth) His play, The Merchant of Yonkers, was later revised and retitled The Matchmaker, and in turn became the musical comedy, Hello Dolly!
1918 William Holden - Actor (Stalag 17, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Born Yesterday, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Casino Royale, Moon is Blue, Network, Picnic, Sunset Boulevard, The Towering Inferno, The World of Suzie Wong)
1923 Harry Reasoner – News anchor and correspondent (ABC Evening News, 60 Minutes)
1923 Lindsay Anderson – Indian-born Scottish director (This Sporting Life, The Whales of August, Glory! Glory!, Britannia Hospital, If..., O Lucky Man!)
1942 David Bradley – British actor (Harry Potter movies, Ideal, Harry Brown, Hot Fuzz, Nicholas Nickleby, The Way We Live Now, Vanity Fair, Our Mutual Friend, The Frisco Kid)
1944 Diane Fletcher – British actress (House of Cards, To Play the King, The Final Cut, Aristocrats, Coronation Street, The Irish RM) She played Marcia Tranter in the Midsomer Murders episode Death of a Stranger, and she also played Marion Brooke in the Inspector Morse episode Masonic Mysteries
1944 Bobby Curtola – Canadian singer (Hand In Hand With You, Don't You Sweetheart Me, Three Rows Over, Fortune Teller)
1951 Olivia Hussey – Argentine-born British actress (Romeo and Juliet, Lost Horizon, Jesus of Nazareth, Death on the Nile, Stephen King’s It)
1959 Sean Bean – British actor (Patriot Games, Sharpe’s Rifles, Game of Thrones, Crusoe, Ronin, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Lord of the Rings, GoldenEye, Scarlett, Troy) He played Alex Bailey in the Inspector Morse episode, Absolute Conviction
1961 Carlo Rota – British-born Canadian actor (Little Mosque on the Prairie, Traders, The Boondock Saints, 24)
1963 Joel Murray – Actor (Mad Men, Dharma & Greg, The Artist, Still Standing, The Cable Guy)
1965 William Mapother – Actor (Lost, A Warrior’s Heart, Another Earth, The Grudge)
1967 Henry Ian Cusick – Peruvian-born Scottish actor (Lost, Hitman, The Book Group, Perfect Romance, Scandal, Two Thousand Acres of Sky)
1972 Jennifer Garner – Actress (Alias, In Harm’s Way, Mr. Magoo, Time of Your Life, Elektra, Juno)
1974 Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) – British singer (Wannabe, Say You'll Be There, Spice Up Your Life) and actress (Spice World) She is married to footballer David Beckham
1985 Rooney Mara – Actress (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, Tanner Hall, The Winning Season)
Died this Day
1680 Catherine (Kateri) Tekakwitha – The first native candidate for Sainthood, died at Kahnawake, Quebec
1790 Benjamin Franklin, age 84 - US statesman, scientist, printer, author, inventor, etc. He died in Philadelphia. He published Poor Richard's Almanac, and was the inventor of the Franklin stove, bifocals, and lightening rods. He served on the Second Continental Congress and helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He was also instrumental in persuading the French to lend military assistance to the colonies during the War of Independence
1892 Alexander Mackenzie, age 70 – Scottish-born second Prime Minister of Canada. He died while still in office as a Member of Parliament. Mackenzie emigrated to Canada in 1842. Trained as a stonemason, he built a bomb-proof stone arch at Fort Henry in Kingston, worked on the Beauharnois Canal near Montreal, the Welland Canal, the martello towers at Fort Henry, the Episcopal Church and bank in Sarnia, courthouses and jails in Chatham and Sandwich, Ontario. In Scotland, Mackenzie had been drawn to the Chartist movement, a political group advocating democratic reform. By 1852, Mackenzie was the editor of the political newspaper, the Lambton Shield, and won his first election in 1861. It was unusual for a man of Mackenzie's humble origins to attain such a position in an age which generally offered such opportunity only to the privileged. The Governor General, expressed early misgivings about a stonemason taking over government, but on meeting Mackenzie, revised his opinions: "However narrow and inexperienced Mackenzie may be, I imagine he is a thoroughly upright, well-principled, and well-meaning man"
1960 Eddie Cochran, age 21 - US Rock singer (Summertime Blues, C'mon Everybody, Somethin' Else, Three Steps to Heaven) He died in an auto accident while on tour in England
1971 Carmen Lombardo, age 67 – Canadian singer, saxophonist, composer and arranger for the band he and his brother founded, the Guy Lombardo Orchestra
1998 Linda McCartney, age 56 – Photographer (Rolling Stone magazine) and singer with the group Wings (Silly Love Songs, My Love, Band on the Run, Jet) She was married to Paul McCartney
On this Day
1421 At Dort, Holland, the sea broke through the dykes and an estimated 100,000 people were drowned
1492 A contract was signed by Christopher Columbus and a representative of Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, giving Columbus a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia
1521 Martin Luther went before the Diet of Worms to face charges stemming from his religious writings
1524 Giovanni da Verrazano reached present-day New York harbour
1610 Henry Hudson set sail on the Discovery from London to look for the North West Passage. Instead, he would discover Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay
1754 Claude-Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecoeur and his French troops from Montréal captured the British fort at the confluence of the Ohio and Alleghany rivers. The city of Pittsburgh now stands on the site
1840 At Queenston, Ontario, Fenian rebel Benjamin Lett set off a Good Friday blast, blowing the top off the Brock Monument.
1851 The square-rigged ship Marco Polo was launched in Saint John, New Brunswick. It was used mainly to carry immigrants from England to Australia, setting records that earned it the name of fastest ship in the world
1855 Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, was incorporated as a city
1856 Quebec City was made the seat of the Canadian government
1860 The first international boxing match between a US boxer, John C. Heenan, and a British boxer, champion Tom Sayers, took place at Farnborough, Hampshire, England. Despite being 46 pounds lighter, Sayers forced a draw after 42 rounds of bare-knuckle brawling
1861 The Virginia State Convention voted to secede from the Union
1882 Several copies of Sheriff Pat Garrett's exaggerated biography, An Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, arrived at the Library of Congress, beginning the widespread dissemination of this highly fictionalised story of the western outlaw. The public was hungry for violent stories of ruthless desperados, and Garrett and his publishers shamelessly catered to these appetites. Garrett claimed to be writing the book to put an end to the exaggerated newspaper accounts of the day. Subsequent historians, however, have suggested that Garrett wrote the book to improve his own image and chances for a successful political career, as his story portrays Billy the Kid as a ruthless killer who was only stopped by Garrett's own selfless and brave actions. For more than a century, Garrett's "eyewitness" account remained the principle historical source on Billy the Kid and his involvement in the famous Lincoln County War. The book influenced numerous subsequent accounts in print and on film, giving rise to one of the most powerful myths of the US West. The first full, realistic biography of Billy the Kid was not published until 1989. Since then, Garrett's version of history has been steadily challenged and undermined. Today, historians realise that An Authentic Life of Billy the Kid is a highly biased and inaccurate portrait that over-simplifies the events of a complex time. Nonetheless, Garrett's mythical version of Billy the Kid continues to live on in the popular imagination and in countless western books and movies
1911 Charles F. Kettering applied for a US patent for the self-starting mechanism he had designed for the Cadillac Car Company. The vision for the self-starter is said to have been the result of the peculiar death of Cadillac founder Henry Leland's close friend, Byron Carter. In 1910, Carter, the manufacturer of the Cartercar, suffered a broken jaw and arm when he stopped to help a woman with the crank-starter on her car. The crank, linked directly to the car's drive shaft, was capable of bucking out of the hands of its "cranker," and Carter suffered for it. His injuries grew complicated and, combined with a case of pneumonia, killed him. Distraught by the event, Leland determined to solve the problem of the crank-starter, and hired Kettering to do it. The engineering problem took Kettering no time at all, and he offered Leland a prototype in December of 1910. Leland ordered twelve thousand units to be installed in the 1912 Cadillac. The self-starter gave women greater access to cars, as without the arduous task of cranking the engine to deter them, more women could drive on their own. Since there were almost as many rich women as rich men, the self-starter drastically broadened the market for the automobile
1916 The Province of Saskatchewan granted women the right to vote
1924 Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and the Louis B. Mayer Company merge to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM. The group was owned by Loew's Inc., a chain of theatres run by Marcus Loew
1937 Daffy Duck made his debut in the Warner Bros. short, Porky's Duck Hunt. In the 1920s, movie houses had started showing a short cartoon before feature presentations, but the form became more innovative and popular after sound was introduced in 1928
1961 About 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's government
1964 Ford introduced the Mustang on the first day of the New York World's Fair in Flushing, Queens. The Mustang was the result of Ford’s desire to make a small, sporty car which was inexpensive enough to appeal to young car buyers, an increasingly important market. The base price for the Mustang was $2,368, but buyers purchased an average of $1,000 worth of options
1967 Prime Minister Lester Pearson announced the creation of the Order of Canada, effective July 1. The honour was to be granted by the Governor General to honour outstanding citizens for service to Canada or humanity at large
1969 A jury in Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating US Senator Robert F. Kennedy
1970 The astronauts of Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft
1975 Phnom Penh fell to Communist insurgents, ending Cambodia's five-year war
1982 Queen Elizabeth II signed the Royal Proclamation of Canada's Constitution in a ceremony on Parliament Hill, transferring sovereignty of the 1867 Canadian Constitution from Britain to Canada. The proclamation gave Canada the power to amend its own highest laws without approval from the British Parliament. It replaced the British North America Act, and incorporated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Under it, Canada remains a constitutional monarchy and member of the Commonwealth, with the Queen as it’s official head of state
1986 The 335-year state of war between the Netherlands and the Scilly Isles ended. Although, for all intents and purposes, the war ended three years after its start in 1651, no one declared it officially over until the Dutch Ambassador did so in 1986
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