Born this Day

1635 Robert Hooke – British physicist whose experimental work made possible the inventions of the steam engine, the quadrant, Gregorian telescope and microscope
1811 William Makepeace Thackeray – Calcutta-born British author (Vanity Fair, The History of Pendennis, Barry Lyndon, The Book of Snobs, The Newcomes)
1891 Gene Lockhart – Canadian actor (Carousel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Madame Bovary, Joan of Arc, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol) He was married to actress Kathleen Lockhart. They were the parents of actress June Lockhart
1903 Chill Wills - Actor (Billy the Kid, McClintock, Giant, The Yearling, Tarzan's New York Adventure, The Wheeler Dealers)
1906 S. I. Hayakawa - Canadian-born US Senator and scholar. He was also known for his popular writings on semantics and for his career as President of San Francisco State University in the 1960s
1909 Harriet Nelson – Singer with Ozzie Nelson's orchestra, and actress (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Follow the Fleet, Death Car on the Freeway)
1911 Hume Cronyn – Canadian-born actor (Sunrise at Campobello, The Seventh Cross, Cocoon, The Four Poster, Fox Fire, Cleopatra, The Parallax View, The World According to Garp, The Pelican Brief, The Gin Game) He had been married to Jessica Tandy for 52 years at the time of her death in 1994
1913 Red (Richard) Skelton - US actor (Lady Be Good, Panama Hattie, Ship Ahoy, The Fuller Brush Man, A Southern Yankee, The Clown, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines) and comedian (The Red Skelton Show) His closing was always "Goodnight ... and may God Bless". His many characters included: Clem Kaddiddlehopper, George Appleby, seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliffe, Freddy the Freeloader, the Drunk, the Hobo and Clown. He was also a recording artist (The Pledge of Allegiance) and did one of the most touching renditions of “O Canada” that I’ve ever heard
1918 Nelson Mandela - South African President and Nobel Peace prize-winner who was imprisoned for 28 years
1921 John Glenn - US Senator and astronaut who was the first man to orbit Earth
1926 Margaret Laurence – Canadian author (The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Diviners, The Side Jordan, The Tomorrow Tamer) Many of her novels were set in the fictional town of Manawaka, which was actually her hometown of Neepawa, Manitoba
1939 Dion (DiMucci) - Rock and Roll singer with his group Dion and the Belmonts (A Teenager in Love, Where or When) and solo (Runaround Sue, The Wanderer, Abraham Martin and John, Ruby Baby, Donna the Prima Donna)
1940 James Brolin - Actor (Hotel, Marcus Welby MD, Westworld, Fantastic Voyage, The Boston Strangler, The Amityville Horror, Burlesque, The Reagans, Last Chance Harvey, Traffic)
1941 Martha Reeves - Singer with her group Martha and the Vandellas (Power of Love, Heat Wave, Quicksand, Dancing in the Street, Nowhere to Run, Jimmy Mack, Come and Get These Memories)
1948 James Faulkner – British actor (Bridget Jones Diary, Carry On Columbus, Devices and Desires, Peter and Paul, Zulu Dawn, I Claudius) He played Basilios Vasilakis in the Inspector Morse episode Greeks Bearing Gifts He also played Stapleton in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Hound of the Baskervilles
1950 Richard Branson – British entrepreneur and founder of the Virgin group of companies. He has a penchant for adventure, and for creating publicity
1951 Margo Martindale – Actress (Dexter, The Millers, Justified, The Americans, A Gifted Man, Secretariat, The Riches, The Pleasure of Your Company, Million Dollar Baby, The Hours, 100 Centre Street, Dead Man Walking, The Firm, Sneaky Pete, The Good Wife)
1954 Ricky Skaggs – Country singer and musician (I Don't Care, Crying My Heart Out Over You, Wheel Hoss)
1959 Audrey Landers - Actress (Dallas, Somerset, California Casanova)
1960 Anne-Marie Johnson – Actress (In the Heat of the Night, JAG, The System, Melrose Place, In Living Color, True Identity, What’s Happening Now!)
1961 Elizabeth McGovern - Actress (Ordinary People, Racing with the Moon, The Bedroom Window, Ragtime, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Downton Abbey, Clash of the Titans, Poirot: Appointment with Death)
1962 Lee Arenberg – Actor (Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Once Upon a Time, Cradle Will Rock, Ted, Waterworld)
1967 Vin Diesel – Actor (The Chronicles of Riddick, xXx, The Fast and the Furious, Saving Private Ryan, Babylon A.D., The Pacifier)
1968 Grant Bowler – New Zealand actor (Killer Elite, Ugly Betty, True Blood, Atlas Shrugged: Part I, Outrageous Fortune, Blue Heelers)
1980 Kristen Bell – Actress (Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, You Again, Burlesque, Scream 4, Get Him to the Greek, When in Rome, Heroes)


Died this Day

1374 Francesco Petrarch - Italian scholar and poet. He died two days before his 70th birthday
1792 John Paul Jones, age 45 – Scottish-born US naval hero, died in Paris
1817 Jane Austen, age 41 – British author (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility) Her work appeared anonymously throughout her lifetime, and her identity was known to only a small circle. The general reading public only knew that "a lady" had written the books. She died of what today is thought to be Addison's disease
1892 Thomas Cook, age 83 – British travel agent and pioneer of the package holiday
1969 Mary Jo Kopechne, age 28 – Secretary, killed when a car driven by Senator Ted Kennedy plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, off Cape Cod, shortly after leaving a party. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours. On the evening of July 18, 1969, while most people were home watching television reports on the progress of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, Kennedy and his cousin Joe Gargan were hosting a cookout and party at a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, an affluent island near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The party was planned as a reunion for Kopechne and five other women, all veterans of his brother’s (the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy) 1968 presidential campaign. Just after 11 p.m., Kennedy left the party with Kopechne, by his account to drive to the ferry slip where they would catch a boat back to their respective lodgings in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. While driving down the main roadway, Kennedy took a sharp turn onto the unpaved Dike Road, drove for a short distance, and then missed the ramp to a narrow wooden bridge and drove into Poucha Pond. Kennedy escaped the car and then dove down in an attempt to retrieve Kopechne from the sunken Oldsmobile. Failing, he stumbled back to the cottage, where he enlisted Gargan and another friend in a second attempt to save Kopechne. The three men were unsuccessful; her body was not recovered. On July 25, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, received a two-month suspended sentence, and had his license suspended for a year
1989 Rebecca Schaeffer, age 21 – Actress (My Sister Sam, Radio Days, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills) She was shot to death at her Los Angeles home by an obsessed fan who was later sentenced to life in prison
1990 Johnny Wayne, age 72 – Canadian comedian who was half of the comedy duo of Wayne and Shuster


On this Day

AD64 Fire broke out during the night, in the Circus Maximus area of the city of Rome. Summer winds fanned the flames, which quickly spread through the dry, wooden structures of the city. The fire spread and raged furiously over Rome, consuming all in its path for six days and seven nights, leaving seventy percent of the city in smouldering ruins. Rumours soon arose accusing the Emperor Nero of ordering the torching of the city and standing on the summit of the Palatine playing his lyre as flames devoured the world around him. These rumours have never been confirmed. In fact, Nero was in his palace in Antium when the fire started, and rushed to Rome, running about the city all that first night without his guards, directing efforts to quell the blaze. Despite that, the rumours persisted and Nero was suspected of planning the fire in order to make room for a new city built in his honour. He did use the fire as an opportunity to rebuild Rome in a more orderly Greek style. The new Rome was made of marble and stone, and had wide streets, pedestrian arcades and ample supplies of water to quell any future blaze. Nero looked for a scapegoat, and he found it in the Christians, at that time a rather obscure religious sect with a small following in the city. Nero’s brutality was exhibited through the persecution of these early Christians, some of whom were torn to death by dogs or lions, while others were used as torches to light his gardens and parties
1536 The authority of the pope was declared void in England
1739 A census put Canada's population at 42,701
1812 The use of the secret ballot was introduced in England
1817 Thomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk, arranged the first treaty with the indigenous people of the Canadian Prairies on behalf of King George III. The treaty was with five Chiefs of the Saulteaux and Cree, lead by Chief Peguis. Chief Peguis was instrumental in helping the first Selkirk Settlers survive in their new, harsh surroundings
1818 Grasshoppers plagued the Red River settlement in Manitoba. They were so thick, they hid the sun and devoured everything green. The settlers’ and livestock’s staple crop of potatoes was completely destroyed in just a few minutes
1853 The first North American international railroad began running between Portland, Maine and Montréal, Québec
1877 Thomas Edison carried out his first successful experiment in recording and storing the human voice, but decided more work was needed before he would demonstrate his invention publicly
1919 The Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall was unveiled. The first World War memorial was designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, and would later serve also as a memorial for the Second World War
1936 The Spanish Civil War began as General Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in Spanish North Africa. The revolt by the right-wing Spanish military officers in Spanish Morocco quickly spread to mainland Spain
1944 The Allied Bomber Command sent 100 British Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force planes to attack German defences around Caen, France. Much of the city was destroyed and up to 3,000 French killed
1969 John Fairfax rowed his 24 foot boat up on a Florida beach, becoming the first man to row across the Atlantic alone. The 4,000 mile journey took 180 days
1976 The first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics history was scored by Romania's 14-year-old star gymnast Nadia Comaneci, performing on the uneven parallel bars. Nadia would go on to collect seven perfect scores, three gold medals, a silver and a bronze at the Montréal Olympics