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Today in History :: Sunday, 5 February 2012

Birthdays:
1788	Sir Robert "Bobbie" Peel, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1834 - 35, 41 - 46). The son of a wealthy cotton manufacturer who was considered one of the rising stars of the Tory party. He first entered the cabinet in 1822 as home secretary. He is best remembered for his organisation of a metropolitan police force for London based out of Scotland Yard, and the police in Great Britain are sometimes colloquially referred to as "bobbies", named after Peel. He is remembered for repealing the Corn Laws, subsidies which supported agricultural revenues by restricting grain imports. He was also responsible for the 1844 Factory Act, restricting the number of hours that children and women could work in a factory, and setting rudimentary safety standards for machinery. In 1850 he was thrown from his horse while riding up Constitution Hill in London and later died as a result of injuries sustained. Born in Bury, Lancashire, England.
1820	Susan B. Anthony, suffragist. Led crusades against slavery, was active in the temperance movement, and helped launch and then sustain the struggle to gain the vote for women, which was granted 14 years after her death. She was fined twice for her very public attempts to vote in American elections. Born in Adams, Massachusetts, USA.
1840	John Boyd Dunlop, veterinarian, inventor. Founder of Dunlop Tyre Company, he was first to develop and patent a practical version of the pneumatic tyre, the result of his 9 year old son complaining of the rough ride he experienced on his tricycle over the cobbled streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland. His design was quickly adopted and popularised by Michelin. Born in Dreghorn, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
1872	Lafayette Benedict Mendel, biochemist. Made discoveries concerning the value of vitamins and proteins which helped establish modern concepts of nutrition. In 1913 he discovered that butterfat contained a growth promoting factor necessary for development, later known as fat-soluble vitamin A, by showing that rats developed xerophthalmia on diets in which lard supplied the fat. He later discovered that the condition was cured by substitution of butterfat. He also contributed to the discovery of B complex vitamins in 1915 and linked the nutritive value of proteins to their amino acids. Born in Delhi, New York, USA.
1878	André-Gustave Citroën, engineer, industrialist. Introduced Henry Ford's methods of mass production to the European car industry, which helped the Mors company to increase its production from 125 cars to 1,200 cars per year in 1908. He built a munitions plant in 1915 to mass-produce munitions for WW I whose production of shells reached 55,000 per day. Following the war he converted his arms factory into a plant to mass-produce small, inexpensive cars, and the first Citroën car rolled off the assembly line in 1919. Born in Paris, France.
1906	John Carradine, actor (Bride of Frankenstein, The Grapes of Wrath, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Howling). One of the most prolific actors of his time. Father of actors David, Keith, and Robert Carradine. Born Richmond Reed Carradine in Greenwich Village, New York City, USA.
1908	Eugen Weidmann, murderer. The last man to be publicly guillotined in France. He was convicted of killing six people by shooting them in the back of the neck, in six separate incidents. Due to the "hysterical behaviour" of the spectators, French President Albert Lebrun, banned any future public executions. In 1939 he was executed before a large crowd outside the Prison Saint Pierre, Versailles, France. Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
1914	William S. Burroughs, writer, "beat" poet. Grandson of William Seward Burroughs, inventor of the first workable "calculating machine" and founder of the company that became Unisys. He is best known for works such as "The Naked Lunch" and "Drugstore Cowboy". He killed his wife while attempting to shoot a wine glass from her head (as in William Tell) while they were drunk at a party. Born in St Louis, Missouri, USA.
1914	Alan Hodgkin, physician. Shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1963 for work concerning the mechanisms of nerve cells. Born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England.
1915	Robert Hofstadter, atomic physicist. Shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1961 for his investigations in which he measured the size of the neutron and proton in the nuclei of atoms. His work revealed the hitherto unknown structure of these particles. He also correctly predicted the existence of the and made substantial contributions to gamma ray spectroscopy, leading to the use of radioactive tracers to locate tumours and other disorders. Born in New York City, USA.
1917	Zsa Zsa Gabor, actress (Moulin Rouge (1952), Queen of Outer Space). Crowned Miss Hungary, 1936. Famous for her nine marriages (so far), the shortest of which was her marriage to Felipe De Alba which lasted only one day. Born Sari Gabor in Budapest, Hungary.
1940	H. R. Giger, artist, special effects designer. Best known for his special effects designs for films such as "Species" and "Alien", where the title creature for the latter was inspired by one of his original creations from his "Necronomicon" collection. He is also known for his images of surrealistic landscapes, erotic figures, and grotesquely misshapen beings in works such as "Beyond the Brain" and "Penis Landscape". Born Hans Ruedi Giger in Chur, Switzerland.
1941	Barrett Strong, R&B singer, song writer. A pivotal figure in Motown's formative years, he helped establish the label with his 1960 hit, "Money (That's What I Want)". Born in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
1943	Nolan Bushnell, computing pioneer. Founder, with friend Ted Dabney, of Atari Computers in 1972. Born in Clearfield, Utah, USA.
1948	Nigel Tufnel, musician (Spinal Tap), actor (This Is Spinal Tap, Princess Bride, A Few Good Men). Born Christopher Haden-Guest in New York City, USA.
1958	Jennifer Jason Leigh, actress (The Hudsucker Proxy, Dolores Claiborne, Single White Female). Daughter of actor Vic Morrow (King Creole, The Twilight Zone). Born Jennifer Lee Morrow in Hollywood, California, USA.
Deaths:
1993	Tip Tipping (b. Tim Tipping), American film stuntman. Died after his parachute failed to open while re-enacting a sky-diving accident for television near Alnwick, England, aged 34.
1994	Fred de Bruyne, Belgian cyclist. Winner of Liege-Bastogne-Liege (1956, 58, 59), Milano-San Remo (1956), Paris-Nice (1956), Paris-Roubaix (1957), Tour of Flanders (1957), Paris-Tours (1957). Died aged 63.
Events on this day:
1631	Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, arrives in Boston, Massachusetts from England.
1782	The Spanish armed forces take Minorca from the British.
1850	An adding machine employing depressible keys is patented in New Paltz, New York, USA.
1870	A motion picture is shown to a theatre audience for the first time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1881	The city of Phoenix, Arizona, USA is founded.
1885	King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the African state of Congo as a personal colonial possession.
1901	A loop-the-loop roller coaster is patented by Ed Prescot.
1918	The separation of church and state begins in the Soviet Union.
1922	The Reader's Digest magazine is first published.
1924	Hourly time signals from Royal Greenwich Observatory are broadcast for the first time.
1937	The first Charlie Chaplin talkie "Modern Times" is released.
1945	Big Racket becomes the fastest race horse, measured at 69.6 kph in Mexico City, Mexico.
1952	The first "Don't Walk" sign is installed in New York City, USA in an effort to reduce pedestrian fatalities in increasingly crowded Manhattan streets.
1953	A decade of wartime sweet rationing ends in Britain, sparking a scramble for toffee apples and nougat.
1958	A nuclear bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
1961	The first issue of the Sunday Telegraph is published in London, England.
1969	The population of the USA reaches 200 million.
1971	Apollo 14, the third US manned Moon expedition, lands on the moon near Fra Mauro. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walk on the Moon for 4 hours.
1974	US space probe Mariner 10 returns its first close-up photos of Venus' cloud structure.
1978	Fred Newman makes 88 consecutive basketball free throws blindfolded.
1983	Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie is brought to trial.
1988	Panamanian leader and dictator Manuel Noriega is indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.
1991	A Michigan court bars Dr Jack Kevorkian from assisting in suicides.
1997	The Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter investment banks announce a $10 billion merger.