Born this Day

427 BC Plato – Greek philosopher
1471 Albrecht Dürer - German painter and engraver who drew his own portrait looking into a mirror when he was 13, creating the earliest known self-portrait in European art. A major German artist, he eventually became court painter for Charles V
1688 Alexander Pope - British poet and satirist (The Rape of the Lock, Windsor Forest, An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, The Art of Sinking in Poetry)
1780 Elizabeth Fry - British Quaker and prison reformer who visited London's Newgate Prison in 1813 where over 300 women and children were living in filthy, overcrowded conditions. From this time, she devoted herself to improving conditions, providing hostels for the homeless and establishing various charitable organisations to help the poor
1815 Edwin Christy - US minstrel show performer
1901 Horace Heidt - Bandleader for Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights, and radio show host (Pot O' Gold)
1904 Robert Montgomery - Actor (Private Lives, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Robert Montgomery Presents) and director (Eye Witness, Lady in the Lake, The Gallant Hours) He was the father of actress, Elizabeth Montgomery
1904 Fats Waller - Blues musician on the piano and organ (It's a Sin to Tell a Lie, Smarty, All My Life, Two Sleepy People) and song writer (Ain't Misbehavin', Honeysuckle Rose)
1915 Bill Williams – Actor (The Adventures of Kit Carson, Oklahoma Territory, Music at the Meadowbrook) He was born Herman Katt in Brooklyn, New York. For forty-six years he was married to actress Barbara Hale, and their son is actor William Katt. Williams appeared in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Twelfth Wildcat, The Case of the Muderous Mermaid, The Case of the Bluffing Blast, and The Case of the Crippled Cougar . He also played a multi-millionaire in the Batman episode Fine Finny Friends
1916 Harold Robbins - Writer (The Carpetbaggers, The Piranhas, Stiletto, The Dream Merchants, The Betsy)
1917 Dennis Day - Singer (Mam'selle, Danny Boy, Clancy Lowered the Boom) and actor (The Jack Benny Show, The Powers Girl, I'll Get By, Golden Girl)
1917 Raymond Burr - Canadian actor (Ironside, Rear Window, A Place in the Sun, The Defence Never Rests, Peter and Paul, Godzilla, His Kind of Woman, Meet Danny Wilson, A Cry in the Night) And, of course, he was Perry Mason!
1920 Anthony Steel - Actor (Wooden Horse, Malta Story, Perfect Crime)
1921 Andrei Sakharov - Russian physicist and dissident who produced the Soviet atomic bomb, and also the hydrogen bomb. He was a Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist and formulated the concepts of perestroika and glasnost
1923 Rick Jason - Actor (Combat!, Day of the Wolves, Who Is the Black Dahlia?)
1924 Peggy Cass - Actress (The Hathaways, Women in Prison, Aunty Mame, Paddy, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Cheaters, To Tell The Truth, and the radio serial The Doctors)
1941 David Groh - Actor (Rhoda, General Hospital, Hot Shot, Broken Vows, Illegal in Blue)
1941 Ronald Isley - Singer with his family group The Isley Brothers (Shout, Twist and Shout, This Old Heart of Mine Is Weak for You, It's Your Thing, That Lady, Fight the Power)
1944 Marcie Blane - Singer (Bobby's Girl)
1945 Richard Hatch - Actor (Battlestar Galactica, Ghetto Blaster, Party Line, Delta Force, Commando 2)
1948 Leo Sayer - Singer (Long Tall Glasses, You Make Me Feel like Dancing, When I Need You, More Than I Can Say)
1948 Jonathan Hyde – Australian-born British actor (Titanic, The Mummy, Jumanji, Deadly Advice, Spooks/MI-5) He portayed Culverton Smith in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Dying Detective
1951 Al Franken – Comedian and actor (Saturday Night Live, The Al Franken Show, From the Earth to the Moon, Trading Places) He is now a U.S. Senator for the State of Minnesota
1952 Lawrence Tero - Actor known as Mr. T (The A-Team, Rocky III, DC Cab, Spy Hard)
1957 Judge Reinhold - Actor (Beverly Hills Cop, Stripes, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ruthless People, The Santa Clause, Swing Vote)
1967 Lisa Edelstein – Actress (House MD, What Women Want)
1972 Olga Sosnovska – Polish actress (Spooks/MI-5, Ocean’s Thirteen, All My Children, Gormenghast)


Died this Day

1471 Henry VI - King of England. He was murdered in the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned by Edward
1542 Hernando de Soto - Spanish conquistador, died of fever while searching for gold along the banks of the Mississippi River in present-day Arkansas. His death ended a three-year journey that took him nearly halfway across the North American continent. In order that the Native Americans would not learn of his death, and thus disprove de Soto's claims of divinity, his men buried his body in the Mississippi River
1924 Bobby Franks, age 14 - He was murdered in a thrill killing committed by Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. Leopold and Loeb were extremely wealthy and intelligent teenagers whose sole motive for killing Franks was the desire to commit the "perfect crime." Both were convinced that their intelligence and social privilege exempted them from the laws that bound other people. Leopold once wrote, "The superman is not liable for anything he may do, except for the one crime that it is possible for him to commit - to make a mistake." Leopold and Loeb received life sentences for the abduction and murder. In January 1936, a fellow inmate killed Loeb in a bloody razor fight in the prison's shower. Leopold was released on parole in 1958 with help from noted poet Carl Sandburg, who testified on his behalf. He lived out the rest of his life in Puerto Rico, where he died in 1971
1991 Rajiv Gandhi - Former Indian Prime Minister, was assassinated during national elections, by a suicide bomber
2000 Sir John Gielgud, age 96 – British actor (Becket, Arthur, Chariots of Fire, The Elephant Man, Ghandi, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Man for All Seasons, Murder on the Orient Express) He played Lord Hinksey in the Inspector Morse episode Twilight of the Gods He also played Lord Salisbury in the Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder by Decree


On this Day

1765 The first agricultural exhibition in Canada was established at Windsor, Nova Scotia
1832 The first Democratic National Convention got under way, in Baltimore
1840 New Zealand was proclaimed a British colony
1856 The first eight-hour working day was achieved by stonemasons in Australia
1881 The American Red Cross was founded in Washington DC, by humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons. The organisation was designed to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross
1892 The opera, I Pagliacci, by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, was first performed, in Milan, Italy
1894 Queen Victoria opened the Manchester Ship Canal
1901 Connecticut became the first state to enact a speeding driver law. The State General Assembly passed a bill submitted by Representative Robert Woodruff that stipulated the speed of all motor vehicles should not exceed 15 mph on country highways and 12 mph within city limits
1901 Captain John Claus Voss left Victoria, British Columbia, in a Nootkan Indian canoe, on a voyage to England. He sailed via Australia and New Zealand and arrived in England on September 2nd, 1904
1916 The clocks and watches in Britain went forward one hour for the first "Summer Time" day. The Daylight Saving Act had passed in Britain a few days earlier
1920 In Montreal, Quebec, radio station XWA broadcast the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America
1927 Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis at Le Bourget Field outside Paris after his historic solo flight across the Atlantic. Lindbergh's trip from New York took 33 hours and 30 minutes in elapsed flying time and its completion is considered one of the great milestones in aviation history
1932 Amelia Earhart completed her transatlantic flight five years to the day that Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to accomplish a solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Earhart landed her plane at Culmore, Ireland, after having travelled 2,000 miles from Newfoundland, in just under fifteen hours, and was the first woman pilot to ever make the journey. For this solo transatlantic crossing, she was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross by the US Congress
1945 Syria and Lebanon proclaimed their independence from France
1945 Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall, his co-star in To Have and Have Not
1953 A tornado hit Sarnia, Ontario, killing five people, flattening the downtown section and causing four-million dollars damage
1956 The US exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific
1959 The musical, Gypsy, inspired by the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, opened on Broadway
1965 Ontario's flag was proclaimed
1968 The nuclear-powered US submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores
1969 A judge in Los Angeles sentenced Sirhan Bishara Sirhan to death for the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
1979 Former San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk
1979 Elton John became the first rock star to perform in the USSR, with a concert in Leningrad which was totally sold out. He ended his show with the Beatles' "Back in the USSR"
1982 Britain announced its troops had attacked the Falkland Islands and established "a firm Bridgehead" while fighting Argentine forces
1990 Canadian Environment Minister Lucien Bouchard praised the cause of Québec separation and resigned from both the Federal Cabinet and the Conservative Party caucus. He later formed the Bloc Québecois, a federal political party devoted to separating Québec from the rest of Canada