Born this Day

1784 Sir Richard Griffith - Irish geologist and civil engineer
1842 Sir James Dewar -Scottish chemist and physicist, who invented the vacuum flask to hold liquid oxygen, which he succeeded in producing in quantity
1861 Herbert Putnam - US librarian who led the Library of Congress from 1899 to 1939
1878 Upton Sinclair - US author (The Jungle, Oil!, The Metropolis, Boston, Dragon’s Teeth) He was a passionate crusader for social reform. In 1900, he was earning money writing journalistic pieces. An assignment on meat-packing plants led to his best-selling novel The Jungle, in which an idealistic immigrant goes to work in the Chicago stockyards. The novel’s gritty portrayal of labour abuses and unsanitary conditions led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906
1896 Elliott Nugent - Actor (Romance, The Unholy Three) and director (Up in Arms, Welcome Stranger)
1914 Kenneth More - British actor (The Forsythe Saga, Genvieve, Doctor in the House, Sink the Bismarck!, The Battle of Britain, Father Brown)
1918 Peg Phillips - Actress (Northern Exposure)
1924 Gogi Grant - Singer (The Wayward Wind, Suddenly There's a Valley)
1927 Johnny Dankworth - British musician, band leader and composer (African Waltz, What the Dickens)
1927 Rachel Roberts - Welsh-born actress (This Sporting Life, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Tony Randall Show, O Lucky Man!, Murder on the Orient Express)
1929 Anne Meara - Comedienne (Stiller & Meara) and actress (Fame, All in the Family, Rhoda, The Paul Lynde Show, The Corner Bar, Alf, The Boys From Brazil, Awakenings) She is married to Jerry Stiller, and is the mother of Ben Stiller
1934 Sophia Loren - Italian actress (Two Women, Black Orchid, Marriage Italian Style, Desire Under the Elms, El Cid, Man of La Mancha, Grumpier Old Men, Brief Encounter, The Millionairess)
1955 Betsy Brantley - Actress (Tour of Duty, The Princess Bride, Deep Impact, Havana, The Fourth Protocol) She played Elsie Cubitt in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Dancing Men
1956 Gary Cole – Actor (Midnight Caller, American Gothic, The Ring Two, From the Earth to the Moon, The Brady Bunch Movie, In the Line of Fire, The West Wing, The Good Fight, Chicago Fire, Veep)
1975 Moon Bloodgood – Actress (Falling Skies, Terminator Salvation, Day Break, Pathfinder)
1976 Camilla Rutherford – British actress (Gosford Park, Rome, Vanity Fair)


Died this Day

AD929 Good King Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia – Ruler of Bohemia who is immortalised in the Christmas carol. He was born around AD907 near Prague, and was raised by his Christian grandmother, Ludmila. When he was 13-years-old his father died and Wenceslas succeeded him as duke. As Wenceslas was too young to rule, his mother, Drahomira, became regent. Drahomira was opposed to Christianity and used her new power to persecute followers of the religion. Drahomira refused to let Wenceslas see his grandmother, Ludmila, because she was afraid they would scheme to overthrow her. Ludmila was murdered by strangulation, it is speculated, at Drahomira's command. After her death Ludmila was revered as a saint. The loss of his grandmother did not stop Wenceslas from seizing power. At the age of 18 he overthrew his mother's regency and began to rule for himself. A stern but fair monarch, he stopped the persecution of priests and tamed the rebellious nobility. He was known for his kindness to the poor, and was especially charitable to children, helping young orphans and slaves. Many of the Bohemian nobles resented Wenceslas's attempts to spread Christianity, and were displeased when he swore allegiance to the king of Germany, Henry I. The duke's most deadly enemy proved to be his own brother, Boleslav, who joined the nobles who were plotting his brother's assassination. He invited Wenceslas to a religious festival and then attacked him on his way to mass. As the two were struggling, Boleslav's supporters jumped in and murdered Wenceslas. Today he is remembered as the patron saint of the Czech Republic. The words to the carol "Good King Wenceslas" were written by John Mason Neale and first published in 1853
1863 Jakob Grimm, age 78 - German philologist and collector of folk tales with his brother Wilhelm (Hansel and Grethel, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White)
1947 Fiorello LaGuardia - Former New York City Mayor, after whom LaGuardia Airport is named
1973 Jim Croce, age 30 - Singer, songwriter (You Don't Mess Around with Jim, Time in a Bottle, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, I've Got a Name)
1998 Muriel Humphrey Brown, age 86 - Widow of Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his brief successor in the US Senate. She died in Minneapolis


On this Day

1258 Salisbury Cathedral was consecrated
1503 The first recorded use of the name “Newfoundland,” was entered in the Daybooks of King's Payments. It is Canada's oldest place name of European origin
1519 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific. In October 1520, he finally discovered the strait he had been seeking. The Strait of Magellan, as it became known, is located near the tip of South America, separating Tierra del Fuego and the continental mainland. Only three ships entered the passage; one had been wrecked and another deserted. It took 38 days to navigate the treacherous strait, and when ocean was sighted at the other end Magellan wept with joy. He was the first European explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. His fleet accomplished the westward crossing of the ocean in 99 days, crossing waters so strangely calm that the ocean was named Pacific, from the Latin word pacificus, meaning tranquil. By the end, the men were out of food and chewed the leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. In March 1521, the expedition landed at the island of Guam, before carrying on to the Philippine island of Cebú. Magellan met with the chief of Cebú, who persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighbouring island of Mactan. In fighting on April 27, Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades. After Magellan's death, the survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas and loaded the hulls with spice. One ship attempted, unsuccessfully, to return across the Pacific. The other ship, the Vittoria, continued west under the command of Basque navigator Juan Sebastián de Elcano. The vessel sailed across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at the Spanish port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda almost three years later, on September 6, 1522, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the globe
1565 The first European battle on North American soil took place as Spanish forces under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés captured the French Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. The French, commanded by René Goulaine de Laudonniere, lost 135 men. Most of those killed were massacred on the order of Avilés, who allegedly had the slain hung on trees beside the inscription "Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." Laudonniere and some 40 other Huguenots escaped. In 1564, the French Huguenots (Protestants) had settled on the Banks of May, a strategic point on the Florida coast. King Philip II of Spain was disturbed by this challenge to Spanish authority in the New World and sent Menéndez de Avilés to Florida to expel the French heretics and establish a Spanish colony there. In early September 1565, Avilés founded San Augustin on the Florida coast, which would later grow into Saint Augustine which is the oldest city in North America. Two weeks later he attacked and destroyed the French settlement of Fort Caroline. The decisive French defeat encouraged France to refocus its colonial efforts in North America far to the north, in what is now Québec and Nova Scotia in Canada
1697 The Treaty of Ryswick was signed in the Netherlands by France and England. It stipulated that England, Spain, Holland and the Holy Roman Emperor make peace with France at the end of the War of the Grand Alliance, or King William's War. All places taken during the war were to be mutually restored. France returned York Factory to the Hudson's Bay Company and Newfoundland to the British in exchange for Acadia
1806 After nearly two-and-a-half years spent exploring the western wilderness, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery arrived at the frontier village of La Charette, the first white settlement they had seen since leaving behind the outposts of eastern civilisation in 1804. Entirely out of provisions and trade goods and subsisting on wild plums, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their men were eager to reach home. Upon arriving at La Charette, the men fired a three-round salute to alert the inhabitants of their approach and were answered by three rounds from the trading boats moored at the riverbank. The people of La Charette rushed to the banks of the Missouri to greet the returning explorers. Clark wrote that, "Every person, both French and Americans seem to express great pleasure at our return, and acknowledge them selves astonished in seeing us return. They informed us that we were supposed to have been lost long since." The Lewis and Clark mission had been a spectacular success. With the aid of friendly Native American tribes, the explorers had charted the upper reaches of the Missouri, found there was no easy water passage across the Continental Divide, and reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. They spent the evening celebrating with the people of La Charette. The next day the expedition continued rapidly down the river and in a couple of days reached St. Louis. Lewis' first act upon leaping from his canoe to the St. Louis dock was to send a note asking the postmaster to delay the mail headed east so he could write a quick letter to President Jefferson telling him that the intrepid Corps of Discovery had, at long last, come home
1816 Stage-coach service started between Toronto and Niagara
1851 The telegraph was first used by a railroad, as Charles Minot, the superintendent of the Erie Railroad, sent a telegram fourteen miles to Goshen, New York, to delay a train
1854 The Battle of Alma, fought by the British against the Russians in the Crimean War, produced six Victoria Cross recipients
1870 Italian troops took control of the Papal States, leading to the unification of Italy
1917 Canada’s Wartime Elections Act gave the vote to soldiers and sailors under 21, and serving women. Female relatives of servicemen also were allowed to vote. Complete enfranchisement for women came the following year
1931 Britain came off the gold standard to stop foreign speculation against the pound. This devaluation brought strikes and even a near-mutiny on 15 navy ships berthed in Scotland
1946 The first annual Cannes Film Festival opened at the resort city of Cannes on the French Riviera. The festival had intended to make its debut in September 1939, but the outbreak of World War II forced the cancellation of the inaugural Cannes. At the first Cannes, organisers placed more emphasis on creative stimulation between national productions than on competition. Nine films were honoured with the top award: Grand Prix du Festival
1967 The ship, the Queen Elizabeth II, was launched by Her Majesty at Clydebank, Scotland
1973 Billie Jean King defeated self-proclaimed chauvinist Bobby Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match