Born this Day

1728 Peter III - Tsar of Russia who married the future Catherine the Great. Feeble minded, he was soon deposed in favour of Catherine and murdered by her lover
1794 Antonio López de Santa Ana - Mexican revolutionary and President, who won his country's freedom from Spain, and later led the attack on the Alamo. He was born Jalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico, the son of middle-class parents. As a teen, he won a commission in the Spanish army and quickly distinguished himself as a capable fighter and leader. After 1821, he gained national prominence in the successful Mexican war for independence from Spain. In 1833, he won election to the presidency of the independent republic of Mexico by an overwhelming popular majority, and two years later he proclaimed himself dictator
1903 Anaïs Nin - French born US author (A Spy in the House of Love, Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, Winter of Artifice, House of Incense)
1907 Wystan Hugh (W.H.) Auden - British born US poet and writer (Spain, Letters from Iceland, The Shield of Achilles, Academic Graffiti, Secondary Worlds, Age of Anxiety) He was educated at Oxford, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948
1915 Ann Sheridan - Actress (Appointment in Honduras, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Dodge City, Stella, Pistols ‘n’ Petticoats)
1925 Sam Peckinpah - Director (Convoy, The Getaway, The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Osterman Weekend, Straw Dogs)
1927 Erma Bombeck - Humorist, columnist, writer (The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank, At Wit's End, If Life Is a Bowl Of Cherries What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Aunt Erma's Cope Book, A Marriage Made in Heaven...Or Too Tired for an Affair)
1927 Hubert de Givenchy - Fashion designer
1934 Rue McClanahan - Actress (Maude, Golden Girls, Starship Troopers, They Might Be Giants)
1937 Gary Lockwood - Actor (2001: A Space Odyssey, Terror in Paradise, Firecreek)
1940 Peter McEnery - British actor (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Negatives, Victim, Pictures) He played Donald Phillipson in the Inspector Morse episode Last Seen Wearing
1946 Tyne Daly - Actress (Cagney & Lacey, Christy, The Perfect Mother, Judging Amy) Her father was actor James Daly, her brother is actor Tim Daly and her grandfather was former Chief Justice Earl Warren
1946 Alan Rickman - British actor (Smiley's People, The Barchester Chronicles, Die Hard, Quigley Down Under, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Sense and Sensibility, Rasputin, Harry Potter movies, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Galaxy Quest, Mesmer)
1946 Anthony Daniels – British actor (Star Wars movies, Ghosts of Albion: Legacy, Prime Suspect: Inner Circles)
1953 William Petersen - Actor (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, To Live and Die in LA, The Beast, The Rat Pack, Manhunter, Fear, Young Guns II)
1953 Christine Ebersole – Actress (Dead Again, Tootsie, Saturday Night Live, Royal Pains, Ghost Dad, The Cavanaughs, Amadeus)
1955 Kelsey Grammer - Actor (Cheers, Frasier, The Pentagon Wars, X-Men 3: The Last Stand)
1958 Jack Coleman – Actor (Kingdom Hospital, Dynasty)
1958 Mary Chapin Carpenter - Country singer (Never Had it So Good, Down at the Twist and Shout, Quittin' Time, Shut Up and Kiss Me, Shooting Straight in the Dark)
1963 William Baldwin - Actor (Backdraft, Virus, Flatliners, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) He is a brother of Alec, Daniel and Stephen Baldwin
1979 Jennifer Love Hewitt - Actress (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Ghost Whisperer, Sister Act 2, Party of Five)
1987 Ellen Page – Canadian actress (Inception, The Stone Angel, Juno, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, ReGenesis, Wilby Wonderful, Trailer Park Boys, Pit Pony)
1987 Ashley Greene – Actress (Twilight, Pan Am, New Moon, A Warrior’s Heart, Radio Free Albemuth)


Died this Day

1437 James I - King of Scotland. He was assassinated by conspirators led by Walter of Atholl. He had tried to diminish the power of the Scottish nobles
1595 Robert Southwell - British poet and Jesuit martyr (An Epistle of Comfort) He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn
1741 Jethro Tull - British agricultural pioneer
1941 Sir Frederick Banting, age 49 - Canadian doctor who was the co-discoverer of insulin. He died in an airplane crash while en route to England on a wartime medical mission
1965 Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), age 39 - Muslim leader who was shot to death as he was about to address a New York City rally
2002 John Thaw, age 60 - British stage, film and television actor (Inspector Morse, Into the Blue, Home to Roost, Kavanagh QC, The Plastic Man, The Sweeney, Goodnight Mr. Tom, The Bofors Gun, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, A Year in Provence, Chaplin, Cry Freedom, The Glass, Monsignor Renaud, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, The Sign of the Four, The Waiting Time) In 1993 Thaw was honoured as a Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) and in 2001 was awarded a British Academy Television Awards fellowship, the organisation's highest award. He had also previously received two BAFTAs for his work as Inspector Morse. He had been married to actress Sheila Hancock for 29 years at the time of his death. Thaw died of oesophageal cancer at his home in Wiltshire, with his family around him


On this Day

1613 Michael Romanov, son of the Patriarch of Moscow, was elected Tsar of Russia. It was the start of the Romanov rule in Russia
1804 In Wales, Richard Trevithick produced the world's first steam engine to run successfully on rails. During the nine mile journey from the ironworks at Penydarren to the Merthyr-Cardiff Canal, the locomotive reached speeds of nearly five miles an hour, hauling ten tons of iron, seventy passengers and five wagons
1824 An 18-year-old boy was hanged in Saint John, New Brunswick for burglary. He had stolen 25¢
1828 The first printing press designed to use the newly invented Cherokee alphabet arrived at New Echota, Georgia. The General Council of the Cherokee Nation had purchased the press with the goal of producing a Cherokee-language newspaper. The alphabet was the work of a Cherokee named Sequoyah. As a young man, Sequoyah had joined the Cherokee volunteers who fought under Andrew Jackson against the British in the War of 1812. In dealing with the Anglo soldiers and settlers, he became intrigued by their "talking leaves" - printed books that he realised somehow recorded human speech. In a brilliant leap of logic, Sequoyah comprehended the basic nature of symbolic representation of sounds and in 1809 began working on a similar system for the Cherokee language. Ridiculed and misunderstood by most of the Cherokee, Sequoyah made slow progress until he came up with the idea of representing each syllable in the language with a separate written character. By 1821, he had perfected his syllabary of 86 characters, a system that could be mastered in less than week. After obtaining the official endorsement of the Cherokee leadership, Sequoyah's invention was soon adopted throughout the Cherokee nation. When the Cherokee-language printing press arrived, the lead type was based on Sequoyah's syllabary. Within months, the first Indian language newspaper in history appeared in New Echota, Georgia. It was called the Cherokee Phoenix. Today, Sequoyah's memory is also preserved in the scientific name for the giant California redwood tree, Sequoia
1849 In India, British forces defeated a large force of 50,000 Sikhs under Shir Singh at the battle of Gujerat in the second Anglo-Indian War
1858 The first electric burglar alarm was installed by Edwin T. Holmes of Boston, Massachusetts
1866 Lucy B. Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati
1878 The first telephone directory was issued, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut. It listed 58 names
1885 In Washington DC, the Washington Monument was formally dedicated over a hundred years after it was first proposed. It was not fully completed for another 30 years
1891 A coal gas explosion in a coalmine at Springhill, Nova Scotia killed 125 miners. The accident was the first of several over the years in Springhill. The mines were finally shut forever after a rock surge on October 23, 1958, in which 74 miners died
1901 Vaudeville performers, at the time a primary source of entertainment, went on strike. With the vaudeville player's strike, theatre owners looked for alternative sources of entertainment and began screening movies, which had first been shown commercially in 1896. The first theatre devoted exclusively to movies opened in Los Angeles in 1902
1916 The World War I Battle of Verdun began in France. The bloody battle began as concealed German guns opened fire on 25 miles of French lines around Verdun. It was estimated 420,000 men were killed at Verdun. After the war, 150,000 unidentified bodies were found on the battlefield
1921 Québec became the first province to establish government control of liquor. For a period of time, Québec was the only jurisdiction in North America with no prohibition of alcohol
1925 The New Yorker magazine made its debut
1947 Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera, which could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds. A colour process hit the market in 1963
1948 Six days after its first race was held, NASCAR was officially incorporated as the National Association for Stock Car Racing, with race promoter Bill France as president. From the beginning, stock car racing had a widespread appeal with its fan base. As the legend goes, the sport evolved from Southern liquor smugglers who souped up their pre-war Fords to outrun the police. NASCAR brought the sport organisation and legitimacy. Bill France realised that product identification would increase enthusiasm for the sport, and he wanted the fans to see the cars they drove to the track win the races on the track. By 1949, all the post-war car models had been released, so NASCAR held a 150-mile race at the Charlotte Speedway to introduce its Grand National Division. The race was restricted to late-model strictly stock automobiles. NASCAR held nine Grand National events that year, but by the end of the year it was apparent that the strictly stockcars could not withstand the pounding of the Grand Nationals. NASCAR drafted rules to govern the changes drivers could make to their cars, and modified stock car racing was born
1969 A device to monitor the function of the human heart was granted a patent. The inventor, King Hussan of Morocco, was the first king to be granted a patent from the US Patents Office
1972 US President Richard Nixon arrived in China to become the first President to visit a country not diplomatically recognised by the US
1988 TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed to his congregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that he was guilty of an unspecified sin, and said he was leaving the pulpit temporarily
1995 Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, landing well into North America at Leader, Saskatchewan
1995 Russian President Boris Yeltsin banned alcohol and tobacco advertising in an effort to reduce the country's death and illness rates