Born this Day

1731 William Cowper – British poet (The Castaway, The Poplar Field, On the Loss of the Royal George) He also wrote the hymn, God Moves in a Mysterious Way
1810 Baron William George Armstrong – British inventor of hydraulic equipment. His invention, originally for military use, led to the development of the first hydraulic crane
1832 Mary Edwards Walker – Physician and women's right leader. She is the only woman to receive the US Congressional Medal of Honor. She was awarded the medal for service during the Civil War, in which she served as an army surgeon, and it is generally accepted that she also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians, and was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons. She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20, but still less than some widows' pensions. In 1865, a bill was signed to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognise her contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country's highest military award. In 1917 her Congressional Medal was taken away when Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include only “actual combat with an enemy.” She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. An Army board reinstated Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, citing her "distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex"
1905 Emlyn Williams – Welsh actor (Jamaica Inn, David Copperfield, The Wreck of the Mary Deare) and playwright (The Corn is Green, Night Must Fall)
1910 Cyril Cusack – South-African born Irish actor (The Day of the Jackal, Odd Man Out, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Fahrenheit 451, Little Dorrit, My Left Foot)
1922 Charles Schulz – US cartoonist who created the comic strip Peanuts, one of the most successful comic strips ever
1923 Pat Phoenix – British actress (Coronation Street, The L-Shaped Room, Constant Hot Water)
1933 Robert Goulet – Singer (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Camelot) He was born at Lawrence, Massachusetts, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta
1935 Marian Mercer - Actress (Nine to Five, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman)
1938 Rich Little – Canadian born comedian and impressionist
1939 Mark Margolis – Actor (The Wrestler, Pi, Black Swan, Breaking Bad, Oz, Ace Venture: Pet Detective, The Equalizer)
1939 Tina Turner – US singer (Proud Mary, What's Love Got to Do with It, We Don't Need Another Hero) She began her career as half of a duo with her then-husband, Ike Turner


Died this Day

1836 John Loudon McAdam, age 80 – Scottish roadmaking engineer and the inventor of the macadam road surface. He was later appointed surveyor of roads in Britain
1915 W. Atlee Burpee, age 57 – Canadian horticulturist, born at Sheffield, New Brunswick. Burpee founded the world's largest mail-order seed company. He died in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
1956 Tommy Dorsey – US trombonist and bandleader (Treasure Island, Song of India, The Big Apple, Boogie Woogie) He choked to death in his sleep a week after his 51st birthday


On this Day

1825 The first college social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, was formed at Union College in Schenectady, NY
1832 John Mason introduced the first horse-drawn streetcars, or trams, in New York. They ran the Prince Street – 14th Street route
1842 The founders of the University of Notre Dame arrived at the school's present-day site near South Bend, Indiana
1857 Australia's first parliament opened at Melbourne
1862 Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dawson sent a hand-written manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground to 10-year-old Alice Liddell. The 30-year-old Dawson, better known by pen name, Lewis Carroll, made up the story one day on a picnic with young Alice and her two sisters, the children of one of Dawson's colleagues. The Liddell children thought his tale of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole was one of his best efforts, and Alice insisted he write it down. During a visit to the Liddells, English novelist Henry Kingsley happened to notice the manuscript. After reading it, he suggested to Mrs. Liddell that it be published. Dawson published the book at his own expense, under the name Lewis Carroll, in 1865. The story is one of the earliest children's books written simply to amuse children, not to teach them
1867 Mrs. Lily Maxwell of Manchester, England cast her vote in a parliamentary election after she had been placed on the voter’s list in error. She had to be escorted by a bodyguard to protect her from opponents to women’s suffrage
1872 The Great Diamond Hoax, one of the most notorious mining swindles of the time, was exposed with an article in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Fraudulent gold and silver mines were common in the years following the California Gold Rush of 1849, and swindlers fooled many eager greenhorns by "salting" worthless mines with particles of gold dust to make them appear mineral-rich. However, few con men were as daring as Kentucky cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack, who convinced San Francisco capitalists to invest in a worthless mine in the north-western corner of Colorado. They arrived in San Francisco in 1872 and tried to deposit a bag of uncut diamonds at a bank. When questioned, the two men quickly disappeared, acting as if they were reluctant to talk about their discovery. Intrigued, a bank director named William Ralston tracked down the men, and assuming he was dealing with unsophisticated country bumpkins, set out to take control of the diamond mine. The two cousins agreed to take a blindfolded mining expert to the site, who returned to report that the mine was indeed rich with diamonds and rubies. Ralston, along with other prominent San Francisco financiers formed the New York Mining and Commercial Company, capitalised at $10 million, and began selling stock to eager investors. As a show of good faith, Arnold and Slack received about $600,000, small change in comparison to the supposed value of the diamond mine. Clarence King, the then-little-known young leader of a geographical survey of the 40th parallel, finally exposed the cousins' diamond mine as a hoax. A brilliant geologist and mining engineer, King was suspicious of the mine from the start. He correctly deduced the location of the supposed mine, raced off to investigate, and soon realised that the swindlers had salted the mine, as some of the gems he found even showed jewellers-cut marks. Back in San Francisco, King exposed the fraud in the newspapers and the Great Diamond Hoax collapsed. Ralston returned $80,000 to each of his investors, but he was never able to recover the $600,000 given to the two cousins. Arnold lived out the few remaining years of his life in luxury in Kentucky before dying of pneumonia in 1878. Slack apparently squandered his share of the money, for he was last reported working as a coffin maker in New Mexico. King's role in exposing the fraud brought him national recognition, and he became the first director of the United States Geological Survey
1922 British archaeologists Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon became the first men in over three thousand years to see inside King Tutankhamun’s tomb near Luxor, Egypt. Carter had discovered the entrance to the tomb of the teenage Pharaoh three weeks earlier, hidden in debris near the excavated tomb of King Ramses VI. Carter and Carnarvon found the sealed chambers to be miraculously intact, having escaped detection by tomb-robbers. The four-room tomb contained an incredible collection of several thousand objects, including golden statues, and a golden throne inlaid with jewels. However, the most important architectural find may be a stone sarcophagus that contained three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for over three thousand years
1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the modern Thanksgiving Holiday by signing a bill proclaiming the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. The tradition of celebrating the holiday on Thursday dates back to the early history of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, when post-harvest holidays were celebrated on the weekday regularly set aside as Lecture Day, a mid-week church meeting where topical sermons were presented. Thanksgiving became an annual custom throughout New England by the mid-seventeenth-century, and in 1777, the Continental Congress declared the first national US Thanksgiving following the Patriot victory at Saratoga, which was to be celebrated in December. In 1789, President George Washington became the first president to proclaim the Thanksgiving holiday, when, at the request of Congress, he proclaimed November 26, a Tuesday, as a day of national thanksgiving for the US Constitution. However, it was not until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to fall on the last Thursday of November, the traditional holiday was celebrated nationally. With few exceptions, Lincoln's precedent was followed annually by every president until 1939 when FDR departed from tradition by declaring November 23, the next to last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving Day. Considerable controversy surrounded this deviation from tradition, and some refused to honour Roosevelt's declaration. For the next two years, FDR repeated the unpopular proclamation, but on November 26, 1941, he admitted his mistake and signed a bill into law making the last Thursday in November the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day forever
1942 The motion picture, Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, had its world premiere at the Hollywood Theatre in New York
1949 India adopted a constitution as a republic within the British Commonwealth
1965 France launched its first satellite, sending a 92-pound capsule into orbit
1973 President Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she'd accidentally caused part of the 18-1/2 minute gap in a key Watergate tape
1988 Mrs. Rita Lockett of Torquay, Devon spent £10,000 to repeat her daughter’s wedding two months after the event because she didn’t like the way the video turned out. The couple went through the reception with all 200 guests, wearing the same outfits, and having to listen to the same speeches – this time with a professional video crew on hand
1992 The British government announced that Queen Elizabeth had volunteered to start paying taxes on her personal income. The Queen had also agreed to take her children off the public payroll