This Day in History - June 20

Born this Day

1771 Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk – Scottish philanthropist and entrepreneur who founded the Red River Settlement, and in collaboration with the Hudson's Bay Company, brought Scottish settlers via Churchill, Manitoba to the rich farmlands of the Red River valley
1905 Lillian Hellman - US playwright and screenwriter (The Little Foxes, Another Part of the Family, The Children’s Hour, Watch on the Rhine, The Searching Wind, Scoundrel Time, The Autumn Garden, Toys in the Attic) Hellman had a long relationship with hard-boiled mystery writer and former private eye Dashiell Hammett
1909 Errol Flynn – Tasmanian born actor (Captain Blood, In the Wake of the Bounty, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Too Much Too Soon, They Died With Their Boots On, The Sea Hawk) The athletic, swashbuckling actor was turned down for military service because he had a heart defect, recurring malaria, and a mild form of tuberculosis
1924 Chet Atkins – Country musician and guitarist who made over 100 albums. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1973. He has recorded and/or toured with Les Paul, Doc Watson (no, not Sherlock’s friend! ), Jerry Reed, Mark Knopfler, Ravi Shankar, The Atlanta Symphony, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, and Garrison Keillor
1924 Audie Murphy - Actor (The Red Badge of Courage, The Unforgiven, Arizona Raiders, To Hell and Back, The Cimarron Kid, Destry) and author (To Hell and Back) He was the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War II and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
1928 Martin Landau - Actor (Mission Impossible, Space: 1999, By Dawn's Early Light, North by Northwest, Pork Chop Hill, The Call Me Mister Tibbs!, The Adventures of Pinocchio, Ed Wood, Without a Trace)
1929 Bonnie Bartlett – Actress (St. Elsewhere, Twins, Tuesdays with Morrie, Little House on the Prairie, Salem’s Lot, The Legend of Lizzie Borden) She played Rosemary Sutter in the Perry Mason TV movie The Case of the Grimacing Governor
1931 Olympia Dukakis - Actress (Moonstruck, Steel Magnolias, Working Girl, The Cemetery Club)
1931 James Tolkan – Actor (Back to the Future movies, Serpico, Love and Death, Top Gun, Remington Steele, Masters of the Universe, The Case of the Hillside Stranglers, Dick Tracy, A Nero Wolf Mystery)
1933 Danny Aiello - Actor (Lady Blue, Moonstruck, Do the Right Thing, Ruby, Mistress, The Godfather Part 2, Harlem Nights, Lucky Number Slevin)
1933 Brett Halsey - Actor (Black Cat, Dangerous Obsession, Twice-Told Tales)
1934 Wendy Craig – British actress (The Royal, Butterflies, Not In Front of the Children)
1940 John Mahoney – British born actor (Frasier, The Manhattan Project, Moonstruck, Tin Men, The Russia House, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Hot in Cleveland) He took up acting in middle age, after a career in medical journalism
1942 Brian Wilson - Bass player and singer with The Beach Boys (I Get Around, Good Vibrations, Help Me, Rhonda, Surfin' USA)
1945 Anne Murray – Canadian singer (You Needed Me, Snowbird, Shadows In the Moonlight)
1946 Bob Vila - Repair show host (This Old House, Home Again with Bob Vila)
1947 Candy Clark - Actress (American Graffiti, The Big Sleep, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blue Thunder)
1949 Lionel Richie – Singer/songwriter with the Commodores, and solo (Three Times a Lady, Say You Say Me, Endless Love)
1952 John Goodman - Actor (The Flintstones, The Babe, King Ralph, Matinee, Roseanne, Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Community, Damages, Treme, Coyote Ugly, The Connors)
1967 Nicole Kidman – Hawaiian born Australian actress (The Hours, Days of Thunder, Malice, Batman Forever, Bangkok Hilton, The Portrait of a Lady, Moulin Rouge, Little Big Lies) She is married to country singer Keith Urban
1971 Josh Lucas – Actor (A Beautiful Mind, Secondhand Lions, Sweet Home Alabama, Wonderland, The Firm)


Died this Day

1597 William Barents – Dutch explorer, died in the Arctic while searching for the north-east passage from Europe to Asia. His ship became trapped in ice, and he and his party tried to find safety by sailing in open boats. They perished within a week. The Barents Sea is named after him
1837 William IV – British king. His 18-year-old niece, Victoria, ascended the throne upon his death, and would reign for 63 years until her death in 1901
1875 Joe Meek, age 65 – US mountain man and a skilled practitioner of the frontier art of the tall tale. He died on his farm in Oregon. Meek was born in Virginia in 1810, and moved west to Missouri when he was 16. In early 1829, Meek joined William Sublette's expedition to begin fur trading in the Far West, and for the next decade, travelled throughout the West, revelling in the adventure and independence of the mountain man life. At 6 feet, 2 inches tall, the heavily bearded Meek became a favourite character at the annual mountain-men rendezvous, where he regaled his companions with humorous and often exaggerated stories of his wilderness adventures. A renowned grizzly hunter, Meek told a story in which he claimed to have wrestled an attacking grizzly with his bare hands before finally sinking a tomahawk into its brain. Over the years, Meek established good relations with many Native Americans, and he married three Indian women, including the daughter of a Nez Perce chief. In 1840, Meek recognised that the golden era of the free trappers was ending. He became a farmer and settled in the lush Willamette Valley of western Oregon with his third wife. In 1847, Meek led a delegation to Washington, DC, asking for military protection from Indian attacks and territorial status for Oregon. Though he arrived "ragged, dirty, and lousy," Meek became something of a celebrity in the capitol. Easterners relished the boisterous good humor Meek showed in proclaiming himself the "envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary from the Republic of Oregon to the Court of the United States." Congress responded by making Oregon an official US territory and Meek became a US marshal. Meek returned to Oregon and became heavily involved in politics, eventually helping to found the Oregon Republican Party. He later retired to his farm
1923 Francisco Pancho Villa – Mexican revolutionary, assassinated on his farm, several years after he retired from politics


On this Day

1756 A group of British soldiers in India was captured and imprisoned in a suffocating cell that became known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. The 146 captured defenders of Calcutta were all from the East India Company’s garrison, and were imprisoned by the Nawab of Bengal. Only 23 survived
1782 Congress approved the Great Seal of the United States
1819 The paddle-wheel steamship, Savannah, arrived at Liverpool, after a voyage lasting 27 days, 11 hours. It was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic
1863 West Virginia became the 35th state of the Union
1872 The Public Archives of Canada was created, initially as part of the Department of Agriculture
1877 More than two-thirds of Saint John, New Brunswick was destroyed by fire. The raging fire wiped out the entire business district, and burned down 1,612 houses, causing $27 million worth of damage. Over 100 people were killed and 15,000 left homeless
1877 Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario
1887 On Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, Buffalo Bill Cody staged a Royal Command performance of his famous Wild West Show
1887 Britain’s longest railway bridge, over the River Tay, was opened. The first bridge had collapsed in 1879 while the Edinburgh to Dundee train was crossing, killing over 90 people
1893 A jury in New Bedford, Massachusetts, found Lizzie Borden innocent of the axe murders of her father and stepmother
1900 The Boxer Rebellion began in China, in response to widespread foreign encroachment upon China's national affairs. By the end of the 19th century, the Western powers and Japan had forced China's ruling Qing dynasty to accept wide foreign control over the country's economic affairs. In the Opium Wars, popular rebellions, and the Sino-Japanese War, China had fought to resist the foreigners, but it lacked a modernised military and suffered millions of casualties. The Boxers, now more than 100,000 strong, besieged the foreigners in Peking's diplomatic quarter, burned Christian churches in the city, and destroyed the Peking-Tientsin railway line. As the Western powers and Japan organised a multinational force to crush the rebellion, the siege of the Peking legations stretched into weeks, and the diplomats, their families, and guards suffered through hunger and degrading conditions as they fought to keep the Boxers at bay. On August 14, the international force, featuring British, Russian, American, Japanese, French, and German troops, relieved Peking after fighting its way through much of northern China. Due to mutual jealousies between the powers, it was agreed that China would not be partitioned further, and in September 1901, the Peking Protocol was signed, formally ending the Boxer Rebellion. By the terms of agreement, the foreign nations received extremely favourable commercial treaties with China, foreign troops were permanently stationed in Peking, and China was forced to pay $333 million dollars as penalty for its rebellion. China was effectively a subject nation
1942 A Japanese submarine shelled Estevan Point, British Columbia during the Second World War. There was little damage and no casualties reported on the isolated Vancouver Island site. It was the only time that Canadian land territory came under fire in World War II
1943 The New Québec Crater was sighted in Ungava. At just over 1,300 feet deep and nearly 7 miles around, it is one of the world's largest craters
1955 The longest eclipse of the sun ever recorded lasted seven minutes and eight seconds, as seen from the Philippines. The maximum time an eclipse can take is seven minutes, 31 seconds
1963 The US and Soviet Union signed an agreement to set up a hot line communication link between the two superpowers
1967 Boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court