Today in History, 12/14

Another big day for the Stuart dynasty, as today is the day Mary, Queen of Scots became the Queen of the Scots. All things being equal, she would have been better off staying in France.

1287: The Zuider Zee sea wall in the Netherlands collapses, killing 50,000 people
1503: Nostradamus is born and a million worthless History Channel shows are born with him.
1542: Princess Mary Stuart ascends to the throne of Scotland, becoming Mary, Queen of Scots.1782: The Montgolfier Brothers make their first balloon flight.
1799: George Washington dies.
1819: Alabama becomes the 22nd US state.
1825: The Decembrist Revolt is put down in St. Petersburg.
1836: The Toledo War between Michigan and Ohio ends, with Ohio as the victor. College football would never be the same.
1861: Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria dies of yellow fever. The Queen was devastated by this and went into mourning until her death.1896: Jimmy Doolittle is born. He led the famous Doolittle Raid on the Japanese home islands during WWII. I highly recommend Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.
1908: Morey Amsterdam is born. He was on the Dick Van Dyke show and also a bit player in most of the Frankie and Annette beach movies. I always thought he and Rose Marie should have gotten together. This clip really makes me want to smoke a Kent with the Micronite filter.
1911: Roald Amundsen becomes the first person to reach the South Pole.
1911: Spike Jones is born.
1916: Shirley Jackson, author of The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House is born.
1920: George Gipp dies. Win one for the Gipper!
1922: Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes is born.
1932: Charlie Rich is born. He wrote that godawful song The Most Beautiful Girl.
1935: Lee Remick is born. She played the ill-fated mom in The Omen.
1939: The Soviet Union is expelled from the League of Nations for their aggression against Finland.
1946: Patty Duke of the aptly-named Patty Duke Show is born. She had one of those horrible childhoods that makes parents want to keep their kids the heck out of show business. Her natural parents were worthless (Dad was a drunk and Mom was a nut) and they handed her upbringing over to her managers John and Ethel Ross who would have fit well in a Dickens novel. They embezzled her money, falsified her age and resume and forced her to lie to Congress over the $64,000 Question game show fixing affair. Yikes.1947: NASCAR is founded in Daytona Beach, FL.
1949: Bill Buckner is born. He is infamous for allegedly costing the Sox the World Series in 1986. But he didn't, really. All he did was force a seventh game. And he was injured and shouldn't have been playing anyway.
1946: Joyce Vincent Wilson, on third of Tony Orlando and Dawn is born. Much like the later Pink Lady and Jeff, Dawn was actually two people. It gets kind of confusing.
1948: Dee-Wallace Stone is born. She played the mom in ET: The Extra Terrestrial.
1949: Cliff Williams, bassist for AC/DC is born.
1964: William Bendix dies.
1958: The Soviet Antarctic Expedition becomes the first to reach The Pole of Relative Incaccessibility.
1959: Berry Gordy founds Motown Records in Detroit.
1979: The Clash release London Calling.
1993: Myrna Loy dies. She was breathtaking in The Thin Man movies.
1998: Norman Fell dies.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.