Born this Day

1723 Sir Joshua Reynolds – British portrait painter who was elected the first President of the Royal Academy in 1768. He was so successful that he virtually ran a portrait factory, with assistants completing the paintings like an assembly line
1821 Mary Baker Eddy – US Religious leader and founder of the Christian Science movement
1872 Roald Amundsen - Norwegian explorer who was the first to reach the South Pole, just weeks before Scott. He was also the first to make a ship voyage through Canada's Northwest Passage, and one of the first to cross the Arctic by air
1907 Orville Redenbacher – US popcorn, innovator, gourmet & tycoon
1907 Barbara Stanwyk – US actress (Stella Dallas, The Big Valley, The Thornbirds, Double Indemnity)
1911 Ginger Rogers – US stage and screen actress (Kitty Foyle, Top Hat, Girl Crazy, The Gay Divorcee, Shall We Dance?, Hello Dolly) She danced with Fred Astaire in many musicals
1915 Barnard Hughes - Actor (Lou Grant, Prelude to a Kiss, The Guiding Light, Doc, Midnight Cowboy, The Borrowers, Mr. Merlin, Tron)
1925 Cal Tjader – Composer and musician on the vibes, piano and percussion (Cast Your Fate to the Winds, La Onda Va Bien) He also did the soundtracks for the Peanuts TV cartoons
1939 Corin Redgrave - Actor (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Gambler, Excalibur, In the Name of the Father, Persuasion, The Ice House, To Kill a King) He is the son of Sir Michael Redgrave, father of Jemma Redgrave, brother of Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, and uncle to Joely and Natasha Richardson
1941 Desmond Dekker - Reggae musician (Israelites, 007 Shanty Town, You Can Get It if You Really Want)
1948 Rubén Blades – Panamanian actor (The Milagro Bean Field War, The Two Jakes, Predator 2, The Devil’s Own, Gideon’s Crossing, Fatal Beauty, Safe House, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Cradle Will Rock)
1952 Stewart Copeland – Egyptian-born US drummer and composer with the rock group The Police (Roxanne, Message in a Bottle, Don’t Stand Too Close To Me) He is the son of a CIA agent, and grew up in the Middle East
1963 Phoebe Cates - Actress (Gremlins, Drop Dead Fred, Princess Caraboo, Bright Lights Big City, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) She is married to actor Kevin Kline
1965 Daryl Mitchell – Actor (Galaxy Quest, The John Laroquette Show, Brothers, Ed, Veronica’s Closet, House Party, The Country Bears)
1967 Will Ferrell – Actor (Elf, Bewitched, Stranger than Fiction, Talladega Nights, Saturday Night Live, Anchorman)
1971 Corey Feldman - Actor (Stand By Me, The Goonies, License to Drive, The 'Burbs, National Lampoon's Last Resort, Gremlins, The Lost Boys)
1979 Jayma Mays – Actress (Glee, The Millers, Ugly Betty, Heroes, Epic Movie, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, The Smurfs)


Died this Day

1577 Anne of Cleves – The fourth wife of Henry VIII. Their marriage was declared null and void after six months
1918 The Romanov family - Tsar Nicholas II, his empress and their five children comprising the Russian royal family, were assassinated on Bolshevik orders, in Yekaterinburg, Russia, bringing an end to the three-century-old Romanov dynasty. They had been under house arrest since March 1917 when, late in the night on July 16, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children, and four family retainers were ordered to dress quickly and go down to the cellar of the house in which they were being held. There, the family, servants, and even their pet dog, were arranged in two rows for a photograph they were told was being taken to quell rumours that they had escaped. Suddenly, a dozen armed men burst into the room and gunned down the imperial family in a hail of gunfire. Those who were still breathing when the smoke cleared were stabbed to death. The remains of Nicholas, Alexandra, and three of their daughters were excavated in a forest near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and positively identified two years later using mtDNA fingerprinting. The Crown Prince Alexei and one Romanov daughter were not accounted for, fuelling the persistent legend that Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter, had survived the execution of her family. Of the several "Anastasias" that surfaced in Europe in the decade after the Russian Revolution, Anna Anderson, who died in the US in 1968, was the most convincing. In 1994, however, scientists used mtDNA to prove that Anna Anderson was not the tsar's daughter but a Polish woman named Franziska Schanzkowska. The Russian government commission studying the remains later determined that one of the skeletons was in fact Anastasia's, and that the missing Romanov daughter was Maria
1981 Harry Chapin, age 38 – Singer (Cats in the Cradle, Taxi) He died when his car was struck by a tractor-trailer on New York's Long Island Expressway. In his early years in the sixties, he made documentary films, one of which (Legendary Champions) was nominated for an Academy Award
1999 John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Lauren Bessette – Former US First Son, his wife and her sister, died when the single-engine plane that Kennedy was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. JFK, Jr, was born on November 25, 1960, just a few weeks after his father and namesake was elected the 35th president of the US. On his third birthday, "John-John" attended the funeral of his assassinated father and was photographed saluting his father's coffin in a famous and searing image. He and his sister, Caroline, were raised in Manhattan by their mother, Jacqueline. He attended New York University Law School and worked in New York as an assistant district attorney, winning all six of his cases. In 1995, he founded the political magazine George, which grew to have a circulation of more than 400,000. In September 1996, he married girlfriend Carolyn Bessette, a fashion publicist. The two shared an apartment in New York City. On July 16, 1999, with only about 300 hours of flying experience, Kennedy took off from Essex County airport in New Jersey and flew his single-engine plane into a hazy, moonless night. He had turned down an offer by one of his flight instructors to accompany him, saying he "wanted to do it alone." To reach his destination of Martha's Vineyard, he would have to fly 200 miles, the final phase over a dark, hazy ocean, a situation in which inexperienced pilots like himself can lose sight of the horizon. Unable to see shore lights or other landmarks, Kennedy would have to depend on his instruments, but he had not qualified for a license to fly with instruments only. In addition, he was recovering from a broken ankle, which might have affected his ability to pilot his plane. At Martha's Vineyard, Kennedy was to drop off his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette. From there, Kennedy and his wife, Carolyn, were to fly on to the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod's Hyannis Port for the marriage of Rory Kennedy, the youngest child of the late Robert F. Kennedy. The Piper Saratoga aircraft never made it to Martha's Vineyard. Radar data examined later showed the plane plummeting from 2,200 feet to 1,100 feet in a span of 14 seconds, a rate far beyond the aircraft's safe maximum. It then disappeared from the radar screen. On July 21, navy divers recovered the bodies of JFK Jr., his wife, and sister-in-law from the wreckage of the plane, which was lying under 116 feet of water about eight miles off the Vineyard's shores. The next day, the cremated remains of the three were buried at sea during a ceremony on the USS Briscoe, a navy destroyer


On this Day

1439 Kissing was banned in England to help prevent the spread of germs
1661 The Bank of Stockholm issued the first banknotes in Europe
1769 The first Catholic mission in California was dedicated. Father Junípero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan missionary, founded the first Catholic mission in California on the site of present-day San Diego. After Serra blessed his new outpost of Christianity in a high mass, the royal standard of Spain was unfurled over the mission, which he named San Diego de Alcala
1808 Almost two years after completing their Voyage of Discovery, Lewis and Clark helped to form the St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company in order to exploit the region's abundant fur-bearing animals. On their journey to the Pacific, they were overwhelmed by the abundance of beaver, otter, and other fur-bearing creatures they saw. The territory was ripe for fur trapping, they reported to President Thomas Jefferson. Both Lewis and Clark recognised that sizeable fortunes could be made in fur trapping, and they were not averse to using their exclusive knowledge to gain a share of the profits. Among their partners were the experienced fur traders and businessmen Manuel Lisa, Pierre Choteau, and Auguste Choteau. Lewis, whom Jefferson had already appointed to the governorship of Louisiana Territory, was presumably a silent partner, and for good reason. The new company planned to mix public and private interests in potentially unethical ways. During their earlier voyage west, Lewis and Clark had convinced an Upper-Missouri River Mandan Indian named Big White to go east and meet President Jefferson. Lewis had promised Big White that the US government would later return him to his people. Now the St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company proposed to use public money to mount a private expedition to take Big White home in the spring of 1809. Once Big White was home safely, however, the expedition would continue on to begin fur trading on the Yellowstone River, where it would enjoy a monopoly guaranteed by Governor Lewis. In May 1809, the hybrid public-private expedition headed up the Missouri River. The men safely returned Big White to his home and inaugurated a fairly successful fur trading operation. Whatever questions there might have been about Governor Lewis' conflicting interests in the company soon became moot, as he died in October 1809, while travelling on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. It is unclear as to whether he killed himself or was murdered. Clark continued to be involved with the company for several years, and no one ever raised questions about the ethics of his participation. Standards of behaviour were often lax on the frontier, and it was not unusual for private and governmental interests to become confused. For all but the most critical observer, Clark's actions would have been acceptable. The St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company the two men helped create endured until 1825 and was instrumental in furthering the exploration and settlement of the Far West
1862 David G. Farragut became the first rear admiral in the US Navy
1867 Reinforced concrete was patented by Joseph Monier of Paris
1912 At the Stockholm Olympics, American Jim Thorpe became the first person to win both the pentathlon and decathlon. He later was stripped of the medals because he was once paid for playing baseball. Decades later, the medals were restored in his name, and returned to his family
1945 The first atomic bomb was exploded above the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was developed by Robert Oppenheimer and his team at Los Alamos. The test remained a closely guarded secret until after the US government announced that an atomic bomb had been dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, on August 6th
1948 The first turbo-prop airplane, the Vickers Viscount, took its maiden flight
1948 The movie Key Largo opened in New York. The film, about a mobster holding guests hostage in a Florida hotel, was the last of three movies Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together
1951 The novel Catcher In The Rye, by J.D. Salinger was first published
1958 Canada's first regional theatre opened in Winnipeg as the Manitoba Theatre Centre staged its first production
1969 At 9:32 am EDT, Apollo 11, was launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on an historic journey to the surface of the moon, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins, on the first manned mission to the surface of the Moon. After travelling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19th, and on the 20th Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon