1782 Friedrich Froebel - German educational pioneer who developed the kindergarten system
1816 Charlotte Brontë - British author (Jane Eyre, The Professor, Shirley, Villette) She was one of six siblings born to an Anglican clergyman. When she was five, the family moved to the remote village of Hawthorne on the moors of Yorkshire. When their mother died in 1821, Charlotte and her older sisters were sent to the Cown Bridge School, a cheap boarding school for daughters of the clergy. However, her two sisters fell ill and died, and Charlotte was brought home, where she and her remaining siblings, Branwell, Emily, and Anne, invented and wrote about elaborate fantasy worlds to amuse themselves. In 1846, Charlotte ran across some poems that Emily had written, which led to the revelation that all three sisters were closet poets. The sisters published their own book, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Only two copies sold, but publishers became interested in the sisters' work. Charlotte, under the nom de plum Currer Bell, published Jane Eyre in 1847. Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were published later that year. Sadly, all three of Charlotte's siblings died within the next two years. Left alone, Charlotte cared for her ill father and married his curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte died during a pregnancy shortly after the marriage
1838 John Muir - Scottish-born naturalist who is considered the father of the environmental movement. When he was still a boy, Muir's parents immigrated to the US where he grew up on a farm in central Wisconsin in the 1850s at a time when the region was still a relatively wild western frontier. When he was 23, Muir left the family farm and travelled around the Midwest working in a variety of industrial jobs. A talented mechanic and inventor, he seemed to be headed for a successful career in the rapidly expanding industrial economy. While working in an Indianapolis factory for wagon parts he sustained an injury that left him temporarily blind for several weeks, leading him to rethink his life plans. When he recovered his sight, he abandoned his career as a skilled mechanic and opted instead to embark on a 1,000-mile walking tour of the US West. During his western ramblings, the beautiful Sierra Nevada range in California especially moved Muir, and he developed a near-religious veneration for the Sierra Nevada territory and a passionate desire to preserve the wild state of the area. In 1892, he and several other early preservationists formed the Sierra Club. Muir served as the club president for 22 years, tirelessly advocating the importance of preserving wilderness as a place where thousands of "tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilised people" could find spiritual and physical rejuvenation
1915 Anthony Quinn - Mexican born actor (Viva Zapata, The Guns of Navarone, The Inheritance, The Old Man and the Sea, Zorba the Greek)
1919 Don Cornell - Singer (It isn't Fair, I'll Walk Along, I'm Yours, Heart of My Heart, This is the Beginning of the End, Hold My Hand, The Bible Tells Me So, Most of All, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing)
1923 John Mortimer QC - British barrister, author and playwright (A Voyage Round My Father, What Shall We Tell Caroline?, Paradise Postponed, Clinging to the Wreckage, Tea with Mussolini, Brideshead Revisited) He is probably best known for his short stories which became the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey
1926 Elizabeth II - Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, and the rest of the Commonwealth. The official celebration of her birthday takes place in June
1931 Carl Belew - Country singer (Welcome Back to My World) and songwriter (Am I That Easy to Forget?, Stop the World and Let Me Off, Lonely Street, What's He Doing in My World?)
1932 Elaine May - Actress (California Suite), director (A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, Ishtar, Mikey and Nicky) and comedienne who was half of a comedy duo with Mike Nichols
1935 Charles Grodin - Actor (Clifford, Beethoven I & II, Midnight Run, Dave)
1949 Patti LuPone – Stage and screen actress (Sunset Boulevard, Les Miserables, Evita, Anything Goes, Falcone, Wise Guys, King of the Gypsies, Pose)
1951 Tony Danza - Actor (Taxi, Angels in the Outfield, Who's the Boss, Baby Talk, Family Law)
1958 Andie Macdowell – Actress (Groundhog Day, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, St. Elmo’s Fire, Hudson Hawk)
1969 Toby Stephens – British actor (Jane Eyre, Die Another Day, Vexed, Lewis: Generation of Vipers, Marple: The Blue Geranium, Sharpe’s Challenge, London, Poirot: Five Little Pigs, Space Cowboys, The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall)
1970 Rob Riggle – Comedian/actor (The Hangover, The Other Guys, Stepbrothers, Talladega Knights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Saturday Night Live)
1979 James McAvoy – Scottish actor (X-Men: First Class, The Conspirator, Atonement, Penelope, The Last King of Scotland, Shameless, Children of Dune)
Died this Day
1910 Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), age 74 - US author (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roughing It, The Guilded Age, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County) He died in Redding, Connecticut
1918 Baron Manfred von Richthofen (The Red Baron) – World War I German flying ace who was the son of a Prussian nobleman. He died a week and a half before his 26th birthday. He began training for the German air force after the outbreak of World War I and by 1916, had begun terrorising the skies over the Western Front in an Albatross biplane, downing fifteen enemy planes by the end of the year. In 1917, Richthofen surpassed all flying ace records on both sides of the Western Front, and first began using a Fokker triplane, painted entirely red in tribute to his old cavalry regiment. Although only used during the last eight months of his career, it is this aircraft that Richthofen was most commonly associated with, and led to his being nick-named the Red Baron. He was shot down over the Western Front by Allied fire while in the skies over Vauz sur Somme, France while in pursuit of a British aircraft flown by Wop May of Carberry, Manitoba. There is some uncertainty as to who actually fired the shot that brought him down. Royal Air Force Captain Roy Brown of Carleton Place, Ontario shot from his airplane above, as Australian gunners in the trenches shot from below. The Red Baron managed to land his plane in a field alongside the road from Corbie to Bray, but was dead by the time British troops reached him. He was buried by the Allies with full military honours. In a time of wooden and fabric aircraft, when twenty air victories insured a pilot legendary status, Manfred von Richthofen had eighty victories, and is regarded to this day as the ace of aces. The tail of von Richthofen's plane is on display at Toronto's Royal Military Institute
1946 Baron John Maynard Keynes, age 62 - British economist and advisor to the Treasury who pioneered the theory of full employment
1985 Foster Hewitt, age 82 - Canadian broadcasting legend who was the radio, and later television, voice of the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs games. He originated the phrase "He shoots, he scores"
1996 Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, age 76 - Infamous US oddsmaker
On this Day
753 BC According to the historian Varro, this is the day that Romulus founded the city of Rome
1649 The Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly
1785 Trial by jury began in Canada with the adoption of British common law
1836 In a battle that lasted only 18 minutes, an army of Texans led by Sam Houston defeated the Mexicans at San Jacinto. In March of that year, in the midst of armed conflict with the Mexican government, Texas declared its independence from Mexico. The Texas volunteers initially suffered defeat against the forces of Santa Ana and the Alamo fell. Sam Houston's troops were then forced into an eastward retreat, which bought Houston time to train his ill-prepared army in proper field manoeuvres so they would be prepared to meet Santa Ana's army. Houston and his 783 troops attacked Santa Ana's force of nearly twice that number near the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River. Only two Texans were killed and 30 wounded. The Texans stormed the surprised Mexican forces with the famous cry, "Remember the Alamo." In a stunning victory, Houston's army succeeded in killing or capturing nearly the entire Mexican force, including General Santa Ana, who was taken prisoner. According to legend, when the attack began Santa Ana was “caught with his pants down”, as he was being entertained by The Yellow Rose of Texas (Emily Morgan) at the time. The day is celebrated as San Jacinto day in Texas and is a State holiday
1908 Frederick Albert Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole on this date, almost a year ahead of US Admiral Peary. The dispute resulted in a major controversy, and in 1911 the US Congress formally recognised Peary's claim. In recent years, further studies of the conflicting claims suggest that neither expedition reached the exact North Pole, but that Peary probably came closer
1948 Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King set a record of service as a Prime Minister in the Commonwealth with 20 years, 10 months and 10 days in office
1959 Ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn was jailed for a day in Panama City while Panamanian police hunted for her husband, Dr. Roberto Arias, former ambassador to Britain, who was accused of planning a coup to overthrow his government. Dame Margot was released and flown to New York, and was reunited with her exiled husband in June of that year
1960 Brazil inaugurated its new capital, Brasilia, transferring the seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro
1962 The US Bell Telephone Company introduced radio paging
1972 The first astronomical observatory on another planetary body was set up on the Moon by Apollo 16 astronauts
1977 The musical play, Annie, opened on Broadway
1989 Over 100,000 Chinese students poured into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, ignoring government warnings of severe punishment for the protesters
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