Historical Events
1821 – Missouri admitted as 24th US state
1887 – Excursion train crashes killing 101. (Chatsworth, Illinois)
1911 – Parliament Act reduces power of UK’s House of Lords
1970 – British Home Secretary Reginald Maulding threatens to impose direct rule on Northern Ireland if the agreed reform measures are not carried out
1994 – Last British troops leave Hong Kong (been there since Sept 1841)
1996 – Bob Dole picks Jack Kemp as his Republican VP running mate
Famous Birthdays
1654 – Bernard Nieuwentyt, Dutch physician/theologist
1845 – Abai Qunanbaiuli, Kazakh poet, composer and philosopher (d. 1904)
1895 – Hammy Love, Former Australian cricketer (d. 1969)
1909 – Claude Thornhill, composer
1912 – Richard Reeves, American actor (Suerman, Date With an Angel), born in NYC, New York (d. 1967)
1971 – Sal Fasano, catcher (KC Royals), born in Chicago, Illinois
Famous Deaths
1730 – Sebastien de Brossard, French composer and music theorist, dies at 74
1784 – Allan Ramsay, Scottish painter, dies at 70
1859 – George Staunton, writer
1948 – Montague Summers, English clergyman and writer (Malleus Maleficarum), dies at 68
1973 – Douglas Kennedy, American actor (Dark Passage, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold), dies of cancer at 57
2017 – Kim Wall, Swedish journalist killed investigating Danish inventor Peter Madsen, dies at 30 [or 11th Aug]