Born this Day

1753 Jean-Pierre Blanchard - French balloonist who made first English Channel aerial crossing. He also tested the parachute during a balloon flight by dropping one with a dog attached to it. He later made several successful jumps, and demonstrated his balloons in Europe and in North America
1804 Nathaniel Hawthorne - US novelist and short story writer (The House of Seven Gables, A Scarlet Letter, Mosses From an Old Manse, The Blithedale Romance, The Snow Image and Other Tales, Tanglewood Tales, The Marble Fann)
1816 Hiram Walker – US-born Canadian distiller. Walker came to Canada in 1853 and in 1859 built the Windsor Distillery and Flouring Mill. He was the founder of Hiram Walker and Sons Ltd and the town of Walkerville, Ontario, which is now part of Windsor. His Canadian Club whiskey, introduced in 1884, became Canada's major export spirit in 1910
1819 E.R. Squibb - US pharmaceutical manufacturer
1826 Stephen Collins Foster - The US’s first professional songwriter (Oh! Susannah, Camptown Races, Old Folks at Home aka Swanee River, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair, Beautiful Dreamer) He wrote over 200 songs, mainly sentimental and minstrel types. In 1849, he was hired to write songs for the minstrel troupe of E.P. Christy. Copyright laws were rarely enforced in music at the time, and he reaped few financial rewards from the widespread performance and publication of his songs. In 1857, economic difficulties led him to sell all rights to his future songs for less than $2,000
1847 James Anthony Bailey – US circus proprietor who is best remembered for his association with P.T. Barnum
1854 William Tilghman – Legendary US marshal in the Wild West who served as a lawman for 35 years
1872 Calvin Coolidge - 30th US President, born in Plymouth, Vermont
1882 Louis B. Mayer - Russian-born, New Brunswick-raised, US movie executive who bought a run-down movie house and ended up with a cinema chain, and a studio to make films for them. He was one of the founders of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
1883 Rube Goldberg – US satirical cartoonist and inventor of elaborate, involved contraptions that accomplish simple tasks
1898 Gertrude Lawrence - British stage and screen actress (London Calling, The King and I, The Glass Menagerie)
1902 George Murphy - Actor (This is the Army, Little Miss Broadway, For Me and My Gal) He was also a US Senator
1910 Gloria Stuart – Actress (Titanic, The Gold Diggers of 1935, The Invisible Man)
1911 Mitch Miller - Record company executive, producer, arranger, musician & instrumentalist (Tzena Tzena Tzena, The Yellow Rose of Texas, March from The River Kwai) He was also known for his Sing Along with Mitch LPs and TV show
1918 Abigail Van Buren (Pauline Esther Friedman) - Advice columnist and twin sister of Ann Landers
1918 Ann Landers (Esther Pauline Friedman) - Advice columnist and twin sister of Abigail Van Buren
1924 Eva Marie Saint - Actress (On the Waterfront, North by Northwest, Exodus, Raintree County)
1927 Neil Simon - Playwright (The Odd Couple, Lost in Yonkers, The Sunshine Boys, Barefoot in the Park, The Goodbye Girl, California Suite, Plaza Suite, Seems like Old Times, Prisoner of Second Avenue)
1927 Gina Lollobrigida – Italian photographer and actress (Trapeze, Belles de Nuit, Solomon and Sheba, Strange Bedfellows, Come September, Mrs. Campbell)
1931 Stephen Boyd – Irish actor (Ben Hur, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Genghis Khan, Fantastic Voyage, The Oscar)
1937 Ray Pillow - Singer (Take Your Hands Off My Heart, Thank You Ma'am, I'll Take The Dog, Volkswagon, Gone with the Wine)
1938 Bill Withers - Songwriter, singer (Ain't No Sunshine, Lean on Me, Use Me)
1940 Karolyn Grimes - Actress (It's a Wonderful Life, Rio Grande)
1946 Ed O’Ross – Actor (Full Metal Jacket, Six Feet Under, Navajo Blues, Mirror Image, Dick Tracy, Red Heat, Lethal Weapon)
1943 Geraldo Rivera - TV talk show host and journalist
1957 Jenny Seagrove – Malaysian-born British actress (Judge John Deed, Appointment with Death, The Woman in White, Lewis: The Point of Vanishing, Incident at Victoria Falls) She played Miss Mary Morstan in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Sign of the Four, with John Thaw & Jeremy Brett
1962 Neil Morrissey – British actor (Boon, Carrie & Barry, The Eustace Bros, Men Behaving Badly (UK), The Bounty, Waterloo Road, Line of Duty)
1978 Becki Newton – Actress (Ugly Betty, Love Bites, How I Met Your Mother)


Died this Day

1826 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – The second and third presidents of the US, respectively, died on this day, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson died at one o’clock in the afternoon, and Adams a few hours later. Both men had been central in the drafting of the historic document. Jefferson had authored it, and Adams served on the drafting committee and had argued eloquently for the declaration's passage. Adams' last words were, "Thomas Jefferson still survives," not knowing that his old friend and political adversary had died a few hours earlier
1831 James Monroe - The 5th president of the US, died in New York City
1934 Marie Curie, age 66 – Polish-born physicist who twice won the Nobel Prize in Physics. She shared it with her husband Pierre in 1903 for their research into radioactivity. In 1911 she won it for discovering radium
1954 Marilyn Sheppard – Wife of Dr. Sam Sheppard. She was beaten to death inside their suburban home in Cleveland, Ohio. Her husband claimed to have returned home to find a man with bushy hair fleeing the scene, but the authorities did not believe his story and charged him with killing his pregnant wife. Sheppard was convicted of the murder, but appealed to the Supreme Court and got his conviction overturned in 1966, on the argument that the circumstances of the trial, and the ensuing publicity, had unfairly influenced the jury. In 1998, DNA tests on physical evidence found at Sheppard's house revealed that there had indeed been another man at the murder scene. The sensational case inspired the TV show, The Fugitive
1985 Joan Wilson – US TV executive producer (PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! series) She died of cancer, and was married to Jeremy Brett at the time of her death
1995 Eva Gabor, age 74 - Actress (Green Acres, Gigi, The Aristocats, The Rescuers Down Under) She was the sister of Zsa Zsa Gabor


On this Day

1634 Trois Rivières, Québec was founded by Jean La Violette, with land granted by the Company of One Hundred Associates
1776 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Initially, both sides saw the conflict as a kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a colonial rebellion, and to the Patriots it was a struggle for their rights as British citizens. However, Parliament remained unwilling to negotiate with the rebels, and in response to Britain's continued opposition to reform, the Continental Congress began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies. By the spring of 1776, support for independence swept the colonies. On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain. Two days later, on July 4, the declaration was formally adopted by 12 colonies. The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. The first section features the famous lines, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The second part presents a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion
1802 The US Military Academy officially opened at West Point, NY
1804 Six weeks after departing on their famous journey, Lewis and Clark staged the first-ever Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi River. The expedition camped that evening at an abandoned Indian village in what is now Kansas. To celebrate Independence Day, Lewis and Clark commanded that the keelboat cannon be fired at sunset, and distributed an extra ration of whiskey to the men
1817 Work began on the Erie Canal
1829 The first regular horse-drawn buses went into service in London between Marylebone Road and Bank
1836 In Toronto, Ontario, William Lyon Mackenzie started a newspaper named The Constitution to mark the 60th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence
1840 The Cunard Line began its first Atlantic crossing when the paddle steamer Britannia sailed from Liverpool. The voyage took just over 14 days
1845 US writer Henry David Thoreau began his two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts
1855 The first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was published. His self-published book contained a dozen poems
1862 During a boat trip, British clergyman Charles L. Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, began work on the story of Alice in Wonderland for his friend Alice Pleasance Liddell
1883 William Frederick Cody, popularly known as Buffalo Bill Cody, held his first Wild West Show in North Platte, Nebraska. It was staged as part of the town's Independence Day celebrations. Receiving an enthusiastic response from North Platte's citizens, Cody expanded the Wild West Show into a travelling show that was eventually seen by tens of thousands of people. It was an open-air extravaganza that featured reenactments of legendary frontier events such as stagecoach robberies and the Battle of Little Bighorn. The Wild West Show later featured colourful figures such as Annie Oakley, a sharp-shooting frontier woman, and Native Americans who had actually fought in the US-Indian wars, such as Sioux leader Sitting Bull. For the next three decades, the show toured across the US and Europe and was seen by thousands, including foreign dignitaries such as Queen Victoria of England. Over time, the show became increasingly elaborate, took on international riders and themes, and Buffalo Bill's retelling of his life became ever more legendary. However, finance was not among Cody's great talents, and in 1913, the Wild West Show went bankrupt
1884 France presented the Statue of Liberty as a gift to the United States
1886 The first passenger train from Montréal reached Port Moody, BC
1898 The French ship La Bourgogne, collided with British ship the Cromartyshire off the coast of Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Five-hundred and sixty lives were lost
1904 Work began on the Panama Canal
1937 The first successful helicopter flight was conducted in Bremen, Germany
1946 The Philippines became independent
1959 The US’s 49-star flag, honouring Alaskan statehood, was officially unfurled
1960 The US’s 50-star flag, honouring Hawaiian statehood, was officially unfurled
1966 President Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act, which went into effect the following year
1981 A champagne cork flew a record 105 feet, nine inches in Reno, Nevada
1982 The space shuttle Columbia concluded its fourth and final test flight with a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California

Happy Independence Day everyone!