Born this Day

1718 John Montague – The Fourth Earl of Sandwich, England's First Lord of the Admiralty, Secretary of State of the Northern Department and Postmaster General. The Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii, were named after him. He is credited with inventing the sandwich
1793 Stephen Austin - The principal founder of Texas, whose capital city, Austin, is named after him
1794 William Cullen Bryant - Poet (Thanatopsis, To a Waterfowl, A Forest Hymn, The Prairies) and editor of the NY Evening Post
1801 Karl Baedeker – German publisher famous for his guide books
1894 Billy Barker – Canadian fighter pilot and First World War flying ace. He was born at Dauphin Manitoba. Barker shot down 53 enemy planes, and won the Victoria Cross for a single handed attack against a squadron of 60 German planes
1921 Charles Bronson – Actor (Death Wish series, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Valachi Papers, Sandpiper, Raid on Entebbe, Miss Sadie Thompson, Battle of the Bulge, House of Wax, You're in the Army Now)
1928 Wanda Hendrix - Actress (My Outlaw Brother, The Admiral was a Lady, Welcome Stranger)
1933 Ken Berry – Actor, singer and dancer (Mayberry RFD, F Troop, Mama's Family, The Andy Griffith Show, Dr. Kildare, Herbie Rides Again, The Ann Sothern Show)
1933 Jeremy Brett – British stage and screen actor (My Fair Lady, War and Peace, The Merchant of Venice, Country Matters, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Rebecca, Macbeth, On Approval, The Good Soldier, The Wimpoles of Barret Street, Deceptions, Florence Nightengale, Moll Flanders) He established himself on television as the most mannered, yet totally convincing, and to many, the definitive, Sherlock Holmes
1933 John Barry – British composer credited on many soundtracks (Born Free, The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, The Cotton Club, The Day of the Locust, Eleanor & Franklin, Indecent Proposal, Midnight Cowboy, Peggy Sue Got Married, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shampoo, Somewhere in Time, James Bond movies, The Persuaders)
1948 Lulu – Scottish singer (To Sir with Love, Boom Bang-A-Bang, Oh Me Oh My I'm a Fool for You Baby, I Could Never Miss You)
1953 Dennis Miller – US comedian (Dennis Miller Live, Citizen Arcane, Saturday Night Live, The Net, Disclosure, Madhouse)
1953 Kate Capshaw – Actress (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, A Girl Thing, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, Internal Affairs, The Quick and the Dead, SpaceCamp) She is married to Steven Spielberg
1954 Kathy Kinney – Actress (The Drew Carey Show, Arachnaphobia, Newhart, Scrooged)
1954 Adam Ant – British singer (Goody Two Shoes, Prince Charming, Stand and Deliver, Apollo Nine)
1957 Dolph Lundgren – Swedish actor (Rocky IV, Universal Soldier, Masters of the Universe, Johnny Mnemonic, A View to a Kill)


Died this Day

1657 Genevieve-Agnes Skanudharoua – Daughter of the Huron Chief. She was the first Native woman to enter religious life, and died at Québec a few hours after taking her holy vows
1926 Annie Oakley, age 66 – Legendary US sharpshooter who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, where she was nicknamed Little Sure Shot. She gained her reputation when she beat national crackshot Frank E. Butler, whom she later married. She is said to have been able to hit the thin edge of a playing card from thirty paces, a coin tossed in the air, and a cigarette held in Butler’s lips
1954 Henri Matisse, age 84 – French painter and sculptor
1995 Eddie Egan, age 65 - New York City cop whose career inspired the film, The French Connection. He died of cancer in Florida
1998 Bob Kane – US cartoonist who created Batman. He passed away in Los Angeles after a long illness, a week and a half after his 83rd birthday
1999 Ian Bannen, age 71 – Scottish stage and screen actor (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Eye of the Needle, Gorky Park, Hope and Glory, Ghost Dad, Doctor Finlay, Braveheart, The Politician’s Wife, Waking Ned) He was in the Perry Mason TV movie, The Case of the Desperate Deception. He was also in the movie Sweeney!, with John Thaw


On this Day

1580 Sir Francis Drake returned from his voyage around the world
1631 The Reverend John Eliot, the first Protestant minister to dedicate himself to the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity, arrived at Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The English-born Eliot settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and taught at a school for colonists. In 1646, after years of interaction with local native groups, Eliot decided to dedicate himself to saving Indians' souls. The efforts of Eliot, who became known as the Apostle of the Indians, inspired the British Parliament to establish the New England Protestant Missionary Society in 1649 for the purpose of propagating the gospel to North America's native peoples
1644 In Québec, Martin Prévost married Manitouabewich. It was the first religious marriage between a French-Canadian man and an Indian woman. The newly married couple were given a cow, a bull, and a hog
1706 The town of Abruzzi in Italy was destroyed by an earthquake, killing an estimated 15,000 people
1762 France ceded Louisiana to Spain by a secret treaty
1839 The first Opium War between China and Britain broke out
1843 Nelson’s statue was hauled to the top of the column in Trafalgar Square. The operation was completed the next day, when the statue’s two sections were assembled
1844 William Makepeace Thackeray completed his novel, The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century, which was published in Fraser's Magazine. Like several of Thackeray's other satirical novels, it followed the career of an unscrupulous character as he made his way in the world by hoodwinking others
1900 The first automobile show in the US opened at Madison Square Garden in New York. The week-long event was organised by the Automobile Club of America. Spectators paid 50¢ each to attend the event
1903 One day after US President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the USS Nashville to Central America, Panama declared its independence. The insurrection was engineered by several Panamanian factions backed by the Panama Canal Company, a US-owned corporation that hoped to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with a waterway across the Isthmus of Panama. In early 1903, the Hay-Herran Treaty had been signed with Columbia, granting the US use of the Isthmus of Panama in exchange for financial compensation. The US Senate ratified the treaty, but the Colombian Senate, fearing a loss of sovereignty, refused. In response, US President Theodore Roosevelt gave tacit approval to a Panamanian independence movement, and on November 3, 1903, Panama issued a declaration of independence from Colombia. The presence of the US warship discouraged Colombian forces from quelling the insurrection, and three days later, the US officially recognised the independent Republic of Panama. Less than two weeks later, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed with Panama, granting the US exclusive and permanent possession of the Panama Canal Zone. In 1909, construction began and, in one of the largest construction projects of all time, US engineers moved over 240 million cubic yards of earth and spent nearly $400 million dollars in constructing the forty-mile-long canal. In October 1913, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were connected with the explosion of the Gamboa Dike, and in August 1914, the Panama Canal opened to traffic with the passage of the vessel Ancon
1908 In Vatican City, the Roman Catholic Church declared that it no longer considered Canada as a country for missionary activities
1953 RCA made the first coast-to-coast colour TV demonstration in the US
1956 The Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution began
1957 The Soviet Union launched Sputnik Two, the first satellite to carry a dog into space. Laika, part Siberian husky, lived as a stray on the Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space program. She survived for several days as a passenger in the satellite, kept alive by a sophisticated life-support system. Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the ground with important information about the biological effects of space travel, but she died after the batteries of her life-support system ran down
1986 A Lebanese magazine reported that the US had been secretly selling arms to Iran in the hopes of securing the release of US hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. Three days later, US intelligence sources confirmed the operation, and on November 12, President Ronald Reagan admitted that he was aware of the arms sale. The next day, the president gave a televised address in which he explained that the arms sales were implemented in order to improve US-Iranian relations, to bring an end to the Iran-Iraq War, to eliminate state-sponsored terrorism, and to secure the release of US hostages. However, on November 25, the Justice Department announced that proceeds from the Iran arms sales had been diverted to support of the Contras fighting in Nicaragua. The first evidence of the support for the Contras came to light in October, when a US cargo plane was shot down as it was delivering US military supplies to the Contras. The sole survivor, an American, revealed in captivity that he was employed by the CIA. Revelations about the Iran-Contra connection caused outrage in Congress, which in 1983 had passed the Boland amendments prohibiting the Defence Department, the CIA, or any other government agency from providing military aid to the Contras. In December, a special prosecutor was named to investigate the matter, and thus began the Iran-Contra affair, in which thirteen top White House, State Department, and intelligence officials were found guilty of charges ranging from perjury to charges of conspiracy to defraud the US. Neither President Ronald Reagan nor Vice President George Bush were directly indicted