MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2014: American actress and diplomat Shirley Temple—who cheered Depression-era moviegoers when she was a dimple-cheeked curly-haired child star and the top Hollywood box-office attraction from 1935 to 1939—died in California. [Watch a video clip of Shirley Temple in The Little Princess.]

2005: Arthur Miller—who was recognized as one of the most important playwrights of the mid-20th century, perhaps best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, Death of a Salesman—died in Connecticut. [Sort fact from fiction in our who wrote it quiz.]

1957: American author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the popular Little House series of children's books, died. [ Take our classic children's books quiz.]

1939: The American film classic Stagecoach, widely considered to be the first “adult” western, had its world premiere; one of director John Ford's defining movies, it also elevated John Wayne to stardom. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about movies.]

1898: German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes, was born in Augsburg. [ How much do you know about theatre?]

1763: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending territorial conflicts between France and Britain in the Seven Years' War, the North American phase of which was called the French and Indian War.