Born this Day

1638 Catherine of Braganza – Queen to King Charles II. Her dowry to the King of England included Tangiers and Bombay
1708 William Pitt the Elder – First Earl of Chatham, British Prime Minister and noted orator
1738 Sir William Herschel – German born British astronomer and organist who discovered the planet Uranus in 1781
1887 Georgia O'Keefe - Artist (Cow's Skull with Calico Roses, A Cross by the Sea, Canada, Black Iris, Farmhouse Window and Door)
1919 Carol Bruce - Actress (WKRP in Cincinnati, American Gigolo, Planes Trains & Automobiles)
1919 Joseph Wapner - Judge (The People’s Court)
1928 C.W. McCall - Singer, songwriter (Convoy, Keep on Truckin' Cafe, Old Home, Filler-up, Wolf Creek Pass, Roses for Mama)
1929 Ed Asner – Actor (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant, JFK, Rich Man Poor Man, Roots, Change of Habit, Fort Apache The Bronx, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs!)
1930 J.G. Ballard – British author (Empire of the Sun, The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth)
1932 Petula Clark – British singer (Down Town, I Know a Place, This is My Song, My Love) and actress (Finian’s Rainbow, Here Come the Huggetts, Goodbye Mr. Chips)
1934 Joanna Barnes - Actress (The Trials of O'Brien, 21 Beacon Street, Spartacus, Parent Trap, Goodbye Charlie)
1937 Little Willie John - Singer (Sleep, Talk to Me Talk to Me, Fever)
1937 Yaphet Kotto – Actor (Live and Let Die, Alien, Homicide: Life on the Street, Raid on Entebbe, Roots, The Running Man) He played General Sorenson in the Perry Mason movie, The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel
1940 Sam Waterston – Actor (Law & Order, The Killing Fields, The Great Gatsby, Friendly Fire, I'll Fly Away, Serial Mom, Capricorn One)
1945 Frida Lyngstad – Swedish singer with the group ABBA (Fernando, Dancing Queen, Take a Chance on Me, Waterloo)
1946 Janet Lennon - Singer with her family group The Lennon Sisters, who often appeared on The Lawrence Welk Show
1951 Beverly D'Angelo - Actress (Annie Hall, National Lampoon's Vacation series, Coal Miner's Daughter, Paternity, Hair, Every Which Way but Loose, Captains and the Kings)
1957 Kevin Eubanks – Bandleader (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno)


Died this Day

1761 Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye – Canadian fur trader, explorer and soldier, who along with his family explored much of the Canadian and US west. He drowned when his ship, en route from Quebec to France, was smashed on the shores of Cape Breton during a gale just 4 days after his 44th birthday
1916 Henryk Sienkiwica, age 72 – Polish born author (Quo Vadis)
1954 Lionel Barrymore, age 76 – Actor (A Free Soul, Camille, Captains Courageous, Duel in the Sun, It's a Wonderful Life, Key Largo, The Little Colonel) He was the great-uncle of Drew Barrymore
1958 Tyrone Power, age 41 – Actor (Tom Brown of Culver, The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, This Above All, The Eddie Duchin Story, The Long Gray Line, Witness for the Prosecution)
1965 Allen Du Mont, age 64 – Engineer who perfected the cathode-ray tube and manufactured the first commercially available television sets. In 1937, he offered his television receivers for sale and set up experimental broadcasting stations. He helped formulate broadcast standards for black and white and colour television, and he worked with the FCC to allocate frequencies for television channels
1971 Rudolf Ivanovich Abel – Soviet master spy who was swapped in 1962 for Gary Powers, the US pilot of the U2 spy plane shot down over Russia in 1960


On this Day

1492 Christopher Columbus noted in his journal the use of tobacco among the Indians. It was the first recorded reference to tobacco
1765 The first Presbyterian church in Canada was established at Québec by Reverend George Henry
1765 Although the British had defeated the French for control of Canada, Governor James Murray admitted French speaking jurors to Quebec courts, and allowed lawyers to plead in French
1777 After 16 months of debate, the Continental Congress, sitting in its temporary capital of York, Pennsylvania, agreed to adopt the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. In 1777, Patriot leaders were reluctant to establish any form of government that might infringe on the right of individual states to govern their own affairs, and the Articles of Confederation provided for only a loose federation of states. Although Congress did not have the right to levy taxes, it did have authority over foreign affairs and could regulate a national army and declare war and peace. Amendments to the Articles required approval from all 13 states. In 1781, following final ratification by the 13th state, the Articles of Confederation became the law of the land. By 1786, defects in the Articles were apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce, and the US was in danger of breaking apart. In 1787, Congress endorsed a plan to draft a new constitution that would establish a more centralised and effective government. In 1789, the modern United States was established when the US Constitution formally replaced the Articles of Confederation
1806 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike spotted the mountaintop now known as Pike’s Peak, as he approached the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains during his second exploratory expedition. In July, 1806, Pike set out to explore the headwaters of the Red and Arkansas Rivers. This route took him across present-day Kansas and into the high plains region that would later become the state of Colorado. When Pike first saw the peak that would later bear his name, he grossly underestimated its height and its distance, never having seen mountains the size of the Rockies. He told his men they should be able to walk to the peak, climb it, and return before dinner. Pike and his men struggled through snow and sub-zero temperatures before finally taking shelter in a cave for the night, without even having reached the base of the towering mountain. Pike later pronounced the peak impossible to scale
1837 Isaac Pitman published his short-hand system, Stenographic Sound-Hand
1859 Charles Dickens' serialised novel, A Tale of Two Cities, came to a close, as the final chapter was published in Dickens' circular, All the Year Round
1864 General Sherman began his famous march from Atlanta to Savannah with 60,000 men
1877 At Regina, Saskatchewan, the North-West Territorial Council passed an ordinance “For the Protection of the Buffalo” in a failed attempt to slow the wanton destruction of the herds. As many as 60 million buffalo once roamed the North American plains, but by the late 1880s they were almost extinct
1889 Following a military coup, Pedro II, Brazil's second and last emperor, was forced to abdicate the throne and a democratic republic was proclaimed. The Brazilian monarchy was first established in 1822, when the Portuguese prince regent declared himself Pedro I, emperor of the newly independent Brazil. However, the Brazilian empire got off to a rough start, and in 1831, Pedro I abdicated in favour of his five-year-old son before returning to Portugal. In 1840, Pedro II officially became emperor, and for the next forty years enjoyed a popular reign. However, during the 1880s, discontent built up, and in 1889 Pedro II was also forced to abdicate. Following the abolishment of the monarchy, the United States of Brazil was officially proclaimed, but the republic endured four years of military dictatorships before civilian rule began in the country
1899 The SS St. Paul became the first ship to receive radio messages, transmitted from the Needles wireless station off the Isle of Wight
1899 Winston Churchill was captured by the Boers while covering the war for the Morning Post. He escaped a few weeks later
1918 Victory Day in Britain, following the end of The Great War, or World War I
1926 The National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) was inaugurated in the US with a radio network of 24 stations
1932 The USS Indianapolis was commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The ship sank in action two weeks before the end of the World War II, having just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian. Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 300 went down with the ship, and the remainder were left floating in shark-infested waters with no lifeboats and most with no food or water for days. By the time the survivors were spotted by a patrol aircraft, only 316 men were still alive
1939 President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC
1956 Thousands of Soviet tanks rolled in to Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution, which had started on October 23rd when students, intellectuals, and workers poured into the streets of Budapest, demanding an end to Soviet domination and Communist rule. Outraged citizens fought back the tanks with little more than their bare hands, and they were hopelessly outmatched. Over 25,000 people were killed in Budapest alone and many more wounded, and the Soviets installed a new government of their choosing
1956 Elvis Presley’s first film, Love Me Tender, premièred in New York
1968 The RMS Queen Elizabeth, in its day the largest ocean liner ever built, ended her last voyage as a passenger carrier. The RMS Queen Elizabeth, boasting a 200,000-horsepower engine and elegant art deco style, made its public debut in 1946, leaving Southampton, England, on its first luxurious run across the Atlantic. However, before her days as a lavish passenger liner, the Queen Elizabeth steamed across the ocean as a transport vehicle during World War II. During the late 1930s, workers at a Scottish construction site began building a sea vessel that would be larger and more luxurious than anything the world had ever seen. However, the outbreak of World War II in 1939 prevented the completion of the Queen Elizabeth's finer points. The vessel was hastily made seaworthy for wartime service, and until the war's end was used as a transport vessel for the Allies during the war, carrying massive amounts of supplies and several hundred thousand troops around the world. After her retirement from the Cunard Line in 1968, the Queen Elizabeth was auctioned off to the highest bidder, eventually being purchased in 1970 by C. W. Tung, a Taiwanese shipping tycoon. Tung renamed the vessel Seawise University, and began work on converting the ship into a learning center that would tour the world. However, in early 1972, as the mobile university neared completion, a fire destroyed the pride of the Cunard Line
1979 The British government publicly identified Sir Anthony Blunt as the "fourth man" of a Soviet spy ring that included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby