Born this Day

1638 Louis XIV - King of France from 1643 to 1715. He was known as the Sun King, because he chose the sun as his royal emblem, and because of the prestige and patronage that his reign brought
1847 Jesse Woodson James – US outlaw who, with his elder brother Frank, ran the former Quantrill Gang, which was a one time Confederate guerrilla unit that had descended to looting and lawlessness. Seen by some as a vicious murderer and by others as a gallant Robin Hood, the famous outlaw was born in Clay County, Missouri. Jesse and his older brother Franklin lost their father in 1849, when the Reverend Robert James abandoned his young family and disappeared forever into the California gold fields. Their mother, Zerelda, quickly remarried, but rumour had it that their new stepfather treated Jesse and Frank poorly, and a third husband soon followed. As Confederate sympathisers, both Jesse and Frank joined William Quantrill's vicious Missouri guerrilla force, and Jesse participated in the cold-blooded murder of 25 unarmed Union soldiers in August 1863. When the war ended, neither brother wanted the drab life of a Missouri farmer, and earning a living with their guns seemed easier and more exciting. Joining a motley band of ex-soldiers and common thieves, Jesse and Frank staged the first daylight bank robbery in US history on Valentine's Day in 1866, making off with $57,000 of the hard-earned cash of the citizens of Liberty, Missouri. For the next decade the James Gang would steal many thousands more from banks, stores, stagecoaches, and trains. The boldness of their crimes and the growing resentment among westerners of big railroads and robber barons led some to romanticise Jesse and Frank, a process that was encouraged by the authors of popular dime novels who created largely fictional versions of the James brothers as modern-day Robin Hoods who stole from the rich to give to the poor. In reality, the James brothers' crimes preyed as much on the common folks as on the very rich, and they did little to spare the lives of innocents caught in the crossfire. The Robin Hood myth conveniently ignores the little girl shot in the leg during a botched robbery at the Kansas City Fair, the train engineer killed when the James Gang derailed his locomotive, or the dozens of other innocent bystanders murdered or maimed by Jesse, Frank, or their gang. Nonetheless, the myth that Jesse James was a good-hearted hero of the common folk remains popular to this day
1897 Arthur Charles Nielsen - Market researcher and the founder of A.C. Nielsen Company which does radio and TV audience surveys
1899 Helen Creighton – Canadian folklorist, born at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She pioneered the collection of folk music in Canada, eventually collecting and transcribing over 2,000 songs in Micmac, Gaelic, German, French and English. She collected both for the Library of Congress in Washington and for the National Museum of Canada
1902 Darryl F. Zanuck – Producer (The Jazz Singer, The Grapes of Wrath, The Snake Pit, All About Eve, The Longest Day) He was a co-founder of 20th Century Studios
1905 Arthur Koestler – Hungarian-born British author (The Thirteenth Tribe, Scum of the Earth, Darkness at Noon)
1912 John Cage – US composer (Bacchanal, Anthems of the Sun, Living Room, Water Music, Third Construction, 4'53") He embraced experimental music and performance with non-traditional instruments
1916 Frank Yerby – US author (The Foxes of Harrow, Bride of Liberty, Judas My Brother, The Dahomean)
1916 Frank Shuster – Canadian comedian who worked with Johnny Wayne (Wayne and Shuster) In World War II the duo wrote and performed for the Army Show, and in 1946 had their own CBC radio program. They made the transition to TV, and appeared 67 times on the Ed Sullivan Show. Frank was the cousin of Superman co-creator, Jo Shuster
1929 Bob Newhart – Actor (The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart, Catch-22, Elf, Cold Turkey, In & Out, Desperate Housewives) and comedian (The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart)
1932 Carol Lawrence – Singer and actress (Saved by the Bell, Valley of the Dolls, Greatest Heroes of the Bible) Many of her roles were on Broadway (West Side Story, Saratoga, I Do! I Do!, Kiss of the Spiderwoman)
1937 Dick Clement – British television scriptwriter and director (The Likely Lads, Porridge, The Prisoner of Zenda) Much of his writing was done with Ian La Fresnais
1939 George Lazenby – Australian-born actor (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Gettysburg, Eyes of the Beholder, Superboy, The Return of the Man from UNCLE)
1940 William Devane - Actor (Knots Landing, Testament, Space Cowboys, From Here to Eternity, Marathon Man, McCabe & Mrs. Miller)
1940 Raquel Welch - Actress (The Four Musketeers, One Million Years BC, The Prince and the Pauper, Mother Jugs and Speed, Myra Breckenridge, Fantastic Voyage, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult)
1946 Freddie Mercury – Zanzibar-born lead singer with the group Queen (Another One Bites the Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, We are the Champions, Killer Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody)
1946 Loudon Wainwright III - Songwriter, singer (Dead Skunk) and actor (M*A*S*H, The Slugger's Wife, Jackknife)
1950 Cathy Lee Guisewite - Cartoonist (Cathy)
1951 Michael Keaton - Actor (Batman, Beetlejuice, Mr. Mom, Much Ado about Nothing, Pacific Heights, Night Shift, Clean and Sober, The Paper, White Noise, The Company, Birdman, Jackie Brown)
1962 Peter Wingfield – Welsh-born actor (Noah's Ark, Highlander, Queen of Swords, Catwoman, X-Men 2, Crocodile Shoes, Murder In Mind) He was also in the BBC radio soap The Archers – a favourite of Morse’s


Died this Day

1877 Crazy Horse - Oglala Sioux chief, was bayoneted by a US soldier, and killed during a scuffle with soldiers who were trying to imprison him in a cell after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. The battle, in which 265 members of the Seventh Cavalry, including Custer, were killed, was the worst defeat of the US Army in its long history of warfare with the Native Americans. After Crazy Horse’s victory at Little Bighorn, US Army forces led by Colonel Nelson Miles pursued Crazy Horse and his followers. His tribe suffered from cold and starvation, and in May 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered to General George Crook at the Red Cloud Indian Agency in Nebraska, where he was sent to Fort Robinson
1997 Mother Teresa of Calcutta - Albanian-born humanitarian and missionary who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for dedicating her life to aiding the poor and the sick. Much of her work was in India where she opened many centres, including several for lepers. She died in Calcutta, India, of a heart attack, a week after her 87th birthday


On this Day

1534 Jacques Cartier returned to St. Malo, France after his first voyage to Canada. He had with him two Iroquois youths, Domagaya and Taignoagny
1698 Russia's Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards
1755 Colonel John Winslow, military commander at Annapolis, Nova Scotia, started expelling Acadians from Grand Pre, Annapolis & the Fundy coast for refusing to take an oath of allegiance. Their land and farms were forfeited to the Crown. Most of the almost 10,000 Acadians forced into exile relocated to Louisiana, and were ancestors of today’s Cajun population
1774 The first Continental Congress convened at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, in response to the British Parliament's enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, and John Jay were among the delegates
1857 English naturalist Charles Darwin first outlined his theory of natural selection and evolution
1881 Forest fires in Ontario and Michigan killed an estimated 500 people in 20 villages near Lake Huron. The region was cloaked with a yellowish-green fog
1882 The US’s first Labour Day parade was held in New York
1896 Beef sold for $48 a pound in Circle City, Alaska during the Klondike gold rush
1905 The Russo-Japanese War came to an end as representatives of the two nations signed the Treaty of Portsmouth in New Hampshire. Russia, defeated in the war, agreed to cede to Japan the island of Sakhalin and Russian port and rail rights in Manchuria
1914 The First Battle of the Marne began during World War I, 30 miles northeast of Paris
1914 In Toronto, Ontario, baseball legend Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run at Hanlan's Point on Toronto Island, knocking in three runs. The budding southpaw pitcher also tossed a one-hitter that day as his Providence club blanked Toronto 9-0
1939 The United States proclaimed its neutrality in World War II
1945 Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. He took with him documents that revealed a network of espionage agents in Canada. Gouzenko's defection resulted in 20 espionage trials and nine convictions. He remained in Canada under an assumed name until his death in 1982
1945 Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist Tokyo Rose, was arrested in Yokohama. She served six years in prison, and was pardoned in 1977 by President Ford
1945 Canada's first atomic reactor began operating in Chalk River, Ontario
1957 On the Road, by author Jack Kerouac, was first published
1958 The novel Doctor Zhivago, by Russian author Boris Pasternak, was published in the US for the first time
1969 Britain’s ITV began broadcasting in colour
1971 TVA became Canada's first French-language private television network when it opened stations in Montréal, Québec City and Chicoutimi
1972 Palestinian terrorists from the Black September organisation stormed the Israeli quarters in the Olympic Village in Munich, killing two team members and taking nine others hostage. Just before dawn on the 11th day of the XX Olympiad, five Arab men in track suits climbed over a six-and-a-half-foot fence to gain access to the Olympic Village. The village had a curfew, and many other Olympic athletes had employed fence climbing as a means of enjoying a late night out on the town. In fact, some members of the US team, returning from a bar, joined them in climbing the fence. A handful of other witnesses hardly gave the five men a second glance, and the intruders proceeded unmolested to the three-story building where the small Israeli delegation to the Munich Games was staying. These five men were not Olympic athletes but members of Black September, an extremist Palestinian group formed in 1971. In their athletic bags they carried automatic rifles and other weapons. They were joined in the village by three other terrorists, two of whom were employed within the Olympic compound. The guerrillas forced their way into one of the Israeli apartments, taking five hostages. When the Palestinians entered another apartment, Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg struggled with them. He was shot to death after knocking two of his attackers down. Weightlifter Yossef Romano then attacked them with a kitchen knife, and he succeeded in injuring one terrorist before he was fatally shot. Some Israelis managed narrowly to escape through a back entrance, but a total of nine were seized
1975 In Sacramento, California, an assassination attempt against President Gerald Ford was foiled when a Secret Service agent wrested a semi-automatic .45-caliber pistol from Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of incarcerated cult leader Charles Manson. Fromme was pointing the loaded gun at the President when the Secret Service agent grabbed it. In trial, Fromme pleaded not guilty to the "attempted assassination of a president" charge, arguing that although her gun contained bullets it had not been cocked, and therefore she had not actually intended to shoot the president. She was convicted, sentenced to life in prison, and sent to the Alderson Federal Correctional Institution in West Virginia. Seventeen days after Fromme’s attempt on his life, Ford escaped injury in another assassination attempt when 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at him. Moore, a leftist radical who once served as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a history of mental illness. She was arrested at the scene, convicted, and sentenced to life
1980 The world’s longest highway tunnel, the St. Gotthard, was opened. It runs over ten miles, from Goschenen to Airolo, Switzerland