Born this Day

1813 Wilhelm Richard Wagner - German composer, born in Leipzig (The Flying Dutchmen, Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Parsifal, Die Meistersinger, Ring of the Nibelung: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung) Wagner wrote some of Inspector Endeavour Morse's favourite operas
1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Scottish-born physician and author who created Sherlock Holmes. He also wrote the Professor Challenger stories (The Lost World, The Poison Belt, The Land of the Mist). Doyle wrote several other novels which have been completely overshadowed by the success of his detective. (The Stark Munro Letters, The White Company, Micah Clarke, Sir Nigel). Doyle was born in Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he met Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher with extraordinary deductive reasoning power. Bell partly inspired Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes years later. After medical school, Doyle moved to London, where his slow medical practice left him ample free time to write. His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. Starting in 1891, a series of Holmes stories appeared in The Strand magazine. There were a total of four novellas and fifty-six short stories in all, which featured the famous detective. Holmes enabled Doyle to leave his medical practice in 1891 and devote himself to writing, but the author soon grew weary of his creation. In The Final Problem, he killed off both Holmes and his nemesis, Dr. Moriarty, only to resuscitate Holmes later due to popular demand and bring him back in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Empty House.
1907 Sir Laurence Olivier - British stage and film actor (Henry V, Hamlet, War Requiem, The Boys from Brazil, Brideshead Revisited, Carrie, The Jazz Singer, Peter the Great, Richard III, Spartacus, The Merchant of Venice, Marathon Man, Khartoum, The Bounty, Sleuth, Rebecca) From the age of nine, when he played Brutus in a school production of Julius Caesar, Olivier distinguished himself as a gifted Shakespearean actor. He also played Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes movie, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
1927 Michael Constantine - Actor (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Room 222, The Hustler, Hawaii, The Juror) He was also in the Perry Mason episodes The Case of the Blonde Bonanza and The Case of the Runaway Racer
1928 Jackie Cain - Singer with the duo Jackie & Roy (Flamingo, Over the Rainbow, Euphoria, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles)
1934 Peter Nero - Pianist (Theme from the Summer of '42)
1938 Richard Benjamin - Actor (Goodbye Columbus, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Portnoy's Complaint) and director (The Money Pit, Made in America, Milk Money)
1940 Michael Sarrazin - Canadian actor (They Shoot Horses Don't They, The Flim Flam Man, For Pete's Sake, Joshua Then and Now, Bullet to Beijing)
1941 Paul Winfield - Actor (Cliffhanger, Dennis the Menace, Presumed Innocent, Sounder, The Terminator, Star Trek 2) He was in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Runaway Racer
1942 Barbara Parkins - Canadian actress (Peyton Place, Captains and the Kings, Valley of the Dolls) She was in the Perry Mason shows The Case of the Unsuitable Uncle and The Case of the Notorious Nun
1949 Cheryl Campbell – British actress (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan Lord of the Apes, Chariots of Fire, Pennies from Heaven, Casualty, Poirot: Appointment with Death, Lewis: Music to Die For, William and Mary, Monsignor Renard) She portrayed Sylvie Maxton in the Inspector Morse episode The Infernal Serpent She also played Lady Frances Carfax in the Sherlock Holmes episode of the same name
1950 Bernie Taupin - Lyricist for Elton John (Your Song, Friends, Rocket Man, Honkey Cat, Crocodile Rock, Daniel, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me)
1961 Ann Cusack – Actress (The Brotherhood of Poland New Hampshire, Maggie, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, Tank Girl) She is the sister of John and Joan Cusack
1964 Mark Christopher Lawrence – Actor & comedian (Chuck, Christmas With the Kranks, The Mullets, Halloween II, The Pursuit of Happyness, Shake Rattle & Roll: An American Love Story, The George Wendt Show)
1967 Brooke Smith – Actress (Grey’s Anatomy, Crossing Jordon, Silence of the Lambs)
1972 Anna Belknap – Actress (CSI: NY, The Handler, Medical Investigaton)
1978 Ginnifer Goodwin – Actress (Once Upon a Time, Big Love, He’s Just Not That Into You, Walk the Line, Mona Lisa Smile, Ed, Something Borrowed)


Died this Day

AD 337 Constatine the Great - Roman Emperor who converted to Christianity
1885 Victor Hugo, age 83 - French poet, novelist and dramatist (Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
1932 Augusta, Lady Gregory - Irish poet and playwright (The Rising of the Moon, The Gaol Gate, The Workhouse Ward) She was a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre
1972 Cecil Day-Lewis - Poet Laureate of Britain (From Feathers to Iron, A Time to Dance, Overtures to a Death, The Whispering Roots) He was the father of the actor, Daniel Day-Lewis
1972 Dame Margaret Rutherford - British actress (Blithe Spirit, Murder She Said, Murder at the Gallop, Murder Ahoy, The V.I.P.s, Arabella) She died 11 days after her 80th birthday
1990 Major Pat Reid - British author of The Colditz Story, about his experiences as the escape officer at the infamous German war prison in World War II
1990 Rocky Graziano - US boxer and world middleweight champion


On this Day

1216 Louis VIII invaded England, the last military invasion of the country
1455 The thirty-year War of the Roses began in England with the Battle of St. Albans. In the 1450s, English failures in the Hundred Years War with France, coupled with periodic fits of insanity suffered by King Henry VI, led to a power struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a red rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a white rose. Richard, the leader of the Yorkist opposition, was appointed protector in 1453, but in the next year the king regained his sanity and York was excluded from the Royal Council. In 1455, Richard raised an army of 3,000 men, and in May, they marched to London. On May 22, a smaller Lancastrian force met them at St. Albans, twenty miles northwest of London, and three hundred nobles perished before the Lancastrians fled the field. After the battle, Richard again was made English protector. Five years later, he was killed, but his son was crowned as King Edward IV in 1461. The War of Roses left little mark on the common English people but severely thinned the ranks of the English nobility. Among the royalty who perished were kings Henry VI and Richard III. In 1486, King Henry VII's marriage to Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV, united the houses of Lancaster and York and effectively ended the bloody War of the Roses
1611 The first Jesuits arrived in New France, at Port Royal
1761 The first life insurance policy in the US was issued, in Philadelphia
1775 Jean-Olivier Briand, the Bishop of Quebec, ordered loyalty to Britain, and forbade Canadian women to marry soldiers in the invading Patriot army
1819 The first steam-propelled vessel to attempt a transatlantic crossing left Savannah, Georgia. The "Savannah" arrived in Liverpool on June 20th
1838 Canada’s last fatal duel took place in Verdun, Quebec, when Colonel Robert Sweeny killed Major Henry Warde on the Montreal race track. Warde had sent a love letter to Sweeny's wife
1843 A massive wagon train, made up of a thousand settlers and a thousand head of cattle, set off down the Oregon Trail from Elm Grove, Missouri. Known as the Great Emigration, the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon. After departing, the wagon train followed the Sante Fe Trail for some forty miles and then turned northwest to the Platte River, which they followed along its northern route to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. From there, they travelled on to the Rocky Mountains, which they passed through by way of the broad, level South Pass that led to the basin of the Colorado River. The travellers then went southwest to Fort Bridger, northwest across a divide to Fort Hall on the Snake River, and on to Fort Boise, where they gained supplies for the difficult journey over the Blue Mountains and into Oregon. The massive wagon train finally arrived in October, completing the 2,000-mile journey in five months. In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and by 1845, the number of emigrants exceeded three thousand. Travel along the Oregon Trail gradually declined with the coming of the railroads
1850 In New York City, Henry Grinnell financed a US expedition in search of the lost Franklin expedition. Two ships, commanded by Edwin De Haven, would enter the Wellington Channel in August and find some Franklin relics
1867 Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the British North America Act. Canada became the first Dominion of the British Empire the following July 1st. In 1947, the British government amended the act to allow Canada to draw up its own constitution, but it was not until 1982 that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau patriated the Constitution
1868 The Great Train Robbery took place near Marshfield, Indiana. Seven members of the Reno Gang held up the crew, detached the locomotive and made off with $96,000 in cash, gold and bonds
1900 The Associated Press was incorporated in New York as a non-profit news co-operative
1906 The Wright brothers received a patent for the airplane
1955 Jack Benny's popular radio program went off the air after more than two decades. Benny’s violin and comedy act made him a vaudeville star in the 1920s, and he debuted on his own radio show in 1932. Benny launched a TV show in 1952, which ran until 1965
1966 Raymond Burr performed in the last original Perry Mason episode, titled The Case Of The Final Fade-Out. The episode featured author Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of the fictional lawyer, as the judge
1977 Driving at nearly 189 miles an hour, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 auto race
1987 Canadian Rick Hansen, age 29, completed his 26-month Man in Motion tour, in which he wheeled around the globe in his wheelchair. Pumping his wheelchair 3,600 times an hour through 34 countries, he raised millions of dollars for spinal cord research and the disabled