Born this Day

1812 Robert Browning - British poet, born in London (The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Home Thoughts From Abroad, Pauline, Men and Women, The Ring and the Book, Pippa Passes: God's in His Heaven - All's Right with the World) Browning’s early poetry was harshly criticised, and he abandoned poetry for drama. He found no more success as a playwright than as a poet, but he did encounter a new form, the dramatic monologue, the form that his most successful poetry would take. His poetry failed to impress the critics, but it did win praise from the respected poet Elizabeth Barrett. Browning wrote Barrett to express his gratitude for her public praise, and to ask if they could meet. Despite her initial reluctance, the two eventually met and fell in love, eloping to Italy, where they lived happily for 15 years, writing poetry and producing a son. During her lifetime, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's reputation as a poet overshadowed that of her spouse, who was sometimes referred to as "Mrs. Browning's husband." Elizabeth died in her husband's arms in 1861, and he returned to England with their son
1833 Johannes Brahms - German composer and pianist, born in Hamburg (Requiem, Symphony #1 in C Minor, Symphony #4 in E Minor)
1840 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Russian composer, born in the Ural region (Marche Slave, 1812 Overture, Swan Lake, Nutcracker Suite, Romeo and Juliet, Sleeping Beauty)
1885 Gabby Hayes - Vaudevillian, silent movie villain, and actor who appeared in over 100 films. He was a sidekick of both Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers
1892 Archibald MacLeish - US poet (Conquistador) He was a US Librarian of Congress and helped draft the constitution of UNESCO
1901 Gary Cooper - US actor who was educated in England (Sergeant York, High Noon, Beau Geste, The Virginian, The Wreck of the Mary Deare, The Winning of Barbara Worth, A Farewell to Arms, The Pride of the Yankees, The Plainsman)
1909 Edwin Herbert Land - US inventor and physicist who developed the Polaroid Land Camera and the process by which it developed photographs
1919 Maria Eva Duarte Perón – Wife of Argentina's President Juan Perón, whom she married when she was just 16. She was a powerful political influence in her country and developed her own independent power base
1921 Gale Robbins - Actress and singer (The Barkley's of Broadway, The Fuller Brush Girl, Three Little Words, The Belle of New York)
1922 Darren McGavin - Actor (A Christmas Story, The Night Stalker, Airport '77, Billy Madison, Child in the Night, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Martian Chronicles, The Natural, Perfect Harmony, Dead Heat)
1923 Anne Baxter - Actress (The Ten Commandments, Walk on the Wild Side, All About Eve, Cimarron, East of Eden, Homecoming) She was the grand-daughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. She also played Olga, Queen of the Cossacks and Zelda in the Batman TV series
1926 Val Bisoglio – Actor (Quincy M.E., Saturday Night Fever, The Frisco Kid, No Way to Treat a Lady)
1927 Jim Lowe - Singer (Green Door, Talkin' to the Blues)
1930 Totie Fields – Comedienne
1931 Teresa Brewer - Singer (Music Music Music, Ricochet, Let Me Go Lover, A Sweet Old Fashioned Girl, 'Til I Waltz Again with You) and actress (Those Redheads from Seattle)
1939 Sidney Altman – Canadian biochemist and Professor of Biology at Yale University. He won the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with Thomas R. Cech for his work with catalytic RNA (ribonucleic acid), an enzyme involved in the transcription of DNA into protein
1939 Jimmy Ruffin - Singer (What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, Hold on to My Love, There Will Never be Another You)
1950 Randall 'Tex' Cobb – Actor and boxer (Raising Arizona, Braker, Liar Liar, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, The Golden Child, Code of Vengeance, The Champ)
1951 Robert Hegyes - Actor (Welcome Back Kotter, Cagney and Lacey, The Pandora Project, Bob Roberts, Underground Aces)
1974 Breckin Meyer – Actor (Clueless, Corporate Affairs, Blue State, Herbie Fully Loaded, Kate & Leopold, Rat Race, Road Trip, 54, The Insider)
1992 Alexander Ludwig – Canadian actor (The Hunger Games, Race to Witch Mountain, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, A Little Thing Called Murder)


Died this Day

1825 Antonio Salieri, age 74 - Italian composer, died in Vienna, Austria. There are some who believed he poisoned Mozart
1890 James Nasmyth, age 81 - Scottish engineer who invented the steam hammer and manufactured over 100 steam locomotives
1925 William Lever, Lord Leverhulme - British manufacturer and founder of the giant Lever Brothers enterprise
1957 Eliot Ness, age 54 - US Government agent who headed the Untouchables in Chicago and was involved in the arrest of Al Capone
1987 Colin Blakely, age 56 – Irish-born actor (The Big Sleep, Equus, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Murder on the Orient Express, Peer Gynt, The Challengers) He also played Dr John H. Watson in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
2000 Douglas Fairbanks Jr, age 90 – Actor (Sinbad the Sailor, Gunga Din, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Dawn Patrol, State Secret, The Life of Jimmy Dolan, Catherine the Great, The Sun Never Sets, The Corsican Brothers, Angels Over Broadway, The Legend of Robin Hood)


On this Day

1663 London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, opened under a charter granted by King Charles II, with a performance of The Humorous Lieutenant
1763 Pontiac's Rebellion began when a confederacy of Native American warriors attacked the British forces at Detroit. The Rebellion was part of a plan by Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawa Indians, to expel the British from lands that had been held by the French. As the French and Indian Wars came to an end in the early 1760s, Native Americans living in former French territory found the new British authorities to be far less conciliatory than their predecessors. In 1762, Pontiac enlisted support from practically every Indian tribe from Lake Superior to the lower Mississippi for a joint campaign to carry out this plan. After failing to take the fort in their initial assault, Pontiac's forces, made up of Ottawas and reinforced by Wyandots, Ojibwas, and Potawatamis, initiated a siege that would stretch into months
1789 The first inaugural ball was held in New York in honour of President and Mrs. George Washington
1823 The deaf Beethoven conducted the first performance of his Ninth Symphony, in Vienna
1837 At St. Ours, Quebec, Louis-Joseph Papineau was chosen leader of the Patriotes at a protest meeting of about 1,200 people. They adopted the Declaration of St. Ours, which declared smuggling a public duty
1847 The American Medical Association was founded in Philadelphia
1888 George Eastman patented his Kodak box camera. He chose the name, Kodak, because he thought it would be easy to remember
1915 The Cunard steamship, Lusitania, was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland in the Celtic Sea. The torpedo attack came without prior warning, and 1,198 of the 1,959 men, women and children on board were drowned, including the multi-millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt and 128 other US citizens. The attack aroused considerable indignation in the US. When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the US, a position that the vast majority favoured. Earlier in the month, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that those travelling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. The sinkings of merchant ships off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the Lusitania to avoid the area or take simple evasive action, such as zigzagging to confuse U-boats plotting the vessel's course. The captain of the Lusitania ignored these recommendations, and at 2:12 pm the 32,000-ton ship was hit by torpedo on its starboard side. The torpedo blast was followed by a larger explosion, probably of the ship's boilers, and the ship sunk in 20 minutes. It was revealed that the Lusitania was carrying about 173 tons of war munitions for Britain, which the Germans cited as further justification for the attack. Public opinion in the US began to turn irrevocably against Germany. Two years later Germany, sank the US liner Housatonic, and four more US merchant ships. That April the US declared war against Germany, and the US entered World War I in 1917
1926 Voting age for British women was lowered from 30 to 21
1934 The Pearl of Allah was found in the Philippines. It weighed almost 14 pounds, and was valued at 3.5-million dollars
1941 Glenn Miller and his orchestra recorded Chattanooga Choo Choo for RCA Victor
1945 Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in a small schoolhouse in Rheims, France. The surrender was signed by German Chief-of-Staff Jodl, and presented to General Montgomery and General Bedell-Smith. It was to take effect the following day, ending the European conflict of World War II
1992 The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on its maiden voyage
1998 Londoners voted overwhelmingly to elect their own mayor for the first time in history