1737 Edward Gibbon - British historian and author (History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)
1759 Mary Wollstonecraft - British writer, social critic, and women's rights advocate (The Vindication of the Rights of Men, The Vindication of the Rights of Women) After a failed love affair, she married the poet William Godwin. Wollstonecraft, who had been raised by a tyrannical, abusive, and alcoholic father, was philosophically opposed to marriage, as was Godwin. However, the two decided to marry after Wollstonecraft became pregnant with his child. Their daughter Mary, was born soon after, but Wollstonecraft died eleven days after her birth. Her daughter, Mary, would marry the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and be an author in her own right. Among her daughter’s writings was the story of Frankenstein
1791 Samuel Morse - US inventor and painter, born in Massachusetts. He first went to Britain to study painting, but returned to the US to study chemistry and electricity. In 1833 he devised a magnetic telegraph. He later developed Morse code to send messages using the telegraph and sent the first telegraph message, "What hath God wrought?"
1822 Ulysses Simpson Grant - The 18th President of the US and commander of the Union armies during the US Civil War, born in Point Pleasant, Ohio
1840 Edward Whymper - British artist and mountaineer, He was the first man to climb the Matterhorn, in 1865, and helped to popularise mountain climbing as a sport
1896 Wallace Hume Carothers - US chemist who, with his research team at E.I. du Pont de Nemours, developed nylon
1899 Walter Lantz - US film animator and the creator of Woody Woodpecker
1922 Jack Klugman - Actor (The Defenders, The Odd Couple, Quincy ME, Twelve Angry Men, Goodbye Columbus)
1927 Coretta Scott King - Civil rights leader and the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King
1931 Robert Donner – Actor (Cool Hand Luke, Mork & Mindy, The Waltons, How the West Was Won, Mrs. Polifax-Spy, El Dorado, Chisum, High Plains Drifter)
1932 Casey Kasem – DJ (The American Top 40 Countdown, America’s Top Hits) and voice actor (Scooby-Doo, Transformers, Hong Kong Phooey, Josie and the Pussycats)
1937 Sandy Dennis - Actress (Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff, The Execution, Splendour in the Grass)
1939 Judy Carne – British actress (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, QB VII, Love on a Rooftop)
1944 Cuba Gooding Sr - Rhythm-and-blues singer with The Main Ingredient (I'm So Proud, Just Don't Want To Be Lonely, Everybody Plays the Fool) He is the father of actors Cuba Gooding Jr and Omar Gooding
1956 Kevin McNally – British actor (Pirates of the Caribbean movies, The Raven, Marple: The Blue Geranium, Wuthering Heights, Johnny English, Bedtime, Sliding Doors, Cry Freedom, I Claudius)
1959 Sheena Easton - Scottish singer (Modern Girl, Morning Train, One Man Woman, For Your Eyes Only)
1965 Anna Chancellor – British actress (Pramface, The Hour, Lewis: The Gift of Promise, Marple: Murder is Easy, Spooks/MI-5, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Suburban Shootout, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Doc Martin and the Legend of the Cloutie, Pride & Prejudice, Poirot: The Chocolate Box, Trust) She played Julia Piper in Kavanagh QC and she also played Sally Smith in the Inspector Morse episode Cheribum & Seraphim
Died this Day
1521 Ferdinand Magellan – Portuguese explorer, killed by natives in the Philippines. After travelling three-quarters of the way around the globe, the Portuguese navigator was killed during a tribal skirmish on the island of Mactan in the Philippines. Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow, and unable to escape with his comrades, was massacred by the Mactan warriors. Eight months before, Magellan had set out from Spain, with five ships and 265 men, on a voyage to find a western passage to the Spice Islands in Indonesia. He was the first European explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. His fleet accomplished the westward crossing of the ocean in ninety-nine days, crossing waters so strangely calm that Magellan named the ocean Pacific, from the Latin word pacificus, meaning tranquil. His ship was taken safely on to Spain, completing the circumnavigation
1813 Zebulon Pike, age 34 – US Old West explorer, died during a battle in the War of 1812. An invasion force of 1,800 US troops under Zebulon Pike and Henry Dearborn landed at York, now Toronto, and the outnumbered British garrison of 600 defenders withdrew to Kingston. York was sacked and burned, and Upper Canada's parliament buildings were torched. In retaliation for this action and the destruction of Newark, now Niagara-on-the-Lake, the British raided Buffalo and Washington, and set fire to the White House the following year. By the time he became a general in 1812, Pike had already faced many perilous situations. He joined the army when he was 15, and eventually took various military posts on the US frontier. In 1805, General James Wilkinson ordered Pike to lead 20 soldiers on a reconnaissance of the upper Mississippi River. Expecting to return before the rivers froze, Pike and his small band departed up the Mississippi in a 70-foot keelboat in early August. Slow progress, however, meant Pike and his men spent a hard winter near present-day Little Falls, Minnesota, before returning the following spring. Less than three months later, Wilkinson ordered Pike to head west again. This time, Pike and his men explored the headwaters of the Arkansas River, a route that took them into Colorado. There, Pike saw the towering peak that now bears his name, and he made an unsuccessful attempt to climb it. During this second expedition, Pike also became lost and wandered into Spanish-controlled territory. A Spanish patrol arrested him and took him into custody. Although Pike had indisputably lost his way, he had also hoped the Spanish would capture him so he could see more of their territory. This risky strategy paid off. Failing to recognise they were providing Pike with a golden opportunity to spy on the territory, the Spanish obligingly moved their prisoner first to Santa Fe and then to Chihuahua, before finally releasing him near the US boundary at Louisiana. Impressed with his daring and his reputation as an efficient officer, the military promoted Pike to brigadier general during the War of 1812
1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson - US philosopher and poet (The American Scholar, May-Day and Other Pieces, English Traits, The Conduct of Life, Society and Solitude, Essays, Representative Men, Nature, Days) Emerson came from a long line of US clergy. He enjoyed a sheltered childhood in Boston, and attended Harvard Divinity School. In 1829 he accepted a position as pastor of a Boston Church, but the death of his wife in 1831 deepened his existing religious doubts. He resigned two years later, moved to Concord, and then set off for Europe where he met leading writers and thinkers of the day. During a visit to a Paris botanical garden, he decided to become a "naturalist." Influenced by Hindu texts and English Romanticism, he argued that man can rise above the material world and discover a sense of transcendent spirituality. In the 1840s, he joined the Transcendentalist movement. He died a month before his 79th birthday, and is buried in the same cemetery as Louisa May Alcott
1932 Hart Crane, age 32 - US poet (The Bridge, The White Buildings) He drowned after jumping from a steamer while en route to New York
1965 Edward R. Murrow – US journalist and broadcaster. He died two days after his 57th birthday
On this Day
1644 Wheat was planted in Canada for the first time
1667 Poet John Milton sold the copyright to his masterpiece Paradise Lost. By this time in his life, he was blind, impoverished, and jobless. He dictated the poem to his family, and when it was ready for publication he sold it for £10. Once printed, the poem was immediately hailed as a masterpiece of the English language
1773 The British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and thus granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into the colonies by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. This Act led to the Boston Tea Party later that year
1805 After marching five hundred miles from Egypt, US agent William Eaton led a small force of US Marines and Berber mercenaries against the Tripolitan port city of Derna. They were on a mission to depose Yusuf Karamanli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the US. It was the first campaign undertaken by US land forces in North Africa. Supported by the heavy guns of the USS Argus and the USS Hornet, the Marines and Arab mercenaries under William Eaton captured Derna and deposed Yusuf Karamanli. Lieutenant Presely O' Bannon, commanding the Marines, performed so heroically in the battle that Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The phrase "to the shores of Tripoli" from the official song of the US Marine Corps also has its origins in the Derna campaign
1828 The London Zoological Gardens in Regents Park, London, were opened
1865 Days after the end of the Civil War, the steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,100 passengers, exploded and sank on the Mississippi River, killing all but 400 of those aboard. The Mississippi, with its dikes and levees damaged by four years of war, stood at flood stage, and most of those who died were drowned in the surging river. All but one hundred of those killed were Union veterans, and most were Yankee survivors of Confederate prisoners of war camps, finally returning to their homes in the North. The Sultana, overloaded with passengers, exploded just north of Memphis, Tennessee, in the early morning hours. The cause of the blast was determined to be a boiler malfunction
1888 The oil company Esso was established in London, England
1928 Prince Edward Island changed to driving on the right hand side of the road
1937 The US's first Social Security checks were distributed
1942 In a national plebiscite, Canadians voted in favour of conscription for overseas service
1967 Expo was officially opened in Montréal by Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson
1977 The Parti Quebecois government proposed legislation to make French the working language in almost all phases of Quebec life
1994 Former President Richard M. Nixon was remembered at an outdoor memorial service attended by all five of his successors at the Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California
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