Born this Day

1817 Pierre Larousse – French lexicographer and encyclopaedist who founded the Parisian publishing house in 1852
1835 Adlai Ewing Stevenson - 23rd Vice President of the US and grandfather of US presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson
1844 Robert Bridges – British Poet Laureate (London Snow, On a Dead Child, Awake My Heart, The Storm is Over) He practised medicine in London until 1881
1869 John William Heisman - US coach who revolutionised the game of college football
1918 James Daly - Actor (Eagle in a Cage, Medical Centre, Planet of the Apes) He’s the father of Tyne Daly and Tim Daly
1925 Johnny Carson - Comedian and TV host (The Tonight Show, The Johnny Carson Show, Who Do You Trust?, Earn Your Vacation, Carson's Cellar)
1931 Diana Dors – British actress (Children of the Full Moon, Oliver Twist, Unicorn, A Kid for Two Farthings, Queenie’s Castle, Theatre of Blood, The Devil's Web, Baby Love) She played Mrs. Rix in the Sweeney episode Messenger of the Gods
1940 Eleanor Greenwich – Singer with the group Raindrops and solo (What a Guy, The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget, Let It be Sung, Leader of the Pack) and songwriter with Jeff Barry (My Baby, Chapel of Love, Da Do Ron Ron, Then He Kissed Me, River Deep Mountain High)
1940 Pélé – Brazilian World Cup footballer
1942 Michael Crichton – Author and screenwriter (Jurassic Park, Twister, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Great Impostor, Looker, Congo, Westworld, Coma, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The First Great Train Robbery) Many of his screenplays were based on his novels
1942 Anita Roddick – British entrepreneur who founded The Body Shop
1954 Ang Lee – Chinese director (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hulk, Sense and Sensibility, Eat Drink Man Woman, The Wedding Banquet, Ride With the Devil)
1956 Dwight Yoakam - Songwriter, singer (I'll be Gone, Bury Me, Miner's Prayer, South of Cincinnati)
1959 “Weird Al” Yankovic – Singer and comedian known for his parodies (Eat It, My Bologna, Another One Rides the Bus, I Love Rocky Road, King of Suede, I Lost on Jeopardy, Polkas on 45, Like a Surgeon)
1976 Ryan Reynolds – Canadian actor (Deadpool, Green Lantern, Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place, Blade: Trinity, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Van Wilder, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Free Guy, R.I.P.D.)


Died this Day

42BC Marcus Junius Brutus - Roman statesman and leading conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar, Brutus committed suicide after his defeat at the Battle of Philippi. Two years earlier, Brutus had joined Cassius in the plot against the Roman dictator Julius Caesar (et tu, Brutus?), believing he was striking a blow for the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the result of Caesar's death was to plunge the Roman world into a new round of civil wars, with the Republican forces of Brutus and Cassius vying for Roman domination against Octavian and Marcus Antonius (Mark Anthony). In 42 BC, Brutus and Cassius were defeated at the Battle of Phillipi by the triumvirate of Lepidus, Marcus Antonius, and Octavian, who as Augustus, became the first emperor of Rome
1921 John Boyd Dunlop, age 81 – Scottish veterinary surgeon and inventor of the pneumatic bicycle tire
1939 Zane (Pearl) Grey, age 67 – US dentist and novelist specialising in Westerns (The Spirit of the Border, The Last of the Plainsmen, Riders of the Purple Sage)
1946 Ernest Thompson Seton, age 86 – British-born naturalist and author (Wild Animals I Have Known, Two Little Savages, The Trail of an Artist-Naturalist) Seton came to Lindsey, Ontario as a young boy, attended school in Toronto and graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1879. After further studies in London and Paris, he started specialising in painting and drawing animals in realistic settings. He homesteaded in Manitoba, then moved to the US in 1896. In 1902, he founded the Woodcraft League, a naturalists club for children, and in 1910, he helped Daniel Bears and Lord Baden Powell in founding the Boy Scouts of America. His books on woodcraft formed the basis of the first Boy Scouts of America Official Manual. In 1915, after quarrelling with the BSA about what he considered their militaristic stance, he was expelled from the organisation. He spent the remainder of his life in studying nature, and wrote extensively on Manitoba and sub-arctic wildlife. He also set up the Seton Village for children's nature study in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was the father of author Anya Seton
1950 Al Jolson, age, 64 – Singer (April Showers, Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye) and actor (The Jazz Singer, Rhapsody in Blue, Rose of Washington Square) He died of a heart attack in San Francisco


On this Day

1813 The US fur traders operating the Pacific Fur Company trading post in Astoria, Oregon, turned the post over to their rivals in the British North West Company, which would dominate the fur trade of the Pacific Northwest. The town and fur trading post at Astoria were founded in 1811 at the behest of John Jacob Astor, a German-born immigrant who had hoped to beat out his British rivals and develop the Pacific Northwest fur trade for the US. However, the outbreak of the War of 1812 between the US and Britain threw the fate of his enterprise into doubt, raising the threat that at any moment a British warship might arrive and seize Astoria as a spoil of war. Rather than risk losing their entire investment in a British take-over, the partners in the Pacific Fur Company, who were mostly Canadian, sold their interests to the British North West Company in early October 1813. Just as they had feared, within weeks of the sale a man-of-war arrived and took possession of Astoria for Great Britain. In December 1813, the stars and strips came down, the Union Jack went up, and Astoria became Fort George. Although Great Britain gave the settlement of Astoria back to the US after the War of 1812, the British maintained control of Fort George and the Pacific Northwest fur trade, primarily through the royally chartered Hudson Bay Company, until 1846 when the British ceded to the US the territory encompassing the future states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho
1826 Gaslight was first used in the US, to light a theatre in New York City
1847 Telegraph service was opened from Montréal to Albany and New York
1855 Rival governments in Kansas came about in opposition to the fraudulently elected pro-slavery legislature of Kansas. The Kansas Free State forces had set up a governor and legislature under their Topeka Constitution, a document that outlawed slavery in the territory. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas' first election proved a violent affair, as more than 5,000 so-called “Border Ruffians” invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, the territorial governor appointed by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown. In May 1856, Border Ruffians sacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and in retaliation a small Free State force under John Brown massacred five pro-slavery Kansans along the Pottawatomie Creek. During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in "Bleeding Kansas," as it became popularly known. In 1861, the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the outbreak of full-scale civil war
1874 An oyster opening contest was held in Montréal. The winner shucked 300 oysters in just 30 minutes
1910 Blanche S. Scott became the first woman to make a solo, public airplane flight. She reached an altitude of thirteen feet as she sailed across a park in Fort Wayne, Indiana
1915 Twenty-five-thousand women marched in New York City, demanding the right to vote
1924 The first radio network broadcast to the West Coast was a 45-minute speech by President Calvin Coolidge
1946 The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing Meadow
1947 Twelve-year-old Julie Andrews made her debut, in Starlight Roof
1956 After enduring nearly ten years of Communist terror by secret police and Soviet agents, Hungarian students and workers took to the streets of Budapest in demonstrations against Soviet domination and Communist rule. Within days, the uprising escalated into a full-scale national revolt, and the Hungarian government fell into chaos. Early in November, a massive Soviet force of 200,000 troops and 2,500 tanks entered Hungary. Nearly 200,000 Hungarians fled the country and thousands of people were arrested, killed, or executed before the Hungarian uprising was finally suppressed
1958 Seventy-four miners died after a deep underground coal gas explosion and rock surge wrecked the #4 Cumberland coal mine at Springhill, Nova Scotia. Of the 174 men trapped in the deepest coal mine in North America, 100 survived the disaster. On the first day, rescue workers brought 81 men out from 13,000 feet below the surface. Twelve more were found alive on October 30th, and 7 more the following day. The last body was recovered from the mine on November 6th
1971 Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida, 16 years after Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California
1987 Dolphins were first used by the US Navy in the Gulf War to help detect mines