Born this Day

1516 Mary Tudor - Queen of England, popularly known as Bloody Mary for her campaign against English Protestants. Born in Greenwich Palace, she was the daughter of King Henry VIII and Catharine of Aragon
1745 Count Alessandro Volta - Italian physicist and inventor who made the first battery and gave his name to the measure of the power of electricity, the volt
1784 Nicolo Paganini - Italian violin virtuoso and composer who is considered the greatest violinist ever. He was a great showman who demonstrated his skill with outrageously difficult compositions, and was also an innovator, introducing new tuning and bowing techniques
1838 Ernst Mach - Austrian physicist who researched airflow. Mach numbers indicate air speed, Mach 1 being the speed at which an aircraft breaks the sound barrier
1848 Louis Comfort Tiffany - Craftsman and designer who made significant advancements in the art of glassmaking
1859 Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Rabinowitz) - Russian author (Fiddler on the Roof, The Bewitched Tailor, Adventures of Mottel)
1862 Charles M. Schwab - US entrepreneur who pioneered Bethlehem Steel
1894 Andres Segovia - Virtuoso Spanish guitarist who was responsible for the revival of interest in the instrument
1895 George Gipp - US football player known as The Gipper
1898 Enzo Anselmo Ferrari - Italian auto racer and manufacturer, born in Modena, Italy
1907 Billy deWolfe - Actor (The Perils of Pauline, Lullaby of Broadway, Tea for Two)
1915 Phyllis Calvert - British stage and screen actress (The Man in Grey, Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Dalloway) She was in the Midsommer Murders episode Blue Herring She also played Agnes Garrideb in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Mazarin Stone
1919 Jack Palance - Actor (City Slickers, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Batman, Cops and Robbersons, Sudden Fear, Shane) He owed his distinctive looks, in part, to plastic surgery following a bomber crash in World War II
1920 Bill Cullen - TV host (I've Got a Secret, The Joker's Wild, Name that Tune)
1922 Helen Gurley Brown - Publisher and author (Cosmopolitan Magazine, Sex and the Single Girl)
1925 George Kennedy - Actor (Cool Hand Luke, The Blue Knight, Earthquake!, Naked Gun, Airport, Dallas, Delta Force, The Dirty Dozen)
1929 Len Deighton – British author (Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match, Spy Story , Fighters: The True Story of the Battle of Britain, Basic French Cooking)
1931 Toni Morrison - US author (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Beloved, Paradise) She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and the Nobel Prize in 1993
1932 Milos Forman - Czechoslovakian born US film director (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Ragtime, Hair)
1933 Yoko Ono Lennon - Artist. She was married to John Lennon, and for years was accused of breaking up the Beatles
1948 Sinéad Cusack - Irish born actress (David Copperfield, Quiller, The Last Remake of Beau Geste, Oliver's Travels) She has been married to Jeremy Irons since 1978
1950 Cybill Shepherd - Actress (Cybill, Moonlighting, The Last Picture Show, The Long Hot Summer, Taxi Driver)
1952 Juice Newton - Singer (Angel of the Morning, Break it to Me Gently, Cheap Love)
1953 Robbie Bachman - Canadian drummer with Bachman-Turner Overdrive (Let It Ride, Takin' Care of Business, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, Roll on Down the Highway) He formed the band with his brother Randy, and Fred Turner
1954 John Travolta - Actor (Welcome Back Kotter, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Urban Cowboy, Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Broken Arrow)
1957 Vanna White - Game show hostess (Wheel of Fortune)
1960 Greta Scacchi - Italian born actress (The Browning Version, Emma, The Odyssey, MacBeth, The Red Violin)
1964 Matt Dillon - Actor (My Bodyguard, Rumble Fish, A Kiss Before Dying, In & Out)
1968 Molly Ringwald - Actress (The Facts of Life, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, The Stand, Requiem for Murder)


Died this Day

1478 George, Duke of Clarence - Murdered in the Tower of London on the orders of his older brother, Edward IV, after plotting his death. He was drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine
1546 Martin Luther - German Augustinian monk and leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany
1564 Michelangelo (Buonarroti) - Italian artist, painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer of the Italian Renaissance (The Sistine Chapel, The statue of David) He died in Rome less than a month before his 89th birthday
1915 Franklin James, age 72 – Outlaw and older brother of Jesse James
1933 "Gentleman" Jim Corbett - US prize-fighter and world heavyweight champion from 1892 to 1897
1967 Robert Oppenheimer - US physicist who is known as the "father of the atomic bomb"
1982 Dame Ngaio Marsh, age 82 – New Zealand author who wrote the Detective Roderick Alleyn mystery books (Artists in Crime, Hand in Glove, Overture to Death)
2001 Dale Earnhardt Sr, age 49 - Auto racing champion. He died from injuries suffered in a crash at the Daytona 500
2003 Johnny Paycheck, age 64 – Country singer (Take This Job and Shove It, Don't Take Her She's All I Got, Jukebox Charlie)


On this Day

1678 Pilgrim's Progress was published. John Bunyan began the novel during his second term in prison for preaching on behalf of the Baptists
1685 The French explorer La Salle established the first settlement in what would become the state of Texas
1688 The Quaker community of Germantown, Pennsylvania made the first North American denunciation of slavery
1814 Upper Canada MP Joseph Wilcocks was expelled posthumously from the Assembly at York for being a traitor, after leading US raids into Canada during the War of 1812
1861 Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama
1876 A direct telegraph line was established between Britain and New Zealand
1878 Long simmering tensions in Lincoln County, New Mexico, exploded into a bloody shooting war when gunmen murdered the English rancher John Tunstall, who had established a large ranching operation in Lincoln County two years earlier. Two Irish-Americans, J.J. Dolan and John Riley, operated a general store called The House, which controlled access to lucrative beef contracts with the government. The big ranchers, led by John Chisum and Alexander McSween, didn't believe merchants should dominate the beef markets and began to challenge The House. Tunstall, a wealthy young English emigrant, soon realised that his interests were with Chisum and McSween in this political and economic conflict for control of the region, and he became a leader of the anti-House forces, establishing a competing general merchandise store in Lincoln. By 1877, the power struggle was threatening to become overtly violent, and Tunstall began to hire young gunmen for protection, including William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. Early the next year, The House used its considerable political resources to strike back at Tunstall, winning a court order demanding that Tunstall turn over some of his horses to pay an outstanding debt. When Tunstall refused to turn over the horses, the House-controlled Lincoln County sheriff dispatched a posse, led by William Morton, to take them. Billy the Kid and several other Tunstall hands were working on the ranch when they spotted the approaching posse. Outnumbered, the men fled, but they had not gone far before they saw Tunstall gallop straight up to the posse to protest its presence on his property. As Billy and the others watched, Morton pulled his gun and shot Tunstall dead with a bullet to the head. Although he had not worked for Tunstall long, Billy the Kid deeply resented this cold-blooded murder, and he immediately began a vendetta of violence against The House and its allies. Lincoln County became a war zone, and both sides began a spree of vicious killings. By July, The House was prevailing, having added McSween to its lists of victims. However, fighting would continue to erupt sporadically until 1884, when Chisum died of natural causes, and The House finally regained full control of Lincoln County. By that time, Billy the Kid had already been dead for three years, gunned down by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett
1885 Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in the US for the first time. The book had made its debut the previous year in Canada and Britain
1911 Over 6,000 letters and postcards were flown five miles from Allahabad to Naini Junction in India by Henri Pecquet. It was the first official airmail
1929 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the winners of the first Academy Awards. The names were published on the back page of the academy's newsletter. Awards were handed out at a banquet in May, which was broadcast live on radio. Although the first awards were for films made in 1927-1928, they weren't announced until February 1929. Wings won the Best Picture award. Janice Gaynor won Best Actress and Emil Jannings won Best Actor. Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone both won Best Director awards. The winners received gold statuettes, designed by art director Cedric Gibbons and sculpted by George Stanley. However, the awards weren't nicknamed "Oscars" until 1931, when a secretary at the academy noted the statue's resemblance to her Uncle Oscar, and a journalist printed her remark
1930 The ninth and smallest planet of the solar system, Pluto, was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona by US astronomer Clyde Tombaugh
1953 Bwana Devil, the movie that heralded the 3D fad of the 1950s, opened in New York City
1965 An avalanche on Grandue Mountain killed 18 copper miners, plus 8 others at the Oranduc Mines camp 30 miles north of Stewart, BC
1977 The space shuttle Enterprise, sitting atop a Boeing 747, went on its maiden “flight” above the Mojave Desert
1984 Italy and the Vatican signed an agreement under which Roman Catholicism ceased to be the state religion of Italy