1622 Claude-Jean Allouez – French Jesuit missionary and explorer. He travelled through Minnesota and Wisconsin in the 1660s, and has been called the founder of Catholicism in the American West
1755 Nathan Hale – US patriot & Revolutionary War military officer. He was caught by the British, and before he was hanged, he said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country"
1756 John Trumbull - Artist (The Revolution: The Battle of Bunker Hill, The Surrender of Cornwallis, The Declaration of Independence)
1868 Captain Robert F. Scott – British naval officer and Antarctic explorer who set out on a second expedition to reach the South Pole in 1910, which turned out to be an ill-fated attempt to beat Amundsen
1898 Walter Abel - Actor (Raintree County, Mirage, Quick Let's Get Married, 13 Rue Madeleine, Wake Island, Holiday Inn, The Indian Fighter)
1903 Aram Khachaturian - Musician, composer (Sabre Dance, Spartacus)
1932 Billie Whitelaw – British actress (Frenzy, The Dressmaker, The Secret Garden, Charlie Bubbles, Start the Revolution Without Me, The Cloning of Joanna May, Deadly Advice, The Krays, Hot Fuzz, Jane Eyre)
1939 Gary US Bonds - Singer (Quarter to Three, New Orleans, Rendezvous, Come on Let's Go)
1943 Joe Stampley - Country singer (Soul Song, There's Another Woman, Whiskey Chasin', Back Slidin')
1945 David Dukes - Actor (War & Remembrance, The Winds of War, Sisters, The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal, The Josephine Baker Story)
1947 Robert Englund - Actor (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hustle, A Star is Born, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane)
1952 Harvey Fierstein – US stage and screen actor (Torch Song Trilogy, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bullets Over Broadway, Independence Day)
1955 Sandra Bernhard – Comedienne and actress (Playing Mona Lisa, Wrongfully Accused, Hudson Hawk, The King of Comedy)
1956 Bjorn Borg – Swedish tennis champion
1958 Danny Webb – British actor (Alien 3, Lewis, A Scandal in Belgravia, Endeavour, Land Girls, Holby City, The Bill, Marple: At Bertram’s Hotel, Life Begins, The Private Life of Samuel Pepys, Shackleton, Our Friends in the North, Henry V, Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook)
1959 Josie Lawrence – British actress (Marple: By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Poirot: The Third Floor Flat, Enchanged April, Downwardly Mobile, Outside Edge, EastEnders, The Old Curiosity Shop)
1959 Amanda Pays – British actress (The Thief Takers, Leviathan, Max Headroom, The Kindred, Agatha Christie’s Thirteen at Dinner)
1963 Jason Issacs – British actor (Harry Potter movies, The Patriot, Awake, Case Histories, Brotherhood, Grindhouse, Peter Pan, Windtalkers, Resident Evil, Black Hawk Down, Armageddon, Event Horizon, DragonHeart, Capital City) He played Dr. Desmond Collier in the Inspector Morse episode Cherubim & Seraphim
1967 Paul Giamatti – Actor (Sideways, The Illusionist, The Ides of March, Cinderella Man, Thunderpants, Bit Momma’s House, Man on the Moon, The Negotiator, Saving Private Ryan, The Truman Show)
1967 Max Casella – Actor (Doogie Howser M.D., The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Leatherheads, Analyze This, Ed Wood, Newsies)
1974 Danny Strong – Actor (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mad Men, Gilmore Girls, Seabiscuit, Pleasantville)
Died this Day
1799 Patrick Henry – US orator, died in Charlotte County, Virginia, a week after his 63rd birthday
1829 Shanawdithit - She was the last surviving member of the Beothuk Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland who had ranged over the island in relative isolation from other native groups. She died in a St. John’s hospital of tuberculosis. Shanawdithit became the source of much of what is known about her people, who had all but been wiped out by disease and clashes with white settlers in the province by the early 1800s. She witnessed several of the final documented encounters between her people and Newfoundland settlers. In the spring of 1823, after her father died when he fell through the ice while trying to escape a group of hunters, Shanawdithit, her sister and mother, weakened by hunger, surrendered. The three women were taken to St. John's, then back to their people, where it was hoped they would be able to assure the remaining Beothuk of the government's desire to establish friendly relations. Only Shanawdithit survived the year. Brought back to St. John's in 1828, Shanawdithit worked with naturalist and explorer, William Cormack, who recorded much of what she told him about her people's ways and beliefs. She provided several informative drawings depicting the traditions of the Beothuk, and in their short time together the two worked to salvage what they could of Beothuk culture and history. Shanawdithit’s surviving sketches display her visual perception of her homeland and reveal details of her people’s domestic, cultural, and religious life. Simple of line and colour, her cartography offers a rare indigenous perspective on the plight of a people slowly being erased from the map. Shanawdithit lived her final days far from her ancestral homeland. The little we know of the vanished Beothuk is the result of the annotated sketches of this remarkable woman who had both the desire and the courage to share her knowledge. She also had the ability to draw her world, using an innate sense of geography and time to relate what little she could before she passed, like the rest of her people, into history
1891 Sir John A. Macdonald, age 76 - Canada's first Prime Minister. He died while still in office. The bells of Ottawa tolled 76 times for him. He was buried in Kingston, Ontario
1941 Louis Chevrolet – US motor racer and car designer
1956 Hiram Bingham – US archaeologist and senator who located the Inca city of Machu Picchu
1968 Robert F. Kennedy, age 42 – US Senator and presidential candidate, died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, a day after he was shot by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. He was shot three times in a hail of gunfire in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where five others were wounded. The senator had just completed a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary. The Palestinian Sirhan, had a .22 revolver wrested from his grip and was promptly arrested
2005 Anne Bancroft, age 73 – Stage and screen actress (The Miracle Worker, The Graduate, Agnes of God, Dracula Dead and Loving It, The Elephant Man, Silent Movie, Young Winston, Freddy and Max) She was married to Mel Brooks for forty years at the time of her death
On this Day
1683 The Ashmolean, the world's first university museum, opened in Oxford, England. At the time of the English Restoration, Oxford was the centre of scientific activity in England, and in 1677, English archaeologist Elias Ashmole donated his collection of curiosities, including a dodo, to Oxford University. The school's directors planned the construction of a building to display the items permanently, commissioning acclaimed English architect Sir Christopher Wren for the job. The first modern museum, the Ashmolean was designed to display its collections, and was organised so that Oxford University could use it for teaching purposes. It was also regularly opened to the public. In 1845, architect Charles R. Cockerell completed the construction of a new home for the museum's rapidly growing collection on Oxford's Beaumont Street. Today, the collection at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology ranges in time from the earliest implements of man, made about 500,000 years ago, to 20th century works of art. Among the collection of antiquities and artwork are curiosities like Guy Fawkes' lantern and relics like the Alfred Jewel. The Ashmolean Museum was featured in the Inspector Morse episode, The Wolvercote Tongue
1833 In Ellicott's Mills, Maryland, President Andrew Jackson boarded a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad train for a pleasure trip to Baltimore. Jackson, who had never been on a train before, was the first president to take a ride on the Iron Horse, as locomotives were then known
1844 The YMCA, the Young Men's Christian Association, was founded by George Williams, at 72 St. Paul’s Churchyard in London, England
1861 The Maid of the Mist became the first ship to navigate the Niagara whirlpool rapids
1907 Persil, the first household detergent, was marketed by Henkel et Cie of Dusseldorf
1918 The Battle of Belleau Wood, the first large-scale battle fought by US soldiers in World War I, began in Belleau Wood, northwest of the Paris-to-Metz road
1925 Walter Percy Chrysler founded the Chrysler Corporation
1932 The first gasoline tax levied by the US Congress was enacted as a part of the Revenue Act of 1932. The act mandated a series of excise taxes on a wide variety of consumer goods. Congress placed a tax of 1˘ per gallon of gasoline and other motor fuel sold
1933 The first drive-in theatre in the US opened in Camden, New Jersey. The lot covered 10 acres, with room for 400 cars. Richard Hollingshead came up with the idea for the drive-in, and experimented in his driveway at home. He mounted a 1928 Kodak film projector on the hood of his car, projected the image onto a screen he had nailed to two trees in his backyard, and placed a radio behind the screen for sound. He researched his idea thoroughly, simulating rainy conditions by running his sprinkler on his car while watching films, and planning the cars’ spacing by using his friends’ cars to simulate a crowded theatre. By using risers he found he could afford all cars a view. Hollingshead spent $30,000 on his first drive-in on Crescent Boulevard in Camden. The admission price was 25˘ per car and 25˘ per person, with no car paying more than a dollar even. The patent was later overturned in 1950 by a Delaware court
1934 The US’s Securities and Exchange Commission was established
1936 Gatwick Airport opened in Surrey
1944 The greatest combined military force ever assembled launched the D-Day invasion of Europe as thousands of British, US, Canadian and other Allied servicemen stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. Allied soldiers scrambled ashore as planes attacked the Germans from the air, and paratroopers secured a hold further inland. By nightfall, some 10,500 Allied soldiers were dead, wounded or captured
1949 Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell’s prophetic novel of a world ruled by Big Brother, was published
1953 Edmund Hillary and Colonel H.C. Hunt, of the British Mount Everest expedition, were knighted. Tensing Norgay of Nepal, because he was not a citizen of a Commonwealth nation, received the British Empire Medal
1956 The Trans-Canada pipeline bill was passed by the House of Commons
1973 In Ottawa, the Canadian Parliament passed a resolution for a bilingual federal public service to be implemented by 1978
1978 California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, a primary ballot initiative calling for major cuts in property taxes
1984 The original version of the computer game Tetris was launched. It has since sold over 125 million copies and been released for almost all video game platforms
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