Born this Day

1761 John Rennie – Scottish civil engineer who built the old Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge across the Thames River. He also built New London Bridge, which was sold in the 1960s to a US consortium who removed it brick by brick and rebuilt it in Arizona
1778 Beau Brummell – British men's fashion leader and dandy, who inherited a large fortune. He was a friend of the Prince Regent until they quarrelled. A great gambler, Brummell also accumulated large debts, and was forced to flee to Calais in 1816. He was later imprisoned for debt, and died in a charitable asylum
1811 Richard Doddridge Blackmore – British novelist (Lorna Doone, Cripps the Carrier, Clara Vaughan, Christowell: A Dartmoor Tale)
1848 Paul Gauguin - French Post-Impressionist painter who left his job as a stockbroker in 1883 to become a full time painter
1899 Elizabeth Bowen – Irish novelist and short story writer (Encounters, Joining Charles, The Cat Jumps, Last September, The Death of the Heart, The Heat of the Day, Eva Trout)
1907 T.E.B. Clarke – British screenwriter (The Lavender Hill Mob)
1909 Jessica Tandy – British-born US actress (Driving Miss Daisy, Cocoon, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Birds, The World According to Garp) She performed on Broadway with her husband, Hume Cronyn
1917 Dean Martin – US singer (Memories are Made of This, Everybody Loves Somebody, Houston) and actor (Airport, The Dean Martin Show, The Sons of Katie Elder, Robin and the 7 Hoods, Bells are Ringing) He starred as Matt Helm in many movies, and was the straight man to Jerry Lewis in their comedy team. He was also a member of The Rat Pack
1928 James Ivory – US movie director (A Room With A View, The Bostonians, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, The Remains of the Day, The Golden Bowl)
1929 John Turner – 17th Canadian Prime Minister
1931 Virginia McKenna - Actress (Duel of Hearts, Born Free, The Chosen, Simba)
1934 Wynn Stewart - Singer (It's Such a Pretty World Today, Wishful Thinking, After the Storm)
1940 Tom Jones – Welsh singer (It's Not Unusual, She's a Lady, What's New Pussycat?, I'll Never Fall in Love Again, Without Love, Delilah, Love Me Tonight, Green Green Grass of Home)
1940 Ronald Pickup – British actor (Ivanhoe, The Rector's Wife, Bethune: The Making of a Hero, Never Say Never Again, Zulu Dawn, The Day of the Jackal, The Jury II, Lewis: Wild Justice, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Holby City) He played Ian Matthews in the Inspector Morse episode Who Killed Harry Field? He also played Barrymore in the The Hound of the Baskervilles
1943 Ken Osmond - Actor (Leave It to Beaver)
1952 Liam Neeson – Irish actor (Schindler's List, Rob Roy, The Dead Pool, Excalibur, The Bounty, The Mission, A Prayer for the Dying, Darkman, Nell, The Haunting, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace)
1954 Louise Erdrich – US author (Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, The Bingo Palace)
1958 Prince Rogers Nelson aka Prince – US musician and singer (When Doves Cry, Let's Go Crazy, Purple Rain) and actor (Purple Rain, Under the Cherry Moon, Graffiti Bridge)
1968 Michael Cera – Canadian actor (Arrested Development, What Katy Did, Superbad, Juno, Childrens’ Hospital)
1970 Helen Baxendale – British actress (An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Cold Feet, Friends, Crossing the Floor, Marple: A Pocketful of Rye, Lewis: Counter Culture Blues, Kidnap and Ransom)
1972 Karl Urban – New Zealand actor (Star Trek, Comanche Moon, Red, The Bourne Supremacy, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Lord of the Rings movies, Ghost Ship, Xena: Warrior Princess)
1978 Mini Anden – Swedish actress & model (The Mechanic, Chuck, My Boys, Fashion House)
1981 Larisa Oleynik – Actress (Mad Men, Hawaii Five-0, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Baby-Sitters Club)


Died this Day

1329 Robert the Bruce, age 54 - Scotland's national hero who seized the throne in 1306 to become King of Scotland. He died of leprosy, which he had contracted during his campaigns against the English
1866 Chief Seattle - Chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. He died in a village, near the city named for him. Born sometime around 1790, Seattle (Seathl) was a chief of the tribes who lived around the Pacific Coast bay that is today called Puget Sound. He was the son of a Suquamish father and a Duwamish mother, a lineage that allowed him to gain influence in both tribes. By the early 1850s, small bands of Euro-Americans had begun establishing villages along the banks of Puget Sound. Chief Seattle welcomed his new neighbours and treated them with kindness. In 1853, several settlers moved to a site on Elliott Bay to establish a permanent town, and since Chief Seattle had proved so friendly and welcoming, the settlers named their tiny new settlement in his honour. The Euro-American settlers picked the site because of the luxuriant forest on the bluff behind the new village. The Gold Rush in California had created a booming market for timber, and soon most of the villagers were at work cutting the trees and skidding them down a long chute to a newly constructed sawmill. The chute became known as "skid road," and in time, it became the main street in Seattle, though it kept its original name. When the Seattle business district later moved north, the area became a haven for drunks and derelicts. Consequently, "skid road" or "skid row" became slang for the dilapidated area of any town. Not all the Puget Sound Indians were as friendly toward the white settlers as Chief Seattle. War broke out in 1855, and Indians from the White River Valley south of Seattle attacked the village. Chief Seattle argued that resistance would merely anger the settlers and hasten the Indians' demise. By the next year, many of the hostile Indians had concluded that Chief Seattle was right and made peace. Rather than fight, Seattle tried to learn white ways. Jesuit missionaries introduced him to Catholicism, and he became a devout believer. He observed morning and evening prayers throughout the rest of his life. The people of the new city of Seattle also paid some respect to the chief's traditional religion. The Suquamish believed the mention of a dead man's name disturbs his eternal rest. To provide Chief Seattle with a pre-payment for the difficulties he would face in the afterlife, the people of Seattle levied a small tax on themselves to use the chief's name
1886 Richard March Hoe – British born rotary press inventor who emigrated to the US where he established his printing company
1937 Jean Harlow, age 26 – US actress (Platinum Blonde, Dinner at Eight, Blonde Bombshell, Suzy) She died of uremic poisoning
1954 Alan Turing – British mathematician and computer pioneer who cracked the German codes in WWII. He died two weeks before his 42nd birthday
1967 Dorothy Parker - Author-critic and poet (Death and Taxes, Enough Rope, Not So Deep as a Well, Laments for the Living, Close Harmony, Ladies of the Corridor) She died in New York. She was famed for her caustic wit, and symbolised the Roaring Twenties in New York for many readers. Parker was born in New Jersey and lost her mother as an infant. Shortly after she finished high school, her father died, and she struck out on her own for New York, where she took a job writing captions for fashion photos for Vogue for $10 a week. She supplemented her income by playing piano at nights at a dancing school. In 1917, she was transferred to the stylish Vanity Fair, where she became close friends with Robert Benchley, the managing editor, and Robert Sherwood, the drama critic. The three became the core of the famous Algonquin Round Table, an ad hoc group of newspaper and magazine writers, playwrights, and performers who lunched regularly at the Algonquin Hotel and tried to outshine each other in brilliant conversation and witty wisecracks. Parker, known as the quickest tongue among them, became the frequent subject of gossip columns as a prototypical young New Yorker enjoying the freedom of the 1920s. Parker lost her job at Vanity Fair in 1919 because her reviews were too harsh. She began writing reviews for The New Yorker, as well as publishing her own work
1970 E.M. Forster, age 91 – British novelist (A Passage to India, A Room With A View, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howard’s End, The Celestial Omnibus)


On this Day

1566 Sir Thomas Gresham laid the foundation stone of the first Royal Exchange in London
1576 Explorer Martin Frobisher set sail on the Gabriel and the Michael to search for the North West Passage. His voyage was licensed by the Muscovy Company, and backed by Elizabeth I and London merchants. During this expedition, he would sight Greenland, and name Frobisher Bay after himself
1654 Louis XIV was crowned King of France in Rheims
1776 Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution calling for a Declaration of Independence
1832 Irish Immigrants arrived in Québec City, aboard the sailing ship Carrick from Dublin. A government inspector allowed the vessel to leave the quarantine station, however, some of the Irish had Asian cholera, which soon spread in Quebec and Montreal. The resulting epidemic killed about 6,000 people in Lower Canada
1862 The US and Britain executed a treaty for suppression of the slave trade
1905 Norway refused to recognise the Swedish king and declared its independence
1929 The sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome. The Papal state had been non-existent since 1870
1939 King George VI became the first reigning British monarch to visit the US when he and his wife, Elizabeth, crossed the Canada-US border to Niagara Falls, New York. The royal couple subsequently visited New York City and Washington, DC. On June 12, they returned to Canada, where they embarked on their voyage home
1942 The Battle of Midway, one of the most decisive US victories in its war against Japan, came to an end. In the four-day sea and air battle, the outnumbered US Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers with the loss of only one of its own, the Yorktown, thus reversing the tide against the previously invincible Japanese navy
1950 The first episode of the BBC’s radio serial of the lives of the farming folk of Ambridge, The Archers, was broadcast. It was a favourite of Inspector Morse
1955 The Lux Radio Theatre signed off the air permanently. The program, which launched in 1934, became one of the most influential radio shows of its time, making box office hits out of the movies it featured
1956 A series of rockfalls sent two-thirds of a huge Ontario Hydro power generating station tumbling into the Niagara River gorge, about a mile below the Falls
1967 During the dedication of a memorial to Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth shook hands with the Duchess of Windsor, healing a feud that had split Britain's royal family for 30 years. The split occurred when King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry the Duchess, the former Wallis Warfield Simpson