Birthdays:
1959 ~ Mike Byster, American mathematician.
1955 ~ Penn Jillette,
American magician and comedian, best known for his work with Raymond Joseph
Teller, in their routine known as Penn and Teller.
1948 ~ Jan van Beveren (d. 2011), Dutch-born soccer
star who became a devoted coach in Texas.
1936 ~ Dean Stockwell, American actor.
1934 ~ Daniel Kahneman, Israeli economist and recipient of the
2002 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is the
author of Thinking Fast and Slow.
1934 ~ James Sikking, American actor.
1918 ~ James Tobin (d. 2002), American economist and recipient
of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Economics.
1915 ~ Laurent Schwartz (d. 2002), French mathematician.
1908 ~ Sir Rex Harrison (d.
1990), English actor best known for his role of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.
1901 ~ Louis Kahn (d. 1974), American architect.
1898 ~ Zhou Enlai (d. 1976), 1st Premier of the
People’s Republic of China.
1871 ~ Rosa Luxemburg (d.
1919), Socialist revolutionary.
1815 ~ John Wentworth (d. 1888), 19th Mayor of
Chicago.
1794 ~ Robert Cooper Grier (d. 1870), Associate Justice of the
US Supreme Court.
1658 ~ Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac (d. 1730),
French explorer. His explorations took
him from eastern Canada to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico.
1575 ~ William Oughtred (d. 1660), English mathematician.
1512 ~ Gerardus Mercantor
(d. 1594), Flemish mapmaker and mathematician. He developed the Mercantor projection, a way
of showing the earth on a flat sheet.
1326 ~ King Louis I of Hungary (d. 1382).
1324 ~ King David II of Scotland (d. 1371).
1133 ~ King Henry II of England (d. 1189).
Events that Changed the
World:
2004 ~ Martha Stewart was
found guilty of obstructing justice.
2003 ~ A Hamas suicide bomber set off a bomb on a bus in Haifa,
Israel, killing 17 Israelis.
1960 ~ Cuban photographer, Alberto Korda (1928 ~ 2001), took his
iconic photograph of Che Guevara.
1946 ~ Sir Winston Churchill coined the term “Iron Curtain”,
which came to mean events in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
1933 ~ During the Great Depression, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday” and closed all US banks and froze all
financial transactions.
1872 ~ George Westinghouse received a patent for the air break.
1836 ~ Samuel Colt made the
first production-model of the .34 caliber revolver.
1770 ~ British soldiers
opened fire on rioters and killed five people in the “Boston Massacre.” This incident was the spark that ultimately
led to the American Revolutionary War.
1766 ~ Antonio de Ulloa
(1716 ~ 1795), the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrived in New Orleans.
1616 ~ Nicolaus Copernicus’s
book, De Revolutionbus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolution of the
Celestial Spheres) was banned by the Catholic Church. This book was the first to state that the
earth and all the planets rotated around the sun.
1496 ~ King Henry VII of
England issued letters of patent to John Cabot authorizing him to explore
unknown lands in the “New World.”
Good-Byes:
2013 ~ Hugo Rafael Frías Chávez (b. 1954), President
of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013.
1982 ~ John Belushi (b.
1949), American actor and comedian.
1980 ~ Jay Silverheels (b.
1912), Canadian Mohawk actor, best known as Tonto, companion of the Lone Ranger
on the television show of the same name.
1963 ~ Patsy Cline (b.
1932), American singer. She was killed
in a private plane crash.
1953 ~ Sergei Prokofiev (b.
1891), Russian composer.
1953 ~ Joseph Stalin (b.
1879), 3rd leader and dictator of the Soviet Union.
1950 ~ Edgar Lee Masters (b.
1868), American poet, best known for his Spoon River Anthology.
1929 ~ David Dunbar Buick
(b. 1854), Scottish-born American automotive executive and founder of the Buick
company.
1927 ~ Franz Mertens (b. 1840), German mathematician.
1925 ~ Johan Jensen (d. 1859), Danish mathematician.
1827 ~ Pierre-Simon Laplace (b. 1749), French mathematician and
astronomer.
1827 ~ Alessandro Volta (b. 1745), Italian physicist.
1534 ~ Antonio de Correggio
(b. 1489), Italian painter.
254 ~ Pope Lucius I (b. 200).
