Born this Day

1304 Francesco Petrarch - Italian scholar and poet. Sherlock Holmes read a pocket edition of his works on the train to Boscombe Valley
1822 Gregor Johann Mendel – Austrian monk and botanist who failed botany when trying to obtain a certificate. He began experimenting in 1856, and his book, Experiments with Plant Hybrids, written in 1866, laid the basis for the study of genetics
1919 Sir Edmund Hillary – New Zealand mountaineer and Antarctic explorer who was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest, along with Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay
1924 Lola Albright - Actress (Peter Gunn, The Tender Trap, The Impossible Years, Lord Love A Duck, Beauty on Parade, The Good Humor Man, When You’re Smiling, The Killer That Stalked New York, Arctic Flight, The Bob Cummings Show, Burke’s Law, Peyton Place, Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?)
1930 Sally Ann Howes - Actress (Dead of Night, The History of Mr. Polly, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Nicholas Nickleby)
1938 Jo Ann Campbell - Singer (I Found a Love, Oh What a Love)
1938 Dame Diana Rigg – British stage and screen actress (The Avengers, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Mother Love, King Lear, Witness for the Prosecution, Evil Under the Sun, Bleak House, Gengis Cohn, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, Rebecca, The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, The Painted Veil, Victoria & Albert) She was also the hostess for PBS' Mystery! series
1938 Natalie Wood - Actress (From Here to Eternity, West Side Story, Splendour in the Grass, Rebel Without a Cause, Marjorie Morningstar, Gypsy, Miracle on 34th Street, Sex and the Single Girl, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) She was one of the few actors to make a smooth transition from a childhood actor to an adult acting career
1943 John Lodge - Singer with the group Moody Blues (Nights In White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon, I’m Just A Singer In A Rock and Roll Band, Your Wildest Dreams, Go Now)
1943 Wendy Richard – British actress (Are You Being Served?, EastEnders, Grace & Favour, Carry On Girls, Bless This House)
1944 T.G. Sheppard – Country singer (I Loved 'Em Every One, Make My Day, Last Cheater's Waltz)
1945 Kim Carnes - Singer (Bette Davis Eyes, Don't Fall in Love With a Dreamer, What About Me)
1947 Carlos Santana – Musician with his group Santana, and solo (Evil Ways, Black Magic Woman, Oye Como Va, Smooth)
1950 Tantoo Cardinal – Canadian actress (A Thief of Time, Moccasin Flats, DreamKeeper, North of 60, Legends of the Fall, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Black Robe, Dances with Wolves, Spirit Bay, Smoke Signals, The Englishman’s Boy, Blackstone)
1951 Jeff Rawle – British actor (Hollyoaks, Drop the Dead Donkey, Doc Martin, Harry Potter movies, Faith in the Future, Billy Liar)
1957 Donna Dixon – Actress (Bosom Buddies, Doctor Detroit, Wayne’s World, Nixon) She is married to Dan Aykroyd
1963 Adoni Maropis – Actor (Troy, 24, Hidalgo, The Scorpion King, Mortal Kombat: Conquest)
1964 Dean Winters – Actor (Oz, Rescue Me, Law & Order: SVU, 30 Rock, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Battle Creek)
1967 Reed Diamond – Actor (Homocide: Life on the Street, Franklin & Bash, Moneyball, 24, Dollhouse, Judging Amy, S.W.A.T., Wayward Pines)
1968 Julian Rhind-Tutt – British actor (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Hour, Poirot: Hallowe’en Party, Meant to Be, Stardust, Marple: Ordeal by Innocence, Green Wing, Keene Eddie, To Kill a King, Heat of the Sun, Reckless)
1969 Josh Holloway – Actor (Lost, Sabretooth, Cold Heart, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol)
1971 Sandra Oh – Canadian actress (Grey’s Anatomy, Sideways, Under the Tuscan Sun, Arli$$, The Princess Diaries, The Red Violin, The Diary of Evelyn Lau, Killing Eve)
1973 Omar Epps – Actor (House, Scream 2, Brother, ER, Breakfast of Champions, Against the Ropes)
1975 Judy Greer – Actress (Marmaduke, Two and a Half Men, Mad Love, Arrested Development, 27 Dresses, The Grand, Elizabethtown, 13 Going on 30, The Wedding Planner, Three Kings)
1983 Martin McCann – Irish actor (Titanic: Blood and Steel, The Pacific, Clash of the Titans, My Boy Jack, Dry Your Eyes)
1985 John Francis Daley – Actor (Bones, The Geena Davis Show, Freaks & Geeks, Boston Public)


Died this Day

1889 Ella Watson and James Averell – Wyoming homesteaders who were murdered by Wyoming ranchers. Having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king, the two were accused of rustling and hanged. As the days of the open range cattle industry faded, conflicts between powerful western cattle barons and the homesteaders were inevitable. The homesteaders had every right to claim their 320 acres of windswept grasslands but some old-time ranchers tried to discourage the settlers in hopes of preserving more rangeland for their cattle. Usually, such discouragement was limited to cowboys cutting the settlers' barbed wire fences or diverting irrigation water, but the tactics occasionally became more violent. A common complaint among ranchers was that many of the homesteaders were actually rustlers who stole their cows and horses. The ranchers' accusations were, for the most part, exaggerated, but the charge of rustling allowed them to take drastic actions, as in the case with Ella Watson and James Averell. Watson, a former prostitute from Kansas, came to Wyoming Territory in 1886, and that same year, she received a license to wed James Averell, a Wyoming saloonkeeper who had a homestead on the Sweetwater River. The couple either never married or kept the union secret so that Watson could file a second homestead near Averell's place. Both claims were located on lands used by the powerful rancher Albert Bothwell, without legal foundation, who grazed his herds on those lands. Bothwell, known as one of the most arrogant cattleman in the region, eventually accused both Watson and Averell of rustling. Bothwell and five of his men took the couple prisoner and hanged them. Although the men were later charged with murder, a pro-rancher jury acquitted them of any wrongdoing. It was the only incidence of a woman being executed, legally or illegally, in the history of Wyoming
1912 Andrew Lang – Scottish author (The Blue Book of Fairy Tales)
1937 Guglielmo Marconi, age 63 – Italian physicist and pioneer in wireless telegraphy who played a major role in the development of early radio. He made important discoveries about short-wave radio that formed the basis for modern long-distance radio, and in 1909, he won the Nobel Prize for Physics
1951 Abdullah Ibn Hussein - King of Jordan, was assassinated in Jerusalem
1973 Bruce Lee, age 32 – Martial arts master and actor (The Green Hornet, Marlowe, Enter the Dragon, Fist of Fury) He died in Hong Kong of a cerebral oedema. He also played Kato in the Batman episodes The Spell of Tut, A Piece of the Action, and Batman’s Satisfaction
1989 Harry Worth – British comedian and actor (Oh Happy Band, How’s Your Father?, Here’s Harry)
2005 James Doohan, age 85 – Canadian WW II military pilot and actor (Star Trek, The Bold and the Beautiful, Homeboys In Outer Space) Doohan landed with Royal Canadian Army troops on the D-Day invasion of France on Juno Beach at Normandy, and was wounded in the leg and hand, losing the middle finger of his right hand to the German fire


On this Day

1810 Colombia declared independence from Spain
1837 Euston Station, London’s first railway station, opened
1859 In the first baseball game for which admission was charged, 1,500 people paid 50¢ each to see New York play Brooklyn
1861 The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, Virginia
1871 British Columbia joined Confederation as the sixth Canadian province
1881 Sitting Bull surrendered, five years after General George A. Custer's infamous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn that resulted in the death of Custer and 264 of his men. The Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader surrendered to the US Army, which promised amnesty for him and his followers. Pursued by the US Army after the Indian victory, he escaped to Canada with his followers. In 1873, in what would serve as a preview of the Battle of Little Bighorn three years later, an Indian military coalition featuring the leadership of Sitting Bull skirmished briefly with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. In 1876, Sitting Bull was not a strategic leader in the US defeat at Little Bighorn, but his spiritual influence inspired Crazy Horse and the other victorious Indian military leaders. He subsequently fled to Canada, but in 1881, with his people starving, he returned to the US and surrendered. He was held as a prisoner of war at Fort Randall in South Dakota territory for two years and then was permitted to live on Standing Rock Reservation straddling North and South Dakota territory. In 1885, he travelled for a season with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show and then returned to Standing Rock
1885 The trial of Louis Riel for treason began at Regina, in what is now Saskatchewan, but was then the capital of the North-West Territories. Riel wished to plead not guilty, but his lawyers entered an insanity plea over his objections
1917 The US’s draft lottery in World War I went into operation
1940 Billboard published its first singles records charts. The top song was I'll Never Smile Again, by the Tommy Dorsey Band, with vocals by Frank Sinatra
1969 Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the Moon. Four days earlier, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Centre with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission. Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19th, and on the 20th, at 1:46 pm, the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 pm the craft touched down on the south-western edge of the Sea of Tranquillity. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a famous message: "The Eagle has landed." At 10:39 pm, five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the lunar module's ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation. At 10:56 pm, Armstrong spoke his famous quote, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be "that's one small step for *a* man, one giant leap for mankind." He then planted his left foot on the grey, powdery surface, took a cautious step forward, and humanity had walked on the moon. Buzz Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface at 11:11 pm, and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a US flag, ran a few simple scientific tests, collected nearly 50 pounds of lunar rock and soil and spoke with President Richard M. Nixon via Houston. By 1:11 am on July 21st, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 pm the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Their stay on the Moon lasted 21 hours, 36 minutes and 21 seconds. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon--July 1969 A.D--We came in peace for all mankind". Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and on July 22nd Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:51 pm on July 24th
1976 The Viking One space robot made the first-ever landing on Mars. It sent back the first pictures ever taken on the planet's surface