Born this Day

1753 Charles Stanhope – British Earl who invented two early mechanical calculators, as well as a printing press, a microscope lens, and various other scientific devices. Stanhope was ahead of his time politically as well as scientifically: He argued for the democratisation of Parliament and criticised the slave trade in British colonies
1801 Sir Joseph Paxton – British architect and landscape gardener who designed the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London
1811 Elisha Graves Otis – US inventor of the safety lift, or elevator
1900 John T. Scopes - High school teacher and the subject of famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. He was convicted of teaching evolution in a Tennessee school
1902 Ray Bloch – TV orchestra leader (The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Larry Storch Show)
1905 Delores Del Rio - Actress (Flying Down to Rio, Journey into Fear, Flaming Star, Children of Sanchez, Accused)
1917 Charlie Shavers – Trumpeter with the John Kirby Sextet, and composer (Pastel Blue, Undecided)
1920 P.D. James – Oxford-born British author who created the detectives Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray (A Mind to Murder, The Black Tower, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Devices and Desires) She didn’t start writing until she was in her forties
1921 Marilyn Maxwell - Actress (Arizona Bushwackers, Champion, The Lemon Drop Kid, Summer Holiday, Lost in a Harem)
1924 Leon Uris - Author (Exodus, Topaz, Mitla Pass, Mila 18) and screenwriter (Gunfight at the OK Corral)
1926 Tony Bennett - Singer (I Left My Heart in San Francisco, The Shadow of Your Smile, Because of You, Rags to Riches, Stranger in Paradise) Throughout his music career, Bennett actively pursued his love of painting. He had his first public exhibit in 1977 in Chicago and has since exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, and many other cities
1927 Gordon Scott – Actor (Gladiator of Rome, Tarzan and the Trappers, Sampson and the 7 Miracles of the World)
1940 Martin Sheen - Actor (Apocalypse Now, Badlands, Ghandi, Gettysburg, Catch-22, The Final Countdown, The West Wing, Wall Street) He is the father of Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez
1941 Martha Stewart – TV personality & business woman (Martha Stewart's Living TV and magazine)
1941 Beverly Lee - Singer with the group The Shirelles (I Met Him on a Sunday, Dedicated to the One I Love, Tonight's the Night, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Mama Said, Soldier Boy)
1950 John Landis – Director (Twilight Zone: The Movie, Beverly Hills Cop 3, The Blues Brothers, Coming to America, National Lampoon's Animal House, Oscar, Three Amigos, Trading Places)
1951 Johnny Graham – Guitarist with the group Earth, Wind & Fire (Shining Star, Sing a Song, Got to Get You into My Life, After the Love Has Gone, Best of My Love)
1951 Jay North - Actor (Dennis the Menace, Maya, Zebra in the Kitchen, The Teacher, Scout's Honour)
1959 John C. McGinley – Actor (Scrubs, Platoon, Point Break, Se7en, On Deadly Ground)
1966 Brent Butt – Canadian comedian and actor (Corner Gas, Rider Pride, Get Serious: Seven Deadly Sins, Hiccups)
1963 Isaiah Washintgon – Actor (Grey’s Anatomy, Romeo Must Die, True Crime, Out of Sight)
1979 Evangeline Lilly – Canadian actress (Lost, Kingdom Hospital, The Hurt Locker)
1983 Mamie Gummer – Actress (Emily Owens MD, The Good Wife, Off the Map, The Ward, Stop-Loss, The Hoax, John Adams, Evening) Her mother is Meryl Streep


Died this Day

1460 James II – King of Scotland, killed by the English during the siege of Roxburgh Castle
1792 Sir Richard Arkwright – British inventor of the spinning frame
1881 William George Fargo – US co-founder of the Wells-Fargo Express Company
1916 Sir Roger Casement - Irish-born British diplomat, executed for his role in Ireland's Easter Rising. He served as a British diplomat during the early part of the 20th century, and won international acclaim after exposing the illegal practice of slavery in the Congo and parts of South America. Despite his Ulster Protestant roots, he became an ardent supporter of the Irish independence movement and after the outbreak of World War I travelled to the US and then to Germany to secure aid for an Irish uprising against the British. Germany, which was at war with Great Britain, promised limited aid, and Casement was transported back to Ireland in a German submarine. On April 21st, of that year, just a few days before the outbreak of the Easter Rising in Dublin, he landed in Kerry and was picked up by British authorities almost immediately. By the end of the month, the Easter Rising had been suppressed and a majority of its leaders executed. Casement was tried separately because of his illustrious past but nevertheless was found guilty of treason and hanged at Pentonville Prison, London
1924 Joseph Conrad, age 66 – Polish-born author (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent) His parents both died of tuberculosis when he was about 12, and an uncle raised him. At age 17 he joined the merchant marines, and when he was 21, he travelled to England as a deck hand on a British freighter. He learned English during six voyages on a small British trade boat and spent 16 years with the British merchant navy. He got his first command in 1888. Conrad began writing in the 1890s. His first novel was published in 1895, and the following year he married an English girl and gave up the sea to write full time
1966 Lenny Bruce, age 41 – US comedian known for his biting style. He died of an overdose of drugs
1983 Carolyn Jones, age 54 – Actress (The Addams Family, Roots, How the West Was Won, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Tender Trap, The Seven Year Itch, The Bachelor Party, House of Wax) She played Marsha in numerous Batman episodes


On this Day

AD216 At the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal seized the large Roman army supply depot after defeating the numerically superior Roman infantry
1492 From the Spanish port of Palos, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set sail in command of three ships, the Santa María, the Pinta, and the Niña, on a journey to find a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus' day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century. However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world's size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe, as they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed. With only the Atlantic Ocean, he thought, lying between Europe and the riches of the East Indies, Columbus convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to support his voyage. During his lifetime, Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the New World, discovering various Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South and Central American mainland, but never accomplished his original goal of finding a western ocean route to the great cities of Asia. Columbus died in Spain in 1506 without realising the great scope of what he did achieve: He had re-discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth
1527 Captain John Rut wrote the first recorded letter from the new world to the old. It was a report to King Henry VIII about conditions in Newfoundland and Labrador
1751 The first printing press in Canada was set up in Halifax by Bartholomew Green
1778 The La Scala Opera House in Milan opened
1861 The final instalment of the serialised novel Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, was published. The book had been serialised in Dickens' literary circular, All the Year Round. The novel tells the story of young Pip, a poor orphan who comes to believe he will inherit a fortune
1900 The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company was established in Akron, Ohio. Thirty-one-year-old inventor and entrepreneur Harvey S. Firestone seized on a new way of making carriage tires and began production with only twelve employees. Eight years later, Firestone tires were chosen by Henry Ford for the Model T, and Firestone eventually became a household name
1918 Lieutenant-Colonel Billy Bishop, Canadian flying ace, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He had downed 25 enemy planes in 12 days, bringing his total to 72
1926 Traffic lights were installed at Piccadilly Circus, the first in Britain
1943 General George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice. Patton was later ordered by General Dwight D. Eisenhower to apologise for this and a second, similar episode
1949 The National Basketball Association was formed by a merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League
1958 The US nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplished the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. On July 23rd the world's first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, departed Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, on Operation Northwest Passage, the first crossing of the North Pole by submarine. There were 116 men aboard for this historic voyage, including Commander William R. Anderson, 111 officers and crew, and four civilian scientists. The Nautilus steamed north through the Bering Strait and did not surface until it reached Point Barrow, Alaska, in the Beaufort Sea, though it did send its periscope up once off the Diomedes Islands, between Alaska and Siberia, to check for radar bearings. On August 1st, the submarine left the north coast of Alaska and dove under the Arctic ice cap. The submarine travelled at a depth of about 500 feet, and the ice cap above varied in thickness from 10 to 50 feet, with the midnight sun of the Arctic shining in varying degrees through the blue ice. The Nautilus travelled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world, and passed under the geographic North Pole without pausing. It then steamed on to Iceland, pioneering a new and shorter route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe
1981 13-thousand US air traffic controllers went on strike, despite a warning from President Reagan that they would be fired if they did not return to work