Wilton Lewis Felder was an American saxophone and bass player, and is best known as a founding member of the Jazz Crusaders, later known as the Crusaders. Felder played bass on the Jackson 5's hits "I Want You Back" (1969) and "ABC" (1970) and on Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" (1973).

1940Larry Hankin, American actor, director, and producer^[†]

Lawrence Alan Hankin is an American character actor. He has had major film roles as Charley Butts in Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Ace in Running Scared (1986), and Carl Alphonse in Billy Madison (1995). He had smaller roles as Doobby in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Sergeant Larry Balzak in Home Alone, Mr. Heckles in Friends, and Joe in Breaking Bad and El Camino.

1940Roger Newman, English-American actor and screenwriter (died 2010)^[†]

Roger Newman was a British born-American soap opera actor and writer. He was born in London, and died in New York City.

1940Jack Thompson, Australian actor^[†]

John Hadley Thompson, AM is an Australian actor and a major figure of Australian cinema, particularly Australian New Wave. He is best known for his role as a lead actor in several acclaimed Australian films, including such classics as The Club (1980), Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Man from Snowy River (1982) and Petersen (1974). He won Cannes and AFI acting awards for the latter film.

Notable Deaths

1940Georges Gauthier, Canadian archbishop (born 1871)^[†]

Georges Gauthier was a French Canadian archbishop of Montreal and the first rector of the Université de Montréal.

1940DeLancey W. Gill, American painter (born 1859)^[†]

DeLancey Walker Gill was an American drafter, landscape painter, and photographer. Gill first became noted for his landscape illustrations and watercolors, featuring subjects such as Native American pueblos in addition to his main focus on Washington, D.C. Characterized as detailed and meticulous in his landscapes, Gill captured views of working-class and rural areas of Washington not commonly depicted in art of the period. Despite his other work, he continued to paint throughout his life, and taught art classes at the Corcoran School.

Historical Events

1940Pennsylvania Central Airlines Trip 19 crashes near Lovettsville, Virginia. The CAB investigation of the accident is the first investigation to be conducted under the Bureau of Air Commerce act of 1938.^[†]

On August 31, 1940, Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19, a new Douglas DC-3A, was flying from Washington, D.C. to Detroit with a stopover in Pittsburgh. While the aircraft was flying near Lovettsville, Virginia at 6,000 feet (1,800 m) and approaching the West Virginia border, Flight 19 encountered an intense thunderstorm. Numerous witnesses reported seeing a large flash of lightning shortly before it nosed over and plunged to earth in an alfalfa field. With limited accident investigation tools at the time, it was at first believed that the most likely cause was the plane flying into windshear, but the Civil Aeronautics Board report concluded that the probable cause was a lightning strike. U.S. Senator Ernest Lundeen was among the 21 passengers and 4 crew members killed. Also on board were "a Special Agent of the FBI, a second FBI employee, and a prosecutor from the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice." At the time of the crash, the FBI was investigating Sen. Lundeen's ties to George Sylvester Viereck, a top German agent working in the U.S. to spread pro-Nazi and antisemitic propaganda.