1891 - Georges Seurat, French impressionist painter, dies. He was primarily responsible for the development of Pointillism, in which the whole picture is made up of tiny points of pure colour.


1916 - Politician Eugene McCarthy is born in Watkins, Minnesota. He was a U.S. Senator from Minnesota when his opposition to the Vietnam War led him to enter the 1968 presidential primaries; he stunned the Democratic Party by nearly defeating the sitting President, Lyndon Johnson, in March, 1968. His Selected Poems was published in 1997.

1918 - Pearl Bailey, a jazz singer whose album For Adults Only was banned from airplay in 1959, is born in Newport News, Va.

1943 - Comedian, actor and writer Eric Idle is born in South Shields, Durham, England. As a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, he played rogues, obsequious television hosts, and fussy old women. The Rutles was his brainchild. His books include the novel Hello Sailor (1974), The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book (1976), and The Road to Mars: A Post Modem Novel (1999).

1951 - All About Eve wins the Academy Award for best picture; its director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, receives his second set of consecutive Oscars for direction and screenplay (he'd won the previous year for A Letter to Three Wives)

1967 - Rock singer-musician John Popper (Blues Traveler) is born.

1968 - Blues guitarist Sue Foley is born.

1970 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono announce that Yoko is pregnant with John's son.

1971 - Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. is convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre. Calley ends up spending three years under house arrest.

1971 - A jury in Los Angeles recommends the death penalty for Charles Manson and three female followers for the 1969 Tate-La Bianca murders. The sentences were later commuted.

1975 - Led Zeppelin registers all six of its albums on the charts simultaneously, a feat never before made in pop history. For the record, coming after its chart-topping current release, Physical Graffiti, are: Led Zeppelin IV at #83, Houses of the Holy at #92, Led Zeppelin II at #104, Led Zeppelin at #116 and Led Zeppelin III at #124.

1982 - Carl Orff, German composer of Carmina Burana, dies.

1986 - For the first time in Russia you can legitimately buy a Beatles album.

1991 - Lee Atwater, the chairman of the Republican National Committee who also played the blues, dies at age 40 shortly after releasing his lone album, Red Hot & Blue: Lee Atwater and Friends. The 'friends' included Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, and B.B. King.

1992 - Paul Henreid, suave Austrian-born actor of stage and screen who played alongside Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca, dies.

1999 - Joe Williams, legendary Georgia - born blues singer who became a star with Count Basie in the 1950s and blossomed into a world famous balladeer in the following decades, dies in Las Vegas. He is 80. Williams dresses himself, and walks out of the hospital where he is being treated for a respiratory ailment. He walks nearly three miles on foot only to collapse on the street a few blocks from his home.

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