Born this Day

1790 Sir William Edward Parry – British explorer who led Arctic & Northwest Passage expeditions
1902 Sir Ralph Richardson – British stage and screen actor (Doctor Zhivago, The Return of Bulldog Drummond, Our Man in Havana, Exodus, Battle of Britain, Who Slew Auntie Roo?, Tales From the Crypt, O Lucky Man!, Rollerball, Time Bandits, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, The Four Feathers) He was with the Old Vic during the 30’s and 40’s, and was equally successful in contemporary roles
1915 Edith Piaf – Legendary French singer (The Three Bells, La Vie en Rose, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, What Can I Do?, I'll Remember Today) She began singing in the streets of Paris when she was 15. Known for her earthy, melancholy cabaret songs, Edith had an extremely difficult childhood. Her mother was a teenage drug addict and her father, a street acrobat twice her mother's age, was away fighting in World War I until she was two. While Edith was still a toddler, her mother abandoned the family, leaving the child to be raised by her paternal grandmother, a cook at a bordello in Normandy. As a teenager, Edith began performing as a singer with her father, travelling throughout Europe. In 1934 she gave birth to a daughter, who later died of meningitis. Her father was murdered in 1935. Only 20, Edith supported herself with street singing and prostitution until a night-club owner discovered her, dubbing her "la mome piaf," or "the waif sparrow." Edith adopted the last name as her own
1923 Gordon Jackson – Scottish actor (Upstairs Downstairs, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Shaka Zulu, A Town Like Alice)
1925 'Little' Jimmy Dickens - Country Music Hall of Famer (Country Boy, My Heart's Bouquet, May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose)
1933 Cicely Tyson - Actress (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Roots, Fried Green Tomatoes, Heat Wave, Sounder)
1941 Maurice White - Singer, musician, drummer and founder of the group Earth, Wind & Fire (Shining Star, Sing a Song, Got to Get You into My Life, After the Love Has Gone, Best of My Love)
1944 Alvin Lee – Guitarist with the group Ten Years After (Baby Won’t You Let Me Rock’n’Roll You, I’m Going Home, Choo Choo Mama, I’d Love To Change the World)
1944 Tim Reid - Actor (WKRP in Cincinnati, Frank's Place, Simon & Simon) He played Jack Barnett in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Silenced Singer
1946 Robert Urich - Actor (Magnum Force, Vegas, Spencer for Hire)
1952 Janie Fricke – Country singer (It Ain't Easy Being Easy, She’s Single Again, If the Fall Don’t Get You)
1960 Mike Lookinland – Actor (The Brady Bunch, Gambler V: Playing for Keeps, The Towering Inferno, Dead Men Tell No Tales)
1963 Jennifer Beals - Actress (The Last Days of Disco, The Bride, Flashdance)
1969 Kristie Swanson – Actress (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dude, Where’s My Car?, Hot Shots!, Nightengales)
1972 Alyssa Milano - Actress (Who's the Boss, Melrose Place)
1979 Tara Summers – British actress (Boston Legal, Ringer, Alfie, Factory Girl)
1980 Jake Gyllenhaal – Actor (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Source Code, Zodiac, Jarhead, The Day After Tomorrow, City Slickers) He is the brother of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal


Died this Day

1741 Vitus Jonassen Bering – Danish born explorer who died from scurvy when his ship was wrecked on the shore of Bering Island during an ill-prepared expedition to the Gulf of Alaska
1848 Emily Brontë, age 30 – British novelist (Wuthering Heights) She was the fifth-born of the six Brontë children. Her sisters Charlotte and Anne were also authors. The Brontë family lived in the remote village of Haworth on the bleak Yorkshire moors and were largely left to their own devices after the death of their mother when Emily was two. A shy, reclusive child, Emily suffered intensely from homesickness whenever she left the parsonage. She joined her three older sisters at a school for clergymen's children when she was six, but the two oldest died, partly because of the school's harsh and unhealthy conditions. She and Charlotte returned home. The girls, along with sister Anne and brother Branwell, read voraciously and created their own elaborate stories about mythical lands. In 1845, Charlotte came across some poems Emily had written and revealed that she too had secretly been writing verse. So had Anne, they learned. Charlotte published their joint work, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, in 1846. Although the book sold only two copies, the sisters continued writing. Emily died of tuberculosis


On this Day

1154 Henry II became King of England. The French-born Henry was the first Plantagenet king of England. It was during his reign that the conquest of Ireland began. He was the father of Richard the Lionheart
1732 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin began publication of Poor Richard's Almanack under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders. The Almanack was an instant success, filled with proverbs preaching industry and prudence. It was published continuously for 25 years and became one of the most popular publications in colonial times, selling an average of 10,000 copies a year. In an advertisement for the humorous publication, Franklin promised "many pleasant and witty verses, jests and sayings." It greatly influenced popular culture with such light-hearted aphorisms as "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man, healthy, wealthy, and wise"
1776 Thomas Paine published his first American Crisis essay, writing: “These are the times that try men's souls”
1777 With the onset of the bitter winter cold, the Continental Army under General George Washington, still in the field, entered its winter camp at Valley Forge, 22 miles from British-occupied Philadelphia. Washington chose a site on the west bank of the Schuylkill River that could be effectively defended in the event of a British attack. During 1777, Patriot forces under General Washington suffered major defeats against the British at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and Philadelphia, the capital of the US, fell into British hands. The particularly severe winter of 1777-1778 proved to be a great trial for the Patriot army, and of the 11,000 soldiers stationed at Valley Forge, hundreds died from disease. However, the suffering troops were held together by loyalty to the Patriot cause and to General Washington, who stayed with his men. As the winter stretched on, Prussian military adviser Frederick von Steuben kept the soldiers busy with drills and training in modern military strategy. When Washington's army marched out of Valley Forge in June 1778, the men were better disciplined and stronger in spirit than when they had entered
1843 Charles Dickens’s classic Yuletide tale, A Christmas Carol, was first published
1846 In Canada's first telegraph message, the mayors of Toronto and Hamilton exchanged greetings
1863 Frederick Walton of London patented linoleum
1871 Albert L Jones of New York City patented corrugated paper
1907 A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania, killed 239 workers
1918 Robert Ripley began his Believe It or Not column in The New York Globe
1922 24-year old Theresa Vaughan confessed to 61 bigamous marriages within a five-year period
1932 The BBC began transmitting overseas with its Empire Service to Australia
1949 The US, Canada, and Britain reached agreement on standardisation of military arms and fighting methods
1955 Carl Perkins recorded his Blue Suede Shoes at the Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee
1957 The musical play, The Music Man, starring Robert Preston, with book and songs by Meredith Willson, opened on Broadway
1958 The first radio broadcast from an orbiting satellite took place. The first experimental satellite, Project SCORE, had been launched two days earlier. Radio listeners heard a taped holiday greeting from President Dwight Eisenhower
1972 Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, ending the Apollo program of manned lunar landings. Apollo 17 had lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 days before, with the last three astronauts to travel to the moon. During the Apollo 17 mission, astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt stayed for a record 75 hours on the surface of the moon, conducting three separate surface excursions in the Lunar Rover vehicle and collecting 243 pounds of rock and soil samples. Although Apollo 17 was the last lunar landing, the last official Apollo mission was conducted in July 1975, when an Apollo spacecraft successfully rendezvoused and docked with the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft in orbit around the Earth