Born this Day

1625 John Fell – British Anglican priest, author and typographer
1763 Joséphine - French consort of Napoleon and empress of France from 1804 to 1810
1775 Étienne-Louis Malus – French physicist who discovered that light, when reflected, becomes partially plane polarised, meaning its rays vibrate in the same plane. Malus served in Napoleon’s corps of engineers, fought in Egypt, and contracted the plague during Napoleon’s aborted campaign in Palestine. Posted to Europe after 1801, he began research in optics. In 1808, he discovered that light rays may be polarised by reflection, while looking through a crystal of Iceland spar at the windows of a building reflecting the rays of the sun. He noticed that on rotating the crystal the light was extinguished in certain positions. Applying corpuscular theory, he argued that light particles have sides or poles and coined the word "polarisation"
1894 Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor - Former King of Britain and the Commonwealth from January 20th to December 10th, 1936 when he abdicated in order to marry US divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson. He was the only British sovereign ever to voluntarily resign the crown
1905 Mary Livingstone - Actress (The Jack Benny Show) She was married to Jack Benny
1910 Jean Marie Anouilh - Playwright (Becket, Antigone, Catch As Catch Can)
1912 Alan Turing – British mathematician, logician and computer pioneer who laid the groundwork for the field of artificial intelligence. At age twenty-four he suggested a theoretical calculating device that could carry out step-by-step mathematical operations based on a program. This "Turing Machine" became the theoretical model for work on digital computers in the 1940s. In his later work, he argued that computers would one day think like humans. During WWII, he served in the Code and Cypher School and was responsible for cracking German codes
1916 Irene Worth – Stage and screen actress (Sweet Bird of Youth, Tiny Alice, Lost in Yonkers, Happy Days, Deathtrap)
1925 Larry Blyden - Actor (Harry's Girls, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever) and TV moderator (What's My Line)
1927 Bob Fosse – Director (Cabaret) and choreographer (Big Deal, Dancin', Sweet Charity, Little Me, Bob Fosse, Damn Yankees, The Panama Game) He was the subject of the film All That Jazz
1929 Michael Shaara – US author (The Killer Angels, For the Love of the Game)
1929 June Carter Cash - Country singer, songwriter and musician (Jackson, If I were a Carpenter, It Ain’t Me Babe, If I Had a Hammer), actress (The Apostle) and author (Among My Klediments, From the Heart) She was the daughter of Maybelle Carter, and her husband was Johnny Cash. They married in 1968 after he proposed to her on stage in London, Ontario
1940 Adam Faith – British singer (Somebody Else's Baby, How about That, Lonely Pup in a Christmas Shop, What Do You Want?, Poor Me, The Time Has Come, You Make My Life Worthwhile) and actor (Beat Girl, Never Let Go, Budgie, Stardust, McVicar, Love Hurts, Mix Me a Person)
1944 Rosetta Hightower - Singer with the group The Orlons (The Wah Watusi, Don't Hang Up, South Street)
1946 Ted Shackelford - Actor (Knots Landing, Dallas)
1947 Bryan Brown – Australian actor (A Town Like Alice, Breaker Morant, The Thorn Birds, F/X, Gorillas in the Mist, Cocktail)
1957 Frances McDormand - Actress (Fargo, Raising Arizona, Mississippi Burning, The Butcher’s Wife, Madeline, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Burn After Reading) She is married to director Joel Coen
1964 Joss Whedon – Producer/writer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Dollhouse, The Avengers, The Cabin in the Woods, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Toy Story)
1969 Martin Klebba – Actor (Pirates of the Caribbean movies, The Cape, Scrubs)
1971 Fred Ewanuick – Canadian actor (Corner Gas, Dan for Mayor, Intelligence, Robson Arms)


Died this Day

1839 Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope – British traveller in the Middle East who was treated as a prophetess by the tribes she settled with. She died in poverty as a result of her excessive generosity
1995 Dr. Jonas Salk, age 80 - Medical pioneer who developed the first vaccine against polio. He died in La Jolla, California
1998 Maureen O'Sullivan, age 87 – Irish born US actress (The Thin Man, Pride and Prejudice, Hannah and Her Sisters, Peggy Sue Got Married, The River Pirates) She also played Jane in numerous Tarzan films. She was the mother of Mia Farrow


On this Day

1812 Great Britain, not aware of President James Madison's declaration of war five days earlier, suspended one of the major causes of the war, the blockade orders that had hampered US shipping by stopping them from entering French ports. Henry Clay and the War Hawks in Congress used the orders as an excuse to go to war to try to conquer Canada.
1817 Canada’s oldest chartered bank, the Bank of Montréal, was founded with £250,000 capital
1836 US Congress approved the Deposit Act, which contained a provision for turning over surplus federal revenue to the states
1848 Adolphe Sax was awarded a patent for the saxophone
1868 Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called a Type-Writer
1887 Rocky Mountains National Park, now Banff National Park, was created with the passing of the Rocky Mountains Park Act. It was Canada’s first national park. When mineral hot springs were discovered in the Rocky Mountains four years earlier, land speculators sought out the property, hoping it would make them rich. The Canadian Government created a reserve around the hot springs area in 1885, in order to retain public ownership. This reserve grew into Banff National Park. From the start, the vision for this area included public use. Prime Minister Macdonald promised that the park would become a "public park and pleasure ground for the benefit, advantage and enjoyment of the people of Canada." However, he also meant the park to become useful for other purposes, so timber cutting, grazing and mineral development were permitted, with the mineral claims being worked for almost a century. At the same time, the government had a policy of protecting scenery so the park could survive as a prime tourist attraction. Regulations were passed in 1889 to protect forests and game, to control private construction and development, and to preserve natural beauty. Early park development favoured resort facilities, and later, natural resource programs were started. These included planting wild rice in shallow lakes and wetlands to encourage the propagation of migratory wildfowl, stocking lakes with fish, establishing a tree nursery to reforest areas damaged by railway construction or forest fires, and maintaining a fire guard to control fires from outside the park. The Rocky Mountains National Park was the birthplace of Canada's national parks system, which now has 38 National Parks and National Park Reserves
1915 Lance-Corporal Frederick Fisher became the first Canadian-born man to win the Victoria Cross while serving in the Canadian Army. He was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for his bravery earlier that year when his Canadian 13th Battalion Quebec Regiment, Royal Highlanders of Canada, moved up reserves to plug a gap in the line at Ypres. Fisher went forward with his company machine-gun while under heavy fire, and covered the retreat of a battery, losing four of his gun team. He then obtained four more men, and moved forward again to the firing line, but was killed while bringing his machine-gun into action under very heavy fire
1931 Aviators Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from New York on the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane
1972 President Nixon and White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed a plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation. Revelation of the tape recording of this conversation sparked Nixon's resignation in 1974
1985 All 329 people aboard an Air-India Boeing 747 were killed when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland, because of a bomb planted by Sikh terrorists in Canada. This tragedy was the greatest loss of Canadian lives in commercial flying history
1992 John Gotti, convicted of racketeering charges, was sentenced in New York to life in prison