Born this Day

1867 Marie Curie – Polish-born physicist who twice won the Nobel Prize in Physics. She shared it with her husband Pierre in 1903 for their research into radioactivity. In 1911 she won it for discovering radium. Their daughter Irene won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for her research into radioactivity
1879 Leon Trotsky - Russian Communist leader who played a leading role in both the 1905 revolution and the revolution in 1917. He was removed from all positions after the death of Lenin in 1924 and driven into exile. He was assassinated in Mexico in 1940
1903 Dean Jagger – Actor (Twelve O'clock High, Elmer Gantry, White Christmas, Bad Day at Black Rock, King Creole, The Robe, Vanishing Point, Mr. Novak)
1913 Albert Camus – Algerian-born French author (Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Caligula, The Plague, The First Man, Resistance Rebellion and Death, The Stranger, The Rebel) He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957
1918 Billy Graham – US evangelist and TV host (Hour of Decision, The Billy Graham Crusade)
1922 Al Hirt - Trumpeter (Java, Sugar Lips) He also did the Flight of the Bumble Bee, the theme song for TV's The Green Hornet
1926 Dame Joan Sutherland – Australian operatic soprano
1929 Lila Kaye – British actress (Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, Nuns on the Run, The Canterville Ghost, An American Werewolf in London) She played Mrs. Mordecai Smith in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Sign of the Four
1935 Judy Parfitt – British actress (Call the Midwife, Poirot: Death on the Nile, Dolores Claiborne, King Ralph, The Jewel in the Crown, Malice Aforethought, ER)
1938 Dee Clark - Singer (Just Keep It Up, Raindrops, Ride a Wild Horse)
1938 Barry Newman - Actor (Petrocelli, Nightingales, The Edge of Night, Vanishing Point, Bowfinger) He played Jason Rudd in the Miss Marple episode, The Mirror Cracked
1942 Johnny Rivers - US singer (Poor Side of Town, Memphis, Secret Agent Man, Slow Dancin', Baby I Need Your Lovin')
1942 Jean Shrimpton – British model whose face and figure helped set the fashion trend in the 60’s
1943 Joni Mitchell – Canadian singer and songwriter (Willy, Help Me, Free Man in Paris, Big Yellow Taxi, Both Sides Now) She was born in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, and grew up in Saskatchewan. As a child, she suffered polio, and recovered despite her doctors' prediction that she would never walk again
1950 Lindsay Duncan – Scottish actress (Under the Tuscan Sun, Oliver Twist, An Ideal Husband, Shooting the Past, Jake's Progress, The Rector's Wife, GBH, Alice in Wonderland) She starred in A Year in Provence with John Thaw


Died this Day

1837 Elijah P. Lovejoy – US abolitionist printer, was shot to death in Alton Illinois, by a mob while trying to protect his printing shop. In the 1830s, Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister born in Maine, founded the St. Louis Observer, an influential Presbyterian newspaper. Lovejoy's editorials increasingly took an abolitionist stance, and threats on his life by supporters of slavery forced him to flee across the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois. In Illinois, Lovejoy established the Alton Observer and continued to publicly advocate the abolition of slavery. On two occasions his Alton press was destroyed, but Lovejoy persisted in his publishing of abolitionist writings, despite threats on his life. When the mob returned a third time, Lovejoy stood in the way. Although he was killed and his printing press destroyed, his death helped to motivate the movement in US for the abolition of slavery. He died two days before his 35th birthday
1962 Eleanor Roosevelt – Former First Lady of the US, she also served as a US delegate to the United Nations. She died less than a month after her 78th birthday
1980 Steve McQueen, aged 50 – Actor (The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Papillon, Towering Inferno, The Sand Pebbles, Love with the Proper Stranger, Hell is for Heroes, Bullitt, The Hunter, Le Mans) He died from lung cancer, in Juárez, Mexico
1990 Hugh MacLennan, age 83 – Canadian author (Barometer Rising, Two Solitudes, The Watch That Ends The Night)
2004 Howard Keel, age 85 – Actor and singer (Dallas, Oklahoma, Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat, Lovely to Look At, Kiss Me Kate, Calamity Jane, Rose-Marie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Deep in My Heart, Saratoga, No Strings)


On this Day

1637 Anne Hutchinson, the first female religious leader in the American colonies, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy. Hutchinson, born in England, first arrived in Massachusetts with her family in 1634. She settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and soon began organising meetings of women in her home, leading them in discussions of religious and secular issues. She preached that faith alone was sufficient for salvation, and therefore that individuals had no need for the church or church law. By 1637, her influence had become so great that she was brought to trial and found guilty of heresy against Puritan orthodoxy. Banished from Massachusetts, she led a group of seventy followers to Roger Williams's settlement, a colony based on religious freedom and located in present-day Rhode Island
1659 The Pyrenees Mountains were fixed as the boundary between France and Spain, thus ending a 24-year war between the two countries
1781 The last public burning by the Spanish Inquisition at Seville took place
1783 The last public hanging at Tyburn took place, near where Marble Arch now stands. Britain’s “Tyburn Tree”, as it was nicknamed, was notorious for being the main site for public executions. Subsequent hangings were carried out at Newgate Prison
1836 Three men from Britain flew 480 miles from London to Germany in a balloon. The trip took 18 hours
1865 The Erie Pocket Lighter, the first ever, was manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts
1874 The Republican Party was symbolised as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly magazine
1885 The last spike was driven into Canada's first transcontinental railway at a remote spot called Craigellachie in the Eagle Pass in the mountains of British Columbia. Donald A. Smith, later Lord Strathcona, a principal organiser of the railway, did the honours. In 1880, the Canadian government contracted the Canadian Pacific Railroad to construct the first all-Canadian line to the West Coast. Over the next five years, the company laid over 2,800 miles of single track, uniting various smaller lines across Canada. Despite the logistical difficulties posed by such challenges as the muskeg region of north-western Ontario and the high rugged mountains of British Colombia, the railway was completed six years ahead of schedule. The transcontinental railway was instrumental in populating the vast new western lands, and helped unite the geographically vast nation of Canada. The railway provided supplies and commerce to new settlers, and many of western Canada's great cities and towns grew up around Canadian Pacific Railway stations
1900 During the Boer War in South Africa, a troop of Canadian cavalrymen, 90 officers and men of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, supported by two guns of the Royal Canadian Field Artillery, covered the retreat of British infantry column under attack by several hundred Boer horsemen near Leliefontein farm, East Transvaal. Only 3 Canadian dragoons were killed, and 11 wounded. Three Canadian cavalrymen won Victoria Crosses for their actions in protecting the British
1929 The Museum of Modern Art in New York City opened to the public
1916 Montana suffragist Jeannette Rankin was elected to the US House of Representatives. She was the first woman in the history of the nation to win a seat in the federal Congress
1940 Only four months after its completion, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State suffered a spectacular collapse. It was the third-largest suspension bridge in the world, spanning 2,800 feet, and connecting Seattle and Tacoma with the Puget Sound Navy yard. From its opening the bridge, which took three years to build, had a pronounced longitudinal roll. The strange undulations earned the span the nickname Galloping Gertie. Some drivers reported that vehicles ahead of them would disappear and reappear several times as they crossed the bridge, and on a windy day, tourists treated the bridge toll as the fee paid to ride a roller-coaster ride. The cause was the topography of the Tacoma Narrows, which turned the passageway into a giant wind tunnel. The toll keeper had closed the bridge, but let one last motorist pass, Tacoma News Tribune copy editor Leonard Coatsworth. Halfway across the bridge, Coatsworth lost control of his car. When the roadway tipped so sharply that it seemed his car would topple off, he decided to flee on foot. Coatsworth ran to safety and called the Tribune, who dispatched a reporter and photographer to the scene. Tribune photographer Howard Clifford was the last man on the bridge before the centre span broke off at 11 a.m. and plunged 190 feet into the turbulent Tacoma Narrows. Trapped on the suddenly destabilised side spans, he narrowly avoided being thrown off and ran to safety. Miraculously, no one perished when the bridge collapsed into the waters
1962 Richard M. Nixon, who failed in a bid to become governor of California, held what he called his last press conference, telling reporters, “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore.”
1967 President Johnson signed a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
1990 A general election saw Mary Robinson, a 46-year-old lawyer, elected as Ireland's first woman president
1990 Fire destroyed the historic Universal Studios backlot in Hollywood. Damage was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars