Born this Day

1489 Thomas Cranmer - British religious leader who was Henry VIII’s first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury. He was responsible for The Book of Common Prayer in 1549.
1821 Sir Charles Tupper - A Father of Confederation and Canada's 6th Prime Minister, born in Amherst, Nova Scotia. Tupper was also the first president of the Canadian Medical Association
1908 Thurgood Marshall - Leader of the legal battle against segregated schools and the first black member of the US Supreme Court
1916 Ken Curtis - Actor (Gunsmoke, Mr. Roberts, The Yellow Rose, Ripcord, The Alamo) He was also a singer with the Tommy Dorsey Band, and with Roy Rogers and Sons of the Pioneers. He played Tim Durant in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Clumsy Clown
1925 Medgar Evers – US civil-rights activist who was assassinated in 1963
1925 Marvin Rainwater - Singer (Gonna Find Me a Bluebird)
1927 Brock Peters - Actor (The Secret, The Pawnbroker, Soylent Green, To Kill a Mockingbird, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)
1929 Imelda Marcos - Former Philippine first lady and shoe aficionado
1931 Robert Ito – Canadian-born actor (Quincy MD, Hollow Point, Midway, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension)
1937 Polly Holliday - Actress (Alice, Flo, Private Benjamin, Gremlins)
1937 Richard Petty – NASCAR racer known as The King of stock car racing
1946 Ron Silver - Actor (Chicago Hope, Rhoda, Silkwood, Reversal of Fortune, Blue Steel, Ali, The West Wing, Veronica’s Closet, Timecop)
1947 Stephen Stucker – Actor (Airplane!, Trading Places, Kentucky Fried Movie)
1948 Saul Rubinek – German born Canadian actor (The Doorbell Rang: A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Nixon, The Equalizer, Bonfire of the Vanities, The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick, Warehouse 13, Jesse Stone movies)
1949 Roy Bittan – Pianist with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (Born to Run, Thunder Road, Badlands, Promised Land, Independence Day, The River, My Hometown)
1954 Wendy Schaal – Actress (The ‘Burbs, Good Grief, *batteries not included, Innerspace, It’s a Living)
1956 Jerry Hall - Actress-model (Urban Cowboy, Cluedo, Princess Caraboo) She also played Alicia in Batman
1970 Yancy Butler - Actress (Thin Air, Brooklyn South, South Beach, Witchblade, Hard Target)
1978 Owain Yeoman – Welsh actor (The Mentalist, Troy, Generation Kill, The Nine, Kitchen Confidential)
1986 Lindsay Lohan – Actress (Georgia Rule, Freaky Friday, The Parent Trap, A Prairie Home Companion)
1990 Margot Robbie – Australian actress (Neighbours, Pan Am, I.C.U., Vigilante, Barbie, Suicide Squad, The Wolf of Wall Street, Mary Queen of Scots)


Died this Day

1566 Nostradamus, age 62 - French astrologer and physician, died in Salon
1778 Jean Jacques Rousseau – Swiss-born French philosopher who gave the world the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” He died four days after his 66th birthday
1843 Christian Freidrich Samuel Hahnemann, age 88 – German physician and founder of homeopathy
1850 Sir Robert Peel, age 62 – British statesman and twice Prime Minister, who founded the London Metropolitan Police. They were first nicknamed “Peelers”, then “Bobbies”, after his name. He was thrown from a horse on June 29th and died this day from his injuries
1961 Ernest Hemingway - US author (A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea) He was plagued by ill health, and committed suicide at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, three weeks before his 62nd birthday
1973 Betty Grable, age 56 - US actress, singer (Pin Up Girl, Million Dollar Legs, Sweet Rosie O’Grady, How to Marry a Millionaire) She died in Santa Monica, California, of lung cancer
1993 Fred Gwynne - Actor (The Munsters, Car 54 Where are You?, My Cousin Vinny, Fatal Attraction, Pet Sematary, The Cotton Club) He died of pancreatic cancer a week before his 67th birthday
1994 Andres Escobar - Colombian soccer player. He was shot to death in Medellin, 10 days after accidentally scoring a goal against his own team in World Cup competition
1997 Jimmy Stewart, age 89 – Actor (Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Harvey, Rear Window, Anatomy of a Murder, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Vertigo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) He died in Beverly Hills, California of a lung embolism


On this Day

1679 In what is now Minnesota, French explorer Daniel Greysolon de Du Luth made a treaty with local tribes, planting the Coat of Arms of France at the Sioux village of Izatys on Lake Michigan. He was the first European to visit Minnesota and see the headwaters of the Mississippi
1809 Alarmed by the growing encroachment of whites squatting on Native American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh called on all Indians to unite and resist. The US government had been reluctant to take action against the squatters, and the rights of the Ohio Valley Indians went unprotected. Therefore, Tecumseh began a concerted campaign to persuade the Indians of the Old Northwest and Deep South to join together, and Indians from as far away as Florida and Minnesota heeded his call. By 1810, he had organised the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Indians from the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa, and Wyandot nations. Initially, Tecumseh's Indian Confederacy successfully delayed further white settlement in the region. In 1811, while Tecumseh was in the South attempting to convince more tribes to join his movement, the future president William Henry Harrison led an attack on the confederacy's base on the Tippecanoe River. Although the battle of Tippecanoe was close, Harrison finally won out and destroyed much of Tecumseh's army. When the War of 1812 began the following year, Tecumseh immediately marshalled what remained of his army to aid the British. Commissioned a brigadier general, he proved an effective ally and played a key role in the British capture of Detroit and other battles
1839 The Mutiny on the Amistad slave ship occurred early in the morning, as Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rose up against their captors, killing two crewmembers and seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe. In 1807, the US Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the US was not yet prohibited. However, Spain and Portugal continued to transport and accept captive Africans to their American colonies until the 1860s. On June 28, 1839, fifty-three slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans mutinied, led by a Membe African known as Cinque. Using sugar cane knives found in the hold, they killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward US waters. After almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time over a dozen Africans perished, the ship was spotted by the first US vessels. In August, the US Navy ship the USS Washington seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island, New York, and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish government called for the Africans' extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, US abolitionists advocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa. The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and after numerous trials, and appeals, the US Supreme Court ruled, with only one dissent, that the Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right to fight for their freedom. In November, with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans departed America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa
1881 Only four months into his administration, President James A. Garfield was shot as he walked through a railroad waiting room in Washington, DC. His assailant, Charles J. Guiteau, was a disgruntled office seeker who had unsuccessfully sought an appointment to the US consul in Paris. The president was shot in the back and the arm, and Guiteau was arrested. Garfield, mortally ill, was treated in Washington and then taken to the seashore at Elberon, New Jersey, where he attempted to recuperate with his family, dying in September of that year
1900 The world’s first rigid airship, the Zeppelin, made its maiden flight in the sky over Germany's Lake Constance, piloted by Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, a retired Prussian army officer. The 420-foot, cigar-shaped craft was lifted by hydrogen gas and powered by a 16-horsepower engine. Although a French inventor had built a power-driven airship several decades before, the Zeppelin's rigid dirigible, with its steel framework, was by far the largest airship ever constructed
1937 The Lockheed aircraft carrying legendary aviator Amelia Earhart and her copilot Frederick J. Noonan was reported missing. They were attempting to make the first round-the-world flight at the equator, and disappeared on the last leg of their global journey somewhere between New Guinea and Howland Island in the South Pacific. The US Coast Guard cutter Itasca had been in sporadic radio contact with the plane as they approached Howland Island, and received messages that they were lost and running low on fuel. No trace of Earhart or Noonan was ever found
1947 An object crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. The Air Force later insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft
1976 North and South Vietnam were officially united after 20 years of war
1982 Using a lawn chair hoisted by 42 helium-filled weather balloons, Larry Walters took off from San Pedro, California. He rose to an altitude of about 16,000 feet and travelled 15 miles before landing safely in Long Beach. Aviation officials fined him $1,500