Born this Day

1771 Thomas Talbot – Irish-born British military officer and coloniser. After serving as private secretary to Governor John Graves Simcoe, Colonel Talbot acquired portions of 29 townships in south-western Ontario along the north shore of Lake Erie, and brought out settlers from the British Isles, founding the Talbot Settlement, and its capital, St. Thomas
1814 Samuel Colt – US firearms manufacturer of the six-shot revolver, which he made of wood during his time at sea, and patented in 1835. The gun was not an initial success and his manufacturing business faltered. He also invented the first remotely controlled naval mine. His guns eventually proved popular, and he ended up a rich man with progressive ideas about the welfare of his workers
1834 Edgar Degas - French Impressionist painter and sculptor noted for his paintings of dancers in motion
1860 Lizzie Borden - US Sunday-school teacher and alleged axe murderer. She was accused of killing her father and step-mother, whose bodies were found on August 4th, 1892 in their locked rooms in the small Massachusetts town of Fall River. After a 13 day trial, the active Christian Endeavour Society member was acquitted, the case unsolved
1865 Charles Horace Mayo – US surgeon who founded the Mayo Clinic & the Mayo Foundation with his brothers
1894 Percy Spencer – US scientist whose work with magnetrons for the Raytheon Company led to his 1945 invention of the microwave oven, as well as major advances in radar
1896 A.J. Cronin – Scottish author (The Citadel, Keys of the Kingdom)
1924 Pat Hingle - Actor (The Grifters, Splendour in the Grass, On the Waterfront, The Glass Menagerie, Norma Rae, Of Mice and Men, The Falcon and the Snowman, Baby Boom, The Quick and the Dead, Shaft) He also played Police Commissioner Gordon in the Batman movies
1926 Sue Thompson - Singer (Norman, Sad Movies Make Me Cry)
1937 George Hamilton IV - Singer (A Rose and a Baby Ruth, Why Don't They Understand, Abilene, The Teen Commandments, She's a Little Bit Country)
1938 Richard Jordan - Actor (Captains and the Kings, The Bunker, Hunt for Red October, Dune, Logan's Run, Rooster Cogburn)
1941 Vikki Carr - Singer (It Must be Him, With Pen in Hand, The Lesson)
1945 George Dzundza – German-born actor (Law & Order, The Deer Hunter, The Butcher’s Wife, Basic Instinct, Crimson Tide, Dangerous Minds, Hack)
1947 Bernie Leadon – Guitarist with the group The Eagles (Take It Easy, Best of My Love, One of these Nights)
1947 Brian Harold May – Guitarist with the group Queen (Killer Queen, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Another One Bites the Dust, Bohemian Rhapsody, Hammer to Fall, Save Me, We Will Rock You) He also has a PhD in astrophysics and is married to actress Anita Dobson
1956 Peter Barton - Actor (Burke’s Law, The Powers of Matthew Star, The Young and the Restless, Sunset Beach)
1960 Atom Egoyan – Egyptian-born Canadian film director (The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia’s Journey, The Line)
1961 Campbell Scott – Actor (Royal Pains, The Amazing Spider-Man, Damages, Music and Lyrics, Roger Dodger, Dead Again) He’s the son of George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst
1962 Anthony Edwards – Actor (ER, The Client, Thunderbirds, Northern Exposure, Pet Sematary II, Top Gun, Call to Glory, Revenge of the Nerds, Fast Times at Ridgemont High)
1976 Benedict Cumberbach – British actor (The Other Bolyen Girl, Hawking, Atonement, Amazing Grace, Marple: Murder is Easy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Doctor Strange, August: Osage County, Zoolander 2, Star Trek Into Darkness) He portrays Sherlock Holmes in PBS’s modern-day series “Sherlock”
1982 Jared Padalecki – Actor (Supernatural, Friday the 13th, Gilmore Girls, New York Minute)


Died this Day

1616 Marguérite Vienne – The first French woman in New France, died in Québec City
1814 Matthew Flinders – British navigator who explored and charted much of the Australian coastline
1974 Joe Flynn – Actor (McHale’s Navy, The Barefoot Executive, The Tim Conway Show) He also played Benton Belgoody in the Batman episodes The Cat’s Meow and The Bat’s Kow Tow

On this Day

1553 Fifteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey was deposed as Queen of England after claiming the crown for nine days. Her cousin Mary, the daughter of King Henry VIII, was proclaimed Queen in her place. Lady Jane, beautiful and intelligent, had only reluctantly agreed to be put on the throne, and the decision would eventually result in her execution. She was the great-granddaughter of King Henry VII and the cousin of King Edward VI. Lady Jane and Edward were the same age, and they had almost been married in 1549. In May 1553 she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, the son of John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. When King Edward fell deathly ill with tuberculosis soon after, Jane's father-in-law, John Dudley persuaded the dying king that Jane, a Protestant, should be chosen the royal successor over Edward's half-sister Mary, a Catholic. On July 6, 1553, Edward died, and four days later Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen of England. Lady Jane's ascendance was supported by the Royal Council, but the populace supported Mary, the rightful heir. Two days into Lady Jane's reign, Dudley departed London with an army to suppress Mary's forces, and in his absence the Council declared him a traitor and Mary the queen, ending Jane's nine-day reign. By July 20, most of Dudley's army had deserted him, and he was arrested. The same day, Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Her father-in-law was condemned for high treason, and on August 23 he was executed. On November 13, Jane and her husband, Guildford Dudley, were likewise found guilty of treason and sentenced to death, but because of their youth and relative innocence Mary did not carry out the death sentences. However, in early 1554, Jane's father, Henry Grey, joined Sir Thomas Wyatt in an insurrection against Mary that broke out after her announcement of her intention to marry Philip II of Spain. While suppressing the revolt, Mary decided it was also necessary to eliminate all her political opponents, and on February 7 she signed the death warrants of Jane and her husband. On the morning of February 12, Jane watched her husband being carried away to execution from the window of her cell in the Tower of London, and two hours later she was also executed
1673 Louis de Buade et de Palluau, Count Frontenac, completed Fort Frontenac. It was a fortified base for fur trade west of the St. Lawrence Valley
1701 The Iroquois deeded hunting ground north of Lake Ontario and west of Lake Michigan to England
1799 The Rosetta Stone was found during Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, when a French soldier discovered a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests of Ptolemy V in the second century BC. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been "dead" for nearly two millennia. Two decades later, French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion was able to decipher the hieroglyphics using his knowledge of Greek as a guide, and the language and culture of ancient Egypt was suddenly open to scientists as never before
1826 Canada’s first sailing regatta was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the North West Arm
1833 The Montréal city council adopted a coat of arms for the city. It comprised the motto 'Concordia Salus', and four national flowers: the fleur-de-lys of France, the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, and the shamrock of Ireland
1848 The modern women's rights movement was launched at a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The meeting approved 11 resolutions, including one demanding women be given the right to vote. At the convention, Amelia Bloomer introduced “bloomers” to the world, which she described as “the lower part of a rational dress”
1912 About 14,000 particles struck the Earth in a meteor shower near Holbrook, Arizona
1921 Alcohol prohibition came into effect in Ontario
1934 Harold T. Ames filed a patent application for his retractable headlamps. The design would later become one of the defining details on Ames’ most triumphant project, the Cord 810
1935 The first automatic parking meter in the US, the Park-O-Meter invented by Carlton Magee, was installed in Oklahoma City by the Dual Parking Meter Company. Twenty-foot spaces were painted on the pavement and a parking meter that accepted nickels was planted in the concrete at the head of each space. The city paid for the meters with funds collected from them
1937 Canada's first bilingual currency was issued by the Bank of Canada
1940 While launching Britain's "V For Victory," campaign, Sir Winston Churchill flashed his famous two-fingered victory salute for the first time
1957 The first US rocket with an atomic warhead was test-fired over the Nevada desert
1969 Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin ''Buzz'' Aldrin and Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon, after lifting off from earth on July 16th and travelling 240,000 miles in 76 hours
1975 The Apollo and Soyuz space capsules that were linked in orbit for two days, separated
1980 The Moscow Summer Olympics began. The US and Canada were among the dozens of countries that boycotted the Games because of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan
1981 Hailstones the size of tennis balls caused millions of dollars damage near Toronto
1985 Christa McAuliffe of New Hampshire was chosen from more than 11,000 applicants to be the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the space shuttle. McAuliffe and six other crew members died in the Challenger tragedy the following January