Born this Day

1758 Noah Webster – US lexicographer who originated the first US dictionary (Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language)
1854 Oscar Wilde – Irish-born playwright (The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Ballad of Reading Gaol) Wilde was born and educated in Ireland. He studied at Oxford, graduating with honours in 1878. In London, he was a popular society figure known for his wit and flamboyant style. Wilde's dapper wardrobe and excessive devotion to art were parodied in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Patience. He spent a year in the US lecturing on poetry and art, and after returning to Britain, married and had two children. In August of 1889, Joseph Marshall Stoddart, publisher of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in Philadelphia, invited Oscar Wilde and another young author, Arthur Conan Doyle for dinner in London at the elegant Langham Hotel. Both authors would produce novels for the magazine, to be published in serial form. Wilde wrote his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of the Four . In 1895, Wilde was accused by the Marquess of Queensberry of having a homosexual affair with his son. Wilde sued for libel, but lost his case when evidence strongly supported the Marquess's observations. At the time, homosexuality was a crime in England, and Wilde was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labour. After his release, Wilde fled to Paris and began writing again. He died of acute meningitis just three years after his release
1888 Eugene Gladstone O’Neill – US playwright (The Ice Man Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, Long Day's Journey into Night, Beyond the Horizon) He was regarded as the foremost US playwright of his time. O'Neill began writing plays in his 20s, while recovering from tuberculosis at a Connecticut sanatorium
1922 Max Bygraves – English entertainer (The Max Bygraves Hour, Charley Moon, Roamin’ Holiday, Family Fortunes)
1925 Dame Angela Lansbury – British born stage and screen actress (Mame, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, Murder She Wrote, Death on the Nile, Gaslight, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Harlow, The Manchurian Candidate, The Long Hot Summer, The World of Henry Orient, Picture of Dorian Gray, National Velvet)
1927 Gunter Grass – German author and sculptor (Dog Years, The Tin Drum)
1931 Charles W. Colson - Former presidential adviser, Watergate co-conspirator and author (Kingdoms in Conflict, Born Again, Life Sentence)
1936 Peter Bowles – British actor (To the Manor Born, Lytton’s Diary, I Claudius, Rumpole of the Bailey, Executive Stress)
1940 Barry Corbin - Actor (Northern Exposure, Who's Harry Crumb, The Closer, One Tree Hill, No Country for Old Men)
1946 Suzanne Somers - Actress (Three's Company, American Graffiti)
1947 Bob Weir – Musician and singer with The Grateful Dead (Touch of Grey, Truckin')
1947 David Zucker - Producer, director (Airplane!, Naked Gun series, Ruthless People, Top Secret!, Police Squad!, Help Wanted!)
1958 Tim Robbins – Actor, director (The Shawshank Redemption, Bull Durham, Short Cuts, Hudsucker Proxy)
1969 Wendy Wilson – Singer with the group Wilson Phillips (Hold On, Release Me) She is the daughter of Beach Boys singer, Brian Wilson
1975 Kellie Martin - Actress (ER, Life Goes On, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Troop Beverley Hills, Christie)


Died this Day

1555 Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley – English Protestant reformers who were found guilty and burned at the stake opposite Balliol College, Oxford
1793 Marie Antoinette - Queen of France and wife of the late King Louis XVI, was guillotined in Paris for treason, nine months after her husband had been executed, and two weeks before her 38th birthday. Born in Vienna, Austria, as the daughter of Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, Marie Antoinette married Louis in 1770 to strengthen France's alliance with its long-time enemy, Austria. Louis was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he had inherited from his grandfather, and his queen soon fell under criticism for her extravagance, her devotion to the interests of Austria, and her opposition to reform. Marie exerted a growing influence over her husband, and under their reign the monarchy became dangerously alienated from the French people. In a legendary episode, Marie allegedly responded to the news that the impoverished French peasantry had no food to eat by declaring "Let them eat cake." At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Marie and Louis resisted the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the monarchy in order to save it, and by 1791 opposition to the royal pair had become so fierce that the two were forced to flee. During their attempted flight to Austria, Marie and Louis were apprehended at Varennes, France, carried back to Paris, and forced to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced the king to a mere figurehead. In August, 1792, the royal couple were arrested and imprisoned, and in September, the monarchy was abolished by the National Convention
1997 James Michener, age 90 – US novelist (Hawaii, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, South Pacific) He died in Austin, Texas


On this Day

1679 The Sovereign Council of Québec ruled that liquor may not be taken to Indian villages
1785 Forest fires caused black rain in Eastern Canada, as soot from the fires mixed with precipitation
1820 Cape Breton Island officially rejoined Nova Scotia
1822 The new Drury Lane Theatre was opened in London, England
1834 Fire caused extensive damage to the Palace of Westminster, but firemen managed to save both Westminster Hall and St Stephen’s Chapel
1840 New Zealand became a British colony
1847 Jane Eyre was published by Charlotte Brontë. She published the book under the male pseudonym Currer Bell, because it was unlikely a book by a woman would be published
1859 At midnight, the radical abolitionist John Brown led a group of twenty-one followers, calling themselves the Provisional Army of the United States, on a raid of the Federal arsenal of Harpers Ferry, located in present-day West Virginia. Brown, born in Connecticut in 1800, first became militant during the mid-1850s, when as a leader of the Free State forces in the territory of Kansas he fought pro-slavery settlers, contributing to the sharply divided territory's popular designation as Bleeding Kansas. Achieving only moderate success against slavery on the Kansas frontier, Brown settled on a more ambitious plan in 1859. With a group of racially mixed followers, Brown set out to Harpers Ferry, intending to seize the arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland and Virginia, where they intended to establish an abolitionist republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites. At Harpers Ferry, Brown's well-trained unit was initially successful, and in the space of two hours, the raiders seized the Shenandoah Bridge, Hall's Rifle Works, and the Federal arsenal. They also barricaded the bridge across the Potomac, cut telegraph wires, and took several prisoners. But at 1:20 A.M., Brown's plans begin to deteriorate when his raiders stopped a Baltimore-bound train, and then allowed it to pass through. News of the raid spread quickly and militia companies from Maryland and Virginia arrived the next day, killing or capturing several raiders. On the 18th, US Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, recaptured the Federal arsenal, taking John Brown and several other raiders alive. Brown was sentenced to death by hanging, and was executed ten months before the outbreak of the Civil War
1907 British New Guinea became part of Australia
1908 US aviator Samuel Cody demonstrated his aircraft at Farnborough and became the first man to fly in Britain
1923 John Harwood patented the self-winding watch, in Switzerland
1928 Martin Pipkin patented the frosted light bulb, in the US
1953 In Toronto, Ontario, the Roman Catholic Church in Canada issued a report discouraging teenagers from forming steady romantic attachments
1970 Canada’s War Measures Act was invoked following the FLQ kidnappings of British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Québec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. It was the only use of the 1914 statute during a domestic crisis. Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, from Québec, was in power at the time. When asked if he would invoke the War Measures Act, an angry Trudeau replied, "There's a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go on and bleed." When asked how far he would go, Trudeau shot back, "Just watch me!" Canadians across the country watched as, at 3 o'clock in the morning, Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act. The Press Gallery in the House of Commons was packed. Trudeau was careful, cold, analytic - and brilliant. The invocation of the War Measures Act meant the suspension of traditional Canadian civil liberties, and gave the federal cabinet emergency powers, allowing it to govern by decree. It could be invoked when the cabinet perceived the existence of "war, invasion or insurrection, real or apprehended." Anyone belonging to the FLQ, or to any cultural or political association suspected of being linked to the FLQ, could be rounded up in the dead of night without a search warrant and incarcerated without the right of habeas corpus. Under the sweeping authority of the act, Canadian troops were ordered to protect public figures, and police rounded up and interviewed 497 possible suspects, arrested 250, and searched 170 homes
1978 The College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chose Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be the new pope. He took the name John Paul II. The Polish Cardinal became the first non-Italian Pope since 1542
1984 At Loma Linda University Medical Centre in California, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performed the first baboon heart transplant, an operation in which a diseased human heart was replaced by a healthy baboon heart. The patient was a fifteen-day-old baby girl known as Baby Fae, whose plight attracted national attention. After a month-long struggle, the infant's immune system finally rejected the baboon heart, and Baby Fae died
1984 South African Bishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize
1987 A 58-hour drama in Midland, Texas, ended happily as rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl trapped in an abandoned well