Born this Day

1646 Gottfried Leibniz - Philosopher and mathematician who built a model of a calculating machine in 1673. He believed that the time and difficulty of performing complex calculations by hand limited scientific achievement, and set out to develop a machine to ease the burden on scientists. His machine used gears and rods to keep track of numbers as they were added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided
1804 George Sand - French Romantic writer (Indiana) She was born Amandine Aurore Lucie Dudevant, and is remembered for her long list of lovers, including Frederic Chopin, with whom she lived for eight years
1872 Louis Blériot – French inventor who, in 1909, was the first man to fly an airplane across the English Channel
1899 Charles Laughton - British actor (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Kidd, Hobson’s Choice) He was married to Elsa Lanchester for 33 years, until his death. In the play, Alibi, in 1928, he became the first actor to portray detective Hercule Poirot
1902 William Wyler - Director (Funny Girl, Ben Hur, Friendly Persuasion, Roman Holiday, Wuthering Heights)
1908 Estée Lauder - Cosmetics mogul
1916 Olivia DeHavilland – Tokyo-born US actress (To Each His Own, The Heiress, Gone with the Wind) She is the sister of actress, Joan Fontaine
1925 Farley Granger - Actor (Strangers on a Train, Rope, Hans Christian Andersen, , Small Town Girl, Senso, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, Very Close Quarters, Night Flight from Moscow, The Purple Heart, The Robe)
1931 Leslie Caron – French actress (Gigi, An American in Paris, Father Goose, Daddy Long Legs)
1934 Jamie Farr - Actor (M*A*S*H, The Blackboard Jungle, Cannonball Run, With Six You Get Egg Roll)
1934 Jean Marsh – British actress (Upstairs Downstairs, The Jewel in the Crown, Frenzy, Nine to Five, The Pale Horse)
1934 Sydney Pollack – US film director (The Firm, Tootsie, They Shoot Horses Don't They, Three Days of the Condor, The Way We Were)
1935 David Prowse – British actor (Star Wars, The Kindess of Strangers, Jabberwocky, A Clockwork Orange)
1936 Ron Masak – Actor (Murder She Wrote, Ice Station Zebra, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Meatballs and Spaghetti, Webster, The Stoneman, My Trip to the Dark Side)
1939 Karen Black - Actress (Five Easy Pieces, Portnoy's Complaint, The Great Gatsby)
1941 Twyla Tharp – Choreographer
1942 Geneviève Bujold – Canadian actress (Anne of a Thousand Days, Coma, Dead Ringers)
1945 Deborah Harry – Singer with the group Blondie (The Tide is High, Heart of Glass, My T-Bird, Call Me)
1951 Trevor Eve – British actor (Heat of the Sun, The Politician’s Wife, David Copperfield, A Doll’s House, Waking the Dead, Kidnap and Ransom) He is married to actress Sharon Maughan
1952 Dan Aykroyd – Canadian comedian, actor (Driving Miss Daisy, Trading Places, Saturday Night Live, Dragnet, Ghostbusters, The Blues Brothers, Chaplin)
1956 Alan Ruck – Actor (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Spin City, Twister, Speed, The Happening, Cheaper by the Dozen, Young Guns II)
1961 Diana, Princess of Wales – The former Lady Diana Spencer who married Prince Charles
1962 Andre Braugher - Actor (Homicide: Life on the Street, Murder in Mississippi, Glory, Frequency, Hack, Poseidon, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, House, Men of a Certain Age, Salt, The Mist, Brooklyn Nine Nine)
1967 Pamela Anderson – Canadian-born US actress (Home Improvement, Baywatch, Barb Wire)
1977 Liv Tyler – Actress (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Incredible Hulk, Armageddon) She is the daughter of Steven Tyler of the band Aerosmith
1982 Hilarie Burton – Actress (One Tree Hill, White Collar, The Secret Life of Bees, Solstice)


Died this Day

1884 Allan Pinkerton, age 64 - Scottish-born US founder of the Pinkerton detective agency. In his early twenties he became very active in the workers' Chartist movement trying to reform British Parliament. A vocal advocate of civil disobedience, his radical views were not unnoticed, and local law enforcement soon issued a warrant and reward for his arrest. Allan quickly married his sweetheart, packed his belongings and headed for the US to evade arrest
1860 Charles Goodyear, age 59 –Inventor of vulcanised rubber
1896 Harriet Beecher Stowe – US author (Uncle Tom's Cabin, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, In the Footsteps of the Master, Bible Heroines) She died less than three weeks after her 85th birthday
1995 Wolfman Jack, age 57 - Rock-and-roll disc jockey and actor (Mortuary Academy, In the Midnight Hour, Deadman's Curve, The Wolfman Jack Show, American Graffiti) He died in Belvidere, NC
1997 Robert Mitchum, age 79 – Actor (The Sundowners, Cape Fear, Ryan’s Daughter, Scrooged) He died in Santa Barbara County, California of lung cancer. He and his wife, Dorothy Spence, had been married for 57 years at the time of his death
2004 Marlon Brando, age 80 - Actor (On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Last Tango in Paris, One-eyed Jacks, Roots: Next Generation, A Streetcar Named Desire)


On this Day

1792 The first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Simcoe, arrived at Kingston to take up his post
1796 The Jay Treaty between Britain and the US came into effect, as the British withdrew from Detroit, Grand Portage, and Michilimackinac. Both parties were granted free use of the Great Lakes
1847 In the US, the first adhesive stamps went on sale in 5¢ and 10¢ denominations
1858 The first Canadian coins were minted. They were pennies, nickels, dimes and 20-cent pieces. No regular issue of bills occurred until 1870
1860 The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, laid the cornerstone of the Parliament Buildings of the Province of Canada, in Ottawa
1860 Britain transferred control of Indian affairs to Canada
1863 The Civil War Battle of Gettysburg began with Confederate General Robert E. Lee attacking the North
1867 Canada became a self-governing Dominion of Great Britain as the British North America Act took effect, creating the Dominion of Canada out of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Upper Canada became Ontario and Lower Canada became Québec. Sir John A. MacDonald was sworn in as the first Prime Minister. Although independent of Britain, Canada was still not allowed to deal directly with other states, control immigration or command Canadian armed forces except through British officers
1871 Canada’s Parliamentary Library was founded in Ottawa
1871 Parliament made the decimal currency system uniform across Canada
1873 Prince Edward Island entered Confederation as the seventh Canadian province
1898 During the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders waged a victorious assault on San Juan Hill in Cuba. Roosevelt and his volunteer cavalry stormed Kettle Hill, and then joined in the capture of the San Juan Hill complex. This victory helped to secure a US supremacy in the Battle of Santiago, which was the decisive battle of the Spanish-American War
1909 On Melville Island in Canada’s North West Territories, Joseph-Elzéar Bernier, captain of the government steamship Arctic, placed a metal plaque at Parry Rock claiming Canadian sovereignty over the entire Arctic Archipelago
1912 The British Copyright Act came into force, protecting author’s works for 50 years after their death
1916 The Battle of the Somme began at 7:30am, when the British launched a massive offensive against German forces in the Somme River region of France during the Great War (WWI). The assault began with an intense bombardment of 250,000 British shells along the Western Front, followed by the explosion of mines planted under the German trenches. Before the smoke and dust cleared, 100,000 British soldiers poured out of their trenches and across no-man's-land, only to be met with a lethal barrage of machine gun fire from the enforced German trenches. By nightfall, 20,000 British were dead, including 1,000 officers, and another 40,000 were injured. The next day, both sides settled down to a war of attrition, characterised by ineffectual but costly offensives and the horrendous conditions of trench life. In November, Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, called off the Battle of the Somme after nearly five months of mass slaughter. The offensive amounted to a total gain of just 125 square miles, at a cost of over 600,000 British and French soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action. German casualties were over 650,000. Although Haig was severely criticised for the costly battle, the stalemate along the Western Front eventually contributed to the collapse of an exhausted Germany in 1918
1916 Coca-Cola adopted its distinctive contour-shaped bottle to fend off competitors
1927 A new law required all drivers in Ontario to have a licence
1927 Canada’s Prime Minister Mackenzie King dedicated Ottawa's Peace Tower carillon in the first Trans-Canada radio network broadcast hook-up over telephone and telegraph lines. The dedication celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation
1929 The cartoon character Popeye the Sailor was created by Elzie Segar in the US
1937 The world’s first 3-digit emergency telephone service, Dial 999 for Emergency, came into effect, in Britain
1942 Sugar rationing began in Canada during the Second World War
1943 In the US, “Pay-as-you-go” income tax withholding began
1958 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation started nation-wide TV broadcasts as the new Trans-Canada microwave relay system went into operation
1963 The US Post Office inaugurated its five-digit ZIP codes
1966 The US’s Medicare federal insurance program went into effect
1968 The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty
1967 Queen Elizabeth II attended centennial celebrations on Parliament Hill in honour of Canada’s 100th birthday
1969 The investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales took place at Caernarvon Castle
1970 In Winnipeg, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau told a Canada Day heckler concerned about unsold grain, "Relax mister. You can't carry the weight of the world on your shoulders every day. This is a fun day."
1979 The first Sony Walkman rolled off the assembly line
1980 “O Canada” was officially proclaimed the national anthem of Canada, although it had been sung as such for years
1997 Hong Kong formally reverted back to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British colony