Born this Day

1707 Carolus Linnaeus - Swedish botanist who was the founder of modern botany. He produced major works on classification of the species, creating a system for defining genera and species
1734 Franz Anton Mesmer - Austrian physician who developed the technique of mesmerism, or hypnosis
1795 Sir Charles Barry - British architect who designed Britain's Houses of Parliament
1824 Ambrose Burnside - US Civil War Union general. One of his legacies is the term “sideburns”, which arose from his unusual facial hair
1883 Douglas Fairbanks - Actor (The Mark of Zorro, The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad) He was married to Mary Pickford, and was the father of Douglas Fairbanks Jr
1890 Herbert Marshall - British actor (The Little Foxes, The Painted Veil, The Razor's Edge, The Underworld Story, The Virgin Queen) For most of his acting career he managed to disguise the fact that he had an artificial leg
1908 John Bardeen – US physicist and Nobel prize winner who, along with William Shockley and Walter Bratton, invented the transistor
1910 Scatman Crothers - Actor (Hello Dolly!, Lady Sings the Blues, The King of Marvin Gardens, Chico and the Man, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Silver Streak, The Cheap Detective, The Shining, Sanford and Son) and singer (Hong Kong Phooey)
1910 Artie Shaw - Jazz clarinettist and bandleader (Begin The Beguine, Indian Love Call, Stardust, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, Any Old Time)
1912 John Payne - Actor (Miracle on 34th Street, The Razor's Edge, Springtime in the Rockies, Tin Pan Alley, To the Shores of Tripoli)
1919 Betty Garrett - Actress (All in the Family, LaVerne & Shirley, My Sister Eileen, Take Me Out to the Ball Game)
1920 Helen O'Connell - Singer (Green Eyes, Amapola, Tangerine) She's married to bandleader, Frank DeVol
1928 Rosemary Clooney - Singer (Come On-A My House, This Ole House, Bye Bye Blackbird) and actress (White Christmas, Deep in My Heart, The Rosemary Clooney Show) She had been married to José Ferrer, was the mother of Miguel Ferrer, and was the aunt of George Clooney
1928 Nigel Davenport - British actor (A Man for All Seasons, Chariots of Fire, Picture of Dorian Gray, A Taste of Honey, Howard's Way, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Longitude)
1931 Barbara Barrie - Actress (Barney Miller, Backstairs at the Whitehouse, Private Benjamin, Suddenly Susan)
1933 Joan Collins - British actress (Dynasty, The Wild Women of Chastity Gulch, The Flintstones in Rock Vegas, Marple: They Do It with Mirrors) She is the sister of writer, Jackie Collins. She played Edith Keeler in the Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever. She also played the role of The Siren, in TV's Batman series
1934 Dr. Robert Moog - Electronics inventor of the Moog synthesiser
1936 Charles Kimbrough – Actor (Murphy Brown, The Wedding Planner, Cast the First Stone, Switching Channels)
1945 Lauren Chapin - Actress (Father Knows Best)
1952 Marvellous Marvin Hagler - International Boxing Hall of Famer, world middleweight champion
1958 Drew Carey - Actor-comedian (The Drew Carey Show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?)
1978 Jesse Heiman – Actor (Chuck, The Jerk Theory, The Social Network, An American Carol, Old School, American Pie 2)
1984 Adam Wylie – Actor (Picket Fences, Kindergarten Cop, Gilmore Girls, Child’s Play 2)


Died this Day

1701 William Kidd – Scottish-born privateer-turned-pirate, popularly known as Captain Kidd. He was executed by hanging at London's Execution Dock for his convictions on five counts of piracy and one count of murdering a crewman. In later years, a legend grew up around the story of Captain Kidd, although reports of his fabled buried treasure have not been substantiated
1868 Kit Carson - US frontiersman
1906 Henrik Ibsen, age 78 - Norwegian playwright and poet (A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Peer Gynt, The Pillars of Society, An Enemy of the People)
1934 Bonnie Parker, age 23 and Clyde Barrow, age 25 - Notorious US outlaws who left a string of bank robberies and murders behind them. They were shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police officers Near Gibsland, Louisiana, as they attempted to escape apprehension in a stolen Ford Deluxe along a road in Bienville Parish
1937 John D. Rockefeller - US industrialist and philanthropist, died in Ormond Beach, Florida


On this Day

1430 Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English
1533 The marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void, as he divorced her to marry his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The result was a break with the Church in Rome, despite Henry's title as "Protector of the Faith." Catherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. She was the mother of Mary Tudor, Queen of England, also known as Bloody Mary
1785 Bifocal eye glasses were invented by Benjamin Franklin
1788 South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the US Constitution
1873 Canadian Parliament passed a bill creating the North-West Mounted Police to patrol the border and keep peace between Indians and traders. In 1920 they merged with the Dominion Police to form the RCMP
1900 Sergeant William Harvey Carney was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery on July 18, 1863, while fighting for the Union cause as a member of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. He was the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, which is the US's highest military honour. In July 1863, the 54th volunteered to lead the assault on Fort Wagner, a highly fortified outpost on Morris Island that was part of the Confederate defence of Charleston Harbour. Struggling against a lethal barrage of cannon and rifle fire, the regiment fought their way to the top of the fort's parapet over several hours. Sergeant William Harvey Carney was wounded there while planting the US flag. The regiment's white commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, was killed, and his soldiers were overwhelmed by the fort's defenders and had to fall back. Despite his wound, Carney refused to retreat until he removed the flag, and though successful, he was shot again in the process. The 54th lost 281 of its 600 men in its brave attempt to take Fort Wagner, which throughout the war never fell by force of arms. Carney eventually recovered and was discharged with disability in June, 1864
1911 The New York Public Library was dedicated in a ceremony presided over by President William Howard Taft. It was the largest marble structure ever constructed in the US. Occupying a two-block section of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, the monumental beaux-arts structure took fourteen years to complete at a cost of nine million dollars. The day after its dedication, the library opened its doors to the public, and some 40,000 citizens passed through its door to make use of a collection that consisted of more than a million books
1923 The Crow scout Curley, the last man on the army side to see Custer and the 7th Cavalry alive, was buried at the National Cemetery of the Big Horn Battlefield in Montana. He was born around 1859 near the Little Rosebud River in Montana, and from an early age had participated in fights with the Crow's hated enemy, the Sioux. Like many of his people, he viewed the Anglo-American soldiers as allies in the Crow war with the Sioux. When he was in his late teens, he signed on as a cavalry scout to aid the army's major campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne in the summer of 1876. On the morning of June 25, Curley and the other scouts warned Custer that a massive gathering of Indians lay ahead that far outnumbered his contingent of 187 men. Custer dismissed the report and made the unusual decision to attack in the middle of the day. The scouts believed this would be suicidal and prepared to die. Right before the battle began Custer released the Crow scouts from duty. All of the scouts, except for Curley, obeyed and rode off to relative safety. When it had become clear that Custer's army was going to be wiped out, Curley abandoned his looking post and rode away to warn the approaching Generals Terry and Gibbon of the disaster. In the weeks following the battle, Curley provided an accurate and valuable account of the final moments of Custer's 7th Cavalry. Unfortunately, some interviewers later pushed the eager-to-cooperate Curley to revise his account and others simply misrepresented his testimony to fit their own theories. Consequently, for many years Curley was dismissed as a liar. Later historians, however, have vindicated the accuracy of Curley's initial story. Little is known about Curley's life after the Little Big Horn, but at some point he moved to the Crow Agency in Montana where he died of pneumonia, and was buried at the National Cemetery at the Little Big Horn Battlefield
1929 Canada's first airborne wedding took place in a bi-plane over Regina
1941 Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, second cousin of King George VI of Britain and the only man other than the king to hold rank in all three military services simultaneously, was among those thrown into the Mediterranean Sea when his destroyer, the HMS Kelly, was sunk. The Kelly was among several British cruisers, destroyers, and battleships sunk off Crete by German dive-bombers. Mountbatten was still on the bridge of the ship when it finally flipped over, but he managed to swim to shore and take control of the rescue operation. Just a day before the sinking of the Kelly, the battleship Valiant was damaged but not sunk during an equally vicious German air attack, also off Crete, which succeeded in sinking two cruisers and four destroyers. Among the crewmen of the Valiant was Lord Mountbatten's nephew, Prince Philip of Greece, now husband of Queen Elizabeth II
1994 Funeral services were held at Arlington National Cemetery for former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis