Born this Day

1736 Robert Raikes – British founder of the Sunday School Movement
1810 Donald McKay – Canadian shipbuilder and naval architect. He was born at Jordan Falls, Nova Scotia and learned his trade in the family shipyards. He then moved to the US where his East Boston ship yard built the Flying Cloud, the Great Republic and the Sovereign of the Seas, which were among the largest and fastest of the clipper ships
1824 Anton Bruckner – Austrian composer who wrote symphonies, masses, and a Te Deum
1846 Daniel Burnham - Architect who designed the Railway Exchange Building in Chicago, one of the first skyscrapers in the US. He also did Chicago's Monadnock Building in 1891, and the Reliance Building in 1894
1866 Simon Lake – US inventor who built the submarine, Argonaut
1891 Fritz Todt – German engineer who was the head designer of the German autobahn
1905 Mary Renault – British author (Promise of Love, The King Must Die, The Bull From the Sea) She wrote many historical novels about ancient civilisations. The daughter of a London physician, she decided to be a writer at age 8. At Oxford, she studied medieval history and used her knowledge of the era as background for her first novel, which she destroyed after many rejections. During the First World War she worked as a nurse, and continued to write in her off-duty hours. After World War II, Renault turned her attention to historical fiction. Fascinated by ancient Greece, she travelled widely in the area and became a self-taught expert on the region’s history
1908 Richard Wright - Author (Black Boy, The Outsider, Native Son, Pagan Spain)
1908 Edward Dmytryk – Canadian-born film director (The Caine Mutiny, The Sniper, The Young Lions, Obsession, The Carpetbaggers)
1918 Paul Harvey - News commentator (The Rest of the Story)
1920 Craig Claiborne - Cooking expert, New York Times food editor, and the author of numerous cookbooks
1928 Dick York - Actor (Bewitched, That Brewster Boy, Going My Way, Inherit the Wind, They Came to Cordura, My Sister Eileen, Tea and Sympathy, Bus Stop)
1931 Mitzi Gaynor - Singer, dancer and actress (South Pacific, Anything Goes, There's No Business like Show Business, For Love or Money, The Joker is Wild)
1932 Dinsdale Lansden – British stage and screen actor (Devenish, Mickey Dunne, International Velvet, The Buccaneers)
1933 Richard Castellano - Actor (The Godfather, Lovers and Other Strangers, Honour Thy Father, Night of the Juggler, The Gangster Chronicles, Joe and Sons, The Super)
1944 Jennifer Salt - Actress (Soap, Midnight Cowboy, Brewster McCloud, Play It Again Sam)
1950 Ronald LaPread – Musician with the Commodores (Still, Three Times a Lady, Nightshift)
1951 Judith Ivey – Stage and screen actress (Steaming, Hurly Burly, Designing Women, The Critic, Down Home, The Five Mrs. Buchanans, Stephen King’s Rose Red)
1953 Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs – Actor (Welcome Back Kotter, Roots, Alien Nation, Youngblood)
1957 Khandi Alexander – Actress (CSI: Miami, ER, There's Something About Mary, Spawn, What's Love Got to Do with It, Scandal)
1960 Damon Wayans – Actor (My Wife and Kids, Mo' Money, In Living Color, Earth Girls Are Easy, Roxanne, Saturday Night Live) He is the brother of Keenan Ivory, Dwayne and Kim Wayans
1969 Noah Taylor – British actor (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Vanilla Sky, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) He played Dave Harding in the Inspector Morse episode Promised Land
1971 Ione Skye – British actress (Say Anything, Covington Cross, Guncrazy, Dream for an Insomniac, Fever Pitch, Wayne's World) She’s the daughter of the singer Donovan
1975 Kai Owen – Welsh actor (Torchwood, Rocket Man, Fun at the Funeral Parlour)
1981 Beyoncé Knowles – Singer with Destiny’s Child and solo (Jumpin Jumpin, Bootylicious, Nasty Girl, Independent Women, Happy Face, Apple Pie a la Mode, Crazy in Love, Survivor, Keep Giving Your Love To Me) and actress (The Fighting Temptations, Austin Powers: Goldmember)


Died this Day

1794 James Heidegger - "Master of Revels" to King Charles II. He was reputed to be the ugliest man of his time
1907 Edvard Grieg, age 64 – Norwegian composer (Peer Gynt Suite)
1965 Albert Schweitzer, age 90 - French philosopher, musician, physician, humanitarian and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. He died in Lambaréné in the Gabon, where he had established his hospital, which was financed by his organ recitals in Europe
1989 Georges Simenon, age 86 – Belgian author who created the detective, Maigret. He could turn out a novel in under two weeks
1991 Dottie West, age 58 – Country singer (Here Comes My Baby, Country Sunshine, Paper Mansions, Rings of Gold, All I Ever Need is You, Lesson in Leavin’)
1993 Herve Villechaize, age 50 – Actor (Fantasy Island, The Man with the Golden Gun, Rumpelstiltskin, Two Moon Junction)


On this Day

1733 The first lioness in Britain died in the Tower of London, of old age. She had produced a litter of cubs each year for several years, and was looked after by the Keeper of the Lion Office
1821 Tzar Alexander I forbade non-Russian ships to approach the Pacific coast of North America south of 51 degrees north
1870 The Emperor Napoleon III, Bonaparte’s nephew, was deposed and the Third Republic was proclaimed
1871 New York municipal government at Tammany Hall was accused of wide-spread corruption in what was known as the Tammany Frauds
1876 In Toronto, Ontario, Frederic Stupart of the Dominion Meteorological Observatory issued Canada's first prepared storm warning
1882 Thomas Edison turned on the world's first commercial electric lighting, in New York's Grand Central Station
1886 The last American-Indian warrior, Geronimo, and the Apaches, surrendered to the US army at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. For almost 30 years he had fought the whites who invaded his homeland, but Geronimo, the wiliest and most dangerous Apache warrior of his time, finally surrendered. He was known to the Apache as Goyalkla, or "One Who Yawns," but most non-Indians knew him by his Spanish nickname, Geronimo. When he was a young man, Mexican soldiers had murdered his wife and children during a brutal attack on his village in Chihuahua, Mexico. Though Geronimo later remarried and fathered other children, the scars of that early tragedy left him with an abiding hatred for Mexicans. Operating in the border region around Mexico's Sierra Madre and southern Arizona and New Mexico, Geronimo and his band of 50 Apache warriors succeeded in keeping white settlers off Apache lands for decades. Geronimo never learned to use a gun, yet he armed his men with the best modern rifles he could obtain and even used field glasses to aid reconnaissance during his campaigns. He was a brilliant strategist who used the Apache knowledge of the arid desert environment to his advantage, and for years Geronimo and his men successfully evaded two of the US Army's most talented Indian fighters, General George Crook and General Nelson A. Miles. In 1886, Miles recruited Apache scouts Charles Martine and Kayitah to help track down the elusive Geronimo. Miles wanted Martine and Kayitah to find the chief and persuade him to come for peace negotiations. Accompanied by a small party of soldiers, Martine and Kayitah eventually located Geronimo's camp in northern Mexico, and bearing a white flag, the two scouts cautiously approached the hostile camp. 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. After several years of imprisonment, Geronimo was given his freedom, and he moved to Oklahoma where he converted to Christianity and became a successful farmer. He even occasionally worked as a scout and adviser for the US army. Transformed into a romantic symbol of the already vanishing era of the Wild West, he became a popular celebrity at world's fairs and expositions and even rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade in 1905. When he died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909, he was still on the federal payroll as an army scout
1888 George Eastman received a patent for his roll-film camera and registered his trademark Kodak
1893 Beatrix Potter sent an illustrated note to Noel Moore, aged five, the son of her governess. In the note, for the first time, she introduced Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail
1894 Some 12,000 tailors in New York City went on strike to protest the existence of sweatshops
1899 The Royal Victoria College for Women at McGill University in Montréal, Québec opened. The college was funded by Donald Alexander Smith, Lord Strathcona. Smith, a controlling shareholder of the Bank of Montréal, the Hudson's Bay Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway, was a strong believer in education for women
1909 The first Boy Scout rally was held in London, England, at the Crystal Palace. It was presided over by Robert Baden-Powell. The movement was funded in part by Canadian High Commissioner Donald Alexander Smith, Lord Strathcona
1948 Queen Wilhelmina abdicated the Dutch throne for health reasons, in favour of her daughter Juliana
1951 In the US’s first live coast-to-coast television broadcast, President Truman addressed the nation from the Japanese peace treaty conference in San Francisco
1955 Kenneth Kendall and Richard Baker became Britain’s first television newsreaders
1957 Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to turn away nine black students trying to enter the formerly whites-only Central High School. It provoked President Eisenhower to send in troops of the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the law
1962 The Beatles began their first recording session at EMI’s famous Abbey Road Studios, London, with their producer, George Martin