Born this Day

1618 Medard Chouart des Groseilliers – French explorer and fur trader, who, with Pierre Radisson, opened Lakes Superior and Michigan to the fur trade. He persuaded Prince Rupert and a group of London merchants to invest in a fur expedition to Hudson Bay, and in 1668 sailed to the mouth of the Rupert River on the ketch Nonsuch, where he wintered and established a fur trade. His success led to the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670
1718 John Canton – British scientist who was the first to make artificial magnets
1858 Richard Dixon Oldham – British geologist who discovered evidence of the Earth's Core
1867 S.S. (Sebastian Spering) Kresge – US merchant who started a chain of 1,000 S.S. Kresge's five & dime stores. Kresge’s also started, and eventually became, K-Mart
1900 Elmo Roper – US pollster who developed political forecasting by polls
1929 Don Murray - Actor (Bus Stop, Knots Landing, The Outcasts, Peggy Sue Got Married, Advice and Consent)
1932 Ted Cassidy – Actor (The Addams Family, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, MacKenna’s Gold, The Last Remake of Beau Geste)
1935 Geoffrey Lewis – Actor (Flo, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Land’s End, Maverick, The Lawnmower Man, Gunsmoke: The Last Apache, Falcon Crest, Any Which Way You Can, Heaven’s Gate, Lucky Lady, The Wind and the Lion, Dillinger) He was the father of Juliette Lewis
1939 France Nuyen – French-born actress (The Joy Luck Club, South Pacific, St. Elsewhere, I Spy)
1944 Gary Lewis – Singer with the group Gary Lewis and the Playboys (This Diamond Ring) He is entertainer Jerry Lewis' son
1944 Geraldine Chaplin - Actress (Nashville, Chaplin, Dr. Zhivago, The Wedding, Marple: Sleeping Murder) She is the daughter of comedian, Charlie Chaplin
1947 Richard Griffiths – British actor (Harry Potter movies, Pie in the Sky, Bleak House, Gormenghast, Withnail & I, Sleepy Hollow, Guarding Tess, The Naked Gun 2 1/2, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) He played Canon Humphrey Appleton in the Inspector Morse episode The Day of the Devil
1951 Barry Van Dyke - Actor (Diagnosis Murder, Galactica 1980, the Canterville Ghost, Airwolf) He is the son of Dick Van Dyke
1952 Alan Autry – Actor (In the Heat of the Night, Grace Under Fire, Brewster’s Milliions, North Dallas Forty, At Close Range, Southern Comfort)
1956 Michael Biehn - Actor (The Terminator, Aliens, The Fan, The Abyss, Navy SEALS, Tombstone, The Rock)
1962 Wesley Snipes - Actor (Demolition Man, Rising Sun, Major League, Sugar Hill, Blade movies, White Men Can't Jump, Passenger 57, Murder at 1600, US Marshals) And, he was in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
1965 J.K. Rowling – British author (Harry Potter books)
1966 Jim True-Frost – Actor (The Wire, Treme, Diminished Capacity, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fat Man and Little Boy)
1966 Dean Cain – Actor (Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Las Vegas, Future Sport, Out of Time, The Dog Who Saved Christmas)
1967 Rudolph Martin – German actor (Beggars and Choosers, Dexter, Raven, 24, Swordfish, Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula)
1969 Loren Dean – Actor (Enemy of the State, Gattica, Terriers, Space Cowboys, Bones, Mrs. Winterbourne, Apollo 13, How to Make an American Quilt, Billy Bathgate)
1971 Eve Best – British actress (Nurse Jackie, The King’s Speech, Prime Suspect: The Final Act, Dolley Madison)
1971 Christina Cox – Canadian actress (F/X: The Series, The Chronicles of Riddick, Defying Gravity, Blood Ties, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven)
1974 Emilia Fox – British actress (Marple: The Moving Finger, The Virgin Queen, Henry VIII, David Copperfield, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Shooting the Past, Rebecca, Silent Witness, The Pianist) She is the daughter of Edward Fox and Joanna David
1975 Anna Parisse – Actress (Law & Order, National Treasure, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Monster-in Law, Rubicon)
1998 Rico Rodriguez – Actor (Modern Family, Babysitters Beware, Opposite Day, Epic Movie)


Died this Day

1556 St. Ignatius of Loyola - Founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic missionaries and educators. He died in Rome. The Jesuit order played an important role in the Counter-Reformation and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism. Ignatius was the son of a noble and wealthy Spanish family called the Loyolas, and was born in his family's ancestral castle in 1491. He showed little interest in church matters and trained as a knight. In May 1521, during the siege of Pamplona by the French, his legs were shattered by a cannonball, and the seriously wounded Ignatius was transported to his family's castle. During his weeks of convalescence, he was given the Bible and a book on the saints to read. He came to see the service of God as a kind of holy chivalry and resolved to live an austere life in imitation of the saints. Ignatius educated himself to prepare for his spiritual mission, studying in Barcelona, the University of Alcala, and the University of Paris. In 1534, the Jesuit movement was born when Ignatius led six of his followers to Montmartre near Paris, where the group took vows of poverty and chastity. Ignatius and most of his companions were ordained in 1537, and in 1540, Pope Paul III approved Ignatius' outline of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is formally known. By the time of Ignatius' death, there were more than 1,000 Jesuit priests
1875 Andrew Johnson, age 66 - The 17th president of the US, died in Carter Station, Tennessee
1937 Charles Martine, age 80 – Apache scout who played an important role in the surrender of Geronimo. He died on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. Born among the Chiricahua Apache of northern Mexico, Martine was captured as a young boy and sold to a Mexican family as a servant. His knowledge of both Spanish and Apache and his familiarity with the southern desert lands eventually made him a valuable interpreter and scout. In 1886, US General Nelson Miles recruited Martine and another Apache, Kayitah, to help track down the renegade Apache chief Geronimo, who had long stymied the US Army's best efforts to find and arrest him. Miles wanted Martine and Kayitah to find the chief and persuade him to come for peace negotiations. If they succeeded, Miles reportedly promised they would be well rewarded by the US government. Accompanied by a small party of soldiers, Martine and Kayitah eventually located Geronimo's camp in northern Mexico. Bearing a white flag, the two scouts cautiously approached the hostile camp, where Geronimo initially wanted to shoot the two scouts, until his braves convinced him to let them come forward. Still in considerable danger, the two scouts entered the camp and managed to convince Geronimo to talk to the army officers. Eventually, Geronimo agreed to a meeting with General Miles during which Geronimo gave his unconditional surrender. Despite their brave and effective service in obtaining the surrender of one of the last hostile Indians in the nation, Martine and Kayitah never received the awards promised them by General Miles. Instead, they were exiled to the east with Geronimo and the other Apache. Miles insisted that all the Chiricahua Apache be exiled, even the scouts who had worked for the US Army. In 1913, they both opted to move to the Apache reservation at Mescalero, New Mexico
1964 Jim Reeves – Country singer (Four Walls, He'll Have to Go, Am I Losing You, I Won't Come In While He's There, Billie Bayou, Welcome to My World, This is It, Guess I'm Crazy, Mexican Joe) He also played baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals. He died in an air crash near Nashville, Tennessee, three weeks before his 40th birthday

On this Day

1703 British author Daniel Defoe was put in the pillory as punishment for seditious libel, brought about by the publication of a politically satirical pamphlet. Defoe's middle-class father had hoped Defoe would enter the ministry, but Defoe decided to become a merchant instead. After he went bankrupt in 1692, he turned to political pamphleteering to support himself. A deft writer, Defoe's pamphlets were highly effective in moving readers. His pamphlet, The Shortest Way with Dissenters, was an attack on High Churchman, satirically written as if from the High Church point of view but extending their arguments to the point of foolishness. Both sides of the dispute, Dissenters and High Church alike, took the pamphlet seriously, and both sides were outraged to learn it was a hoax, resulting in his arrest. The public sympathised with Defoe and threw flowers, instead of the customary rocks, at him while he stood in the pillory. He was sent back to Newgate Prison, from which Robert Harley, the future Earl of Oxford, obtained his release
1741 Vitus Jonassen Bering put a landing party ashore in Alaska for several hours, before returning to Kamchatka. It was the beginning of a Russian trade presence on the pacific coast
1777 The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a major-general in the American Continental Army
1910 The first use of radio in tracking down a criminal occurred on a ship in the St Lawrence River, near Rimouski, Québec. Wanted for the murder of his wife, Dr Hawley Crippen and his mistress, Ethel Le Neve, disguised as a boy, were arrested on board the SS Montrose which sailed from England to Canada. The captain, Henry Kendall, had become suspicious of the relationship of the two passengers and radioed London. Chief Inspector Walter Drew, came aboard disguised as the pilot, when the ship entered the St. Lawrence River, and arrested the pair
1928 MGM's famous lion trademark roared for the first time
1930 The radio mystery program, The Shadow, debuted. The show became famous for its trademark opening line: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows..."
1948 President Truman helped dedicate New York International Airport (later John F. Kennedy International Airport) at Idlewild Field
1950 Britain’s first self-service store, Sainsburys, opened in Croydon
1957 The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line of radar stations opened across Canada’s far north. It was a joint US-Canada defence project during the Cold War, financed by the US and operated by Canada
1964 An unmanned US lunar probe, Ranger 7, took the first close-up images of the moon before it impacted with the lunar surface north-west of the Sea of the Clouds. There were 4,308 images in total, which were 1,000 times as clear as anything ever seen through earth-bound telescopes. The pictures showed that the lunar surface was not excessively dusty or otherwise treacherous to a potential spacecraft landing, thus lending encouragement to the NASA plan to send astronauts to the moon
1965 Cigarette ads were banned from British television
1987 A tornado cut a path of destruction through Edmonton, Alberta, and its suburbs during afternoon rush hour. The funnel remained on the ground for an hour, cutting a path 25 miles long and over 1/2 mile wide in places. The tornado, which reached an intensity of F4, claimed 27 lives and injured at least 250 people. Damage was estimated at 330-million dollars. It was highly unusual to have such a severe tornado event at those northern latitudes