Category: On This Day

Historical Events

1775 – Continental Congress approves resolution barring blacks from army
1835 – Texas Rangers, mounted police force authorized by Texas Provisional Government
1948 – “Bicycle Thieves”, Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica, starring himself and Cesare Zavattini, is released (Honorary Academy Award 1950)
1950 – US infantry division conquers Chonju Korea
1956 – Americans go 1-2 in the men’s 100m final at the Melbourne Olympics; Bobby Morrow and Thane Baker both record hand-timed 10.50s but automatic timing gives gold medal to Morrow
1971 – American “Dan Cooper” hijacks plane, extorts $200,000 ransom before jumping out of plane over Washington State, never seen again

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Famous Birthdays

1642 – Anne Hilarion de Cotentin, earl of Tourville/knight/admiral/marshal
1766 – Friedrich Weinbrenner, German architect, born in Karlsruhe (d. 1826)
1815 – Grace Darling, English heroine (d. 1842)
1893 – Fern Andra [Vernal Edna Andrews], German-American actress (Eyes of the World), born in Watseka, Illinois (d. 1974)
1943 – Barry Milburn, cricketer (NZ wicket-keeper in three Tests 1969)
1950 – Damon Evans, Balt Md, American actor (The Jeffersons), born in Baltimore, Maryland

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Famous Deaths

1572 – John Knox, Scottish preacher, dies at about 67
1693 – William Sancroft, 79th Archbishop of Canterbury, dies at 76
1914 – Louis de Raet, Belgian economist/Flemish People Party, dies
1953 – George Alexander Russell, American organist, composer and the first Frick Professor of Music for Princeton University, dies at 73
1953 – Robert Lightfoot, English theologist and exegetist, dies at 70
1987 – Jehane Benoît, French Canadian culinary author (b. 1904)

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Historical Events

1577 – Water Geuzen under Captain Slope enters Amsterdam
1904 – III Summer (Modern) Olympic Games close in St Louis
1971 – Danny Murtaugh, manager of MLB world champions Pittsburgh Pirates, announces his retirement
1977 – “Jesus Christ Superstar” opens at Longacre Theater NYC for 96 performances
1991 – Evander Holyfield TKOs Bert Cooper in 7 for heavyweight boxing title
1993 – “Doggystyle” debut album by Snoop Doggy Dogg is released (Billboard Album of the Year 1994)

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Famous Birthdays

1878 – Holcombe Ward, American tennis player (US Nat C’ship 1904; President USLTA 1937-47), born in New York, NY (d. 1967)
1888 – Harpo Marx [Adolph], American actor and comedian (Marx brothers), born in NYC, New York (d. 1964)
1902 – Aaron Bank, American OSS officer and founder of the US Army Special Forces (d. 2004)
1946 – Diana Quick, English actress (Brideshead, Big Sleep, Odd Job), born in London
1978 – Kayvan Novak, English actor, born in Cricklewood, London
1991 – Anurag Kashyap, 2005 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, born in Muzaffarpur, India

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Famous Deaths

1503 – Margaret of York (Margaret of Burgendy), wife of Charles I, Duke of Burgundy, dies at 57
1616 – Richard Hakluyt, English writer (b. 1552)
1752 – Conrad Michael Schneider, composer, dies at 79
1990 – Renate Rubinstein, German-Dutch author and columnist (Tamar), dies at 61
1992 – Rita Corday, actress (Dick Tracy vs Cueball), dies at 68
1996 – Art Porter, saxophonist, dies at 35

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Historical Events

1908 – 1st US-Japanese baseball game Reach All-Americans defeat Waseda U, 5-0
1910 – Arthur Knight patents steel shaft golf clubs
1914 – Ypres, Belgium, burned by German bombing
1928 – “Bolero” by Maurice Ravel first performed publicly (Paris)
1966 – 32nd Heisman Trophy Award: Steve Spurrier, Florida (QB)
1999 – Elian Gonzalez, Cuban boy at the center of a heated 2000 controversy involving the governments of Cuba and the United States, and his mother are sighted off of Florida’s coast by U.S. Coast Guard

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Famous Birthdays

1808 – Thomas Cook, British founder and CEO of Thomas Cook and Son travel agency (Cook Travel Bureau), born in Derbyshire, England (d. 1892)
1877 – Endre Ady, Hungarian lyric poet (Még egyzer, Uj versek), born in Ermindszent, Hungary (d. 1919)
1902 – Humphrey Gibbs, Governor of Southern Rhodesia (1959-69), born in London (d. 1990)
1950 – Art Sullivan, Belgian singer
1950 – Steven Van Zandt, American guitarist, songwriter, producer (E-Street Band; Asbury Jukes), and actor (The Sopranos), born in Winthrop, Massachusetts
1959 – Frank McAvennie, Scottish footballer

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Famous Deaths

1758 – Richard Edgcumbe, 1st Baron Edgcumbe, British politician (b. 1680)
1943 – Pietro Alessandro Yon, composer, dies at 57
1955 – Guy Ropartz [Joseph Guy Marie Ropartz], French composer, dies at 91 (b. 1864)
1997 – Tom Blackburn, writer, dies at 71
2006 – Pat Dobson, American baseball player (b. 1942)
2011 – Lynn Margulis, American biologist (serial endosymbiotic theory), dies at 73

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Historical Events

1905 – 1st match ever played in the Australian National Tennis Championships
1976 – 26th NASCAR Sprint Cup: Cale Yarborough wins
1977 – First flight of Concorde (London to New York)
2002 – NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.
2006 – Daughtry release their debut album “Daughtry” (2007 Billboard Album of the Year, American Music Awards Favorite Pop-Rock Album 2007)
2017 – Robert Mugabe’s resignation after 37 years in power is read out in Zimbabwe’s parliaments during impeachment proceedings

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Famous Birthdays

1924 – Christopher Tolkien, British author and son of J. R. R. Tolkien, born in Leeds, England (d. 2020)
1943 – Jacques Laffite, French former racing driver
1948 – George Zimmer, American entrepreneur
1954 – Thomas Rothman, American film executive
1956 – Mariana Simionescu, Romanian tennis player (1st wife of Björn Borg), born in Tirgu Neamt, Romania
1985 – Carly Rae Jepsen, Canadian singer (“Call Me Maybe”), born in Mission, British Columbia

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Famous Deaths

1566 – Annibale Caro, Italian writer and poet (Lettere familiare), dies at 59
1900 – J. J. Ferris, Australian cricketer (48 wickets for Aust in 8 Tests in 1880’s), dies at 33
1932 – Pietro Bonfante, Italian lawyer (Roman law) and historian, dies at 68
1967 – C. M. Eddy, Jr., American writer (b. 1896)
2009 – Konstantin Feoktistov, Soviet cosmonaut (b. 1926)
2017 – David Cassidy, American singer and actor (Keith-Partridge Family), dies at 67

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Historical Events

1431 – First meeting of Order of the Golden Fleece
1461 – Astronomer Regiomontanus returns with Cardinal Basilios Bessarion’s to his house in Rome, home to one of largest libraries in Europe
1755 – English minister William Pitt the Elder resigns
1951 – Snowdonia becomes a British National Park
1972 – 2 British soldiers are killed in a booby trap bomb in Cullyhanna, County Armagh
1997 – Last original Florida Marlin, Jeff Conine, traded to KC Royals

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Famous Birthdays

1620 – Peregrine White, First English child born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, born aboard the Mayflower (d. 1704)
1890 – Robert Armstrong, American actor (Mighty Joe Young, King Kong), born in Saginaw, Michigan (1973)
1934 – Valentine J. Peter, American priest (Boy’s Town ), born in Omaha, Nebraska
1936 – Don DeLillo, American author (Underworld), born in New York City
1951 – David Walters, American politician, Governor of Oklahoma (1991-95), born in Canute, Oklahoma
1969 – Chris Harris, New Zealand cricketer (NZ all-rounder in ODI’s), born in Christchurch, New Zealand

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Famous Deaths

1750 – Wilhelmus Schortinghuis, Dutch Christian theologist, dies at 50
1952 – Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher (La Critica), dies at 86
2006 – Robert Altman, American screenwriter, producer and director (The Player, M*A*S*H, Nashville), dies of complications from leukemia at 81
2010 – Rob Lytle, American football player (b. 1954)
2013 – Sylvia Browne, American author and self-proclaimed medium dubbed “America’s most controversial psychic,” dies at 77
2019 – Fred Cox, American NFL kicker (NFL champion 1969; Pro Bowl 1970; Minnesota Vikings all-time leading scorer), dies at 80

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Historical Events

1274 – Mongol army lands at Hakata Bay in Japan during their first invasion attempt and are defeated; a typhoon destroys most of their fleet as they withdraw
1872 – E.D. Barbour of Boston is awarded the first U.S. patent for the first ‘calculator’, an adding machine capable of printing totals and subtotals
1911 – NY receives first Marconi wireless transmission from Italy
1932 – Shaft and Thyssen demand Adolf Hitler become German chancellor
1985 – Herb Gardner’s “I’m Not Rappaport” premieres in NYC
1996 – “God Said, Ha!” opens at Lyceum Theater NYC for 22 performances

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Famous Birthdays

1899 – Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, Iranian influential Shia Islamic scholar, born in Khoy, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran (d. 1992)
1919 – Angus “Alan” Young, British actor and voice actor (Mister Ed, Scrooge McDuck), born in North Shields, England (d. 2016)
1936 – Yuan T. Lee, Taiwanese-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1938 – Richard Dumbrill, cricketer (South African all-rounder in 5 Tests 1965-67)
1975 – Ju-Yeon Choi, Pusan Korea, tennis star (1995 Futures-Seoul-KOR II)
1997 – Nathaniel Roy McCaughey, Iowa, septuplets (6)

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Famous Deaths

1692 – Georg F von Waldeck, German commander-in-chief (Colors), dies
1899 – John William Dawson, Canadian geologist, dies at 79
1917 – Basil Grieve, cricketer (batted in 2 Tests England v South Africa 1889), dies
1974 – George Brunies, American musician (b. 1902)
2013 – Charlotte Zolotow, American author and publisher of children’s books (When the Wind Stops), dies at 98
2014 – Mike Nichols [Mikhail Peschkowsky], German-American film director (Catch 22, The Graduate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), dies from cardiac arrest at 83

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Historical Events

1421 – Southern sea floods 72 villages, killing estimated 10,000 in Netherlands
1424 – Storm flood ravages Dutch coast
1964 – J. Edgar Hoover describes Martin Luther King as “most notorious liar”
1966 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1985 – Enterprise (OV-101) flies from Kennedy Space Center to Dulles Airport
2002 – “Up!” 4th studio album by Shania Twain is released (Billboard Album of the Year 2003)

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Famous Birthdays

1856 – Nicholas Nikolaevich Romanov, Grand Duke of Russia and general in World War I (1914-18), born in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire (d. 1929)
1877 – Arthur Cecil Pigou, English economist (Economics of Welfare), born in Ryde, Isle of Wight, England (d. 1959)
1900 – Constantin Alajalov, Armenian-American artist (Ditters and Jitters), born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia (d. 1987)
1972 – Jessica “Jessi” Alexander, American country music singer and songwriter (“The Climb”), born in Jackson, Tennessee
1975 – Shawn Camp, American baseball player
1983 – Jon Johansen, Norwegian software developer

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Famous Deaths

1965 – Henry A Wallace, VP (1941-45)/founder (Progressive Party), dies at 77
1977 – Davey O’Brien, American College Football Hall of Fame quarterback (Heisman Trophy 1938, Texas Christian University; NFL: Philadelphia Eagles), dies from cancer at 60
1997 – Joyce Wethered, British golfer (English Ladies’ champion 1920–24), dies at 96
2009 – Red Robbins, American basketball player (b. 1944)
2012 – Elena Donaldson-Akhmilovskaya, Russian Woman Grandmaster of chess, dies from brain cancer at 55
2015 – Jim Slater, British financier and writer, dies at 86

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Historical Events

1965 – William Eckert is unanimously elected commissioner of baseball
1970 – Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse
1973 – US President Richard Nixon tells AP “…people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook”
1974 – Union of Banana Exporting Countries (UPEB) forms
1984 – Islanders score 20 assists against Rangers
1989 – Student demonstration in Prague put down by riot police, leading to an uprising (the Velvet Revolution) that will topple the communist government on Dec. 29

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Famous Birthdays

1685 – Pierre Gaultier, French-Canadian trader and explorer (d. 1749)
1878 – Grace Abbott, Grand Island Neb, social worker (US Children Bureau)
1925 – Libby Newman, painter/printmaker/curator
1961 – Merete Van Kemp, Danish actress (Grace-Dallas, Princess Daisy)
1965 – Rob Koll, Bellefonte PA, 163 lbs/74 kg freestyle wrestler (Olymp-96)
1966 – Jeff Nelson, pitcher (NY Yankees), born in Baltimore, Maryland

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Famous Deaths

375 – Valentinian I “The Great”, Roman Co-Emperor and Ruler of Western Roman Empire (336-75), dies at 54
1856 – William Knyvett, British singer and composer, dies at 77
1905 – Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders and son of Leopold I, dies at 68
1936 – Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Austrian contralto (b. 1861)
1995 – Edward LeBone Molotlegi, chief of the Bafokeng, dies at 66
2013 – Doris Lessing, Iranian novelist and Nobel laureate (Adore, Memoirs of a Survivor, Golden Notebook), dies at 94

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Historical Events

1875 – William Bonwill, patents dental mallet to impact gold into cavities
1965 – Venera 3 launched, 1st to land on another planet (crashes into Venus)
1973 – US President Richard Nixon authorizes construction of the Alaskan pipeline
1974 – ABBA begin their first tour of Europe – their first tour outside of Sweden
1976 – Rick Barry (San Francisco), ends then longest NBA free throw streak of 60
1989 – 6 Jesuit priests are killed by El Salvadorian troops

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Famous Birthdays

1888 – Clinton Golden, Penn, founder (United Steelworkers of America)
1942 – Joanna Pettet, British actress (Knots Landing, Cry of the Innocent), born in London
1952 – Piero Falchetta, Italian archivist (Biblioteca Marciana), born in Venice, Italy
1955 – Pierre Larouche, Canadian National Hockey League player
1977 – Oksana Baiul, Ukrainian figure skater (Olympic gold 1994), born in
1981 – Allison Crowe, Canadian singer-songwriter, born in Nanaimo, British Columbia

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Famous Deaths

1603 – Pierre Charron, French philosopher/theologian, dies
1779 – Pehr Kalm, Finnish explorer and naturalist (b. 1716)
1802 – André Michaux, French botanist, dies at 56
1965 – William Thomas Cosgrave, President of the Irish Free State, dies at 85
1996 – Jack Popplewell, British composer and playwright (If I Should Fall In Love Again), dies at 87
2016 – Jay Forrester, American engineer, invented random-access magnetic core memory, dies at 98

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Historical Events

1835 – Charles Darwin reaches Tahiti on board HMS Beagle, the location where he would formulate his ideas later written in The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
1932 – Walt Disney Art School created
1955 – Poland and Yugoslavia sign trade agreement
1972 – Small Astronomy Satellite Explorer 48 launched to study gamma rays
1987 – USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1993 – Joe Buttafuoco sentence to 6 months for statutory rape of Amy Fisher

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Famous Birthdays

1498 – Eleanor of Austria, Queen of Portugal and France, born in Leuven, Belgium (d. 1558)
1874 – Dimitrios Golemis, Greek athlete (d. 1941)
1925 – Jurriaan Andriessen [Leslie Cool], Dutch pianist/composer
1933 – Barbara Carson, actress (Comedy Tonight, Carter Country), born in Memphis, Tennessee
1941 – Daniel Manus Pinkwater, American sci-fi author (Magic Moscow)
1955 – Oliver Conant, American actor (Summer of ’42), born in NYC, New York

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Famous Deaths

1795 – Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo, French painter (b. 1719)
1928 – Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, American Geologist and educator, dies at 85
1983 – Dai Rees, Scottish golfer (British Open runner-up 1953-54, 61), dies of car accident injuries at 70
1990 – Alydar, American racehorse (b. 1975)
1998 – Stokely Carmichael, American civil rights activist (b. 1941)
2004 – Ben Cami, Flemish writer and poet (Rose from Mud), dies at 84

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