Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include James Monroe, fifth president of the United States, in 1758; Dutch legal scholar and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tobias Michael Carel Asser in 1838; actor Lionel Barrymore in 1878; German industrialist Oskar Schindler, credited with saving almost 1,200 Jews during the World War II Holocaust, in 1908; novelists Harper Lee ("To Kill a Mockingbird") in 1926 (age 88) and Terry Pratchett in 1948 (age 66); former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in 1930 (age 84); Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1937; actors Carolyn Jones in 1930, Madge Sinclair in 1938, Ann-Margret in 1941 (age 73), Marcia Strassman in 1948 (age 66), Bruno Kirby in 1949, Penelope Cruz in 1974 (age 40) and Jessica Alba in 1981 (age 33); former "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno in 1950 (age 64); U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in 1960 (age 54); Hall of Fame baseball player Barry Larkin in 1964 (age 50); and golfer John Daly in 1966 (age 48).
On this date in history:
In 1788, Maryland ratified the U.S. Constitution, becoming the seventh state of the Union.
In 1789, the most famous of all naval mutinies took place aboard the HMS Bounty en route from Tahiti to Jamaica.
In 1930, the first night game in organized baseball history was played in Independence, Kan.
In 1945, fascist leader Benito Mussolini, his mistress and several of his friends were executed by Italian partisans.
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and five crew members began a trip from Peru to Polynesia on the Kon-Tiki.
In 1975, the last U.S. civilians were evacuated from South Vietnam as North Vietnamese forces tightened their noose around Saigon.
In 1988, an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 lost an 18-foot section of its roof at 24,000 feet between Hilo, Hawai, and Honolulu, killing a flight attendant. The pilot landed on Maui with the remaining 94 passengers and crew members, 61 of them injured.
In 1994, former CIA officer Aldrich Ames pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union. (He was sentenced to life in prison.)
In 1996, a rampage by a gunman in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia, killed 35 people.
In 2001, California businessman Dennis Tito became the first tourist in space. He reportedly paid Russia's space agency $20 million to give him a ride to the International Space Station.
In 2005, a Shiite-led Cabinet was approved by Iraq's National Assembly for its first freely elected government.
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law requiring state or federal photo identification to vote.
In 2009, three Albanian immigrant brothers were sentenced in Camden, N.J., to life in prison for their part in a plot to attack soldiers at Fort Dix.
In 2012, Malaysian police fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of protesters who defied government warnings and entered Kuala Lumpur's historic Merdeka (Independence) Square, demanding electoral reform.
In 2013, renowned concert cellist Janos Starker, who gave his first public performance at age 6 as a child prodigy in Hungary, died in Bloomington, Ind. He was 88.
A thought for the day: H. Jackson Brown Jr. said, "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking."
