April 16

It’s National Eggs Benedict Day and National Stress Awareness Day and National Librarian Day

ON THIS DAY…
1705 Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton
1746 The Jacobite uprising ends when Charles “Bonnie Prince Charlie” Stuart is defeated by the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Culloden
1818 The US Senate ratified Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed US-Canada border
1881 In Dodge City, KS Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle
1900 The first book of postage stamps was issued; the two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps
1912 Harriet Quimby became the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel
1922 Annie Oakley shot 100 clay targets in a row, setting a women’s record
1931 Lawrence Welk married Fern Renner; they would be together until his death in 1992
1932 The Music Box starring Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy is released in the US
1936 Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur is released in the US
1943 The hallucinogenic effect of the drug LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide, was first observed by chemist Albert Hofmann who had synthesized the drug five years earlier, but hopes of its use for treating respiratory problems were not fulfilled, and it was shelved
1947 The first zoom lens for the television camera was demonstrated by the NBC in New York City
1947 Financier Bernard Baruch coined the term “cold war” in a speech in South Carolina
1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pens his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while incarcerated in Birmingham, AL for protesting against segregation
1972 Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon; it was the fifth manned moon landing
1977 The ban on women attending West Point was lifted
1987 The US Patent Office began allowing the patenting of new animals created by genetic engineering
1992 The House ethics committee listed 303 current and former lawmakers who had overdrawn their House bank accounts
1999 Wayne Gretzky announced his retirement
2004 The Punisher starring Thomas Jane is released in the US
2007 Student Cho Seung-Hui, killed two students in a Virginia Tech dorm, then killed 30 more two hours later in a classroom building; his suicide brought the death toll to 33, making his shooting rampage the most deadly in US history

BORN:
1660 Sir Hans Sloane, physician and naturalist whose collection of books, manuscripts, and curiosities formed the basis for the British Museum in London
1682 John Hadley, mathematician and inventor who perfected methods for grinding and polishing telescope lenses
1728 Joseph Black, chemist and physicist who experimented with “fixed air” (carbon dioxide), discovered bicarbonates and identified latent heat
1839 Frederic Ward Putnam, archaeologist, naturalist and museum administrator who played a major role in the popularization of anthropology, its acceptance as a university study, and instigated more anthropological museums
1867 Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer who, with his brother Orville, invented the first powered airplane, Flyer, capable of sustained, controlled flight
1889 Sir Charles Chaplin, actor, producer, writer, director and Academy Award-winning composer (Limelight, The Great Dictator, City Lights, Tillie’s Punctured Romance)
1890 Donald Forsha Jones, geneticist and agronomist whose hybridization methods for corn (maize) enabled an agricultural revolution
1894 Jerzy Neyman, mathematician who was one of the principal architects of modern theoretical statistics
1912 Garth Williams, illustrator known for his work on children’s books (Charlotte’s Web, The Cricket in Times Square)
1917 Barry Nelson, actor (Bataan, A Guy Named Joe, The Shining, Casino Royale)
1918 Spike Milligan, actor, comedian and writer (“The Goon Show”, Gormenghast, Yellow Beard, The Three Musketeers, The Bed Sitting Room)
1921 Sir Peter Ustinov, director, writer and two-time Academy Award-winning actor (Topkapi, Spartacus, Quo Vadis, Billy Budd, Logan’s Run)
1924 Henry Mancini, Academy Award and Grammy Award-winning composer (Victor Victoria, Days of Wine and Roses, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther, 10)
1939 Dusty Springfield, singer who hit it big during the British Invasion of the 1960’s (“I Only Want To Be With You”, “The Look of Love”, “Son of a Preacher Man”, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”)
1947 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor), athlete, occassional actor and retired professional basketball player, widely considered one of the greatest NBA players of all time; from 1969 to 1989, he scored 38,387 points – the highest total of any player in league history – in addition to winning a record six Most Valuable Player Awards and he was the first player in NBA history to play 20 seasons
1949 Melody Patterson, actress (F Troop, The Angry Breed)
1954 Ellen Barkin, Emmy Award-winning actress (Before Women Had Wings, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Diner, Ocean’s Thirteen)
1963 Jimmy Osmond, entertainer
1965 Martin Lawrence, stand-up comedian and actor (Bad Boys, Big Momma’s House, Martin, Black Knight)
1965 Jon Cryer, actor (Two and a Half Men, Pretty in Pink, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, The Famous Teddy Z, Hot Shots!)
1972 Peter Billingsley, actor (A Christmas Story, Russkies, The Break-Up)
1976 Lukas Haas, actor (Witness, Solarbabies, Mars Attacks!, 24)

DIED:
1788 Comte Georges-Louis de Buffon, naturalist, who formulated a crude theory of evolution and was the first to suggest that the earth might be older than suggested by The Bible, dies at 80
1850 Marie Tussaud, known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussauds, the wax museum she set up in London, dies at 88
1914 George William Hill, mathematical astronomer considered by many of his peers to be the greatest master of celestial mechanics of his time, dies at 76
1958 Rosalind Franklin, scientist who contributed to the discovery of the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a constituent of chromosomes that serves to encode genetic information, dies at 37
1991 David Lean, 2-time Academy Award-winning director (Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, A Passage to India, Brief Encounter), dies at 83
2002 Robert Urich, actor (S.W.A.T., Vega$, Tabitha, Magnum Force, Spenser: For Hire), dies at 55