Born this Day

1632 Sir Christopher Wren – British architect, astronomer and mathematician. He was largely responsible for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666. His works include many churches in London, including St. Paul’s Cathedral. He also built Marlborough House and Oxford’s Ashmolean, the world's first university museum. The Ashmolean was featured in the Inspector Morse episode, The Wolvercote Tongue
1784 Lord Palmerston – British statesman and Prime Minister who was popular with the people
1792 Colin Campbell, Baron Clyde – British Commander-in-Chief during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. He was nicknamed “Old Careful”, because of his sense of economy, which included winning battles by losing as few of his men as possible
1873 Nellie McClung – Canadian women's rights advocate, teacher, legislator and author (Sowing Seeds in Danny, Clearing in the West)
1882 Bela Lugosi – Hungarian actor (Dracula, One Body Too Many, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Night Monster, Chandu the Magician, The Ape Man, The Body Snatcher, Glen or Glenda)
1890 Jelly Roll Morton - Ragtime composer and pianist who was one of the great jazz pioneers
1904 Tommy Douglas – Canadian politician, preacher and the former premier of Saskatchewan who will be remembered as the father of Canadian Medicare. He was born at Falkirk, Scotland, and in 1911, Tommy, his mother and his sister moved to Winnipeg to join his father who had moved there the previous year. Shortly after settling in Winnipeg, Tommy was diagnosed with osteomyelitis in his right leg. Tommy’s family was not wealthy and subsequently his family could not pay for the best or most immediate treatment. The delay nearly cost Tommy his leg. This experience marked the beginning of Tommy’s quest for universal, public health care. He was also the grandfather of actor Kiefer Sutherland
1905 Frederic Dannay – Mystery author. He and his writing partner, Manfred B. Lee, wrote under the pseudonym of Ellery Queen, also the name of their main character (The Roman Hat Mystery, The Glass Village, And On the Eighth Day, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine) They also wrote the Sherlock Holmes pastiche A Study in Terror
1913 Grandpa (Louis Marshall) Jones - Country Music Hall of Famer (The All-American Boy, T for Texas, Old Rattler, Mountain Dew, Hee Haw, Grand Ole Opry)
1923 Herschel Bernardi - Actor (Peter Gunn, Arnie, Love with the Proper Stranger, Irma La Douce) He did voices for Jetson’s characters, and Charlie the Tuna in TV commercials
1929 Colin Jeavons – British actor (House of Cards, To Play the King, The Blackheath Poisonings, Reilly: The Ace of Spies, The French Lieutenant's Woman) He played Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes TV series He also played Edward Walker in the Home To Roost episode Front Runner, with John Thaw
1931 Mickey Mantle - Baseball Hall of Famer who played with the New York Yankees
1932 William Christopher - Actor (M*A*S*H, Aftermash, Gomer Pyle, USMC, With Six You Get Eggroll)
1934 Timothy West – British actor (Brass, The Looking Glass War, Nicholas and Alexandra, The Day of the Jackal, Agatha, Cry Freedom, Framed, Bramwell: Our Brave Boys) He played Marcus Devere in the Midsomer Murders episode Judgement Day He also played Rex Fortescue in the Miss Marple episode A Pocketful of Rye
1935 Jerry Orbach – US stage and screen actor (Law & Order, Mr. Saturday Night, Dirty Dancing, Straight Talk, Brewster's Millions, Murder She Wrote, Prince of the City, The Law and Harry McGraw) He was in the Perry Mason movies The Case of the Musical Murder and The Case of the Ruthless Reporter
1950 Tom Petty - Rock singer-musician (Don't Come Around Here No More, Don't Do Me Like That, Refugee)
1958 Viggo Mortensen – Actor (The Lord of the Rings, Hidalgo, A Perfect Murder, Crimson Tide)
1959 Niamh Cusack – British actress (Heartbeat, Marple: 4.50 from Paddington, Always and Everyone)
1967 Susan Tully – British actress (EastEnders, The Bill, Murder Investigation Team, Grange Hill)


Died this Day

1524 Thomas Linacre – British physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII. He was the founder of the Royal College of Physicians in 1518
1842 Grace Darling – British heroine of the wreck of the Forfarshire in 1838. She died from consumption. On a wild and stormy night on the cruel sea, the small steamship Forfarshire struck rocks near the Longstone Lighthouse on Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast. Grace, the lighthouse-keeper’s daughter, rowed a mile in a small boat to rescue four men and a woman, becoming a British heroine and a legend
1890 Sir Richard Burton, age 69 – British explorer and translator of “The Arabian Nights”
1964 Herbert Hoover, age 90 – 31st US President, died in New York
1977 Ronnie Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines – All members of the southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd (Sweet Home Alabama, Free Bird) They were among six people killed in the crash of a privately-chartered plane near Gillsburg, Mississippi. Steve and Cassie were brother and sister
1989 Sir Anthony Quayle, age 76 – British stage and screen actor (Anne of a Thousand Days, The Guns of Navarone, Lawrence of Arabia, Mackenna’s Gold, The Bourne Identity) He played Sir Charles Warren in the Sherlock Holmes movie Murder by Decree He also played Dr. Murray in the Sherlock Holmes movie A Study in Terror
1994 Burt Lancaster - Actor (Elmer Gantry, Trapeze, From Here to Eternity, The Bird Man of Alcatraz, Atlantic City, The Rose Tattoo, Scorpio, Tough Guys, Airport, Gunfight at the OK Corral) He was a former circus acrobat. He died two weeks before his 81st birthday


On this Day

1611 Henry Hudson's mutineers on board the Discovery reached London in a half-starved condition. All the ringleaders had died. The surviving crew were questioned, and a recommendation made that they be hanged. The trial took place in 1618, and the Admiralty court found the survivors not guilty
1671 Bachelors in the colony of New France were ordered to marry the women brought over from France, the Filles du Roy, or lose their fishing, hunting and fur-trading rights
1740 Maria Theresa became ruler of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia upon the death of her father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. She was the mother of Marie Antoinette
1803 The US Senate approved a treaty with France providing for the purchase of the territory of Louisiana. The Louisiana Purchase would double the size of the US
1818 Great Britain and the United States signed a diplomatic convention establishing a boundary between the US and British Canada along the forty-ninth parallel, from Rainy River to the Rockies. The boundary stretched from Lake of the Woods in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. The delegates also agreed to a joint occupation of Oregon territory for ten years, an arrangement that was extended for an additional ten years in 1827. After 1838, the issue of who possessed Oregon became increasingly controversial, especially when mass US migration along the Oregon Trail began during the early 1840s. US expansionists urged the seizure of Oregon, and in 1844, Democrat James K. Polk successfully ran for president under the platform, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight," which referred to his hope of bringing a sizeable portion of present-day British Columbia and Alberta into the US. However, neither President Polk nor the British government wanted a third Anglo-American war, and in June 1846, the Oregon Treaty was signed. By the terms of the agreement, the US and Canadian border was extended west along the forty-ninth parallel to the Strait of Georgia, just short of the Pacific Ocean. The US gained formal control over the future states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and the British retained Vancouver Island and navigation rights to part of the Columbia River
1822 The first edition of The Sunday Times was published in Britain
1892 The city of Chicago dedicated the World's Colombian Exposition
1930 Sherlock Holmes debuted on the radio. The program ran, with some interruptions, until 1956. In the late 1920s, actress and writer Edith Meiser, a lifelong mystery addict, proposed that NBC launch a radio series based on the ingenious sleuth. Once she recruited her own sponsor, the network agreed. Meiser spent the next 12 years writing for the program. The radio show debuted starring William Gillette as Holmes, with several other actors playing Holmes during the next several years. In 1939, Basil Rathbone took on the part, supported by Nigel Bruce as his faithful sidekick, Watson. Rathbone had already played the detective in a film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which opened earlier in the year. Rathbone and Bruce stayed with the radio show until 1946, during which time they also starred in some 16 Sherlock Holmes movies. From 1946 to 1956, a variety of other actors played Holmes and Watson on the radio show
1944 During World War II, General Douglas MacArthur stepped ashore at Leyte in the Philippines, fulfilling his “I shall return” promise made two-and-a-half years earlier
1945 Women were permitted to vote for the first time in France
1947 Hollywood came under scrutiny as the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist influence and infiltration within the motion picture industry
1956 Canada launched its first rockets to examine weather and the ionosphere. They were sent into space from the launch pad at Churchill, Manitoba
1960 The first fully automated post office system was put into service in Providence, Rhode Island. The $20 million experimental project electronically sorted and cancelled mail at a rate of eighteen thousand pieces per hour
1960 D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, brought Penguin Books to the dock at the Old Bailey under the Obscene Publications Act. Mr Griffiths-Jones, the prosecutor, asked, “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” Penguin, and the late D.H. Lawrence, were found not guilty. The book had been published in its entirety in Italy in 1928, and in expurgated editions in Britain and the US in 1932. Following the court verdict, it was available in its original form
1968 Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy, widow of the late US President John F. Kennedy, married Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate, in a ceremony held on his private island of Skorpios in Greece
1973 After fifteen years of construction, the Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II. The $102 million structure, designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon and funded by the profits of the Opera House Lotteries, is located on Nennelong Point in the city of Sydney, Australia. Famous for its geometric roof shells, the structure contains several large auditoriums and presents hundreds of events a year to an estimated two million people. The first performance in the complex was the Australian Opera's production of Prokofiev's War and Peace, held in the 1,547-seat Opera Theatre. In the Inspector Morse episode, The Promised Land, Morse attended an opera there
1992 In the first World Series game to be played outside the US, the host Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Atlanta Braves 3-2 to take a 2-1 series lead