Born this Day

100BC Gaius Julius Caesar - Roman imperial general and statesman. He was the most famous general in Roman history, who became a dictator. When he was born, the month was called Quintilis, but was later renamed in his honour
1730 Josiah Wedgwood – British pottery designer and manufacturer. He worked in the family pottery business at Churchyard Works, Staffordshire. When his right leg was affected by smallpox, and had to be amputated, he spent his recovery time in research and experimentation which led to Wedgwood becoming prized world-wide
1817 Henry David Thoreau – US philosopher, naturalist and author (On Walden Pond, Early Spring in Massachusetts)
1849 Sir William Osler – Canadian physician, professor of medicine, and author (The Principles and Practice of Medicine) He taught medicine and pathology at McGill University in Montréal, and, in 1889, was the first professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Osler also assisted in the creation of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York and held the Regius Chair of Medicine at Oxford. He combined physiological and psychological treatment of patients and emphasised the patient's state of mind in achieving a cure. Osler is known as The Father of Clinical Medicine, and has been called “the most influential physician in history”
1854 George Eastman – US photographic pioneer and inventor of the Kodak camera and flexible roll film. He was born in Waterville, NY
1855 Ned Hanlan – Canadian world champion rower. Hanlan was Ontario's best sculler by 1873 and four years later, he won the Dominion championship. The next year, he won the US title, and he held the world title for five years until defeated in 1884. Hanlan was Canada's first world sports champion. He is memorialised by Hanlan's Point on the Toronto Islands. From 1876 to 1886 Hanlan lost only six of 300 races
1861 George Washington Carver – US scientist whose discoveries helped to improve agriculture in the South. He was an authority on cotton, and also discovered scores of uses for such lowly products as sweet potatoes, peanuts and clay, developing ink, pigments, cosmetics, paper, paint, and many other articles. He refused to make money on his discoveries, and simply devoted his life to scientific agricultural research. Carver also started a Bible class at Tuskegee Institute in 1906. He was born to slave parents on a farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri, and did not learn to read and write until he was almost 20
1895 Buckminster Fuller – US engineer and architect
1895 Oscar Hammerstein II – Lyricist and songwriter who worked with various composers from Richard Rodgers to Jerome Kern (Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Sound of Music, Show Boat)
1908 Milton Berle – US comedian and actor known as Uncle Miltie and Mr. Television (The Milton Berle Show, Texaco Star Theatre, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World) He started his career on the vaudeville stage
1917 Andrew Wyeth – US artist (the Helga pictures, Christina's World)
1930 Gordon Pinsent – Canadian actor (Due South, Quentin Durgens MP, The Rowdy Man, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, The Pillars of the Earth, Away from Her, The Shipping News, Wind at My Back, Power Play, The Red Green Show, The Life and Times of Edwin Alonzo Boyd, Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper, The Forest Rangers)
1934 Van Cliburn - Piano virtuoso
1937 Bill Cosby – Actor and comedian (I Spy, The Cosby Show, Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids, California Suite, Ghost Dad, Leonard Part 6, Mother Jugs & Speed)
1943 Christine McVie – Musician and singer with Fleetwood Mac (Got a Hold on Me, Dreams, Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow)
1944 Denise Nicholas - Actress (Room 222, In the Heat of the Night, Ghost Dad)
1948 Richard Simmons - Weight loss expert, entertainer (Sweatin' to the Oldies)
1948 Jay Thomas – Actor (Cheers, Murphy Brown, Mork & Mindy, Love & War, Mr. Holland’s Opus, The Santa Clause 2)
1951 Cheryl Ladd - Actress (Charlie’s Angels, Kentucky Woman, Grace Kelly, Millennium, Las Vegas, When She Was Bad…, Purple Hearts, Dead Before Dawn, Poison Ivy)
1951 Jamey Sheridan – Actor (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Trauma, Syriana, Cradle Wil Rock, The Ice Storm, Chicago Hope, A Stranger Among Us)
1956 Mel Harris – Actress (thirtysometing, The Burden of Proof, Out of the Woods, K-9, Saints & Sinners, Something So Right, Murder She Wrote: South by Southwest)
1967 Tonya Lee Williams – British-born Canadian actress (The Young and the Restless, Spaced Invaders, Polka Dot Door)
1969 Lisa Nicole Carson - Actress (Ally McBeal, ER)
1971 Kristi Yamaguchi – US Olympic gold medal figure skater
1976 Anna Friel – British actress (Pushing Daisies, Land of the Lost, Bathory, Mad Cows, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Our Mutual Friend, Brookside, G.B.H.)
1977 Steve Howey – Actor (Reba, Shameless, Something Borrowed, DOA: Dead or Alive, Five Year Plan)
1978 Michelle Rodriguez – Actress (Lost, Resident Evil, The Fast and the Furious, Girlfight, Avatar, Battle Los Angeles, Machete)
1978 Topher Grace – Actor (That 70’s Show, Spiderman 3, Traffic, Mona Lisa Smile)
1984 Natalie Martinez – Actress (Detroit 1-8-7, Saints & Sinners, Fashion House, Death Race)


Died this Day

1705 Titus Oates, age 55 – British Anglican priest responsible for the fabricated Popish Plot of 1678 which caused a reign of terror in London. He died in obscurity after being expelled from the church
1799 David Douglas – Scottish botanist and explorer. The Douglas fir is named after him. He died two weeks before his 35th birthday
1804 Alexander Hamilton – The first Secretary of the Treasury, a leading Federalist and chief architect of America's political economy. He died from wounds he received the previous day, when he had been shot by Vice President Aaron Burr, in a duel held in Weehawken, New Jersey. As New Jersey did not have a law against duelling at the time, Burr and Hamilton, both New Yorkers, crossed the Hudson to Weehawken. New York had banned the practice earlier, partly due to Hamilton's own campaign efforts after his son was killed in a duel. The two had a long history as political antagonists. In an 1804 election, Hamilton had a leading role in the campaign against Burr, savagely attacking his character. After Burr lost the election he resolved to restore his reputation by challenging Hamilton to a duel, or an "affair of honour," as they were known. Affairs of honour were commonplace in the US at the time, and the complex rules governing them usually led to an honourable resolution before any actual firing of weapons. In fact, the outspoken Hamilton had been involved in several affairs of honour in his life, and he had resolved most of them peaceably. No such recourse was found with Burr, however, and on July 11, 1804, the enemies met at 7 a.m. at the duelling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey. It was the same spot where Hamilton's son had died defending his father's honour two years before. There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to Hamilton's "second", his assistant and witness in the duel, Hamilton decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately fired into the air. Burr's second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed. What happened next is agreed upon: Burr shot Hamilton in the stomach, and the bullet lodged next to his spine. Hamilton was taken back to New York, and he died the next afternoon. Few affairs of honour actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder in New York and New Jersey, Burr, still vice president, returned to Washington, DC, where he finished his term immune from prosecution
1910 Charles Stewart Rolls, age 32 – British aviator and car manufacturer, killed in a an aircraft crash near Bournemouth. He was the first pilot to be killed in British aviation history


On this Day

1389 King Richard II appointed Geoffrey Chaucer to the position of chief clerk of the king's works in Westminster. Chaucer, the middle-class son of a wine merchant, served as a page in an aristocratic household during his teens and was associated with the aristocracy for the rest of his life. He wrote several poems in the 1380s, and later began work on the Canterbury Tales, in which a mixed group of nobles, peasants, and clergy make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The work, a compilation of tales told by each character, is remarkable for its presentation of the spectrum of social classes. Although Chaucer intended the book to include 120 stories, he died in 1399, with only 22 tales finished
1543 England's King Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, who outlived him and married again after his death
1690 Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland
1794 British Admiral Lord Nelson lost his right eye at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica
1812 US Brigadier General William Hull crossed the Detroit River with 2,500 troops and occupied the town of Sandwich in the first US invasion of Canada in the War of 1812. Worried about a new alliance between the British and the Indians led by Tecumseh, Hull soon retreated to Detroit, and surrendered to the British a month later
1836 Canada's first railway, the Champlain and St. Lawrence, started service between Laprairie and St-Jean on the Richelieu in Québec
1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed into law a measure calling for the awarding of a US Army Medal of Honor, in the name of Congress, "to such non-commissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other soldier-like qualities during the present insurrection." The previous December, Lincoln had approved a provision creating a US Navy Medal of Valor, which was the basis of the Army Medal of Honor. The first US Army soldiers to receive what would become the nation's highest military honour were six members of a Union raiding party who in 1862 penetrated deep into Confederate territory to destroy bridges and railroad tracks between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia. In 1863, the Medal of Honor was made a permanent military decoration available to all members, including commissioned officers, of the US military
1876 Signorina Maria Spelterina walked across Niagara Falls backward on a tightrope, with peach baskets on her feet. The 23-year-old took 11 minutes to cross. The following week, she walked across blindfolded, and then with her wrists and ankles manacled
1962 The Rolling Stones gave their first public performance at the Marquee Club in London. At the time, the band included singer Mick Jagger, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, bassist Dick Taylor, and drummer Mick Avory, who later played with the Kinks
1963 Terrorists destroyed Queen Victoria’s monument in Montréal’s Dominion Square in a dynamite explosion
1989 A shouting woman, convicted in a Cleveland, Ohio court for stealing jewellery, was ordered by the judge to have her mouth taped shut