Born this Day

1710 Charles Messier – French astronomer who was called a “comet ferret” by King Louis XV, and was the first to anticipate the return of Hally’s comet
1819 Abner Doubleday - Baseball founder
1824 William Thompson, 1st Baron Kelvin – Irish physicist and inventor who was a brilliant mathematician in his teens. He became a rich man with his invention of a receiver for the submarine telegraph and was knighted by Queen Victoria
1854 Sir Robert Borden – The 8th Prime Minister of Canada. He governed during the First World War
1892 Pearl S. Buck – US author (The Good Earth, A House Divided, This Proud Heart, The Exile) She moved to China with her missionary parents as a young child, and learned to speak Chinese before English. Her time in China provided material for her writing
1898 Willy Messerschmitt - German aircraft engineer and designer who built the first jet fighter to go into combat, his Me-262, in 1944
1904 Peter Lorre - Hungarian born US actor (Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Arsenic and Old Lace, Around the World in 80 Days, The Raven, Muscle Beach Party, Tales of Terror, The Man Who Knew Too Much, M, and the Mr. Moto series of movies)
1909 ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker – US concert impresario and later, Elvis Presley’s manager and a very powerful father-figure to the pop superstar
1911 Sir Frederick Williams – British electrical engineer who invented an early form of computer memory which was based on a cathode-ray tube. It could store programs, whereas previous computers like ENIAC had to be rewired to execute each new type of problem. Although Williams' cathode-ray memory system would soon be replaced by magnetic-core memory, the creation of a stored program computer represented a great step forward for computer science
1914 Richard Maltby - Bandleader (Theme from The Man with the Golden Arm, St. Louis Mambo)
1914 Laurie Lee – British author and poet (Cider With Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning)
1922 Eleanor Parker - Actress (The Sound of Music, Of Human Bondage, Caged, The Man with the Golden Arm, Detective Story, Interrupted Melody, Bracken’s World)
1934 Dave Grusin – Composer of film and TV scores (On Golden Pond, Tootsie, It Takes a Thief, Gidget, The Wild Wild West, The Virginian, Murder by Death, St. Elsewhere, Little Drummer Girl)
1940 Billy Davis, Jr. – Singer with The 5th Dimension (Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, Up Up and Away, Your Love)
1943 John Beasley – Actor (Everwood, The Sum of All Fears, Walking Tall, The General’s Daughter, The Operator, Crazy in Alabama)
1946 Clive Francis – British actor (Poldark, Masada, Lord Peter Wimsey, May to December, The Piglet Files, Lipstick On Your Collar, Sharpe’s Company, Longitude, A Clockwork Orange) He also played Neville St. Claire/Hugh Boone in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Man With the Twisted Lip
1951 Pamela Bellwood – Actress (Dynasty, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Airport 77)
1954 Robert Davi – Actor (Profiler, Cops and Robbersons, Licence to Kill, Die Hard, Stargate: Atlantis)
1956 Chris Isaak – Actor (The Chris Isaak Show, From the Earth to the Moon, That Thing You Do!, Little Buddha, The Silence of the Lambs)
1964 Ian Tracey – Canadian actor (Da Vinci's Inquest, Da Vinci's City Hall, Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, Intelligence, Milgaard, Conspiracy of Silence, Hell on Wheels, Sanctuary)
1970 Matt Letscher – Actor (Eli Stone, Scandal, Joey, Good Morning Miami, Jackie Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot, The Mask of Zorro)
1970 Sean Hayes – Actor (Will & Grace, The Three Stooges, The Bucket List, Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!, Martin and Lewis)
1970 Nick Offerman – Actor (Parks and Recreation, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Childrens Hospital, Sin City, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous)
1970 Chris O'Donnell – Actor (NCIS: Los Angeles, Batman & Robin, Batman Forever, Blue Sky, The Three Musketeers, Scent of a Woman, Fried Green Tomatoes, Max Payne)


Died this Day

AD 363 Julian the Apostate – Roman Emperor, died of wounds inflicted by a spear in battle with the Persians
1541 Francisco Pizarro - Governor of Peru and conqueror of the Inca civilisation. He was assassinated in Lima by Spanish rivals while he was eating dinner
1723 Antony van Leeunwenhoek - Dutch inventor who developed the microscope
1810 Joseph Michel Montgolfier, age 69 – French balloonist and paper manufacturer, who with his brother Jacques, made the first successful flight in a hot-air balloon
1830 George IV – King of England from 1820 to 1830
1947 Richard Bedford (R.B.) Bennett - Prime Minister of Canada from 1930 to 1935. He was responsible for creating the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, later called the CBC, the Bank of Canada and the Canadian Wheat Board. He died a week before his 77th birthday
1984 George Horace Gallup – US opinion poll organiser
2003 Strom Thurmond, age 100 – US senator. When he retired from the senate with 48 years of service in January 2003, he was the longest serving and oldest Senator in US history. He was governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951


On this Day

1284 According to legend, on this day, the Pied Piper of Hameln led 130 children away after being refused his fee for charming rats and mice into a river. Earlier, a figure claiming to be a rat catcher promised to free the town of Hameln of a plague of rats and mice for a fixed sum of money. The citizens pledged to pay him his fee, so the visitor produced a pipe and began to play. Soon all the rats and mice came running out of the houses and gathered around him in a teeming mass. He went out of the town straight into the River Weser where the vermin plunged after him and drowned. The townspeople regretted their promise and refused to pay the Piper who left Hameln in a bitter mood. He returned, and while the townsfolk were assembled in the church, he again sounded his pipe in the streets, this time luring the children. Two children returned because they could not keep up: one was blind and could not show where the others had gone, and the other was mute and could not tell the secret. A last little boy escaped when he came back to fetch his coat. The historical background of the Pied Piper’s legend cannot be proven, but there are many theories. One has all the boys and girls older than four being led through the Ostertor gate into the very heart of a hill where they all disappeared. Another has all the children being led into a great cavern and reappearing in Transylvania. Among the various interpretations, reference to the colonisation of East Europe starting from Low Germany is the most plausible one: The "Children of Hameln" would have been in those days citizens (or "children of the town") willing to emigrate, having being recruited by landowners, to settle in Moravia, East Prussia, Pomerania or the Teutonic Land. The "Legend of the children’s Exodus" was later connected to the "Legend of expelling the rats," which most likely refers to the rat plagues, which were a great threat in the milling town of Hameln in medieval times, and the more or less successful professional rat catchers
1346 The British defeated France in the Battle of Crecy, in which a cannon was used, probably for the first time
1784 Cape Breton separated from Nova Scotia
1833 Captain John Ross and 19 of his crew were rescued from Baffin Island. Their ship had become ice-bound and they survived by living with Inuit for three years
1846 British protectionists repealed the Corn Laws, raising the price of wheat for British farmers. It resulted in rioting in the streets, and a fall in British property values of 50%
1870 The first section of the famous boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ, was opened to the public
1906 The first French Grand Prix, the first race of its kind to be held anywhere, was staged in Le Mans, France. Hungarian driver Ferenc Szisz took first place in a ninety horsepower Renault, covering the 768 miles of rural dirt roads at an average speed of sixty-three miles per hour
1909 King Edward VII opened the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
1919 The New York Daily News was first published
1917 The first US troops arrived in France during World War I. The 14,000 US infantry troops landed at the port of Saint Nazaire. The landing site had been kept secret because of the menace of German submarines, but by the time the Americans had lined up to take their first salute on French soil, an enthusiastic crowd had gathered to welcome them. However, the "Doughboys," as the British referred to the green US troops, were untrained, ill-equipped, and far from ready for the difficulties of fighting along the Western Front. One of US General John J. Pershing's first duties as commander of the American Expeditionary Force was to set up training camps in France and establish communication and supply networks. Four months later the first US troops entered combat
1925 Canadian broadcast pioneer, Ted Rogers Sr, invented the alternating-current tube which allowed plug-in batteryless radios. The ‘RB’ call sign of his radio station CFRB meant 'Rogers Batteryless'
1933 Kraft Music Hall debuted on the NBC radio network. Kraft conceived the show to launch and promote its new salad dressing, Miracle Whip
1945 The United Nations Charter was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco
1959 The St. Lawrence Seaway, a navigational channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, was officially opened in a Montréal ceremony presided over by Queen Elizabeth II and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Part of the Seaway is made up of a system of canals, locks, and dredged waterways, almost 200 miles long, enabling ocean freighters to travel a distance of nearly 2,500 miles, from the Atlantic Ocean through the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Duluth, Minnesota, on Lake Superior. In 1952, when Canada decided to build the Seaway entirely in Canadian territory, the US Congress moved swiftly to make it a joint venture. Work on the massive project began in 1954, and five years later, in April 1959, the icebreaker D'Iberville began the first transit of the St. Lawrence Seaway
1961 The Hockey Hall Of Fame in Toronto was opened by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
1963 US President John Kennedy wrapped up a visit to West Germany with a stopover in West Berlin, where he declared, "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner)
1970 The Canadian Parliament revised the Canada Elections Act, lowering the voting age in federal elections from 21 to 18 years of age
1976 In Toronto, Ontario, the CN Tower was opened to the public, over a year after its completion
1978 The Roman Catholic College of Cardinals elected Albino Luciani as the 263rd Pope. He took the name John Paul I, but died only 34 days after his election