The day an Australian cricket legend was born!
William Lloyd Murdoch was born in Sandhurst (today's Bendigo) in Victoria, but moved with his parents to NSW in the 1860s. And it was there, at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where in 1881-82 he became the first Australian , and only the second eprson altogether, to score a first-class triple century in a game against Victoria - 321, scoring against all ten Victorian bowlers. He also scored the first Test double century at The Oval in Kennington/London in 1884.
Considered to be the best wicketkeeper in Australia at the time, he captained the Australian team on tours to England in 1880, 1882, 1884 and 1890, including that famous match in 1882 at The Oval in which Australia beat England on English ground for the first time and the "Ashes Series" was born - when the British newspaper The Sporting Times satirically remarked that English cricket had died and "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia."
Other birthdays include German writer Heinrich von Kleist, author of the famous comedy "Der Zerbrochene Krug" [The Broken Jug], who was born in Frankfurt/Oder (1777), Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (St. Louis, Missouri) and Polish born German movie actor Klaus Günter Karl Nakszynski, better known as Klaus Kinski ["Nosferatu", "Woyzeck" and "Fitzcarraldo"] (both 1926, although Kinski already died two decades ago), as well as the Czech-born American tennis star Martina Navratilova (Prague, 1956).
Margaret Tudor, elder sister of Henry VIII and Queen of Scotland, died of a massive stroke in 1541 (Methven Castle, Perthshire) and Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, the phonograph and a whole lot of other comunications devices, died in West Orange, New Jersey (1931).
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