Born this Day

1002 Leo IX – The Pope who brought the conflict between Rome and the eastern Church to a head in 1054, ending with the Patriarch of Constantinople being excommunicated, and the creation of the Schism
1731 Martha Washington – The first First Lady of the US, and wife of President George Washington
1905 Jean-Paul Sartre - French existentialist philosopher, playwright and writer (Being and Nothingness, No Exit, The Age of Reason) He rejected the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964
1912 Mary McCarthy – US novelist (The Company She Keeps, Memories of a Catholic Childhood)
1921 Judy Holliday - Actress (Adam's Rib, Bells are Ringing, Born Yesterday, It Should Happen to You, The Solid Gold Cadillac)
1921 Jane Russell - Actress (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Outlaw, Paleface, The Road to Bali)
1925 Maureen Stapleton - Actress (Reds, A View from the Bridge, Bye Bye Birdie, Cocoon, Airport)
1933 Bernie Kopell - Actor (Get Smart, The Love Boat, Love American Style)
1935 Monte Markham – Actor (Baywatch, Midway, Death Takes a Holiday)
1935 Françoise Sagan – French novelist (Bonjour Tristesse, A Certain Smile)
1936 O.C. (Ocie Lee) Smith - Singer (Little Green Apples, Daddy's Little Man, The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp) He was a vocalist for the Count Basie Orchestra
1938 Ron Ely - Actor (Tarzan, Slavers, Doc Savage)
1940 Mariette Hartley – Actress (Marnie, Peyton Place, M.A.D.D.: Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, Goodnight Beantown, WIOU, Encino Man) She played Dr. Sheila Carlin in the Perry Mason TV movie The Case of the Telltale Talk Show Host
1941 Joe Flaherty – Comedian/actor (Second City TV, Stripes, Maniac Mansion, Innerspace, Robson Arms, The King of Queens, Freaks and Geeks)
1944 Ray Davies - Rock singer-musician with The Kinks (You Really Got Me, All Day and All of the Night, Lola, Come Dancing)
1947 Meredith Baxter Birney - Actress (Family Ties, Bridget Loves Bernie, Ben, All The President’s Men, Murder on the Orient Express, Cold Case)
1947 Michael Gross - Actor (Family Ties, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Tremors)
1950 Joey Kramer - Rock drummer with Aerosmith (Dream On, Walk This Way, Dude Looks Like A Lady)
1953 Michael Bowen – Actor (Kill Bill Vol. 1, Jackie Brown, Lost, Magnolia, Beverley Hills Cop III)
1954 Robert Pastorelli – Actor (Murphy Brown, Dances with Wolves, Sister Act 2, Cracker – the US version)
1957 Berke Breathed - Cartoonist (Bloom County)
1959 Kathy Mattea - Country singer (Goin’ Gone, Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses, Standing Knee Deep in a River)
1964 Doug Savant – Actor (Desperate Housewives, Melrose Place, 24, Teen Wolf, Masquerade, Knot’s Landing, The Hanoi Hilton)
1964 David Morrissey – British actor (South Riding, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Hilary and Jackie, Our Mutual Friend, Framed)
1967 Carrie Preston – Actress (True Blood, The Good Wife, Duplicity, The Legend of Bagger Vance, For Richer or Poorer, My Best Friend’s Wedding)
1973 Juliette Lewis - Actress (Cape Fear, Husbands and Wives, Natural Born Killers, Romeo is Bleeding, The Wonder Years, The Facts of Life, Cold Creek Manor)
1978 Luke Kirby – Canadian actor (The Stone Angel, Mambo Italiano, Halloween: Resurrection, Shattered Glass, Slings and Arrows, Cra$h & Burn)
1978 Erica Durance – Canadian actress (Smallville, Saving Hope, The Butterfly Effect 2, Sophie)
1979 Chris Pratt – Actor (Everwood, The O.C., Parks and Recreation, Moneyball, The Five-Year Engagement, Guardians of the Galaxy, Zero Dark Thirty, Jurassic World)
1982 Prince William – Eldest son of then Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and grandson of Queen Elizabeth II


Died this Day

1377 Edward III – King of England
1527 Niccolo Machiavelli, age 58 – Italian statesman, philosopher and author (The Prince)
1652 Inigo Jones, age 79 – British architect and designer of some of the finest buildings in London, including the Banqueting House, Whitehall
1852 Friedrich Froebel, age 70 – German educationalist and founder of the kindergarten system
1876 Antonio López de Santa Ana, age 82 – Mexican revolutionary who beat the Texans at the Battle of the Alamo. He died in Mexico City, blind, and in poverty
1952 Wilfred 'Wop' May, age 56 – Canadian aviation pioneer and World War I flying ace. He died while on holiday in Utah. May was being pursued by German ace Manfred von Richthofen when the Red Baron was shot down
1964 Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney – Civil rights activists killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob near Meridian, Mississippi. The three young civil rights workers were working to register black voters in Mississippi, which enraged the local Klan. The deaths of Schwerner and Goodman, white Northerners and members of the Congress of Racial Equality, and Chaney, a young black man who was acting as a liaison to the black community, caused a national outrage. Schwerner was a particularly dedicated activist, living in Mississippi while he registered blacks to vote. Sam Bowers, the local Klan's Imperial Wizard, decided that Schwerner was a bad influence and had to be killed. When the three victims were coming back from a trip to Philadelphia, Mississippi, deputy sheriff Cecil Price, who was also a Klan member, pulled them over for speeding. He then held them in custody while other KKK members prepared for their murder. Eventually released, the three activists were later chased down in their car and cornered in a secluded spot in the woods where they were shot and then buried in graves that had been prepared in advance. When news of their disappearance got out, the FBI converged in Mississippi to investigate. With the help of an informant, federal agents learned about the Klan's involvement and found the bodies. Since Mississippi refused to prosecute the assailants in state court, the federal government charged 18 men with conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. Bowers, Price, and five other men were convicted. Eight were acquitted, and the all-white jury deadlocked on the other three defendants
2001 Carroll O'Connor, age 76 – Actor (All In the Family, Lonely Are the Brave, Cleopatra, In Harm's Way, Death of a Gunfighter, Kelly's Heroes, In the Heat of the Night) O'Connor was instrumental in the passage of California's Drug Dealers Civil Liability Act, and made Public Service Announcements warning of the dangers of drug abuse, after his son’s drug-related death


On this Day

1675 Work began to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral in London by Sir Christopher Wren. It would replace the old building, which had been destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666
1749 Halifax, Nova Scotia, was founded by Governor Edward Cornwallis. First called Chebucto, it was renamed soon after in honour of George Dunk, the Earl of Halifax, who was the guiding force behind the settlement
1788 The US Constitution took effect as New Hampshire became the ninth and last necessary state to ratify it, thereby making the document the law of the land
1813 US Colonel Charles Boerstler, moving to make a surprise attack on Lieutenant James Fitzgibbon's British outpost at Beaver Dams, stopped at Queenston, Ontario for the night, where he billeted his soldiers at the farm of Loyalist James Secord and his wife Laura Ingersoll Secord. The Secords overheard the US plans for a surprise attack on FitzGibbon and his Mohawk warriors at Beaverdams, and Laura stole away to warn the British, 20 miles away. She made her way west through swamps, then climbed the heights at Twelve-Mile Creek to St. Davids. After passing three US sentries, she was captured by Iroquois, who lead her to the British, three days after she set out. Her warning and a decisive US defeat led to the salvation of Upper Canada
1834 Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine
1843 Britain’s Royal College of Surgeons was founded from the original Barber-Surgeons Company
1844 Four Sisters of Charity, arrived at the Red River settlement in Manitoba, after 59 days of canoeing and portaging through wilderness from Lake Superior. The Grey Nuns were part of the first religious community to settle in the Canadian West, and taught in makeshift schools until their convent was completed in 1847. They also provided medical care for the settlers, vaccinated over 3,000 people when smallpox broke out in 1870, and opened the first hospital in Western Canada in 1871, Saint-Boniface General Hospital, the first in the West
1854 The first Victoria Cross was awarded to Charles Lucas, an Irishman and mate aboard the HMS Hecla, for conspicuous gallantry at Bomarsrund in the Baltic. The medal was made from metal from a cannon captured at Sevastopol
1868 The first performance of Wagner’s opera, Die Meistersinger, took place in Munich. Morse would have loved that!
1876 The first gorilla arrived in Britain
1916 US Brigadier General John J. Pershing's force was attacked by Mexican troops at Carrizal, Mexico, bringing the US and Mexico closer to war. The US suffered 22 casualties, and more than 30 Mexicans were killed. Against the protests of Venustiano Carranza's government, Pershing had been penetrating deep into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa. If not for the critical situation in Europe, war might have been declared
1919 Two people were killed and 30 were injured in the most violent clash of the Winnipeg General Strike, a day known as Bloody Saturday
1919 German sailors scuttled 72 warships at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, even though Germany had surrendered. It was the greatest act of self-destruction in modern military history
1932 Heavyweight Max Schmeling lost a title fight by decision to Jack Sharkey. Schmeling's manager, Joe Jacobs, exclaimed: “We was robbed!”
1948 The first successfully produced microgroove (long playing) records were unveiled in New York City by Dr. Peter Goldmark of Columbia Records . The new disc turned at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute, offering superior sound quality and fewer interruptions than 78 rpm records
1948 The first computer with stored memory was successfully tested. The tiny experimental computer, lacking a keyboard or printer, was developed at Manchester University in England. The system, based on a cathode-ray tube, could store programs, whereas previous electronic computers had to be rewired to execute each new type of problem. The Manchester computer proved theories set forth by John von Neumann in a report that proposed modifications to ENIAC, the electronic computer built at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1940s. The report also proposed the use of binary instead of digital numbers
1963 Giovanni Cardinal Battista Montini was chosen to succeed Pope John XXIII as head of the Catholic Church. He took the name Paul VI
1966 In Guelph, Ontario, the renovated birthplace of John McCrae was designated a national historic site. McCrae was the author of the World War I poem, In Flanders Fields
1973 The Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards
1977 A flash fire killed 21 prisoners in the police lockup in Saint John, New Brunswick
1982 A Washington jury found John Hinckley Junior innocent by reason of insanity in the shooting of US President Reagan and three others more than a year earlier
1984 The first amendment to Canada's Constitution became law. It added new rights for indigenous peoples