Born this Day

1738 Joseph Ignace Guillotin - French physician and revolutionary who suggested a decapitating machine which bears his name. It was an improved version of similar instruments of execution used in other countries, including Scotland
1759 William Pitt, The Younger - British prime minister from 1783-1801, and 1804-6
1779 Thomas Moore - Irish poet, satirist, composer and musician (Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms, The Last Rose of Summer, Oft in the Stilly Night)
1900 Taffy Abel - US Hockey Hall of Famer and one of first US born NHL players. He played for the New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks
1908 Ian Fleming - British author and creator of James Bond. Fleming worked in naval intelligence during the Second World War, and was a journalist for Reuters and the London Times, stationed in Moscow for both. All of his books were filmed, including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
1910 Rachel Kempson, Lady Redgrave - British stage and screen actress (Jane Eyre, Georgy Girl, Elizabeth R, The Jewel in the Crown, Out of Africa) She was the wife of Sir Michael, and mother of Vanessa, Lynn and Corin Redgrave
1911 Dame Thora Hird - British actress (A Taste of Honey, In Loving Memory, Hallelujah!, Last of the Summer Wine) Her daughter, Janette Scott, had been married to Mel Tormé, making her, at one time, Mel Tormé's mother-in-law
1918 Johnny Wayne – Canadian comedian who was half of the comedy duo of Wayne and Shuster
1931 Carroll Baker - Actress (The Carpetbaggers, Giant, Baby Doll, Harlow, Kindergarten Cop)
1933 Zelda Rubinstein – Actress (Picket Fences, Poltergeist, Under the Rainbow, Sinbad: The Battle of the Dark Knights, Soutland Tales)
1933 John Karlen - Actor (Cagney & Lacey, Dark Shadows, The Winds of War) He was in the Perry Mason TV movie, The Case of the Glass Coffin
1934 Annette, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile and Marie Dionne - The Dionne quintuplets, born near North Bay, Ontario. At the time, they were the only quintuplets to survive more than a few days. The Ontario government placed them in a specially-built hospital, where the children were put on public display. More than three-million people came to watch them play behind a one-way screen. Their mother fought for nine years to regain custody, but the family reunion in 1943 was not successful
1944 Gladys Knight - Singer with her backup group, The Pips (Midnight Train to Georgia, If I Were Your Woman, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Neither One of Us, Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me, Every Beat of My Heart)
1944 Rita MacNeil – Canadian singer (Black Rock, My Island Too, Flying On Your Own, Southeast Wind, Blue Roses) She’s from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
1944 Patricia Quinn – Irish actress (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I Claudius, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, England My England)
1945 John Fogerty - Songwriter/singer with the group Credence Clearwater Revival (Proud Mary, Have You Ever See the Rain, Bad Moon Rising, Lookin' Out My Back Door, I Heard It Through the Grapevine) and with the group The Blue Ridge Rangers (Jambalaya, Hearts of Stone, The Old Man Down the Road, Centerfield)
1945 Gary Stewart - Country singer (She's Acting Single I'm Drinkin' Doubles, Drinkin' Thing, Out of Hand)
1947 Sondra Locke - Actress (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Bronco Billy, Every Which Way But Loose, The Gauntlet, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Willard, Sudden Impact)
1962 Roland Gift - British singer with the group Fine Young Cannibals (She Drives Me Crazy, Good Thing, Don't Look Back, Suspicious Minds) and actor (Highlander, Scandal, Painted Lady, Tin Men)
1962 Brandon Cruz - Actor (The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Bad News Bears)
1964 Christa Miller – Actress (Cougar Town, Scrubs, The Drew Carey Show)
1968 Kylie Minogue - Australian singer (I Should Be So Lucky, Confide in Me) and actress (Neighbours, Moulin Rouge)
1972 Kate Ashfield – British actress (Shaun of the Dead, Poirot: Three Act Tragedy, Collision, The Diary of Anne Frank, This Little Life, Late Night Shopping, Prime Suspect: Scent of Darkness)
1985 Carey Mulligan – British actress (My Boy Jack, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Pride & Prejudice, Bleak House, An Education, Drive, Northanger Abbey, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, Marple: The Sittaford Mystery)


Died this Day

1843 Noah Webster, age 84 – US lexicographer and publisher of Webster's Dictionary
1849 Anne Brontë - British novelist (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Agnes Grey) and sister of Emily and Charlotte
1972 Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor, age 77 - Former King of England who had abdicated the throne to marry the woman he loved, Wallis Warfield Simpson
1984 Eric Morecambe - British comedian who formed a popular comedy duo with Eric Wise. He died two weeks after his 58th birthday
1998 Phil Hartman – Canadian comedian and actor (Saturday Night Live, NewsRadio, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Three Amigos, Blind Date, Coneheads, House Guest, The Simpsons) He was shot to death at his home in Encino, California by his wife, Brynn, who then killed herself


On this Day

1533 England's Archbishop declared the marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid
1664 The French West India Company received a royal grant of all French colonies in North America and a monopoly of trade in exchange for a royalty to the King
1742 The first indoor swimming pool in England opened in London. The entrance fee was one guinea
1756 In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeated a French reconnaissance party in southwestern Pennsylvania. In a surprise attack, the Virginians killed 10 French soldiers from Fort Duquesne, including the French commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and took 21 prisoners. Only one of Washington's men was killed. The French and Indian War was the last and most important of a series of colonial conflicts between the British and the American colonists on one side, and the French and their broad network of Native-American allies on the other. Actually part of a larger global conflict known as the Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War officially began on May 15th of the same year, when Britain declared war on France. Thirteen days later, the twenty-two-year-old George Washington struck the first blow of the war in North America, defeating a French force en route from Fort Duqesne. Over the next seven years of the war, Washington continued to lead the Virginia militia in the defence of their colony's western frontier colonies. On February 10, 1763, the French and Indian War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by France, Great Britain, and Spain. In the treaty, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain, and strengthened the thirteen American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire to Britain contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots, even though the Americans were led by France's old enemy George Washington
1808 Canadian explorer Simon Fraser began a trip down the river that would bear his name
1858 Tonic water was patented by Erasmus Bond of London
1892 The Sierra Club was organised in San Francisco
1898 The Shroud of Turin was photographed for the first time. Many believe the shroud shows the negative image of the crucified Jesus Christ
1902 Owen Wister's book, The Virginian, was published by Macmillan Press. It was the first "serious" Western and one of the most influential in the genre. Almost single-handedly, The Virginian turned the US cowboy into a legendary hero. The book became a sensation almost overnight, selling more than 1.5 million copies by 1938
1926 The Canadian Old Age Pension Plan was approved
1929 Hollywood's first all-colour, all-sound musical, On with the Show, debuted. Sound pictures had appeared two years earlier with The Jazz Singer, which included a few lines of dialogue and several songs. Primitive colour systems, requiring film to be painted or tinted to add an additional one or two colours, were common in the 1920s and even earlier, but the industry had reverted to black and white with the introduction of sound because the colouring process interfered with soundtrack reproduction. New colour systems were invented and improved throughout the 1920s and 1930s, but it wasn't until the mid-1930s that realistic colour was introduced
1932 The world's largest sea dam was completed in Holland. It stretched 2,000 miles across the mouth of the Zuider Zee, creating a new inland lake, the IJsselmeer
1935 John Steinbeck's first successful novel, Tortilla Flat, was published. Tortilla Flat describes the antics of several drifters who share a house in California. The novel's endearing comic tone captured the public's imagination, and the novel became a financial success
1951 The first Goon Show was broadcast by the BBC. Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe brought to life Henry Crunn, Major Bloodnock, Minnie Bannister, Bluebottle, Neddy Seagoon and Eccles. British comedy would never be the same, or sane, again
1954 Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder opened, at New York's Paramount Theatre. The movie was filmed in 3-D, but most movie houses showed it in the traditional 2-D format
1977 Fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, killing 165 people
1987 Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, stunned the world as he landed a private plane in Moscow's Red Square, having evaded Soviet air defences. The plane had not been detected once during its 700-mile flight from Helsinki, Finland. Soviet authorities hastily arrested the pilot at his conspicuous landing spot, and in September, he was convicted on charges stemming from the flight. His seemingly effortless penetration of Soviet air space raised serious questions about the Soviet Union's ability to defend itself from air attack, and shook the Soviet military hierarchy to its core. Following his conviction, Rust was sentenced to four years in a labour camp, but was released as a goodwill gesture to the West after serving only a year of his sentence