Born this Day

1637 Jacques Marquette – French explorer and Jesuit missionary who travelled down the Mississippi River with Louis Joliet
1793 Henry Francis Lyte - Scottish hymn writer who wrote Abide With Me
1796 Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot - French physicist and founder of thermo-dymamics
1801 Brigham Young - Mormon church leader who succeeded Joseph Smith, and led thousands across the wilderness to settle in over 300 US western towns
1861 William Wilfred Campbell – Canadian poet (Lake Lyrics and Other Poems)
1890 Frank Morgan – Actor (The Wizard of Oz, The Shop Around the Corner, The Three Musketeers, The White Cliffs of Dover, Piccadilly Jim, The Great Ziegfeld, Enchanted April)
1898 Molly Picon - US actress and singer (Fiddler on the Roof, Come Blow Your Horn, For Pete's Sake, Murder on Flight 502, Cannonball Run)
1905 Robert Newton – Actor (Treasure Island, Oliver Twist, Blackbeard the Pirate, The Adventures of Long John Silver, The Desert Rats, Around the World in Eighty Days)
1915 John Randolph – Actor (Serpico, Frances, Prizzi’s Honor, You’ve Got Mail, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Grand, The Winds of Kitty Hawk)
1921 Nelson Riddle - Orchestra leader (Cross Country Suite, Lisbon Antigua) He was also a music arranger for Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. He also wrote the theme for the 1966 Batman TV series
1922 Joan Caulfield - Actress (Pony Express Rider, Daring Dobermans, Welcome Stranger, Blue Skies, The Lady Says No)
1925 Richard Erdman - Actor (Tomboy, Stalag 17, Namu the Killer Whale, Cry Danger)
1926 Marilyn Monroe - US film actress and Hollywood legend (Gentleman Prefer Blondes, The Seven-Year Itch, Some Like It Hot, The Asphalt Jungle, Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend, The Misfits, Bus Stop) She was born Norma Jean Mortensen
1926 Andy Griffith - Actor (The Andy Griffith Show, Matlock, A Face in the Crowd, No Time for Sergeants, From Here to Eternity)
1930 Pat Corley - Actor (Bay City Blues, Murphy Brown, Of Mice and Men)
1930 Edward Woodward - British actor (The Equalizer, Breaker Morant, Code Name Kyril, Deadly Advice, Arthur the King, Champions, The Final Option, The Appointment, Callan) He played Sherlock Holmes in the movie, Hands of a Murderer
1934 Pat Boone - Singer (Love Letters In the Sand, April Love, Moody River, Ain't That A Shame, I Almost Lost My Mind, Friendly Persuasion, Don't Forbid Me) and actor (State Fair, Journey to the Centre of the Earth)
1937 Morgan Freeman - Actor (Driving Miss Daisy, Million Dollar Baby, Glory, Unforgiven, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Queen, Another World, Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, The Shawshank Redemption, Invictus, The Dark Knight, The Bucket List)
1939 Cleavon Little – US stage and screen actor (Blazing Saddles, Dear John, Vanishing Point, Fletch Lives, Perfect Harmony, Separate But Equal, Murder by Numbers) He won Broadway's Tony Award for his work in Purlie, in 1970
1940 René Auberjonois - Actor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Batman Forever, The Patriot, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Reilly: Ace of Spies, Bensonm Boston Legal)
1944 Robert Powell – British actor (The Italian Job, Tommy, The Thirty Nine Steps, Shaka Zulu, Hannay, The Detectives, Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage, Holby City)
1945 Linda Scott - Singer (I've Told Every Little Star, Don't Bet Money Honey, I Don't Know Why) and TV host (Where the Action Is)
1946 Brian Cox - Scottish actor (Braveheart, The Cloning of Joanna May, Sharpe's Rifles, Rob Roy, Longitude, The Bourne Identity, X-Men 2, Troy, The Straits, Marple: They Do It With Mirrors, Deadwood) He played Michael Steppings in the Inspector Morse episode, Deadly Slumber
1947 Jonathan Pryce - Welsh actor (Jumpin' Jack Flash, Brazil, The Ploughman's Lunch, Haunted Honeymoon, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Man From the Pru, Deadly Advice, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Age of Innocence, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Clone, Leatherheads)
1947 Ron Wood - British rock guitarist with the Rolling Stones (Waiting on a Friend, Start Me Up, Harlem Shuffle, Fool to Cry)
1948 Powers Boothe – Actor (Deadwood, Joan of Arc, Nixon, Tombstone, Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, 24, Hatfields & McCoys, The Avengers)
1950 John M. Jackson – Actor (JAG, The Glimmer Man, On Promised Land, A Few Good Men, The Hitcher)
1950 Graham Russell - Singer with the group Air Supply (The One that You Love)
1953 Diana Canova - Actress (Soap, I'm a Big Girl Now, Home Free, Night Partners) She is the daughter of actress Judy Canova
1956 Lisa Hartman - Actress (Knot's Landing, Tabitha, Bare Essentials, Deadly Blessing, Red Wind, Where the Boys Are, Valley of the Dolls)
1969 Teri Polo – Actress (Meet the Fockers, Meet the Parents, Northern Exposure)
1973 Adam Garcia – Australian actor (Coyote Ugly, Marple: The Body in the Library, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Britannia High, Bootmen)
1974 Alanis Nadine Morrisette - Canadian singer (Jagged Little Pill, Fate Stay With Me)
1977 Sarah Wayne Callies – Actress (The Walking Dead, Prison Break, Whisper, The Celestine Prophecy)
1979 Craig Olejnik – Canadian actor (The Listener, Margaret’s Museum, The Timekeeper, Runaway, In God’s Country)


Died this Day

1868 James Buchanan - The 15th president of the United States, died near Lancaster, Pennsylvania
1927 Lizzie Borden, age 66 - US Sunday-school teacher and alleged axe murderer, died on the anniversary of the start of her trial, which started in 1893
1943 Leslie Howard, age 50 – British actor (Of Human Bondage, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Gone with the Wind) He died in a plane crash while travelling from Lisbon to London on World War II-related business. His civilian flight was shot down by Nazis who suspected Winston Churchill was aboard. He was the father of British actor Ronald Howard, who played Sherlock Holmes in the 1954 TV series
1959 Sax Rohmer - British author who created Dr Fu Manchu
1968 Helen Keller - Author-lecturer (The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, Out of the Dark, My Religion, Helen Keller's Journal, Teacher) In 1904, she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe, despite being blind and deaf most of her life. She died in Westport, Connecticut, less than a month before her 88th birthday


On this Day

1792 Kentucky became the 15th state of the Union
1779 The court-martial of Benedict Arnold convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a relatively clean record in the early days of the American Revolution, Arnold was charged with malfeasance, misusing government wagons, illegally buying and selling goods, and favouritism to the British Loyalists. Abruptly interrupted at its outset by a British attack north of New York City, the court-martial did not get under way again until December that year, in Morristown, New Jersey. Although Arnold was cleared of most charges, General George Washington issued a reprimand against him, and Arnold became increasingly angered. His notorious betrayal was still many months away, but his resentment over this order and the mistreatment by the US Army would fuel his later decision
1796 Tennessee became the 16th state of the Union
1813 The US Navy gained its motto as the mortally wounded commander of the frigate Chesapeake, Captain James Lawrence, said, "Don't give up the ship," during a losing battle with a British frigate
1831 Sir James Clark Ross first discovered the position of the North Magnetic Pole on the west coast of Boothia Peninsula, North West Territories
1831 Canada's Kingston Penitentiary opened, with 6 inmates
1840 Samuel Cunard navigated his 700 ton wooden paddlewheel steamer, Unicorn, across the Atlantic Ocean to Halifax after a two week trip from Liverpool with 27 passengers
1860 The Province of Canada's first official post office was established at Fort Arthur
1874 The first Pullman cars in Britain were introduced on the Midland Railway, on the London to Bradford route
1880 The first pay telephone service began in New Haven, Connecticut. The pay phone was located in the office of the Connecticut Telephone Company. Patrons paid a toll to an attendant who let them use the phone
1882 Winnipeg was the first to get gas lighting in Manitoba
1890 US Census Bureau clerks began the daunting task of tallying the results of the country's 11th census. The 2,000 clerks were aided for the first time by mechanical calculating devices. Some 45,000 census counters had spent the entire month of June counting the US’s 60 million-plus population, using hole punches to record the results of their surveys by punching out designated spots on the card, like a train conductor punches a ticket. Later, those cards were counted by a tabulating machine invented by 29-year-old Herman Hollerith. Hollerith's counting machine had soundly beaten other proposed counting methods in a contest sponsored by the Census Bureau. Hollerith later founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which eventually became IBM
1909 The Governor General of Canada, Albert Henry George, Earl Grey, donated the Grey Cup for the best rugby football team in Canada
1916 Prohibition went into effect in Manitoba
1927 Ontario ended prohibition as government liquor stores started selling liquor to adults with $2 permits. The province had been dry since 1921
1938 Superman made his first appearance in DC Comics' Action Comics Series issue #1. He was created by Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born cartoonist Joe Shuster. The original cost of the comic was 10¢
1967 The Beatles released their album, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
1969 The tobacco advertising ban on Canadian radio and TV came into effect
1969 In Montreal, John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded Give Peace a Chance with friends Tommy and Dick Smothers, Derek Taylor, Murray the K and Timothy Leary, during their 'bed-in' at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel
1980 Cable News Network (CNN) made its debut