1490 Albert - Prussian duke from 1525 to 1568, and the last grand master of the Teutonic Knights from 1510 to 1525
1749 Edward Jenner - British surgeon and a pioneer in the field of vaccination. He developed the smallpox vaccination and administered it for the first time just three days before his 47th birthday
1836 Joseph Norman Lockyer - British astronomer and co-discoverer of helium, which he detected in the sun's chromoshere
1868 Horace E. Dodge - US automobile manufacturer
1873 Dorothy Richardson - British novelist (Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, Interim, The Tunnel, Deadlock, The Trap, Dawn's Left Hand, Clear Horizon, Pilgrimmage) She pioneered the stream-of-consciousness style which influenced James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Richardson had an affair with H.G. Wells and in 1906 found herself pregnant with his child. She broke off with him, hoping to raise the child herself, but miscarried
1898 Alfred Joseph (AJ) Casson – Canadian artist. He was a member of the Group of Seven painters, who helped forge a national identity through the visual arts with their Canadian landscapes
1911 Maureen O'Sullivan - Irish born US actress (The Thin Man, Pride and Prejudice, Hannah and Her Sisters, Peggy Sue Got Married, The River Pirates) She also played Jane in numerous Tarzan films. She was the mother of Mia Farrow
1913 James “Buster” Brown – Choreographer and dancer on stage and screen (Tap, The Cotton Club, Bubbling Brown Sugar, Black and Blue)
1921 Bob Merrill - Song writer (If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake, Doggie in the Window, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Funny Girl)
1926 Tenniel Evans – British actor (Dalziel and Pascoe: Cunning Old Fox, The Scold's Bridle, Pat and Margaret, The Citadel, My Brother's Keeper, 10 Rillington Place) He played Hilton Cubitt in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Dancing Men
1936 Dennis Hopper - Actor (Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Rebel without a Cause, Giant, Hoosiers, Flashback, Blue Velvet, Super Mario Brothers, True Romance, Speed, Waterworld)
1946 Peter Hinwood – British actor (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Ballad of Tam Lin, The Odyssey)
1955 Bill Paxton - Actor (True Lies, Aliens, Apollo 13, Future Shock, The Terminator, Tombstone, Thunderbirds, Big Love)
1956 Sugar Ray Leonard - US boxer and Olympic gold medallist and World Champion Boxer at welterweight, light-middleweight and middleweight
1956 Bob Saget - Actor and TV Host (Full House, America's Funniest Home Videos)
1957 Whip Hubley – Actor (Top Gun, North and South Book II, Coneheads, Executive Decision, A Cinderella Story)
1961 Enya – Irish singer (May It Be, Aníron, Only Time, Orinoco Flow, The Story of Boadicea, Only If, Book of Days, The Celts, Caribbean Blue, Storms in Africa, Now We Are Free, Sail Away)
1961 Cory Johnson – Actor (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Mummy, X-Men: First Class, Saving Private Ryan) He played Eugene Styles in the Kavanagh QC episode In God We Trust
1962 Craig Ferguson – Scottish-born American comedian (The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, The Drew Carey Show, Join or Die, Celebrity Name Game)
1966 Hill Harper – Actor (CSI: NY, Lackawanna Blues, The Handler, City of Angels, Beloved)
1973 Sasha Alexander – Actress (Rizzoli & Isles, NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, He’s Just Not That Into You, Dawson’s Creek, Love Happens)
1974 Sendhil Ramamurthy – Actor (Heroes, Covert Affairs, Blind Dating, Ultimate Force, In the Beginning, Death Deceit & Destiny Abord the Orient Express, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man)
1988 Nikki Reed – Actress (Twilight, The O.C., Chain Letter, Privileged, New Moon, Thirteen)
Died this Day
1510 Sandro Botticelli - Italian painter
1935 Paul Abraham Dukas - French composer (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
1992 Lawrence Welk, age 89 - Orchestra leader and song-writer (Bubbles in the Wine, Don't Sweetheart Me, Shame on You) Welk was born in Strasburg, North Dakota, one of eight children born to immigrants from the Alsace-Lorraine region between France and Germany. He grew up speaking German and was always bashful about his accented English. He dropped out of school in the fourth grade and pursued an interest in music, acquiring an accordion by mail order. He began playing at weddings and barn dances, and by his early 20s he was leading polka bands and making radio appearances. He died in Santa Monica, California
2004 Tony Randall, age 84 – Stage and screen actor (The Odd Couple, Pillow Talk, Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, Fatal Instinct, The Alphabet Murders, Love Sidney, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)
On this Day
1620 The first merry-go-round is referred to in records as being set up at a fair in Philippolis, Turkey
1630 The belts of the planet Jupiter were first observed
1673 Fathers Marquette and Joliet set out across Lake Michigan to rediscover the Mississippi River and claim for France all land and water they might discover
1792 The New York Stock Exchange was founded by brokers meeting under a tree located on what is now Wall Street
1814 Norway's constitution was signed, providing for a limited monarchy
1861 The first package holiday, arranged by Thomas Cook, set off for Paris. A party from a Working Men's club went with coupons for pre-paid hotel accommodation inclusive of meals
1875 The first Kentucky Derby was run at Churchill Downs in Louisville. The winner was Aristides
1877 The first telephone switchboard, established by a company that made electronic burglar alarms, went into operation in Boston. The alarms were connected by wire to telephones in the offices of the company's six customers. The system served as a burglar alarm at night and a telephone switchboard by day. On the same day, Alexander Graham Bell answered the first interstate telephone call, from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to New York City
1890 The first weekly comic paper, Comic Cuts, was published by Alfred Harmsworth, in London
1916 The world's first Daylight Savings Act was passed in Britain and clocks were put forward one hour the following Sunday. It was known as "Summer Time"
1932 Porto Rico became Puerto Rico in a victory for Puerto Rican nationalists. In October of 1898, the US flag was raised over the 3,500-square mile island, formalising US authority over Puerto Rico's one million inhabitants. In the first three decades of its rule, the US government made efforts to Americanise its new possession, including the granting of full US citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917 and the consideration of a measure that would make English the island's official language. However, during the 1930s, a nationalist movement led by the Popular Democratic Party won wide support across the island and successfully fought further US assimilation. The US Congress officially changed the name of the US protectorate of Porto Rico to Puerto Rico, restoring the original non-Anglicised, spelling of the Caribbean island's name
1937 Dizzy Gillespie was featured for the first time in a recording made in New York by Teddy Hill and the NBC Orchestra. They recorded King Porter Stomp
1938 The Marquess of Bute sold half the city of Cardiff, Wales, for £20 million, in the biggest British property deal ever. It included theatres, farmlands, villages, 20,000 houses, 1,000 shops and 250 pubs
1939 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth disembarked at Wolfe's Cove, Québec, from the CP ship Empress of Australia. The month long royal tour was the first visit to Canada by reigning British sovereigns
1946 President Truman seized control of the nation's railroads, delaying a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen
1954 In a major civil rights victory, the US Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that ruled that racial segregation in public educational facilities was unconstitutional. The historic decision, which brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African-American girl who had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the colour of her skin. In 1896, the Supreme Court had ruled that "separate but equal" accommodations in railroad cars conformed to the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. That ruling was used to justify segregating all public facilities, including elementary schools. However, in the case of Linda Brown, the white school she attempted to attend was far superior to her black alternative, and, additionally, was miles closer to her home. Future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall led Brown's legal team, and on May 17, 1954, the high court handed down its decision. In an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the nation's highest court ruled that not only was the "separate but equal" doctrine unconstitutional in Linda's case, but was unconstitutional in all possible cases
1963 In Montréal, Canadian army engineer Sergeant-Major Walter Leja was seriously injured when a terrorist bomb he was trying to dismantle blew up in his hands. It was one of a series of six Front de Liberation du Québec terrorist bombs that exploded in Westmount mailboxes starting at 3 a.m. Five more bombs were disarmed, and another five were carried away and blown up safely. Three days later, police arrested 20 young members of the FLQ and 21-year-old Mario Bachand was sentenced to four years in prison for planting bombs
1973 In Washington, DC, the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, began televised hearings on the continuing Watergate affair, and a week later Archibald Cox, a professor at Harvard Law School, was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor. During the Senate hearings, John Dean, a former White House counsel, testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell with the knowledge of chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, and that President Nixon had been aware of the cover-up
1975 Ten women broke the gender barrier in the Ontario Provincial Police force when they became the first women to begin training in the OPP's 65-year history
1978 Police in Lausanne, Switzerland retrieved the body of Charlie Chaplin and arrested two men on extortion charges. The body had been stolen from a graveyard 11 weeks earlier. The body, in its coffin, was found ten miles from its original Swiss cemetery
1996 President Clinton signed a measure requiring neighbourhood notification when sex offenders move in. Megan's Law was named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and killed in 1994
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