Born this Day

1862 May Irwin – Canadian comedienne, music-hall performer, and Ragtime pioneer. She popularised such songs as After the Ball and A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
1880 Helen Keller - Author-lecturer (The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, Out of the Dark, My Religion, Helen Keller's Journal, Teacher) A normal infant, she was stricken with an illness at 19 months, probably scarlet fever, which left her blind and deaf. She advocated new policies to help the blind live in normal surroundings
1907 John McIntire - Actor (Honkytonk Man, Rooster Cogburn, Summer and Smoke, Psycho, Elmer Gantry)
1912 Audrey Christie - Actress (Splendor in the Grass, Harper Valley PTA, Frankie and Johnny)
1913 Willie Mosconi – US pocket billiards world champion
1917 Ben Homer - Composer (Sentimental Journey)
1925 Jerome 'Doc' Pomus - Songwriter (Boogie Woogie Country Girl, Lonely Avenue, A Teenager in Love, Turn Me Loose, Save the Last Dance for Me, This Magic Moment) Many of his songs were written with Mort Shuman
1927 Bob Keeshan - Children's TV host (Captain Kangaroo)
1942 Frank Mills - Pianist (Music Box Dancer)
1951 Julia Duffy - Actress (Designing Women, Newhart, Children in the Crossfire, Night Warning) She is married to actor Jerry Lacy
1955 Isabelle Adjani - Actress (Queen Margot, Ishtar, Subway, The Tenant, The Story of Adele H, The Slap)
1975 Tobey Maguire – Actor (Spiderman, Pleasantville, Seabiscuit, The Cider House Rules, The Good German, Brothers)
1986 Sam Claflin – British actor (The Pillars of the Earth, Snow White and the Huntsman, White Heat, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Lost Future)
1989 Matthew Lewis – British actor (Harry Potter movies, The Syndicate, The Sweet Shop)


Died this Day

1829 James Lewis Macie Smithson – British scientist. He died in Genoa, Italy after a long illness. He left behind a will with a peculiar footnote. In the event that his only nephew died without any heirs, Smithson decreed that the whole of his estate would go to "the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Six years after his death, his nephew, indeed died without children, and in July, 1836 the US Congress authorised acceptance of Smithson's gift. The estate, as received, consisted of 11 boxes containing a total of 104,960 gold sovereigns, eight shillings, and seven pence, as well as Smithson's mineral collection, library, scientific notes, and personal effects. After the gold was melted down, it amounted to a fortune worth well over $500,000. After considering a series of recommendations, including the creation of a national university, a public library, or an astronomical observatory, Congress agreed that the bequest would support the creation of a museum, a library, and a program of research, publication, and collection in the sciences, arts, and history. On August 10, 1846, the act establishing the Smithsonian Institution was signed into law. Smithson had been a fellow of the venerable Royal Society of London from the age of 22, publishing numerous scientific papers on mineral composition, geology, and chemistry. In 1802, he overturned popular scientific opinion by proving that zinc carbonates were true carbonate minerals, and one type of zinc carbonate was later named smithsonite in his honour. In 1904, his remains were brought to the US under escort (one of whom was Alexander Graham Bell) and interred in the original Smithsonian building
1844 Joseph Smith - Founder and leader of the Mormon religion, was murdered along with his brother Hyrum when an anti-Mormon mob broke into a jail where they were being held in Carthage, Illinois. Smith claimed in 1823 that he had been visited by an angel who spoke to him of an ancient Hebrew text that had been lost for 1,500 years. Smith dictated an English translation of this text, and in 1830 The Book of Mormon was published. In the same year, Smith founded the Church of Christ, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The religion rapidly gained converts, and Smith set up Mormon communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. However, the sect was heavily criticised for its unorthodox practices, such as polygamy. In 1844, the threat of mob violence prompted Smith to call out a militia in the Mormon town of Nauvoo, Illinois. He was charged with treason by Illinois authorities and imprisoned with his brother Hyrum in the Carthage city jail, where they were murdered
2001 Jack Lemmon, age 76 – Actor (The Odd Couple, Some Like it Hot, Mister Roberts, Irma la Douce, Grumpy Old Men, Out to Sea, JFK, Days of Wine and Roses)
2002 John Entwistle, age 57 – Bass player with The Who (My Generation, Happy Jack, Pinball Wizard, I Can See For Miles)


On this Day

1693 The Ladies’ Mercury, the first magazine for women, was published
1743 The last British King to lead his troops into battle was George II, who led the Pragmatic Army made up of British, Hanoverian, and Hessian troops. At the Battle of Dettingen, he was victorious over the French
1847 The New York-to-Boston telegraph was completed
1854 In Washington, DC, New Brunswick chemist Abraham Gesner was awarded the patent for distilling kerosene from petroleum. It would completely replace whale oil in lamps in a few years time
1860 The inaugural Queen's Plate horse race was run near Toronto and was won by Don Juan. The Queen's Plate is the oldest uninterrupted stakes race in North America
1874 Twenty-eight buffalo hunters, using new high-powered rifles to devastating effect, repulsed a much larger force of attacking Indians at an old trading post in the Texas panhandle called Adobe Walls. The Commanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne Indians living in western Texas had long resented the advancement of white settlement in their territories. In 1867, some of the Indians had accepted the terms of the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, which required them to move to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, but they also reserved much of the Texas Panhandle as their exclusive hunting grounds. Many white Texans, however, maintained that the treaty had ignored their legitimate claims to that area, and these buffalo hunters, who had already greatly reduced the once massive herds, continued to hunt in the territory. By the early 1870s Indians were finding it harder to locate buffalo, and they blamed the illegal white buffalo hunters. When the federal government failed to take adequate measures to stop the illegal hunters, the great chief Quanah Parker and others began to argue for war. In the spring of 1874, a group of white merchants occupied an old trading post called Adobe Walls near the South Canadian River in the Indian's hunting territory, quickly transforming the site into a regional centre for the buffalo-hide trade. Angered by this blatant violation of the treaty, Chief Quanah Parker and Lone Wolf amassed a force of about 700 Commanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne braves, and attacked Adobe Walls. Only 28 hunters and traders occupied Adobe Walls, but they had the advantage of a number of high-powered rifles normally used on buffalo, as well as the thick walls of the adobe structure, which were impenetrable to arrows and bullets. Already skilled marksmen, the buffalo hunters used the rifles to deadly effect, decimating the warriors before they came close enough even to return effective fire. Despite their overwhelmingly superior numbers, after three days the Indians concluded that Adobe Walls could not be taken and withdrew. The buffalo hunters had lost only four men in the attack, and they later estimated that the Indians had lost 13. Enraged by their defeat, several Indian bands subsequently took their revenge on poorly defended targets. Fearful settlers demanded military protection, leading to the outbreak of the Red River War. By the time the war ended in 1875, the Commanche and Kiowa had been badly beaten and Indian resistance on the Southern Plains had effectively collapsed
1940 The Germans started using their sophisticated coding machine, Enigma, to transmit information. They set up two-way radio communication in their newly occupied French territory, transmitting signals to German bombers so as to direct them to targets in Britain. The Enigma coding machine, invented in 1919 by Hugo Koch, a Dutchman, looked like a typewriter and was originally employed for business purposes. The German army adapted the machine for wartime use and considered its encoding system unbreakable. They were wrong. The Brits had broken the code as early as the German invasion of Poland and had intercepted virtually every message sent through the system. Britain nicknamed the intercepted messages Ultra
1945 The FCC allocated TV channels, assigning airwaves for 13 TV stations. Before World War II, a few experimental TV shows had been broadcast in New York, but the war postponed the development of commercial television. With the allocation of airwaves, commercial TV began to spread
1954 The first nuclear power station was opened in Obninsk, 55 miles from Moscow
1971 The Fillmore East, the legendary rock club in New York City run by Bill Graham, closed. Every major rock star had performed there in the past decade
1976 Six Palestinians hijacked an Air France airbus after it took off from Athens with 280 passengers on board, and forced the pilot to fly to Entebbe, where they were sure of support from Uganda’s Idi Amin. They demanded the release of 33 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. The hostages were dramatically rescued the following week
1984 Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was named the 1984 winner of the Albert Einstein peace prize for his global campaign to ease East-West tensions
1985 Route 66, which originally stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, passed into history as officials decertified the road
1986 In a referendum, Irish voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to lift a ban on divorce
1988 Dave Hurst and Alan Matthews, both from England, became the first blind climbers to reach the summit of Europe’s highest Mountain, Mont Blanc, which is 15,781 feet high