Born this Day

1856 George Bernard Shaw – Irish-born journalist, music and drama critic, and playwright (Widower’s Houses, Caesar and Cleopatra, Major Barbara, St. Joan) Two of his plays became musicals: Arms and the Man was turned into The Chocolate Soldier, and Pygmalion was turned into My Fair Lady
1875 Carl Jung - Swiss founder of analytic psychology
1894 Aldous Huxley – British philosopher, satirist and author (Brave New World, Chrome Yellow, Point Counter Point, Eyeless in Gaza)
1895 Robert Graves – British poet, novelist and critic (I Claudius, Goodbye To All That)
1895 Gracie Allen - Vaudeville, radio, TV and stage actress who worked with her husband, George Burns (The Burns and Allen Show, College Swing, Honolulu, Two Girls and a Sailor)
1898 Willy Messerschmitt - German aircraft engineer and designer
1902 William Lear - US engineer and industrialist who founded the Lear Jet Corporation
1909 Vivian Vance - Actress (I Love Lucy, The Lucille Ball Show, The Blue Veil, The Great Race, The Great Houdini)
1914 Erskine Hawkins – Trumpeter and bandleader (Dolemite, No Soap, Uptown Shuffle) He was known as the '20th Century Gabriel'
1918 Marjorie Lord - Actress (The Danny Thomas Show, Sweet Surrender, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!, Riding High) She’s the mother of actress Anne Archer. Also, she played Nancy Partridge in the movie, Sherlock Holmes in Washington
1921 Jean Shepherd – Radio personality and author (Wanda Hickey's Night of Gold Memories and Other Disasters, A Fistful of Fig Newtons ,The Phantom of the Open Hearth, The Ferrari in the Bedroom) He narrated the movie A Christmas Story which was based on his novel In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash
1922 Blake Edwards - Director (The Pink Panther movies, 10, Victor/Victoria, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, Switch, Peter Gunn, The Tamarind Seed, Darling Lili, Operation Petticoat)
1922 Jason Robards - Actor (A Boy and His Dog, The Adventures of Huck Finn, Philadelphia, All the President's Men, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Paper) He was the son of actor, Jason Robards, Sr
1926 James Best - Actor (Ode to Billy Joe, The Naked and the Dead, Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Cimarron Kid) He was in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Unwelcome Well and The Case of the Surplus Suitor
1928 Stanley Kubrick - Director (2001: A Space Odyssey, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange, Lolita, Paths of Glory)
1936 Mary Millar – British actress (Keeping Up Appearances, Crown Court, Rookery Nook, The Dick Emery Show)
1938 Darlene Love – Actress (Lethal Weapon movies, Another World, Shindig!) and singer (Christmas Baby Please Come Home, He’s a Rebel, Da Do Ron Ron, He’s Sure the Boy I’m Gonna Marry)
1943 Dobie Gray - Singer (Drift Away, Look at Me, Loving Arms, You Can Do It, The 'In' Crowd)
1943 Mick Jagger – British rocker and lead singer with The Rolling Stones (I Can't Get No Satisfaction, Paint It Black, Ruby Tuesday, Honky Tonk Women, Brown Sugar, Angie, Miss You, Jumping Jack Flash) He dropped out of the London School of Economics to form the Rolling Stones
1944 Kiel Martin - Actor (Hill Street Blues, Second Chance, Panic in Needle Park, Convicted: A Mother's Story)
1945 Helen Mirren – British actress (Prime Suspect, The Queen, Gosford Park, Calendar Girls, White Knights, O Lucky Man!, Caligula, Excalibur, The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover, Elizabeth I)
1950 Susan George – British actress (Straw Dogs, Jack the Ripper, Mandingo, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, The Castle of Adventure)
1957 Nana Visitor – Actress (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, A Father's Homecoming, The Doctors, Wildfire, Dark Angel, Torchwood: Miracle Day)
1959 Kevin Spacey - Actor (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, American Beauty, Wiseguy, Working Girl, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Ref, A Time to Kill, The Usual Suspects, The Shipping News, Casino Jack, The Men Who Stare at Goats)
1964 Sandra Bullock - Actress (Speed, Demolition Man, The Net, Two If By Sea, Miss Congeniality, A Time to Kill, The Blind Side)
1965 Jeremy Piven - Actor (Entourage, Cupid, The Larry Sanders Show, Grosse Pointe Blank, Serendipity, Black Hawk Down, Mr Selfridge)
1967 Jason Statham – British actor (Killer Elite, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, The Transporter, The Italian Job, Crank, Gnomeo & Juliet, The Meg, The Expendables, Crank, Spy, Fast & Furious 6)
1968 Olivia Williams – British actress (Dollhouse, Hanna, Miss Austen Regrets, Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures, Peter Pan, To Kill a King, The Sixth Sense)
1973 Kate Beckinsale – British actress (The Aviator, Van Helsing, Laurel Canyon, Emma, Anna Lee: Headcase, Much Ado About Nothing, Underworld movies, Total Recall)
1978 Eve Myles – Welsh actress (Torchwood, Little Dorritt, Belonging, Framed, Doctor Who, Baker Boys, Colditz, Broadchurch, Victoria, Keeping Faith)


Died this Day

1863 Sam Houston, age 70 –The first President of the Republic of Texas, he was also a US senator and Texas governor. He died at his home in Huntsville, Texas, and is buried in Huntsville's Oakwood Cemetery. The city of Houston, Texas is named after him
1939 Ford Maddox Ford – British author (The Good Soldier)
1952 Eva Peron, age 33 - Argentina's first lady, died in Buenos Aires of cancer


On this Day

1664 In Québec, the Sovereign Council fixed commodity and shipping prices, and required price tags on all goods sold
1745 The first recorded woman’s cricket match took place at Gosden Common, near Guildford, Surrey, with neighbouring villages Hambledon against Bramley
1758 The British captured the Cape Breton fortress of Louisbourg after a siege of nearly 2 months. The French surrendered with 3,500 soldiers and about 4,000 sailors and militia
1775 The US colonial postal system was established, with Benjamin Franklin becoming postmaster-general
1788 New York became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution
1845 The Great Britain sailed from Liverpool on her maiden voyage, the first iron ship designed by Brunel, and the first liner fitted with a screw propeller
1847 The Republic of Liberia, formerly a colony of the American Colonization Society, declared its independence. Under pressure from Britain, the US hesitantly accepted Liberian sovereignty, making the West African nation the first democratic republic in African history. A constitution modelled after the US Constitution was approved, and in 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts was elected Liberia's first president. The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 by American Robert Finley to return freed African American slaves to Africa
1908 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was born when US Attorney General Charles Bonaparte ordered a group of newly hired federal investigators to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch of the Department of Justice. One year later, the Office of the Chief Examiner was renamed the Bureau of Investigation, and in 1935 it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation
1936 At Vimy Ridge, France, King Edward VIII unveiled the Vimy Memorial, commemorating those Canadians who took Vimy Ridge in 1917. It was designed by Canadian sculptor Walter Allward
1942 Actor Gene Autry was sworn into the Army Air Corps on the air, during his regular radio show, Gene Autry's Melody Ranch. He served as an officer until 1945, when he resumed his show
1945 In the 11th hour of World War II, Winston Churchill was forced to resign as British prime minister following his party's electoral defeat by the Labour Party. It was the first general election held in Britain in more than a decade. The same day, Clement Attlee, the Labour leader, was sworn in as the new British leader
1953 A young Havana lawyer, Fidel Castro, led a group of revolutionaries in an attack on a fortress held by army and police supporters of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Many of the attackers, including Castro, were captured and imprisoned. Castro was later released and in 1956, he returned as head of another insurgent group. It overthrew the Batista regime in 1959
1956 The Suez Crisis began when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the British and French-owned Suez Canal. The Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas across Egypt, was completed by French engineers in 1869. For the next 87 years, it remained largely under British and French control, and Europe depended on it as an inexpensive shipping route for oil from the Middle East. After World War II, Egypt pressed for evacuation of British troops from the Suez Canal Zone, and in July 1956 President Nasser nationalised the canal, hoping to charge tolls that would pay for construction of a massive dam on the Nile River. In response, Israel invaded in late October, and British and French troops landed in early November, occupying the canal zone. Under Soviet, US, and UN pressure, Britain and France withdrew in December, and Israeli forces departed in March 1957. That month, Egypt took control of the canal and reopened it to commercial shipping
1966 Under medical supervision, disc jockey Charles Christensen of KMEN Riverside, California began a period of 277 hours without sleep