1830 – Christina Rossetti born. English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. She is perhaps best known for her long poem Goblin Market, her love poem Remember, and for the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.
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1890 – Fritz Lang born. Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor.[3] One of the best known émigrés from Germany’s school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the “Master of Darkness” by the British Film Institute. His most famous films include the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world’s most expensive silent film at the time of its release), and M, made before he moved to the United States, which is considered to be the precursor to the film noir genre.
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1899 – Aleck “Rice” Miller born – better known as Sonny Boy Williamson II. American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He is acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, with considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills. He recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s, and had a direct influence on later blues and rock performers. He should not be confused with another leading blues performer, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, who died in 1948.
His year of birth is open to question – 1908 and 1912 are other possibilities.
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1932 – Little Richard born. American singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, and actor, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the mid-1950s. He was also the first artist to put the funk in the rock and roll beat and contributed significantly to the early development of soul music.
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1933 – Prohibition in the United States ended. Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States).
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1945 – Flight 19, five US navy bombers and their crews, mysteriously disappeared on a training flight over the area of ocean that became known as the Bermuda Triangle.
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1952 – Great Smog of 1952: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that followed.
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2007 – Karlheinz Stockhausen died. German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries, also described as “one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music”. He is known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musical spatialization.
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Alchemy & Accident 