Born this Day

1844 Reverend William Archibald Spooner – Anglican clergyman and Warden of New College, Oxford who was the originator of “spoonerisms”. As a result of nervousness, he sometimes transposed the initial letters or syllables of a word, so “a half-formed wish” would become a “half-warmed fish”
1849 Emma Lazarus – US poet best known for her sonnet, The New Colossus, which is inscribed on the pedestal at the Statue of Liberty
1888 Selman Abraham Waksman – Ukrainian-born US biochemist who discovered the antibiotic streptomycin, the first effective treatment for tuberculosis
1890 Rose Kennedy – Matriarch of the Kennedy clan
1898 Stephen Vincent Benet - Poet and author (John Brown's Body, Western Star, The Devil and Daniel Webster)
1922 Dan Rowan – US comedian & actor (Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, The Dean Martin Summer Show, The Maltese Bippy, Once Upon a Horse)
1924 Margaret Whiting - Singer (Moonlight in Vermont, It Might as Well be Spring, Now is the Hour)
1928 Orson Bean – Comedian and actor (Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Desperate Housewives, Being John Malkovich, Innerspace, Anatomy of a Murder)
1932 Oscar De La Renta - Fashion designer
1934 Louise Fletcher - Actress (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Cheap Detective, The Lady in Red, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Cruel Intentions, Blue Steel) She was in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Larcenous Lady, and The Case of the Mythical Monkeys
1938 Terence Stamp – British actor (Superman: The Movie, Far from the Madding Crowd, Wall Street, Young Guns, The Real McCoy, Modesty Blaise, Star Wars Episode I, Smallville, The Adjustment Bureau, The Haunted Mansion, Red Planet, Bowfinger, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert)
1940 Alex Trebek – Canadian-born US game show host (Jeopardy, Concentration, Reach for the Top)
1941 Ron Turcotte – Canadian jockey, born at Drummond, New Brunswick, one of 11 children of a lumberjack. In 1973 he rode Secretariat to the first Triple Crown in 25 years. In 1978 he broke his back falling from his horse at Belmont Park
1943 Bobby Sherman - Singer (Little Woman, Julie, Do Ya Love Me) and actor (Shindig, Here Come the Brides, Getting Together)
1944 Nick Brimble – British actor (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Frankenstein Unbound, To Play the King, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Final Cut, A Knight’s Tale, Emmerdale Farm, Grantchester)
1946 Danny Glover - Actor (Lethal Weapon movies, Silverado, Escape from Alcatraz, Chiefs, The Color Purple, Lonesome Dove, Touch, Death at a Funeral, 2012, Gospel Hill, Dreamgirls, Manderlay)
1947 Albert Brooks - Actor (Broadcast News, Lost in America, Private Benjamin, Taxi Driver)
1947 Don Henley – Drummer and singer with The Eagles (Hotel California) and solo (Dirty Laundry, All She Wants to Do is Dance, The End of the Innocence)
1955 Willem Dafoe - Actor (Platoon, Mississippi Burning, Clear and Present Danger, New York Nights, The English Patient, Spider-Man, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, Manderlay, The Aviator, Once Upon a Time in Mexico)
1963 Rob Estes – Actor (Melrose Place, Silk Stalkings, 90210, Women’s Murder Club, Suddenly Susan, Providence)
1964 Adam Godley – British actor (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Around the World in 80 Days, Nanny McPhee, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Old Curiosity Shop, The X Files: I Want to Believe, Marple: The Secret of Chimneys)
1964 John Leguizamo – Colombian-born actor (Summer of Sam, Spawn, Fan, Executive Decision, Moulin Rouge, ER) And he was in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
1964 David Spade - Actor-comedian (Just Shoot Me, Saturday Night Live, Rules of Engagement, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter)
1965 Patrick Labyorteaux – Actor (JAG, Little House on the Prairie, Yes Man, Hollywood Palms, 3 Ninjas, Heathers, Summer School)
1967 Irene Bedard – Actress (Smoke Signals, Into the West, Miracle at Sage Creek, Song of Hiawatha, Pocahontas, The Last Great Warrior)
1972 Colin Ferguson – Canadian actor (Eureka, Life’s a Beach, Because I Said So, The House Next Door, Vinegar Hill, Line of Fire, Then Came You, More Tales of the City)
1974 Franka Potente – German actress (The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, Copper, Blow, The Princess and the Warrior, Run Lola Run, The Bridge)
1978 A.J. Cook – Canadian actress (Criminal Minds, Tru Calling, Misconceptions, Higher Ground, Blue Moon, Final Destination 2)
1982 Sarah Lind – Canadian actress (Edgemont, True Justice, What Goes Up, Personal Effects, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Human Cargo)


Died this Day

1893 John Rae, age 79 – Scottish physician and explorer of the Canadian Arctic who found the first Franklin remains. He died at Stillwall, Orkney, Scotland
1915 Sir Sanford Fleming, age 88 – Scottish born Canadian engineer and railway surveyor. He developed the concept of international standard time and time zones, which were adopted in 1884. As well, Fleming designed the first Canadian postage stamp, issued in 1851
1932 Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, age 65 – Canadian inventor, sometimes described as the genius Canada forgot. His most important invention was the wireless telephone, which preceded modern-day radio. He also invented the first wireless compass and the fathometer. He died at Hamilton, Bermuda
1932 Florenz Ziegfeld, age 63 – US impresario and producer of the Ziegfeld Follies
1934 John Dillinger – US gangster, shot to death by federal agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre. In a fiery bank-robbing career that lasted just over a year, Dillinger and his associates robbed 11 banks for more than $300,000, broke jail and narrowly escaped capture multiple times, and killed seven police officers and three federal agents. Anna Sage, a Romanian-born brothel madam in Chicago and friend of Dillinger's, agreed to co-operate with the FBI to capture Dillinger, in exchange for leniency in an upcoming deportation hearing. She also hoped to cash in on the $10,000 bounty that had been put on his head. On July 22, Sage and Dillinger went to see the gangster movie Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theatre around the corner from her house. Twenty FBI agents and police officers staked out the theatre and waited for him to emerge with Sage, who would be wearing an orange dress to identify herself. At 10:40 pm, Dillinger came out. Sage's orange dress looked red under the Biograph's lights, which would earn her the nickname "the lady in red." Dillinger was ordered to surrender, but he took off running. He made it as far as an alley at the end of the block before he was gunned down, allegedly because he pulled a gun. Two bystanders were wounded in the gunfire. Public Enemy No. 1, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had deemed him, was dead. Some researchers have claimed that another man, not Dillinger, was killed outside the Biograph, citing autopsy findings on the corpse that allegedly contradict Dillinger's known medical record
1950 William Lyon Mackenzie King, age 75 – Three time prime minister of Canada. He died at his Kingsmere estate


On this Day

1314 Robert the Bruce defeated English King Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn, a few miles south of the town of Stirling in Scotland, where William Wallace had, 17 years earlier, defeated the English army. The battle began early and lasted for two days. The Scots gradually won the hand-to-hand fighting, forcing the English army downhill into the Bannock Burn and towards the Forth, where many more were slaughtered. The result of the victory was the re-establishment of Scottish independence and the withdrawal of the English claim to the Scottish throne
1582 England's first newspaper, The English Mercurii, began publication
1598 William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice was entered on the Stationers' Register. By decree of Queen Elizabeth, the Stationers' Register licensed printed works, giving the Crown tight control over all published material
1793 Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing north of Mexico. A young Scotsman engaged in the fur trade out of Montréal, Mackenzie made his epic journey across the continent without any of the governmental financial backing and support given to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In 1787, he was assigned to the British North West Company's fur trading post in what is now northern Alberta. Two years later, he led a small expedition north to the Great Slave Lake where he discovered the westward flowing river that now bears his name. To Mackenzie's disappointment, he discovered that the river soon turned north and led to the Arctic Ocean rather than the Pacific. On his next expedition to reach the Pacific, he followed the Peace River west accompanied by a party of nine men. In June 1793, they crossed the Continental Divide over a portaged pass of 3,000 feet. From there, they moved south down the Fraser River, which Mackenzie hoped was a tributary of the Columbia River. The Fraser River eventually proved impassable, however, and the expedition struck out overland to the west. Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean down the Bella Coola River into Dean Channel, BC. Using a paint he concocted from grease and vermilion, he wrote on a rock: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three." With this inscription, Great Britain staked its first claim on the northwest. Aside from the Spanish explorers who had previously crossed the narrow Mexican land mass, Mackenzie was the first Euro-American to cross the North American continent to reach the Pacific Ocean. Yet, he considered his achievement to be "at least in part a failure" because he had failed to find a passable commercial route. Twelve years later, the discoveries Mackenzie made on his "failed" voyage played a key role in President Thomas Jefferson's decision to send Lewis and Clark on their two-year journey to the Pacific. In 1802, Mackenzie was knighted for being first to cross the North American continent by land.
1796 Cleveland was founded by General Moses Cleaveland
1847 A British Act of Parliament gave Canada power over its own taxation, so that Canada could now raise its own duties for revenue
1892 Fire destroyed most of St. John's, Newfoundland
1933 US aviator Wiley Post completed the first round-the-world solo flight in 7 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes. His single engine Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae, was equipped with a Sperry prototype automatic pilot and the US Army's new Automatic Direction Finder. Post, instantly recognisable by the patch he wore over one eye, began the journey on July 15, flying non-stop to Berlin. After a brief rest, he flew on to the Soviet Union, where he made several stops before returning to North America, with stops in Alaska, Canada, and finally a triumphant landing at his starting point in New York
1942 Gasoline rationing involving the use of coupons began along the US’s Atlantic seaboard
1948 Newfoundlanders voted to join Canadian Confederation
1981 In Québec, licensed taverns were required to post a notice saying that women were now allowed to enter. It was the end of an old tradition barring women. Taverns licensed before 1979 were not affected and could still bar women