Born this Day

1724 John Smeaton – British civil engineer and designer who is regarded as the father of civil engineering in Britain. In the late 1750s, he built the third Eddystone Lighthouse, Plymouth, Devon. It was all-masonry, using dovetailed blocks of portland stone. Smeaton was the first to develop a cement which would be used underwater, when he discovered the best mortar for underwater construction to be limestone with a high proportion of clay. Smeaton also introduced cast-iron shafts and gearing into wind and water mills, designed large atmospheric pumping engines for mines, and improved the safety of the diving bell
1810 Robert Schumann - Composer (Symphonic Etudes, Fantasia in C Major) He had to give up playing the piano when he injured his hand in a mechanical contrivance which he had invented to strengthen his fingers
1832 Sir Charles Tilston Bright - British engineer who supervised the laying of the first Atlantic telegraph cable
1848 Franklin Hiram King – US agricultural scientist who invented the cylindrical tower silo and a gravity system of ventilation for dairy barns that was widely used until electrically powered blowers became commonly available
1867 Frank Lloyd Wright - US architect (Pennsylvania's Falling Water, NYC's Guggenheim Museum, Wisconsin’s Taliesin, Chicago’s Robie House) He designed over 600 buildings in a career that spanned over 66 years. He developed the Prairie Style of architecture, and re-introduced the philosophy of Naturalism to design in the 1940's
1916 Professor Sir Francis Crick – British biologist and Nobel Prize winner, with J.D. Watson, for their work in discovering the structure of DNA
1918 Robert Preston - Actor (Victor Victoria, The Music Man, How the West was Won, North West Mounted Police, The Sundowners)
1921 Alexis Smith – Canadian actress (Gentleman Jim, Night and Day, The Age of Innocence, Of Human Bondage, Dallas)
1925 Barbara Bush – Former First Lady of the United States
1927 Jerry Stiller – Comedian with Stiller and Meara, actor (Seinfeld, The King of Queens, Hairspray, The Paul Lynde Show) He’s the husband of Anne Meara, and the father of Ben Stiller
1931 Dana Wynter – German born actress (Airport, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Sink the Bismarck!, Backstairs at the Whitehouse)
1933 Joan Rivers - Comedienne, talk show host
1934 Millicent Martin – British actress (Alfie, Those Magnificent Men in Those Flying Machines, Stop the World I Want To Get Off)
1936 James Darren - Singer (Goodbye Cruel World, Her Royal Majesty) and actor (The Guns of Navarone, Because They're Young, Gidget, The Time Tunnel)
1940 Nancy Sinatra - Singer (These Boots Are Made For Walkin', Sugar Town, Somethin' Stupid, Jackson) and actress (The Wild Angels, Speedway) Her father was Frank Sinatra
1942 Chuck Negron - Singer with the group Three Dog Night (Joy to the World, Eli's Coming, Mama Told Me Not to Come, An Old Fashioned Love Song)
1943 Colin Baker – British actor (Doctor Who, The Brothers, The Waiting Time, A Dance to the Music of Time, The Citadel)
1944 Don Grady - Actor (My Three Sons, Mickey Mouse Club)
1944 Boz Scaggs – Musician and singer (Lowdown, Lido Shuffle, Look What You've Done To Me) and songwriter (Silk Degrees, Middle Man)
1947 Sara Paretsky – Author of the V.I. Warshawski mystery books (Indemnity Only, Bitter Medicine, Windy City Blues, Fire Sale)
1950 Sonia Braga – Brazilian actress (Moon Over Parador, The Milagro Beanfield War, The Streets of Laredo, The Kiss of the Spider Woman)
1950 Kathy Baker - Actress (Jesse Stone movies, Picket Fences, Edward Scissorhands, Mad Dog and Glory, The Right Stuff)
1951 Bonnie Tyler - Singer (Total Eclipse of the Heart, It's a Heartache)
1955 Griffin Dunne – Actor (An American Werewolf in London, After Hours, Johnny Dangerously, My Girl, Trust Me, House of Lies)
1957 Scott Adams – Cartoonist (Dilbert)
1958 Keenen Ivory Wayans - Actor (In Living Colour, Scary Movie, A Low Down Dirty Shame, The Glimmer Man)
1966 Julianna Margulies - Actress (The Good Wife, ER, Paradise Road, The Mists of Avalon, Ghost Ship)
1969 David Sutcliffe – Canadian actor (Gilmore Girls, Private Practice, The Division, I’m With Her, The Atwood Stories, Cold Feet, Under the Tuscan Sun)
1970 Kelli Williams – Actress (The Practice, Lie to Me, Army Wives, Medical Investigation)
1976 Eion Bailey – Actor (Once Upon aTime, Fight Club, Covert Affairs, Band of Brothers)


Died this Day

1845 Andrew Jackson - Seventh President of the US, died in Nashville, Tennessee
1865 Sir Joseph Paxton, age 63 – British architect and landscape gardener who designed the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London
1874 Chief Cochise – Apache chief, who was one of the great leaders in the Apache battles with the Anglo-Americans. Little is known of Cochise's early life, but by the mid-19th century, he had become a prominent leader of the Chiricahua band of Apache Indians living in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Cochise resented the encroachment of Mexican and US settlers on his traditional lands. Although he led numerous raids on the settlers living on both sides of the border, the war between the US and Cochise resulted from a misunderstanding when, in 1860, a band of Apache attacked the ranch of John Ward, kidnapping his adopted son, Felix Tellez. Ward, who had been away at the time of the raid, believed that Cochise had been the leader of the raiding Apache, and demanded that the US Army rescue the kidnapped boy and bring Cochise to justice. The military dispatched a force under the command of Lieutenant George Bascom. Unaware that they were in any danger, Cochise and many of his top men responded to Bascom's invitation to join him for a night of entertainment at a nearby stage station. When the Apache arrived, Bascom's soldiers arrested them. Cochise told Bascom that he had not been responsible for the kidnapping, but the lieutenant refused to believe him and ordered Cochise be kept as a hostage until the boy was returned. Cochise would not tolerate being unjustly imprisoned, and escaped. During the next decade, Cochise and his warriors increased their raids on US settlements and fought with soldiers. By 1872, the US government was anxious for peace, and offered Cochise and his people a huge reservation in the south-eastern corner of Arizona Territory if they would cease hostilities. Cochise agreed, saying, "The white man and the Indian are to drink of the same water, eat of the same bread, and be at peace." Cochise did not enjoy his hard-won peace for long. In 1874, he became seriously ill, possibly with stomach cancer. The night he died, his warriors painted his body yellow, black, and vermilion, and took him deep into the Dragoon Mountains. They lowered his body and weapons into a rocky crevice, the exact location of which remains unknown. Today, however, that section of the Dragoon Mountains is known as Cochise's Stronghold. About a decade after Cochise died, Felix Tellez, the boy whose kidnapping had started the war, resurfaced as an Apache-speaking scout for the US Army. He reported that a group of Western Apache, not Cochise, had kidnapped him
1876 George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucie Dudevant) - French Romantic writer (Indiana) She is remembered for her long list of lovers, including Chopin, with whom she lived for eight years. She died less than a month before her 72nd birthday
1913 Emily Davison – British suffragette. Four days earlier, she had thrown herself in front of the King’s horse, and was seriously injured as the horse fell and rolled over her. Thousands of suffragettes marched across central London at her funeral, accompanied by ten bands
1929 Starr Faithfull – She was found dead on Long Beach, clad only in a silk dress. Her story was retold in the novel and film, Butterfield 8, by John O’Hara. She had kept a diary of her sex life and heavy drinking. A victim of the Roaring Twenties, no one could prove that she had been murdered
1969 Robert Taylor, age 57 – US actor (Magnificent Obsession, Billy The Kid, Where Angels Go Troubles Follow, Death Valley Days)
1977 Gilbert Labine, age 87 – Canadian prospector who is known for his discovery of the pitchblende (radium) deposits on Great Bear Lake in Canada’s North West Territories in 1930. He established the Eldorado refinery in Port Hope, Ontario in 1933. His company was secretly nationalised in 1944, and produced the U-235 used to fuel the first atomic bombs that pulverised Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945


On this Day

1685 In Quebec, Jacques de Meulles first used card money to pay soldiers during a coin shortage. The playing cards were used whole, or cut into halves and quarters. They were officially redeemed in 1718, but remained in common use until the 1750s
1786 The first commercially-made ice cream was advertised in New York City by Mr. Hall of 76 Chatham Street
1824 The washing machine was patented by Noah Cushing of Quebec. It was the first patent issued in Canada
1869 Ives McGaffney of Chicago obtained the first US patent for a "sweeping machine." This first suction-type vacuum cleaner was a light hand-powered device for surface cleaning
1861 Tennessee seceded from the Union
1900 Prince Edward Island passed Canada's first prohibition law
1966 The American and National Football Leagues announced plans to merge
1968 Three days after falling prey to an assassin in California, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, just 30 yards from the grave of his assassinated older brother, President John F. Kennedy
1968 James Earl Ray, wanted for the murder of Martin Luther King, was arrested in London, England, travelling under an assumed name
1979 A 200-pound tumour was removed from a woman at the University of California Medical Centre. The tumour included 165 pounds of liquid and 35 pounds of solids