Born this Day

1632 Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds - English Chief Minister and founder of the Tory Party
1694 François Arouet de Voltaire - French philosopher, historian, playwright and novelist (Candide, La Henriade)
1844 Joshua Slocum - Canadian sea captain, adventurer and author (Sailing Alone Around the World, Voyage of the Liberdade) Slocum was born and raised in Nova Scotia and ran away to sea at age 16. In 1893 he rebuilt a 13 ton 36 foot New England oyster sloop, The Spray, and from April 1895 to June 1898 sailed around the world single-handedly, the first man in history to do so
1887 Vincent Massey - Canadian statesman who was the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada, and was Canada's first ambassador to the US, from 1926 to 1930. He was the brother of actor Raymond Massey
1902 Ansel Adams - US photographer. Adams' dramatic black and white images of Yosemite and the US West are some of the most widely recognised and admired photographs of the 20th century. Ansel Adams discovered his love of photography and the West during a family trip to Yosemite when he was 14 years old. He made his first photographs of the dramatic Yosemite Valley during that trip, and he returned to photograph the park every year thereafter for the rest of his life. For many years, photography was only a hobby for Adams. From childhood, he had studied piano, and as a young man embarked on a promising career as a concert pianist. It was only when he was in his late 20s that Adams decided to abandon music and make a career out of photography instead. Besides being a brilliant artist, Adams was also a technical innovator and a teacher. Along with several other photographers, Adams founded Group f/64, which was dedicated to promoting deep-focus photography and the use of straight images free from darkroom trickery. He created a number of innovative photographic techniques that he introduced to the general public through a series of books and an annual workshop in Yosemite. In recognition of his lifelong efforts supporting the national park system, Mount Ansel Adams in Yosemite was named in his honour shortly after he died in 1984
1906 Gale Gordon - Actor (The Lucy Show, The Lucille Ball Comedy Hour, My Little Margie, Our Miss Brooks, The ‘Burbs)
1924 Gloria Vanderbilt – Heiress, fashion designer, painter. She was the subject of one of the most famous child custody cases of the 20th century. Her great-great-grandfather was Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of her family's fortune. She is the mother of Anderson Cooper
1925 Robert Altman - Director (M*A*S*H, Nashville, Brewster McCloud, Gosford Park)
1927 Sidney Poitier - Actor (Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, To Sir With Love, Sneakers)
1929 Amanda Blake - Actress (Gunsmoke, Betrayal, The Glass Slipper, Sabre Jet, The Red Skelton Show, High Society, A Star is Born, Lili)
1934 Bobby Unser – Race car driver and three-time Indy 500 winner. He is the brother of Al Unser
1937 Roger Penske - Indy 500 driver and designer. While he drove and designed a variety of racecar models, Penske is most famous for his achievements in Indy car design, a field that he dominated for many years
1937 Nancy Wilson - Singer (How Glad I Am, Face It Girl, It's Over, What Are You Doing New Years?)
1938 Richard Beymer - Actor (The Diary of Anne Frank, West Side Story, Twin Peaks)
1940 Judy Cornwell – British actress (Keeping Up Appearances, The Mayor of Casterbridge, David Copperfield, Miss Marple: The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side, Cry Freedom) and author (Cow and Cow Parsley, Fear and Favour, Fish-Cakes at the Ritz, The Seventh Sunrise)
1941 Buffy Sainte-Marie - Canadian born singer (I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again, Mister Can't You See, Up Where We Belong) and songwriter (Universal Soldier, Until It's Time for You to Go)
1942 Phil Esposito - Canadian born hockey player (Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers)
1945 Brion James – Actor (Bladerunner, The Fifth Element, The Horror Show, Silverado)
1946 Brenda Blethyn - British actress (Vera, Pride & Prejudice, Little Voice, Secrets & Lies, A River Runs Through It, Atonement, Piccadilly Jim, Blizzard)
1946 Sandy Duncan - Dancer, actress (The Sandy Duncan Show, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Roots, Valerie, Funny Face)
1946 J. Geils - Guitarist with The J. Geils Band (Looking for a Love, Give It to Me, Freeze-Frame, Centrefold)
1947 Peter Strauss - Actor (Peter Gunn, Rich Man Poor Man, The Yearling)
1950 Walter Becker - Rock musician with Steely Dan (Reeling in the Years, Rikki Don't Loose that Number, Hey Nineteen)
1951 Edward Albert - Actor (Mind Games, Butterflies Are Free, The Heist) He is the son of actor Eddie Albert
1954 Anthony Head – British actor (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Adventures of Merlin, Persuasion, The Iron Lady, Free Agents, Little Britian, A Prayer for the Dying) He is the brother of musician Murray Head
1958 James Wilby - Burma born British actor (Mother Love, Howards End, Crocodile Shoes, An Ideal Husband, The Woman in White) He also played the young James Barclay in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Crooked Man
1961 Imogen Stubbs – British actress (Anna Lee Mysteries, Sense and Sensibility, Jack and Sarah, Marple: The Moving Finger, Twelfth Night, Jack & Sarah, True Colors)
1964 French Stewart – Actor (3rd Rock from the Sun, Stargate, Leaving Las Vegas,
1966 Cindy Crawford - Model
1967 Kurt Cobain – Musician with the band Nirvana (Smells Like Teen Spirit, Lithium, About a Girl, In Bloom, All Apologies, Come As You Are)
1978 Lauren Ambrose – Actress (Six Feet Under, Torchwood: Miracle Day, The Return of Jezebel James, In & Out)
1988 Rihanna (Fenty) – Barbadian singer (Rude Boy, Please Don’t Stop the Music, Love the Way You Lie, We Found Love)


Died this Day

1437 James I - King of Scotland, assassinated by a group of dissident nobles who were later tortured
1707 Aurangzeb - The last Mogul Emperor of India
1895 Frederick Douglass - US abolitionist. He died in Washington, DC
1920 Robert Peary - US Arctic explorer
1966 Chester Nimitz - US Admiral and Pacific Fleet commander in WWII. He died four days before his 81st birthday
1972 Walter Winchell, age 74 - US radio personality and newspaper columnist. His radio news show was packed with short news and gossip items, and he introduced it with, "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press!"
1992 A.J. Casson, age 93 - Canadian artist who immortalised small Ontario towns in watercolour. Casson was the last surviving member of Canada's influential artists known as the Group of Seven
1992 Dick York, age 63 - Actor (Bewitched, That Brewster Boy, Going My Way, Inherit the Wind, They Came to Cordura, My Sister Eileen, Tea and Sympathy, Bus Stop)
1993 Ferrucio Lamborghini - Italian engineer who started the Lamborghini Tractor Company before switching to sportscars


On this Day

1725 The first mass scalping by European colonists occurred when a posse of New Hampshire volunteers came across a band of encamped Native Americans and took ten scalps in the first significant appropriation of this Native American practice by the colonists. The posse subsequently received a bounty of approximately £100 per scalp from the colonial authorities. Although the custom of scalping was once practised in Europe and Asia, it is generally associated with North American native groups
1792 President Washington signed an act creating the US Post Office. Postage was 6¢ to 12¢, depending on distance
1809 The US Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government is greater than that of any individual state
1817 An event took place at Britain's Drury Lane Theatre that indirectly affected US history. A promising young actor, Junius Brutus Booth competed with Edmund Keane to see who was the nation's finest actor. Booth lost and went to the US, where his sons became leading actors. The younger son, John Wilkes, also became President Lincoln's assassin
1839 Congress prohibited duelling in the District of Columbia
1861 Violent storms hit England which damaged the Crystal Palace, and blew the steeple off the Chichester Cathedral
1927 Golfers in South Carolina were arrested for violating the Sabbath
1943 Directors and movie studio executives agreed to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies informally. World War II led to a proliferation of war-themed films, and the government feared that vital information might be disclosed through movies
1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten, a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, was named the last British Viceroy, or colonial administrator, of India. The appointment was made the same day London announced that the British would leave India by June 1948
1962 US astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule. After separating from the Atlas D launching rocket, the bell-shaped capsule entered into an orbit around the earth at an average speed of 17,400 miles per hour. During his first orbit, Glenn noticed what he described as small, glowing fireflies drifting by the capsule's tiny window. NASA mission control later determined that the sparks were crystallised water vapour released by the capsule's air-conditioning system. A more serious problem occurred before the end of the first orbit, when the automatic control system began to malfunction, sending the capsule spinning out of control. Glenn switched into manual mode and regained control of the craft. Near the end of his third and last orbit, mission control received a mechanical signal from space indicating that the straps holding the heat shield on the base of the capsule were loose. Travelling at nearly 23 times the speed of sound, the capsule would be incinerated if the shield failed to absorb and dissipate the 5,000 degree Celsius re-entry temperatures. It was decided that the craft's retrorockets, usually jettisoned before re-entry, would be left on in order to better secure the heat shield. Minutes later, Friendship 7 slammed into the earth's atmosphere. During Glenn's fiery descent back to earth, the straps holding the retrorockets gave way and flapped violently by his window as a shroud of ions caused by excessive friction enveloped the spacecraft, causing Glenn to lose radio contact with earth. As mission control anxiously waited for the resumption of radio transmissions, Glenn watched flaming chunks of retrorocket, heat shield, and spacecraft fly by his window. Moments later, Glenn's voice crackled through loudspeakers at mission control and Friendship 7 safely splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. John Glenn, the third American in space and the first to orbit the earth, was hailed as a national hero
1980 US President Carter formally advised the Soviet Union the US would boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow because the USSR refused to withdraw its 100,000 troops from Afghanistan. Canada also boycotted the Moscow games, which went ahead as planned
1985 The first successful US cruise missile test in Canadian airspace took place. The missile was released from a B-52 bomber over Beaufort Sea, and successfully made its way to a target in Alberta