This Day in History

[Gravdigr]

November 24

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.

There are 37 days remaining in 2016.

There are 30 days until Christmas. So, get busy.

Events

1248 – In the middle of the night a mass on the north side of Mont Granier suddenly collapsed, in one of the largest historical rockslope failures known in Europe, creating the sheer 700 m north face of the mountain.

1429 – Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.

1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).

1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain: Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

1877 – Anna Sewell's animal welfare novel Black Beauty is published.

1917 – In Milwaukee, Wisconsin nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001.

1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.

1963 – In the first live, televised murder, Lee Harvey Oswald, the [presumed] assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is murdered two days after the assassination, by Jack Ruby, a nightclub operator, in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. Oswald was being led by two detectives to an armoured car to take him to the nearby county jail.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

1973 – A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasts only four months.

1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

1976 – The Çaldıran–Muradiye earthquake in eastern Turkey kills between 4,000 and 5,000 people.

2015 – A Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet is shot down by Turkish Air Force F-16s over the Syria–Turkey border, killing one of the two pilots; a Russian marine is also killed during a subsequent rescue effort.

Births

1690 – Charles Theodore Pachelbel; 1713 – Junípero Serra; 1784 – Zachary Taylor (12th POTUS); 1806 – William Webb Ellis (created rugby); 1864 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; 1867 – Scott Joplin♪ ♫; 1877 – Alben W. Barkley (35th VPOTUS); 1888 – Dale Carnegie (author How to Win Friends and Influence People); 1897 – Lucky Luciano (mob boss); 1913 – Howard Duff; 1913 – Geraldine Fitzgerald; 1925 – William F. Buckley, Jr.; 1938 – Charles Starkweather; 1940 – Paul Tagliabue; 1941 – Pete Best; 1941 – Donald "Duck" Dunn(Booker T. & the M.G.'s); 1942 – Billy Connolly; 1942 – Marlin Fitzwater; 1945 – Lee Michaels♪ ♫; 1946 – Ted Bundy; 1947 – Dwight Schultz ('Howlin' Mad Murdock' on The A-Team); 1950 – Bob Burns(Lynyrd Skynyrd); 1956 – Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Castle); 1957 – Denise Crosby ('Tasha Yar' on Star Trek: TNG); 1962 – John Squire(The Stone Roses); 1964 – Brad Sherwood (Whose Line Is It Anyway? (American and British)); 1969 – Rob Nicholson(Rob Zombie); 1977 – Colin Hanks (Life In Pieces, Tom Hanks' son); 1978 – Katherine Heigl

Deaths

1916 – Hiram Maxim (invented the Maxim machine gun); 1957 – Diego Rivera; 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald (presumed assassin of JFK); 1980 – George Raft; 1982 – Barack Obama, Sr. (if only he'd worn a condom); 1991 – Freddie Mercury♪ ♫(Queen); 1991 – Eric Carr(KISS); 1993 – Albert Collins; 2005 – Pat Morita ("Wax on, wax off."); 2012 – Héctor 'Macho' Camacho

[DanaC]

1739 – Start of the Battle of Porto Bello between British and Spanish forces during the War of Jenkins' Ear.

All-time winner of the best name for a war contest.

[Gravdigr]

Agreed.

[fargon]

Concur

[xoxoxoBruce]

Disagree, war by any other name is just as bad.

[Gravdigr]

Well, if there's gonna be a war anyway, it may as well have a cool name.

[Gravdigr]

November 25

Not a lot of ado about Movember this year, was there?

Today is an International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This day marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.

New York, New York marks this day as Evacuation Day, commemorating the day in 1783 when British troops departed Manhattan Island after the end of the American Revolution.


There are 36 days remaining in 2016.

There are 29 days until Christmas.

Events

885 – Siege of Paris: Viking forces sail the Seine River with a fleet of 300 longships and lay siege to Paris.

1120 – The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son and heir of Henry I of England.

1343 – A tsunami, caused by an earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea, devastates Naples and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, among other places.

1487 – Elizabeth of York is crowned Queen of England.

1667 – A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.

1759 – An earthquake hits the Mediterranean destroying Beirut and Damascus and killing 30,000-40,000.

1833 – A massive undersea earthquake, estimated magnitude between 8.7-9.2, rocks Sumatra, producing a massive tsunami all along the Indonesian coast.

1839 – A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40-foot storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths result from the disaster.

1876 – American Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.

1940 – World War II: First flight of the de Havilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.

1950 – The Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950 impacts 22 American states, killing 353 people, injuring over 160, and causing US$66.7 million in damages (1950 dollars, $$661,468,220 in 2016 dollars).

1952 – Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. It will become the longest continuously-running play in history.

1960 – The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated.

1961 - The Everly Brothers started active service for the 8th Battalion Marine Corps Reserves, working as artillerymen.


1968 - The Beatles (known as The White Album), was released in the US.

1972 - Chuck Berry was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'My Ding a-Ling', his only UK No.1.

1976 - The Band made their final performance; 'The Last Waltz' held on American Thanksgiving Day, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The event was filmed by director Martin Scorsese and made into a documentary of the same name, released in 1978.

1984 – Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1992 - The Bodyguard opened nation-wide featuring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. The film which was Houston's acting debut was written by Lawrence Kasdan in the 1970s, originally as a vehicle for Steve McQueen [Wikipedia says Ryan O'Neal] and Diana Ross. It became the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 1992 with the soundtrack becoming the best-selling soundtrack of all time, selling more than 42 million copies worldwide.

1999 – A 5-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast.

1999 – The United Nations establishes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the murder of three Mirabal sisters for resistance against the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

2000 – The 2000 Baku earthquake, with a Richter magnitude of 7.0, leaves 26 people dead in Baku, Azerbaijan, and becomes the strongest earthquake in the region in 158 years.

2003 - Glen Campbell was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona with a blood alcohol level of .20 after his BMW struck a Toyota Camry. He was charged with 'extreme' drunk driving, hit and run, and assaulting a police officer. A police officer reported that while in custody, Campbell hummed his hit 'Rhinestone Cowboy' repeatedly.

Births

1835 – Andrew Carnegie; 1844 – Karl Benz (yeah, that one); 1846 – Carrie Nation; 1914 – Joltin' Joe DiMaggio; 1915 – Augusto Pinochet; 1920 – Ricardo Montalbán (Fantasy Island, The Wrath Of Khan); 1926 – Jeffrey Hunter; 1940 – Percy Sledge♪ ♫; 1943 – Jerry Portnoy♪ ♫; 1944 – Ben Stein ("Bueller?"); 1947 – John Larroquette (Night Court); 1953 – Jeffrey Skilling (former Enron CEO); 1960 – Amy Grant♪ ♫; 1960 – John F. Kennedy Jr.; 1965 – Tim Armstrong♪ ♫(Rancid); 1965 – Dougray Scott; 1968 – Jill & Jacqueline Hennessy (OMG Jill Hennesey has an identical twin); 1971 – Christina Applegate; 1986 – Katie Cassidy

Deaths

1560 – Andrea Doria (the person, not the boat); 1748 – Isaac Watts♪ ♫; 1885 – Thomas A. Hendricks (21st VPOTUS); 1944 – Kenesaw Mountain Landis; 1949 – Bill Robinson (danced w/Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel); 1965 – Myra Hess; 1968 – Upton Sinclair (author of The Jungle); 1973 – Laurence Harvey (played William Travis in The Alamo); 1981 – Jack Albertson; 1998 – Flip Wilson

[Gravdigr]

November 26

Anti Obesity Day is observed internationally on this date.

There are 35 days remaining in 2016.

There are 28 days until Christmas.


Events

1476 – Vlad the Impaler defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.

1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President George Washington at the request of Congress.

1825 – At Union College in Schenectady, New York, a group of college students form the Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.

1863 – United States President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. (Since 1941, it has been on the fourth Thursday.)

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (King Tut) in over 3000 years.

1922 – The Toll of the Sea debuts as the first general release film to use two-tone Technicolor. (The Gulf Between was the first film to do so, but it was not widely distributed.)

1942 – Casablanca, the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City.

1944 – World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's shop in London, killing 168 people.

1950 – Korean War: Troops from the People's Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces (Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River and Battle of Chosin Reservoir), ending any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.

1958 - Johnny Cash made his debut on the US country chart when ‘Cry! Cry! Cry!’ made it to number 14.

1968 – Vietnam War: United States Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire. He is later awarded the Medal of Honor.

1968 - Cream played their farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

1970 – In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fall in 1 minute, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded.

1983 – Brink's-Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars, diamonds, and cash worth nearly £26 million are stolen from the Brink's-Mat vault at Heathrow Airport.

1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the members of what will become known as the Tower Commission.

1988 - Russian cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 7 took into space a cassette copy (minus the cassette box for weight reasons) of the latest Pink Floyd album Delicate Sound Of Thunder and played it in orbit, making Pink Floyd the first rock band to be played in space.

1994 - The Eagles started a two-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Hell Freezes Over.'

2000 - The Beatles went to No.1 on the US album chart with 'Beatles 1.' The album features virtually every number-one single released from 1962 to 1970. The world's best-selling album of the 21st century, 1 has sold over 31 million copies.

2000 – George W. Bush is certified the winner of Florida's electoral votes by Katherine Harris, going on to win the United States presidential election, despite losing in the national popular vote.

2003 – The Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England.

2004 – The last Poʻouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii, before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.

2010 - Willie Nelson was arrested for possession of six ounces of marijuana found in his tour bus while travelling from Los Angeles to Texas. He was released after paying bail of $2,500. Prosecutor Kit Bramblett supported not sentencing Nelson to jail due to the amount of marijuana being small, but suggested instead a $100 fine and told Nelson that he would have him sing "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" for the court.

2011 – The Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars with the Curiosity Rover.

Births

1607 – John Harvard (yeah, that Harvard); 1853 – Bat Masterson (He wore a cane and derby hat, They called him Bat, Bat Masterson); 1876 – Willis Carrier (invented air conditioning); 1888 – Ford Beebe; 1895 – Bill W. (co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous); 1899 – Bruno Richard Hauptmann (may or may not have kidnapped and murdered Charles Lindbergh's son); 1902 – Maurice McDonald (co-founded McDonald's); 1912 – Eric Sevareid; 1922 – Charles M. Schulz (created Peanuts); 1933 – Robert Goulet♪ ♫; 1938 – Rich Little; 1939 – Wayland Flowers (put his hand up Madame's dress); 1939 – Tina Turner♪ ♫; 1945 – Daniel Davis (played 'Prof. Moriarty' on Star Trek: TNG); 1945 – John McVie(Fleetwood Mac); 1956 – Dale Jarrett

Deaths

1883 – Sojourner Truth; 1926 – John Browning (weapon designer); 1943 – Edward 'Butch' O'Hare (namesake of the USS O'Hare, and O'Hare Int'l Airport in Chicago); 1956 – Tommy Dorsey♪ ♫; 1978 – Ford Beebe; 2005 – Stan Berenstain (co-created the Berenstain Bears); 2013 – Tony Musante; 2016 – Fidel Castro (Cuban revolutionary, leader of Cuba 1959 - 2008)

[Gravdigr]

November 27

There are 34 days remaining in 2015.

There are 27 days until Christmas.


Events

602 – Emperor Maurice is forced to watch his five sons be executed before being beheaded himself.

1703 – The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.

1810 – The Berners Street hoax was perpetrated by Theodore Hook in the City of Westminster, London.

1835 – James Pratt and John Smith are hanged in London; they are the last two to be executed for sodomy in England.

1895 – At the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.

1896 – Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss is first performed.

1901 – The U.S. Army War College is established.

1924 – In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.

1942 – World War II: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands.

1944 – World War II: RAF Fauld explosion: An explosion at a Royal Air Force ammunition dump in Staffordshire kills 70 people, and 200 cattle. The explosion left a crater 300 yards long, 233 yards wide, and 100 feet deep, covering 12 acres.

1965 – Vietnam War: The Pentagon tells U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.

1968 – Penny Ann Early became the first woman to play major professional basketball, for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars.

1973 – Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. (On December 6, the House will confirm him 387–35). [Gerald Ford holds the distinction of being the only person to hold the office of Vice-President and, later, President, without being elected to either office.]

1975 – The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter had announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England.

1978 – In San Francisco, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.

1992 – For the second time in a year, military forces try to overthrow president Carlos Andrés Pérez in Venezuela.

1997 - A disturbed rock fan brought the funeral of INXS singer Michael Hutchence to a standstill when he tried to launch himself from a 20 ft high balcony with a cord around his neck. He was removed by police and taken away to a psychiatric unit.

2005 - Multimillionaire defense contractor David H. Brooks booked New York’s Rainbow Rooms and his daughter Elizabeth’s favorite acts for her ‘bat mitzvah’ coming-of-age celebration. The stars who appeared included 50 Cent, Tom Petty, Aerosmith, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Stevie Nicks. 50 Cent who was paid $500,000 to appear performed only four songs but he did manage to work in the lyric, "Go shorty, it's your bat miztvah, we gonna party like it's your bat mitzvah". The party cost an estimated $10 million, including the price of corporate jets to ferry the performers to and from the venue.

2015 – An active shooter inside a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, shoots at least four members of the Colorado Springs Police Department. One officer later dies. Two civilians were also killed, and six injured. The shooter later surrendered.

Births

1701 – Anders Celsius (yeah, that Celsius); 1897 – Vito Genovese (mob boss "Boss of All Bosses"); 1909 – James Agee; 1916 – Chick Hearn; 1917 – Buffalo Bob Smith (Howdy Doody Show); 1918 – Stephen Elliott; 1921 – Alexander Dubček; 1932 – Benigno Aquino, Jr.; 1934 – Al Jackson, Jr.(Booker T. & The M.G.'s); 1940 – Bruce Lee; 1941 – Eddie Rabbitt♪ ♫; 1942 – Jimi Hendrix; 1944 – Mickey Leland; 1945 – James Avery (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air); 1953 – Curtis Armstrong ('Booger' in Revenge of the Nerds); 1955 – Bill Nye The Science Guy; 1956 – William Fichtner (Invasion); 1957 – Caroline Kennedy; 1957 – Michael A. Stackpole; 1960 – Tim Pawlenty; 1961 – Samantha Bond (played 'Moneypenny' during the Peirce Brosnan James Bond films); 1961 – Steve Oedekerk; 1962 – Charlie Benante(Anthrax); 1962 – Mike Bordin(Faith No More, Ozzy); 1963 – Fisher Stevens (Short Circuit); 1964 – Robin Givens; 1968 – Michael Vartan (Alias); 1971 – Kirk Acevedo (Oz); 1976 – Jaleel White ('Urkel' on Family Matters); 1985 – Alison Pill

Deaths

8 BC – Horace ("A clumsier child you'll never see than Horace; I bet he broke 40 cup."); 602 – Maurice (he spoke of the pompitous of love); 1901 – Clement Studebaker (yeah, that one); 1934 – Baby Face Nelson ("My name is GEOOOOOORGE NELSON!" [his name was actually Lester]); 1953 – Eugene O'Neill; 1975 – Ross McWhirter; 1978 – Harvey Milk; 1978 – George Moscone; 1988 – John Carradine ('Cassius Starbuckle' in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); 1990 – David White (Bewitched); 2005 – Jocelyn Brando (The Big Heat); 2007 – Robert Cade (co-invented Gatorade); 2011 – Ken Russell; 2013 – Lewis Collins (The Professionals)

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

602 – Emperor Maurice is forced to watch his five sons be executed before being beheaded himself.

Damn. That's harsh.

Wealthy powerful people have different things to worry about. Kidnapping. Assassination. Etc.

[Clodfobble]

All things considered, though, beheading's probably not a bad way to go. Much less painful than what they often did to people they were kicking out of power.

[Gravdigr]

I guess it would depend on what you are being beheaded with...a big ol' "Hassan chop!!"-style scimitar, or, a chunk of stove wood.

I've long thought that the word 'beheading' is an odd duck. If you bedazzle something with your Bedazzler, you're adding dazzle, if you bedeck your halls at Christmastime, you're adding boughs of holly.

A little different w/beheading.

[glatt]

The beheading doesn't bother me so much, it's being forced to watch your children killed first.

[Gravdigr]

November 28

Today is the 333rd day of the year, there are 33 days remaining in 2016.

There are 26 days until Christmas.


Events

1443 – Having deserted the army of the Ottoman Empire, Skanderbeg went to Krujë in Middle Albania and using a forged letter from Sultan Murad II to the Governor of Krujë, became lord of the city.

1520 – An expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan passes through the Strait of Magellan.

1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license.

1811 – Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

1895 – The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.

1905 – Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.

1909 – Sergei Rachmaninoff makes the debut performance of his Piano Concerto No. 3, considered to be one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical repertoire.

1919 – Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markievicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance.

1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people.

1943 – World War II: Tehran Conference: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.

1967 – The first pulsar, known as PSR B1919+21, was discovered in the constellation of Vulpecula by two astronomers, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and Antony Hewish.

1970 - Dave Edmunds was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with his version of the 1955 Smiley Lewis hit 'I Hear You Knocking.'.

1971 – Fred Quilt, a leader of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation suffers severe abdominal injuries allegedly caused by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers; he dies two days later.

1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison.

1979 – Air New Zealand Flight 901, a DC-10 sightseeing flight over Antarctica, crashes into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.

1980 – Iran–Iraq War: Operation Morvarid: The bulk of the Iraqi Navy is destroyed by the Iranian Navy in the Persian Gulf. (Commemorated in Iran as Navy Day.)

Births

1757 – William Blake; 1792 – Victor Cousin (invented the cousin); 1866 – Henry Bacon (designed the Lincoln Memorial); 1887 – Ernst Röhm; 1923 – Gloria Grahame; 1927 – Chuck Mitchell ('Porky' in Porky's, & Porky's Revenge); 1929 – Berry Gordy, Jr.♪ ♫; 1933 – Hope Lange (Peyton Place, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir); 1936 – Gary Hart; 1940 – Bruce Channel♪ ♫(wrote/sang "Hey Baby!"); 1943 – Randy Newman; 1949 – Alexander Godunov (Die Hard); 1949 – Paul Shaffer(CBS Orchestra); 1950 – Ed Harris; 1952 – S. Epatha Merkerson; 1959 – Judd Nelson; 1961 – Martin Clunes (Doc Martin); 1962 – Matt Cameron(Soundgarden, Pearl Jam); 1962 – Jon Stewart; 1967 – Anna Nicole Smith; 1987 – Karen Gillan (Dr. Who); 1995 – Chase Elliott(NASCAR driver, son of "Awesome Bill From Dawsonville" Bill Elliott)

Deaths

1859 – Washington Irving ("Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"); 1872 – Mary Somerville; 1939 – James Naismith (created basketball); 1953 – Frank Olson(<--Interesting read.); 1954 – Enrico Fermi; 1968 – Enid Blyton; 1972 - Claude Buffet; 1972 - Roger Bontems; 1976 – Rosalind Russell (Auntie Mame, His Girl Friday); 1983 – Christopher George (The Rat Patrol); 1993 – Jerry Edmonton(Steppenwolf); 1993 – Garry Moore; 1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer; 1994 – Buster Edwards (helped commit The Great Train Robbery of 1963); 1994 – Jerry Rubin; 2001 – Kal Mann♪ ♫(wrote the lyrics to "Teddy Bear", "Butterfly", and "Let's Twist Again"); 2005 – Marc Lawrence; 2010 – Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!, Naked Gun); 2012 – Zig Ziglar; 2015 – Marjorie Lord (Make Room For Daddy)

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by glatt

The beheading doesn't bother me so much, it's being forced to watch your children killed first.

If it helps, he was 63 and his sons were all well into adulthood. Wiki says they spared his wife and daughters.