Born this Day

1803 Ralph Waldo Emerson - US essayist and poet (The American Scholar, May-Day and Other Pieces, English Traits, The Conduct of Life, Society and Solitude, Representative Men, Nature, Days)
1878 Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson - Vaudeville and screen dancer who was known as The King of Tap Dancers (Stormy Weather, Blackbirds of 1928, The Hot Mikado, The Littlest Rebel, In Old Kentucky, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Little Colonel)
1879 William Maxwell Aiken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook - Canadian-born British politician, journalist and newspaper proprietor (London Daily Express, London Sunday Express, London Evening Standard) He went to England in 1910, and in 1911 was elected to Parliament. That same year, he was knighted, and in 1916 he was raised to the peerage, taking his title Beaverbrook from a small stream near his home in New Brunswick. He was one of only three persons to sit in the British Cabinet during both World Wars I and II. The others were Winston Churchill and John Simon. He served as Chancellor of the University of New Brunswick, and donated his art collection to the city of Fredericton, New Brunswick, where it served as the nucleus of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. When he died his son renounced the peerage, saying that there could only be one Lord Beaverbrook
1889 Igor Sikorsky - Russian-born US aeronautical engineer who developed the helicopter, and built the first practical model in 1939
1898 Bennett Cerf - US publisher, businessman and founder of Random House Publishers. He was a regular panelist on What’s My Line?
1913 Richard Dimbleby - British reporter and pioneering broadcast journalist who became the BBC's first war correspondent in 1939
1921 Hal David - Songwriter (The Four Winds and the Seven Seas, American Beauty Rose, Broken-Hearted Melody, The Story of My Life, Magic Moments) Many of his songs were written with Burt Bacharach
1923 Kitty Kallen - Singer (Little Things Mean a Lot, Go on with the Wedding, If I Give My Heart to You, My Colouring Book)
1925 Jeanne Crain - Actress (Pinky, State Fair, People Will Talk)
1926 Claude Akins - Actor (The Caine Mutiny, From Here to Eternity, Rio Bravo, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Inherit the Wind, B.J. and the Bear, Austin City Limits, Murder She Wrote)
1927 Robert Ludlum – Author (The Bourne Identity, The Chancellor Manuscript, The Holcroft Covenant, The Sigma Protocol, The Prometheus Deception, The Osterman Weekend)
1929 Beverly Sills - Opera soprano
1934 David Burke - British stage and screen actor (Reilly: The Ace of Spies, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, The Woman in Black, Bertie and Elizabeth, Poirot: Hickory Dickory Dock, Mesmer) His wife is Anna Calder-Marshall who appeared in the Sherlock Holmes episode, The Eligible Bachelor. He is best known for his role as Dr. John H. Watson, in which he portrayed the character as an intelligent and dynamic man, as the stories depict
1935 William Patrick (W.P.) Kinsella – Canadian teacher and writer (The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt) His book, Shoeless Joe, was made into the movie Field of Dreams
1936 Tom T. Hall - Country singer (P.S. I Love You), songwriter (Harper Valley P.T.A.) and syndicated TV host (Pop Goes the Country, The Nashville Network)
1939 Sir Ian McKellen - British actor (X-Men, Gods and Monsters, The Keep, Walter and June, Last Action Hero, The Six Degrees of Separation, Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code, Rasputin, David Copperfield, The Shadow, Last Action Hero, The Keep, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Vicious) He portrayed an aging Sherlock in the movie Mr. Holmes
1939 Dixie Carter - Actress (Designing Women, Different Strokes, Filthy Rich, Family Law, Desperate Housewives) She was married to Hal Holbrook. She was in the Perry Mason TV movie, The Case of the Lethal Lifestyle
1943 Leslie Uggams - Actress (Roots, Backstairs at the White House, Skyjacked, Toe to Toe, Sugar Hill) and singer (Sing Along with Mitch)
1944 Frank Oz - British born puppeteer, actor (Sesame Street, Muppet Movies, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places) and director (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Stepford Wives, In & Out, What About Bob?, Little Shop of Horrors) He worked with Jim Henson on the Muppets, and is also the voice of Yoda in the Star Wars series of movies
1947 Karen Valentine - Actress (Room 222, Children in the Crossfire, Perfect People)
1951 Patti D'Arbanville - Actress (Modern Problems, Wiseguy, The Fan, Rescue Me, Third Watch, New York Undercover)
1955 Connie Sellecca - Actress (Hotel, The Greatest American Hero, The Brotherhood of the Rose, Second Chances, Flying High)
1963 Mike Myers - Canadian actor/comedian (Austin Powers movies, Saturday Night Live, Wayne's World, So I Married An Axe Murderer, Shrek, Inglourious Basterds, 54, It’s Only Rock and Roll)
1964 Ray Stevenson – Irish actor (Rome, Thor, The Book of Eli, The Three Musketeers, The Other Guys, Kill the Irishman, King Arthur, City Central, Band of Gold)
1969 Anne Heche – Actress (Wag the Dog, Volcano, Donnie Brasco, Cedar Rapids, Men in Trees, Everwood)
1970 Octavia Spencer – Actress (The Help, Raising the Bar, Next of Kin, Ugly Betty, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, A Time to Kill)
1971 Justin Henry – Actor (Kramer vs. Kramer, Sixteen Candles, Finding Home)
1973 Molly Sims – Actress and model (Las Vegas, The Benchwarmers, Starsky & Hutch, House of Style)
1976 Cillian Murphy – Irish actor (Inception, Batman Begins, Sunshine, Watching the Detectives, The Dark Knight, Cold Mountain, The Way We Live Now)


Died this Day

1675 Gespard Poussin - French landscape painter
1934 Gustav Holst - British composer (The Planets, In the Bleak Midwinter)


On this Day

1660 The English Restoration of the Monarchy began, as Charles II, the exiled King of England, landed at Dover to assume the throne and end eleven years of military rule. Prince of Wales at the time of the English Civil War, Charles II fled to France after Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarians defeated King Charles I's Royalists in 1646. Charles I, was beheaded in 1649. After Cromwell's death in 1658, the English republican experiment faltered. Cromwell's son Richard proved an ineffectual leader and the public resented the strict Puritanism of England's military rulers. In 1660, in what became known as the English Restoration, General George Monck met with Charles II and arranged to restore him to the throne that his father lost, in exchange for a promise of amnesty and religious tolerance for his former enemies. In the first year of the Restoration, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted of treason and his body disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and hanged from the gallows at Tyburn
1768 Captain Cook set sail on his first voyage in the Endeavour, which circumnavigated New Zealand, and surveyed the east coast of Australia. Inspector Morse was named after this ship, but managed to keep it a secret for many, many years!
1790 Congress enacted the US’s first copyright protection law, and President George Washington signed the bill six days later. Copyright protection extended for fourteen years, with renewal rights granted only to living filers
1793 In Baltimore, Maryland, Father Stephen Theodore Badin became the first Catholic priest to be ordained in the US. Badin was ordained by Bishop John Carroll, and appointed to the Catholic mission in Kentucky
1810 Argentina began its revolt against Spain
1833 The first flower show in Britain was held at the Royal Horticultural Society in Chiswick, West London
1840 The first drama school in Britain opened. Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School in Dean Street later became a theatre
1850 The first hippopotamus arrived in Britain, destined for Regent's Park Zoo
1858 The first shipload of gold miners from California arrived in British Columbia
1861 President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the Civil War and was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney immediately sought a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court could examine the charges. However, President Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the general in command of Fort McHenry refused to turn Merryman over to the authorities. Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn't respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South. Five years later, in an unrelated case, the Supreme Court held that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus and that civilians were not subject to military courts, even in times of war
1882 The Royal Society of Canada was founded to promote science and literature
1895 Playwright Oscar Wilde was convicted of a morals charge in London, for offences arising from his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the 8th Marquess of Queensberry's son. The trial had started one month before, and he was sentenced to prison 1935 Babe Ruth hit his 714th and final home run, for the Boston Braves in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates
1958 The first Direct Distance Dialling (DDD) system in Canada was installed in Toronto
1961 President Kennedy asked the nation to work toward putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade
1967 US President Lyndon Johnson unveiled the United States' Centennial gift to Canada at Expo '67, a crystal and steel sculpture called The Great Ring of Canada
1968 The Gateway Arch, part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, was dedicated
1977 The space fantasy Star Wars opened, becoming one of the most popular movies of all time
1981 'Spiderman' Daniel Goodwin of Chicago used suction cups and metal clips to become the first person to scale the outside of the 110-storey Sears Roebuck Tower. Following the seven and a-half hour climb, he was jailed for disorderly conduct
1982 Argentina called for a negotiated end to the Falkland Islands war against Britain with the help of the United Nations
1982 The electronics firm Philips introduced Laservision, a laserdisc and player unit
1987 In Yonkers, NY, New Brunswick jockey Hervé Filion rode Commander Bond to victory in the third race at Yonkers Raceway, becoming the first harness racing driver to win 10,000 races
1997 Senator Strom Thurmond, R-SC, became the longest-serving senator in US history, marking 41 years and 10 months of service to that date