Born this Day

1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge – British poet (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight, Fears in Solitude, The Keepsake) Born in the small town of Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, Coleridge led a turbulent, tragic life. He was sent to school in London after his father's death, and was a lonely student who fell into dissolution and debt after he went to Cambridge in 1791. In 1793, he fled his creditors and enlisted in the Light Dragoons, an English cavalry unit, which he later abandoned. He then returned to Cambridge, met poet Robert Southey, and the two launched an ambitious plan to establish a democratic utopia in Pennsylvania. To further the plan, Coleridge married a woman he did not love. When Southey abandoned the plan, Coleridge remained in the ultimately unhappy marriage. In 1795, Coleridge met the poet William Wordsworth. The two became close friends and collaborators, assisted by Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's sister. The Wordsworths moved near Coleridge in 1797, and later established the Romantic school of poetry. Coleridge's life began unraveling at the turn of the century. He became estranged from his wife and fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, whose sister married Wordsworth three years later. Meanwhile, his health began to suffer, and he began taking large doses of opium to control his rheumatism and other problems. His creative output waned when he became addicted to opium. In 1810, he broke with Wordsworth, and the two would not reconcile for nearly 20 years. Thanks to the help of Dr. James Gillman and his wife the poet began to cut back on his opium use
1833 Alfred Nobel – Swedish industrialist, chemist and inventor of dynamite. His factory once made nitro-glycerine until it blew up in 1864, killing his younger brother. Three years later he found a safer explosive and patented dynamite in 1867. He made a vast fortune with his invention and his oil field holdings, and founded the Nobel prize in 1901 to honour the world’s leading scientists, artists and peacemakers
1868 Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton – British tank inventor. He originated the word “tank” to describe the armoured vehicle
1912 Sir Georg Solti – Hungarian conductor with Covent Garden, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He led the first complete recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. I wonder if Morse had a copy of that recording ?
1917 John Birks (Dizzie) Gillespie – Trumpet player, bandleader and composer (Night in Tunisia) He and Charlie Parker pioneered be-bop
1925 Joyce Randolph – Actress (The Honeymooners, The Jackie Gleason Show)
1940 Manfred Mann – South African-born singer and musician (Do Wah Diddy Diddy, The Mighty Quinn, Blinded by the Light, Pretty Flamingo)
1956 Carrie Fisher – Actress (Star Wars, The Blues Brothers, When Harry Met Sally, Hannah and Her Sisters, Shampoo) and author (Postcards from the Edge,Surrender the Pink, Delusions of Grandma) She was the daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds
1957 Steve Lukather - Musician with the group Toto (Rosanna, Africa, Hold the Line)


Died this Day

1805 Lord Horatio Nelson – British admiral who died at the Battle of Trafalgar, less than one month after his 47th birthday. Despite injuries in the line of duty, which had cost him the sight in his right eye, and later the loss of his right arm, he proved himself to be one of Britain’s boldest and most successful naval heroes. French Emperor Napoleon had planned an invasion of Britain, and induced Spain to also declare war against England. Earlier that year, Napoleon had ordered the French and Spanish fleets to break out of the British blockades and then converge as a single enormous fleet in the West Indies. The Franco-Spanish fleet, Napoleon hoped, would then win control of the English Channel, and an invasion force of 350,000 could cross to the British isle. On October 19th, a Franco-Spanish force of 33 ships slipped out of Cádiz, but Nelson caught him off Cape Trafalgar on October 21st. Nelson divided his 27 ships into two divisions and signalled a famous message from the flagship Victory: "England expects that every man will do his duty." In five hours of fighting, the British devastated the enemy fleet, destroying 19 enemy ships. No British ships were lost, but 1,500 British seamen were killed or wounded in the heavy fighting. Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar ensured that Napoleon would never invade Britain. The battle raged at its fiercest around the Victory, and a French sniper shot Nelson in the shoulder and chest. The admiral was taken below and died about 30 minutes before the end of the battle. Nelson's last words, after being informed that victory was imminent, were "Now I am satisfied. Thank God I have done my duty." His body was sent home in a barrel of rum. One of the guards reported hearing gurgling coming from the barrel en route to Deptford where it was unloaded. After Nelson’s corpse was removed, sailors came along and found half a barrel of rum abandoned in the dockyard, and apparently got ‘pickled’. Neat rum is still known in the Royal Navy as ‘Nelson’s Blood’. Nelson, hailed as the saviour of his nation, was given a magnificent funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. A column was erected to his memory in the newly named Trafalgar Square, and numerous streets were renamed in his honour. The HMS Victory, where Nelson won his most spectacular victory and drew his last breath, sits preserved in dry-dock at Portsmouth
1969 Jack Kerouac, age 47 – US poet and novelist (On The Road, The Town and the City, Big Sur, Visions of Cody) He inspired the Beat Generation


On this Day

1797 The Constitution, a forty-four-gun US Navy frigate built to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli, was launched in Boston Harbour. The vessel performed commendably during the Barbary conflicts, participating in four bombardments of enemy forts and destroying or capturing five enemy ships. During the War of 1812, the Constitution won its enduring nickname, Old Ironsides, after defeating the British warship Guerriere in a furious engagement off the coast of Nova Scotia. Witnesses claimed that the British cannonballs merely bounced off the Constitution's sides, as if the ship was made of iron rather than wood. In 1855, the Constitution retired from active military service, but continued to serve the US, first as a training ship and later as a touring national landmark. Since 1934, it has been based at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. Today, the Constitution is the world's oldest commissioned warship afloat
1824 Portland Cement was patented by Joseph Aspdin of Wakefield, Yorkshire
1880 A contract was signed between the Canadian government and the Canadian Pacific Railway to build a transcontinental rail link. When British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871, it demanded as a condition a railway linking all sections of the country. The line was completed to the west coast with the ceremony of the last spike on November 7th, 1885
1909 The Anglican Bishop of the Yukon, Isaac Stringer, and a companion stumbled into an Athabascan village after being lost in the wilderness for 51 days. They had left for Dawson in early September, and started a canoe trip down the Bell River. When the river froze they abandoned their canoe and set off across the mountains back to Fort McPherson, getting lost in fog and snow, and running out of ammunition. By mid-October, they were reduced to eating the soles of the Bishop's sealskin boots
1915 The first transatlantic message was transmitted over radiotelephone, from Arlington, Virginia, to the Eiffel Tower in Paris
1917 Members of the First Division of the US Army training in Luneville, France, became the first US soldiers to see action on the front lines of World War I
1925 The first demonstration of a photoelectric cell took place at the Electrical Show in New York City. The light-sensitive cell was used to count objects as they interrupted a light beam
1926 While performing in Montréal, famed magician and escape artist Harry Houdini invited a McGill student to punch him hard in the stomach. The young man complied immediately, before Houdini had a chance to brace himself. The blow led to Houdini’s death ten days later from internal bleeding
1940 Ernest Hemmingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, was published in New York
1948 The first high-speed radio fax was sent. To demonstrate the speed of the line, capable of transmitting one million words per minute, RCA transmitted all 1,047 pages of the novel Gone with the Wind from a radio station to the Library of Congress. The three-mile transmission took two minutes and twenty-one seconds
1959 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of contemporary art opened in New York City. Designed by acclaimed US architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the modern structure marked a bold departure from traditional museum design. Its exhibition space features a six-story ramp that spirals upward a quarter mile and provides access to four levels of galleries. The spiralling ramp encircles a large open centre naturally lit by the building's dramatic glass dome
1966 A coal slag slid and engulfed the Welsh village of Aberfan, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Locals had warned coal board officials and others that the coal slag was unsafe, and that there had been signs of a slide before, but these complaints and warnings had been ignored
1988 A federal grand jury in New York indicted former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, on charges of fraud and racketeering. Marcos died before he could be brought to trial, his widow Imelda was acquitted in 1990