Born this Day

1846 Peter Carl Fabergé – Russian jeweller who is best known for making the exquisite Fabergé eggs. His Easter eggs were made using gemstones and precious metals. Most of the eggs were commissioned by the Russian royal family
1886 Dorothy Harrison – US dog trainer who trained dogs in the Swiss Alps to aid Red Cross, police, and the army. In 1927, she wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled The Seeing Eye, which explained techniques used in Germany to train dogs to aid blind veterans. It attracted the attention of Morris Frank, from Nashville, who became blind at the age of 16. His interest in the article led him to Harrison and to Switzerland, and in 1928 he returned to Nashville accompanied by Buddy Fortunate Fields, the first seeing-eye dog in the US
1896 Howard Hawks - US film director (The Thing From Another World, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Rio Bravo, Sergeant York, A Song is Born, Hatari!, Red River, The Big Sleep, Bringing Up Baby)
1899 Irving G.Thalberg - US movie executive who was one of the most powerful and respected producers in Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s. After his death, the Motion Picture Academy created an award for excellence in production, which is named after him
1908 Mel Blanc - US entertainer who created voices for radio, television and film characters (Bugs Bunny, Barney Rubble, Dino the Dinosaur, Tweety Bird, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Quick Draw McGraw, Foghorn Leghorn, Heathcliff, Mr. Spacely…) He was known as "the man of a thousand voices"
1909 Benny Goodman - Clarinetist and bandleader known as the King of Swing (Let's Dance, Stompin' At The Savoy, Alexander's Ragtime Band, St. Louis Blues, One O'Clock Jump)
1912 Hugh Griffith – Welsh actor (Ben Hur, Tom Jones, Oliver!, Start the Revolution Without Me, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The Last Remake of Beau Geste, The Canterbury Tales, The Walrus and the Carpenter, Mutiny on the Bounty, Exodus, Lucky Jim) He portrayed Frankland in the 1978 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles
1920 Franklin Schaffner - Director (Patton, The Boys from Brazil, Papillon, Planet of the Apes, Lionheart)
1927 Clint Walker - Actor (Cheyenne, The Dirty Dozen, None But the Brave, Yuma, All American Cowboy, Kodiak, Pancho Villa, The Great Bank Robbery, The Travellers, The Ten Commandments, The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw)
1936 Ruta Lee – Canadian actress (Funny Face, Witness for the Prosecution, Coming of Age, The Ghosts of Buxley Hall, Bullet for a Badman, Marjorie Morningstar, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) She appeared in many Perry Mason episodes
1936 Keir Dullea - Actor (2001: A Space Odyssey, Oh What a Night, The Starlost, The Accidental Husband, The Good Shepherd, Leopard in the Snow, 2010)
1939 Michael J. Pollard - Actor (Bonnie and Clyde, Dick Tracy, American Gothic, Roxanne, Scrooged, Tango & Cash)
1944 Meredith MacRae - Actress (Petticoat Junction, My Three Sons, Bikini Beach) She was the daughter of Gordon and Sheila MacRae
1946 Don Ferguson – Canadian comedian and actor (The Royal Canadian Air Farce, Duct Tape Forever)
1951 Stephen Tobolowsky – Actor (Groundhog Day, Heroes, Deadwood, Glee, Memento, Basic Instinct, Thelma & Louise, Bird on a Wire, Mississippi Burning, Spaceballs)
1953 Colm Meaney - Irish actor (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Con Air, Under Siege, The Last of the Mohicans, The Commitments, Die Hard 2, Hell on Wheels, Get Him to the Greek, Law Abiding Citizen)
1955 Philip Bretherton – British actor (As Time Goes By, Footballer’s Wives, Casualty, Cry Freedom, Miss Marple: At Bertram’s Hotel) He portrayed Mr. Joyce Cummins QC in the Sherlock Holmes episode The Problem of Thor Bridge . He also played David Acum in the Inspector Morse episode Last Seen Wearing
1958 Ted McGinley - Actor (The Love Boat, Revenge of the Nerds, Young Doctors in Love, Wayne's World 2, Hope & Faith, Married With Children, The John Larroquette Show, Dynasty, Happy Days)
1961 Harry Enfield – British actor (Harry Enfield and Chums, Men Behaving Badly, We Know Where You Live, Churchill: The Hollywood Years, Marple: The Moving Finger, The Ultimate Pop Star)
1964 Wynonna Judd - Country singer with her mother, Naomi (Mama He's Crazy, Why Not Me, Grandpa Tell Me 'Bout the Good Old Days) She is the sister of actress Ashley Judd
1964 Mark Sheppard – British actor (Supernatural, Warehouse 13, Leverage, Battlestar Galactica, 24, Evil Eyes, Mysterious Island, Firefly, Dollhouse, Soldier of Fortune)
1976 Omri Katz – Actor (Dallas, Eerie Indiana, Hocus Pocus, The John Larroquette Show)
1977 Rachael Stirling – British actress (The Young Victorial, Centurion, Snow White and the Huntsman, Boy Meets Girl, Lewis: Life Born of Fire, Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage, Poirot: Five Little Pigs, Othello, Tipping the Velvet)
2000 Jared Gilmore – Actor (Once Upon A Time, Mad Men, The Back-Up Plan, Opposite Day, A Nanny for Christmas)


Died this Day

1431 Joan of Arc, age 19 - Catholic mystic and French nationalist, burned at the stake as a heretic by the English, following her convictions for witchcraft and heresy. Her condemnation was posthumously reversed in 1456 and she was canonised in 1920
1593 Christopher Marlowe, age 29 – British poet and playwright (Tamburlaine the Great, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Dido Queen of Carthage, The Massacre at Paris, Edward the Second, Hero and Leander, The Passionate Shepherd) Marlowe was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker. He was a bright student, winning scholarships to prestigious schools, earning his BA from Cambridge in 1584. Historians believe Marlowe served as a spy for Queen Elizabeth while at Cambridge. In 1587 he was nearly denied his master's degree until the queen's advisers intervened, recommending he receive the degree and referring obliquely to his services for the state. In May of 1593, Marlowe's former roommate, playwright Thomas Kyd, was arrested and tortured for treason. He told authorities that "heretical" papers found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who was subsequently arrested. While out on bail, Marlowe became involved in a fight over a tavern bill and was stabbed to death
1640 Peter Paul Rubens - Flemish painter
1744 Alexander Pope - British poet and satirist (The Rape of the Lock, Windsor Forest, An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot) He died a week after his 56th birthday
1778 François Arouet de Voltaire, age 94 - French philosopher, historian, playwright and novelist (Candide, La Henriade, Lettres Philosophiques)
1806 Charles Dickinson - US lawyer, died in a duel in Logan County, Kentucky. The victor was future US president Andrew Jackson who was participating in his first recorded duel. Dickinson was known as one of the best pistol shots in the area. The proud and volatile Jackson, a former senator and representative of Tennessee, called for the duel after his wife Rachel was slandered as a bigamist by Dickinson, who was referring to a legal error in the divorce from her first husband in 1791. Jackson met his foe at Harrison's Mills on Red River in Logan, Kentucky. In accordance with duelling custom, the two stood twenty-four feet apart with pistols pointed downwards. After the signal, Dickinson fired first, grazing Jackson's breastbone and breaking some of his ribs. However, Jackson, a former Tennessee militia leader, maintained his stance and fired back, fatally wounding his opponent. It was the first of several recorded duels Jackson was said to have participated in during his lifetime, the majority of which were called in defence of his wife's honour. In 1829, Rachel died, and Jackson was elected the seventh president of the US
1912 Wilbur Wright, age 45 - US aviation pioneer, who with his brother Orville, developed the first real powered aircraft while running their cycle business in Dayton
1946 Louis Slotin, age 35 – Canadian scientist. He was part of the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago which helped to build the first atomic bomb. In December 1944 he moved to the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. There he absorbed a lethal dose of radiation during a lab accident in New Mexico. Nine days earlier, in a shed on the outskirts of Los Alamos, NM, a group of scientists were testing the plutonium core of an atomic bomb in a very primitive and dangerous way, by "tickling the dragon's tale." Slotin was using a screwdriver to do the "tickling" at 3:20 pm, when his hand slipped. In that moment, a blue glow filled the room, and Slotin knew his life was over. He used his body to shield the seven others in the lab from the radiation, absorbing most of it himself. His coffin was wrapped in the US flag and flown home to Winnipeg, Manitoba where he was given a hero's burial
1960 Boris Pasternak, age 70 - Russian poet and author (Dr. Zhivago)
1967 Claude Rains, age 77 - British actor (The Invisible Man, Casablanca, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Notorious)


On this Day

1498 Columbus sailed from Spain on his third voyage of discovery to the New World
1539 Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto landed in Florida
1656 The Grenadier Guards were formed in the British Army
1832 The Rideau Canal officially opened to traffic, with 47 locks linking the Ottawa River at Ottawa with Lake Ontario at Kingston. It was first proposed as a military route between the two cities
1842 Jon Francis attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria, as she rode in her carriage with Prince Albert
1854 The territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established
1859 The British government took over British Columbia from the Hudson's Bay Company
1868 Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a memorial day "for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land." This first national celebration of the holiday took place at Arlington National Cemetery, where both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried. Originally known as Decoration Day, around the turn of the century it was designated as Memorial Day. Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War's end. Records show that by 1865, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day. In April 1866 a women's memorial association in Columbus, Mississippi, decorated the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers. This act of generosity and reconciliation prompted an editorial piece, published by Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, and a poem by Francis Miles Finch, "The Blue and the Grey," published in the Atlantic Monthly. The practice of strewing flowers on soldiers' graves soon became popular throughout the reunited nation. Waterloo, New York was proclaimed by President Lyndon Johnson as the "Birthplace of Memorial Day," because it began a formal observance in May 1866. However, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania also claims to be the first, based on an observance dating back to October 1864. Many other towns also lay claim to being the first. In 1971, federal law changed the observance of the holiday to the last Monday in May and extended it to honour all soldiers who died in US wars
1883 Twelve people were trampled to death in New York City when a rumour that the recently opened Brooklyn Bridge was in danger of collapsing, triggered a stampede
1896 The first recorded car accident in the US took place in New York. It involved bicyclist Evelyn Thomas and a Duryea motor wagon. Miss Thomas suffered a fractured leg
1911 The Indianapolis 500 car race was inaugurated. It was won by Ray Harroun at an average speed of 74.59 miles an hour
1922 The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC, by Chief Justice William Howard Taft
1959 The first experimental hovercraft, designed by Sir Christopher Cockerell and built by Saunders-Roe, was launched at Cowes, Isle of Wight
1959 The Auckland Harbour Bridge was officially opened on New Zealand's North Island
1996 Britain's Prince Andrew and the former Sarah Ferguson were granted an uncontested decree ending their 10-year marriage