61 BC – Pompey the Great celebrates his third triumph for victories over the pirates and the end of the Mithridatic Wars on his 45th birthday.
1011 – Danes capture Canterbury after a siege, taking Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury, as a prisoner.
1227 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades.
1267 – The Treaty of Montgomery recognises Llywelyn ap Gruffudd as Prince of Wales, but only as a vassal of King Henry III.
1364 – English forces defeat the French in Brittany, ending the War of the Breton Succession.
1578 – Tegucigalpa, capital city of Honduras, is claimed by the Spaniards.
1637 – 42-year-old Lorenzo Ruiz dies.
1717 – An earthquake strikes Antigua Guatemala, destroying much of the city’s architecture.
1789 – The United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.
1789 – The 1st United States Congress adjourns.
1829 – The Metropolitan Police of London, later also known as the Met, is founded.
1848 – The Battle of Pákozd is a stalemate between Hungarian and Croatian forces, and is the first battle of the Hungarian Revolution.
1850 – The papal bull Universalis Ecclesiae restores the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales.
1855 – The Philippine port of Iloilo is opened to world trade by the Spanish administration.
1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm is fought.
1864 – The Treaty of Lisbon defines the boundaries between Spain and Portugal and abolishes the Couto Misto microstate.
1885 – The first practical public electric tramway in the world is opened in Blackpool, England.
1907 – The cornerstone is laid at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (better known as Washington National Cathedral) in Washington, D.C.
1911 – Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
1918 – World War I: Bulgaria signs the Armistice of Salonica.
1918 – The Hindenburg Line is broken by an Allied attack.
1918 – Germany’s Supreme Army Command tells the Kaiser and the Chancellor to open negotiations for an armistice.
1923 – The British Mandate for Palestine takes effect, creating Mandatory Palestine.
1923 – The French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon takes effect.
1923 – The First American Track & Field championships for women are held.
1932 – Chaco War: Last day of the Battle of Boquerón between Paraguay and Bolivia.
1940 – Two Avro Ansons collide in mid-air over New South Wales, Australia, remain locked together, then land safely.
1941 – World War II: German forces, with the aid of local Ukrainian collaborators, begin the two-day Babi Yar massacre.
1949 – The Communist Party of China writes the Common Programme for the future People’s Republic of China.
1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed.
1957 – The Kyshtym disaster is the third-worst nuclear accident ever recorded.
1971 – Oman joins the Arab League.
1972 – China–Japan relations: Japan establishes diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China after breaking official ties with the Republic of China.
1975 – WGPR becomes the first black-owned-and-operated television station in the US.
1979 – The dictator Francisco Macias of Equatorial Guinea is shot by soldiers from Western Sahara.
1988 – NASA launches STS-26, the first mission since the Challenger disaster.
1990 – Construction of the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (better known as Washington National Cathedral) is completed in Washington, D.C.
1990 – The YF-22, which would later become the F-22 Raptor, flies for the first time.
1991 – A Haitian coup d’état occurs.
1992 – Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello is impeached.
2004 – The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passes within four lunar distances of Earth.
2004 – Burt Rutan’s Ansari SpaceShipOne performs a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the Ansari X Prize.
2006 – A Boeing 737 and an Embraer 600 collide in mid-air, killing 154 people and triggering a Brazilian aviation crisis.
2007 – Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, is demolished in a controlled explosion.
2009 – The 8.1 Mw Samoa earthquake results in a tsunami that kills 189 and injures hundreds.
2011 – The special court in India convicted all 269 accused officials for atrocity on Dalits and 17 for rape in the Vachathi case.
2013 – Over 42 people are killed by members of Boko Haram at the College of Agriculture in Nigeria.
2016 – Eleven days after the Uri attack, the Indian Army conducts “surgical strikes” against suspected militants in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
2019 – Violence and low turnout mar the 2019 Afghan presidential election.
2019 – At least 59 people are reported dead due to monsoon rains in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India. 350 people have died this year due to rain in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
Births on September 29
106 BC – Pompey, Roman general and politician (d. 48 BC)
929 – Qian Chu, Chinese king (Ten Kingdoms) (d. 988)
1240 – Margaret of England, Queen consort of Scots (d. 1275)
1276 – Christopher II of Denmark (d. 1332)
1373 – Margaret of Bohemia, Burgravine of Nuremberg (d. 1410)
1402 – Fernando, the Saint Prince, of Portugal (d. 1443)
1403 – Elisabeth of Brandenburg, Duchess of Brzeg-Legnica and Cieszyn, German princess (d. 1449)
1460 – Louis II de la Trémoille, French military leader (d. 1525)
1463 – Louis I, Count of Löwenstein, founder of the House of Löwenstein-Wertheim (d. 1523)
1511 – Michael Servetus, Spanish physician, cartographer, and theologian (d. 1553)
1527 – John Lesley, Scottish bishop (d. 1596)
1538 – Joan Terès i Borrull, Spanish archbishop and academic (d. 1603)
1547 – Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright (d. 1616)
1548 – William V, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1626)
1561 – Adriaan van Roomen, Flemish priest and mathematician (d. 1615)
1574 – Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, Scottish nobleman and politician (d. 1624)
1602 – Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, English military leader (d. 1668)
1636 – Thomas Tenison, English archbishop (d. 1715)
1639 – William Russell, Lord Russell, English politician (d. 1683)
1640 – Antoine Coysevox, French sculptor and educator (d. 1720)
1674 – Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, French flute player and composer (d. 1763)
1678 – Adrien Maurice de Noailles, French soldier and politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs (d. 1766)
1691 – Richard Challoner, English bishop (d. 1781)
1703 – François Boucher, French painter and set designer (d. 1770)
1718 – Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian soldier and politician, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs (d. 1783)
1725 – Robert Clive, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Montgomeryshire (d. 1774)
1758 – Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, English admiral (d. 1805)
1766 – Charlotte, Princess Royal of England (d. 1828)
1786 – Guadalupe Victoria, Mexican general, lawyer, and politician, 1st President of Mexico (d. 1843)
1803 – Mercator Cooper, American captain and explorer (d. 1872)
1803 – Jacques Charles François Sturm, French mathematician and theorist (d. 1850)
1808 – Henry Bennett, American lawyer and politician (d. 1868)
1810 – Elizabeth Gaskell, English author (d. 1865)
1816 – Paul Féval, père, French author and playwright (d. 1887)
1832 – Joachim Oppenheim, rabbi and author (d. 1891)
1832 – Miguel Miramón, Unconstitutional president of Mexico, 1859-1860 (d. 1867)
1843 – Mikhail Skobelev, Russian general (d. 1882)
1844 – Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman, Argentinian lawyer and politician, 10th President of Argentina (d. 1909)
1853 – Luther D. Bradley, American cartoonist (d. 1917)
1863 – Hugo Haase, German lawyer, jurist, and politician (d. 1919)
1864 – Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and author (d. 1936)
1866 – Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Ukrainian historian, academic, and politician (d. 1934)
1876 – Charlie Llewellyn, South African cricketer (d. 1964)
1880 – Liberato Pinto, Portuguese colonel and politician, 79th Prime Minister of Portugal (d. 1949)
1881 – Ludwig von Mises, Austrian-American economist, sociologist, and philosopher (d. 1973)
1882 – Lilias Armstrong, English phonetician (d. 1937)
1885 – George Scott, English footballer (d. 1916)
1891 – Ian Fairweather, Scottish-Australian painter (d. 1974)
1895 – Clarence Ashley, American singer, guitarist, and banjo player (d. 1967)
1895 – Joseph Banks Rhine, American botanist and parapsychologist (d. 1980)
1895 – Roscoe Turner, American pilot (d. 1970)
1897 – Herbert Agar, American journalist and historian (d. 1980)
1898 – Trofim Lysenko, Ukrainian-Russian biologist and agronomist (d. 1976)
1899 – László Bíró, Hungarian-Argentinian journalist and inventor, invented the ballpoint pen (d. 1985)
1899 – Billy Butlin, South African-English businessman, founded Butlins (d. 1980)
1901 – Lanza del Vasto, Italian poet, philosopher, and activist (d. 1981)
1901 – Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954)
1903 – Miguel Alemán Valdés, Mexican lawyer and civilian politician, 46th President of Mexico (1946-1952) (d. 1983)
1903 – Diana Vreeland, American journalist (d. 1989)
1904 – Greer Garson, English-American actress (d. 1996)
1907 – Gene Autry, American singer, actor, and businessman (d. 1998)
1907 – George W. Jenkins, American businessman, founded Publix (d. 1996)
1908 – Eddie Tolan, American sprinter and educator (d. 1967)
1910 – Bill Boyd, American singer and guitarist (d. 1977)
1910 – Virginia Bruce, American actress (d. 1982)
1911 – Charles Court, English-Australian politician, 21st Premier of Western Australia (d. 2007)
1912 – Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian director and screenwriter (d. 2007)
1913 – Trevor Howard, English actor (d. 1988)
1913 – Stanley Kramer, American director and producer (d. 2001)
1915 – Vincent DeDomenico, American businessman, founded the Napa Valley Wine Train (d. 2007)
1915 – Oscar Handlin, American historian and academic (d. 2011)
1915 – Brenda Marshall, American actress (d. 1992)
1916 – Carl Giles, English cartoonist (d. 1995)
1919 – Kira Zvorykina, Belarusian chess player (d. 2014)
1920 – Peter D. Mitchell, English biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1992)
1920 – Václav Neumann, Czech violinist and conductor (d. 1995)
1921 – John Ritchie, New Zealand composer and educator (d. 2014)
1921 – Albie Roles, English footballer and manager (d. 2012)
1922 – Lizabeth Scott, American actress (d. 2015)
1923 – Stan Berenstain, American author and illustrator (d. 2005)
1923 – Bum Phillips, American football player and coach (d. 2013)
1925 – Steve Forrest, American actor (d. 2013)
1925 – Paul MacCready, American engineer, founded AeroVironment (d. 2007)
1926 – Chuck Cooper, American basketball player (d. 1984)
1926 – Pete Elliott, American football player and coach (d. 2013)
1927 – Adhemar da Silva, Brazilian triple jumper and actor (d. 2001)
1927 – Sherwood Johnston, American race car driver (d. 2000)
1927 – Pete McCloskey, American colonel and politician
1927 – Barbara Mertz, American historian and author (d. 2013)
1928 – Eric Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury, English lieutenant, engineer, and politician (d. 2016)
1928 – Brajesh Mishra, Indian politician and diplomat, 1st Indian National Security Advisor (d. 2012)
1928 – Nathan Shamuyarira, Zimbabwean journalist and politician, Zimbabwean Minister of Foreign Affairs (d. 2014)
1930 – Richard Bonynge, Australian pianist and conductor
1930 – Colin Dexter, English author and educator (d. 2017)
1931 – James Cronin, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2016)
1931 – Anita Ekberg, Swedish-Italian model and actress (d. 2015)
1931 – Paul Oestreicher, German-English priest and theologian
1932 – Robert Benton, American director, producer, and screenwriter
1932 – Paul Giel, American baseball player and sportscaster (d. 2002)
1933 – Samora Machel, Mozambican commander and politician, 1st President of Mozambique (d. 1986)
1934 – Skandor Akbar, American wrestler and manager (d. 2010)
1934 – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Hungarian-American psychologist and academic
1934 – Lance Gibbs, Guyanese cricketer and manager
1934 – Stuart M. Kaminsky, American author and screenwriter (d. 2009)
1934 – Lindsay Kline, Australian cricketer (d. 2015)
1935 – Jerry Lee Lewis, American singer-songwriter and pianist
1936 – Silvio Berlusconi, Italian businessman and politician, 50th Prime Minister of Italy
1936 – James Fogle, American author (d. 2012)
1936 – Hal Trosky, Jr., American baseball player (d. 2012)
1938 – Dave Harper, English footballer (d. 2013)
1938 – Wim Kok, Dutch union leader and politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 2018)
1939 – Fikret Abdić, Bosnian economist and politician
1939 – Jim Baxter, Scottish footballer (d. 2001)
1939 – Larry Linville, American actor (d. 2000)
1939 – Rhodri Morgan, Welsh politician, 2nd First Minister of Wales (d. 2017)
1940 – Brute Force, American singer-songwriter
1940 – Carlos Morales Troncoso, Dominican politician, 34th Vice President of the Dominican Republic (d. 2014)
1941 – David Steele, English cricketer
1942 – Felice Gimondi, Italian cyclist
1942 – Madeline Kahn, American actress and singer (d. 1999)
1942 – Ian McShane, English actor
1942 – Bill Nelson, American captain and politician
1942 – Jean-Luc Ponty, French violinist and composer
1942 – Janet Powell, Australian educator and politician (d. 2013)
1942 – Steve Tesich, Serbian-American screenwriter and playwright (d. 1996)
1943 – Wolfgang Overath, German footballer
1943 – Lech Wałęsa, Polish electrician and politician, 2nd President of Poland, Nobel Prize laureate
1944 – Mike Post, American composer and producer
1945 – Kyriakos Sfetsas, Greek composer and poet
1945 – Nadezhda Chizhova, Russian shot putter
1946 – Patricia Hodge, English actress
1947 – Ülo Kaevats, Estonian philosopher, academic, and politician (d. 2015)
1947 – S. H. Kapadia, Indian lawyer, judge, and politician, 38th Chief Justice of India (d. 2016)
1947 – Gary Wetzel, American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient
1948 – Mark Farner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1948 – Bryant Gumbel, American journalist and sportscaster
1948 – Theo Jörgensmann, German clarinet player and composer
1948 – Mike Pinera, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1949 – George Dalaras, Greek singer-songwriter and guitarist
1950 – Ken Macha, American baseball player and manager
1951 – Michelle Bachelet, Chilean physician and politician, 34th President of Chile
1951 – Pier Luigi Bersani, Italian educator and politician, 6th President of Emilia-Romagna
1951 – Andrés Caicedo, Colombian author, poet, and playwright (d. 1977)
2018 – Otis Rush, American blues guitarist and singer (b. 1934)
Holidays and observances on September 29
Christian feast day:
Rhipsime
September 29 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. One of the four quarter days in the Irish calendar. (England and Ireland). Called Michaelmas in some western liturgical traditions
1419 – First Defenestration of Prague: A crowd of radical Hussites kill seven members of the Prague city council.
1502 – Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.
1609 – Beaver Wars: At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs on behalf of his native allies.
1619 – In Jamestown, Virginia, the first Colonial European representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convenes for the first time.
1626 – An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills about 10,000 people.
1635 – Eighty Years’ War: The Siege of Schenkenschans begins; Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, begins the recapture of the strategically important fortress from the Spanish Army.
1656 – Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeat the forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.
1676 – Nathaniel Bacon issues the “Declaration of the People of Virginia”, beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.
1729 – Founding of Baltimore, Maryland.
1733 – The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.
1756 – In Saint Petersburg, Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly built Catherine Palace to Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.
1811 – Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the Mexican insurgency, is executed by the Spanish in Chihuahua City, Mexico.
1825 – Malden Island is discovered by captain George Byron, 7th Baron Byron.
1859 – First ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps.
1863 – American Indian Wars: Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders including Chief Pocatello (of the Shoshone) sign the Treaty of Box Elder.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of the Crater: Union forces attempt to break Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia by exploding a large bomb under their trenches.
1865 – The steamboat Brother Jonathan sinks off the coast of Crescent City, California, killing 225 passengers, the deadliest shipwreck on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. at the time.
1866 – Armed Confederate veterans in New Orleans riot against a meeting of Radical Republicans, killing 48 people and injuring another 100.
1871 – The Staten Island Ferry Westfield’s boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.
1912 – Japan’s Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō.
1930 – In Montevideo, Uruguay wins the first FIFA World Cup.
1932 – Premiere of Walt Disney’s Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.
1945 – World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen. Most die during the following four days, until an aircraft notices the survivors.
1956 – A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.
1962 – The Trans-Canada Highway, the longest national highway in the world, is officially opened.
1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.
1966 – England defeats West Germany to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup at Wembley Stadium after extra time.
1969 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and meets with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.
1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 15 Mission: David Scott and James Irwin on the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.
1971 – An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collide over Morioka, Iwate, Japan killing 162.
1974 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court of the United States.
1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again.
1978 – The 730 (transport), Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.
1980 – Vanuatu gains independence.
1980 – Israel’s Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law.
1981 – As many as 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, took to the streets in Łódź to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland.
1990 – Ian Gow, Conservative Member of Parliament, is assassinated at his home by IRA terrorists in a car bombing after he assured the group that the British government would never surrender to them.
2003 – In Mexico, the last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.
2006 – The world’s longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years.
2011 – Marriage of Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest granddaughter Zara Phillips to former rugby union footballer Mike Tindall.
2012 – A train fire kills 32 passengers and injures 27 on the Tamil Nadu Express in Andhra Pradesh, India.
2012 – A power grid failure in Delhi leaves more than 300 million people without power in northern India.
2014 – One hundred and fifty people are trapped after a landslide in Maharashtra, India; 20 are killed.
Births on July 30
1470 – Hongzhi, emperor of the Ming dynasty (d. 1505)
1511 – Giorgio Vasari, Italian painter, historian, and architect (d. 1574)
1549 – Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1609)
1641 – Regnier de Graaf, Dutch physician and anatomist (d. 1673)
1751 – Maria Anna Mozart, Austrian pianist (d. 1829)
1763 – Samuel Rogers, English poet and art collector (d. 1855)
1809 – Charles Chiniquy, Canadian-American priest and theologian (d. 1899)
1818 – Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet (d. 1848)
1818 – Jan Heemskerk, Dutch lawyer and politician, 16th and 19th Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 1897)
1825 – Chaim Aronson, Lithuanian engineer and author (d. 1893)
1832 – George Lemuel Woods, American lawyer, judge, and politician, 3rd Governor of Oregon (d. 1890)
1855 – Georg Wilhelm von Siemens, German-Swiss businessman (d. 1919)
1857 – Thorstein Veblen, American economist and sociologist (d. 1929)
1859 – Henry Simpson Lunn, English minister and humanitarian, founded Lunn Poly (d. 1939)
1862 – Nikolai Yudenich, Russian general (d. 1933)
1863 – Henry Ford, American engineer and businessman, founded the Ford Motor Company (d. 1947)
1872 – Princess Clémentine of Belgium (d. 1955)
1881 – Smedley Butler, American general, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1940)
1890 – Casey Stengel, American baseball player and manager (d. 1975)
1893 – Fatima Jinnah, Pakistani dentist and politician (d. 1967)
1898 – Henry Moore, English sculptor and illustrator (d. 1986)
1899 – Gerald Moore, English pianist (d. 1987)
1901 – Alfred Lépine, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 1955)
1904 – Salvador Novo, Mexican poet and playwright (d. 1974)
1909 – C. Northcote Parkinson, English historian and author (d. 1993)
1910 – Edgar de Evia, Mexican-American photographer (d. 2003)
1913 – Lou Darvas, American soldier and cartoonist (d. 1987)
1914 – Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, Irish journalist and author, 6th President of the International Olympic Committee (d. 1999)
1920 – Walter Schuck, German lieutenant and pilot (d. 2015)
1921 – Grant Johannesen, American pianist and educator (d. 2005)
1922 – Henry W. Bloch, American banker and businessman, co-founded H&R Block (d. 2019)
1925 – Stan Stennett, Welsh actor and trumpet player (d. 2013)
1925 – Alexander Trocchi, Scottish author and poet (d. 1984)
1926 – Betye Saar, African American artist
1927 – Richard Johnson, English actor, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2015)
1927 – Pete Schoening, American mountaineer (d. 2004)
1927 – Victor Wong, American actor (d. 2001)
1928 – Joe Nuxhall, American baseball player and sportscaster (d. 2007)
1929 – Sid Krofft, Canadian-American puppeteer and producer
1931 – Dominique Lapierre, French historian and author
1934 – Bud Selig, 9th Major League Baseball Commissioner
1936 – Buddy Guy, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1936 – Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz (d. 2020)
1938 – Hervé de Charette, French politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs
1938 – Terry O’Neill, English photographer (d. 2019)
1939 – Peter Bogdanovich, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1939 – Eleanor Smeal, American activist, founded the Feminist Majority Foundation
1940 – Patricia Schroeder, American lawyer and politician
1940 – Clive Sinclair, English businessman, founded Sinclair Radionics and Sinclair Research
1941 – Paul Anka, Canadian singer-songwriter and actor
1942 – Pollyanna Pickering, English environmentalist and painter (d. 2018)
1943 – Henri-François Gautrin, Canadian physicist and politician
1944 – Gerry Birrell, Scottish race car driver (d. 1973)
1944 – Peter Bottomley, English politician
1944 – Frances de la Tour, English actress
1945 – Patrick Modiano, French novelist and screenwriter, Nobel Prize laureate
1945 – David Sanborn, American saxophonist and composer
1946 – Neil Bonnett, American race car driver and sportscaster (d. 1994)
1946 – Jeffrey Hammond, English bass player
1947 – William Atherton, American actor and producer
1947 – Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, French virologist and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1947 – Jonathan Mann, American physician and author (d. 1998)
1947 – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, and politician, 38th Governor of California
1948 – Billy Paultz, American basketball player
1948 – Jean Reno, Moroccan-French actor
1948 – Otis Taylor, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1948 – Julia Tsenova, Bulgarian pianist and composer (d. 2010)
1949 – Duck Baker, American guitarist
1949 – Sonia Proudman, English lawyer and judge
1950 – Harriet Harman, English lawyer and politician
1950 – Frank Stallone, American singer-songwriter and actor
1951 – Alan Kourie, South African cricketer
1951 – Gerry Judah, Indian-English painter and sculptor
1952 – Stephen Blackmore, English botanist and author
1954 – Ken Olin, American actor, director, and producer
1955 – Rat Scabies, English drummer and producer
1955 – Christopher Warren-Green, English violinist and conductor
1956 – Delta Burke, American actress
1956 – Réal Cloutier, Canadian ice hockey player
1956 – Anita Hill, American lawyer and academic
1956 – Soraida Martinez, American painter and educator
1957 – Antonio Adamo, Italian director and cinematographer
1957 – Bill Cartwright, American basketball player and coach
1957 – Clint Hurdle, American baseball player and manager
1957 – Nery Pumpido, Argentinian footballer, coach, and manager
1958 – Kate Bush, English singer-songwriter and producer
1958 – Liz Kershaw, English radio broadcaster
1958 – Daley Thompson, English decathlete and trainer
1960 – Jennifer Barnes, American-English musicologist and academic
1960 – Richard Linklater, American director and screenwriter
1960 – Brillante Mendoza, Filipino independent film director
1961 – Laurence Fishburne, American actor and producer
1962 – Alton Brown, American chef, author, and producer
1962 – Jay Feaster, American ice hockey player and manager
1962 – Yakub Memon, Indian accountant and terrorist (d. 2015)
1963 – Peter Bowler, English-Australian cricketer
1963 – Lisa Kudrow, American actress and producer
1963 – Antoni Martí, Andorran architect and politician
1963 – Chris Mullin, American basketball player, coach, and executive
1964 – Ron Block, American singer-songwriter and banjo player
1964 – Vivica A. Fox, American actress
1964 – Alek Keshishian, Lebanese-American director, producer, and screenwriter
1964 – Jürgen Klinsmann, German footballer and manager
1964 – Laine Randjärv, Estonian lawyer and politician, 6th Estonian Minister of Culture
1965 – Tim Munton, English cricketer
1966 – Kerry Fox, New Zealand actress and screenwriter
1966 – Craig Gannon, English guitarist and songwriter
1966 – Allan Langer, Australian rugby league player and coach
1966 – Louise Wener, English author and singer-songwriter
1968 – Terry Crews, American football player and actor
1968 – Robert Korzeniowski, Polish race walker and coach
1968 – Sean Moore, Welsh drummer and songwriter
1969 – Simon Baker, Australian actor, director, and producer
1969 – Errol Stewart, South African cricketer and lawyer
1970 – Alun Cairns, Welsh businessman and politician
1970 – Dean Edwards, American comedian, actor, and singer
1970 – Christopher Nolan, English-American director, producer, and screenwriter
1971 – Elvis Crespo, American-Puerto Rican singer
1971 – Tom Green, Canadian comedian and actor
1972 – Jim McIlvaine, American basketball player and sportscaster
1973 – Kenton Cool, English mountaineer
1973 – Ümit Davala, Turkish footballer and manager
1973 – Anastasios Katsabis, Greek footballer
1973 – Markus Näslund, Swedish ice hockey player and manager
1973 – Sonu Nigam, Indian playback singer and actor
1973 – Clementa C. Pinckney, American minister and politician (d. 2015)
1974 – Radostin Kishishev, Bulgarian footballer and manager
1974 – Jason Robinson, English rugby league footballer, and rugby union footballer and coach
1974 – Hilary Swank, American actress and producer
1975 – Graham Nicholls, English author and activist
1975 – Kate Starbird, American basketball player and computer scientist
1977 – Diana Bolocco, Chilean model and journalist;
1977 – Misty May-Treanor, American volleyball player and coach
1977 – Jaime Pressly, American actress
1977 – Bootsy Thornton, American basketball player
1977 – Ian Watkins, Welsh singer-songwriter and child abuse convict
1979 – Carlos Arroyo, Puerto Rican basketball player and singer
1979 – Chad Keegan, South African cricketer and coach
1979 – Graeme McDowell, Northern Irish golfer
1979 – Maya Nasser, Syrian journalist (d. 2012)
1980 – Seth Avett, American folk-rock singer-songwriter and musician
1980 – Justin Rose, South African-English golfer
1981 – Nicky Hayden, American motorcycle racer (d. 2017)
1981 – Juan Smith, South African rugby union footballer
1981 – Hope Solo, American soccer player
1981 – Indrek Turi, Estonian decathlete
1982 – Jehad Al-Hussain, Syrian footballer
1982 – James Anderson, English cricketer
1982 – Yvonne Strahovski, Australian actress
1983 – Seán Dillon, Irish footballer
1984 – Marko Asmer, Estonian race car driver
1984 – Gabrielle Christian, American actress and singer
1984 – Trudy McIntosh, Australian artistic gymnast
1984 – Kevin Pittsnogle, American basketball player
1985 – Chris Guccione, Australian tennis player
1985 – Daniel Fredheim Holm, Norwegian footballer
1985 – Luca Lanotte, Italian ice dancer
1985 – Matthew Scott, Australian rugby league player
1986 – Tiago Alencar, Brazilian footballer
1986 – William Zillman, Australian rugby league player
1987 – Anton Fink, German footballer
1987 – Sam Saunders, American golfer
1988 – Wen Chean Lim, Malaysian rhythmic gymnast
1989 – Aleix Espargaró, Spanish motorcycle racer
1989 – Wayne Parnell, South African cricketer
1990 – Chris Maxwell, Welsh footballer
1991 – Diana Vickers, English singer-songwriter
1992 – Hannah Cockroft, English wheelchair racer
1993 – Jacob Faria, American baseball player
1993 – André Gomes, Portuguese footballer
1993 – Margarida Moura, Portuguese tennis player
1994 – Nelydia Senrose, Malaysian actress
1996 – Nina Stojanović, Serbian tennis player
Deaths on July 30
578 – Jacob Baradaeus, Greek bishop
579 – Pope Benedict I
734 – Tatwine, English archbishop (b. 670)
829 – Shi Xiancheng, general of the Tang Dynasty
1286 – Bar Hebraeus, Syrian scholar and historian (b. 1226)
1393 – Alberto d’Este, Lord of Ferrara and Modena (b. 1347)
1516 – Johann V of Nassau-Vianden-Dietz (b. 1455)
1540 – Thomas Abel, English priest and martyr (b. 1497)
1540 – Robert Barnes, English martyr and reformer (b. 1495)
1550 – Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, English politician, Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom (b. 1505)
1566 – Guillaume Rondelet, French doctor (b. 1507)
1608 – Rory O’Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, last King of Tyrconnell (b. 1575)
1624 – Esmé Stewart, 3rd Duke of Lennox, British nobleman (b. 1579)
1652 – Charles Amadeus, Duke of Nemours (b. 1624)
1680 – Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory, Irish admiral and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (b. 1634)
1683 – Maria Theresa of Spain (b. 1638)
1691 – Daniel Georg Morhof, German scholar and academic (b. 1639)
1700 – Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, English royal (b. 1689)
1718 – William Penn, English businessman and philosopher, founded the Province of Pennsylvania (b. 1644)
1771 – Thomas Gray, English poet (b. 1716)
1811 – Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Mexican priest and soldier (b. 1753)
1832 – Lê Văn Duyệt, Vietnamese general, mandarin (b. 1763-4)
763 BC – Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
844 – Louis II is crowned as king of Italy at Rome by pope Sergius II.
923 – Battle of Soissons: King Robert I of France is killed and King Charles the Simple is arrested by the supporters of Duke Rudolph of Burgundy.
1184 – The naval Battle of Fimreite is won by the Birkebeiner pretender Sverre Sigurdsson. Sigurdsson takes the Norwegian throne and King Magnus V of Norway is killed.
1215 – King John of England puts his seal to Magna Carta.
1219 – Northern Crusades: Danish victory at the Battle of Lindanise (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia.
1246 – With the death of Frederick II, Duke of Austria, the Babenberg dynasty ends in Austria.
1300 – The city of Bilbao is founded.
1312 – At the Battle of Rozgony, King Charles I of Hungary wins a decisive victory over the family of Palatine Amade Aba.
1389 – Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians.
1410 – In a decisive battle at Onon River, the Mongol forces of Oljei Temur were decimated by the Chinese armies of the Yongle Emperor.
1502 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Martinique on his fourth voyage.
1520 – Pope Leo X threatens to excommunicate Martin Luther in Exsurge Domine.
1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1667 – The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1670 – The first stone of Fort Ricasoli is laid down in Malta.
1752 – Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).
1776 – Delaware Separation Day: Delaware votes to suspend government under the British Crown and separate officially from Pennsylvania.
1800 – The Provisional Army of the United States is dissolved.
1804 – New Hampshire approves the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratifying the document.
1808 – Joseph Bonaparte becomes King of Spain.
1836 – Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
1844 – Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.
1846 – The Oregon Treaty extends the border between the United States and British North America, established by the Treaty of 1818, westward to the Pacific Ocean.
1859 – Ambiguity in the Oregon Treaty leads to the “Northwestern Boundary Dispute” between American and British/Canadian settlers.
1864 – American Civil War: The Second Battle of Petersburg begins.
1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) of the Arlington estate (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
1877 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy.
1878 – Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.
1888 – Crown Prince Wilhelm becomes Kaiser Wilhelm II; he will be the last Emperor of the German Empire. Due to the death of his predecessors Wilhelm I and Frederick III, 1888 is the Year of the Three Emperors.
1896 – The deadliest tsunami in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people.
1904 – A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City’s East River kills 1,000.
1916 – United States President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.
1919 – John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
1920 – Following the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites, Northern Schleswig is transferred from Germany to Denmark.
1921 – Bessie Coleman earns her pilot’s license, becoming the first female pilot of African-American descent.
1934 – The United States Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.
1936 – First flight of the Vickers Wellington bomber.
1937 – A German expedition led by Karl Wien loses sixteen members in an avalanche on Nanga Parbat. It is the worst single disaster to occur on an 8000m peak.
1940 – World War II: Operation Ariel begins: Allied troops start to evacuate France, following Germany’s takeover of Paris and most of the nation.
1944 – World War II: The United States invades Saipan, capital of Japan’s South Seas Mandate.
1944 – In the Saskatchewan general election, the CCF, led by Tommy Douglas, is elected and forms the first socialist government in North America.
1970 – Charles Manson goes on trial for the Sharon Tate murders.
1972 – Red Army Faction co-founder Ulrike Meinhof is captured by police in Langenhagen.
1977 – After the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, the first democratic elections took place in Spain.
1978 – King Hussein of Jordan marries American Lisa Halaby, who takes the name Queen Noor.
1985 – Rembrandt’s painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.
1991 – In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, killing over 800 people.
1992 – The United States Supreme Court rules in United States v. Álvarez-Machaín that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the United States for trial, without approval from those other countries.
1994 – Israel and Vatican City establish full diplomatic relations.
1996 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a powerful truck bomb in the middle of Manchester, England, devastating the city centre and injuring 200 people.
2001 – Leaders of the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
2012 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to successfully tightrope walk directly over Niagara Falls.
2013 – A bomb explodes on a bus in the Pakistani city of Quetta, killing at least 25 people and wounding 22 others.
Births on June 15
1330 – Edward, the Black Prince of England (d. 1376)
1479 – Lisa del Giocondo, Italian model, subject of the Mona Lisa (d. 1542)
1519 – Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (d. 1536)
1542 – Richard Grenville, English captain and explorer (d. 1591)
1549 – Elizabeth Knollys, English noblewoman (d. 1605)
1553 – Archduke Ernest of Austria (d. 1595)
1605 – Thomas Randolph, English poet and playwright (d. 1635)
1618 – François Blondel, French architect (d. 1686)
1623 – Cornelis de Witt, Dutch politician (d. 1672)
1624 – Hiob Ludolf, German orientalist and philologist (d. 1704)
1640 – Bernard Lamy, French mathematician and theologian (d. 1715)
1645 – Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin, English politician (d. 1712)
1749 – Georg Joseph Vogler, German organist, composer, and theorist (d. 1814)
1754 – Juan José Elhuyar, Spanish chemist and mineralogist (d. 1796)
1755 – Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, French chemist and entomologist (d. 1809)
1763 – Franz Danzi, German cellist, composer, and conductor (d. 1826)
1763 – Kobayashi Issa, Japanese priest and poet (d. 1827)
1765 – Martin Baum, American businessman and politician, Mayor of Cincinnati (d. 1831)
1765 – Johann Gottlieb Friedrich von Bohnenberger, German astronomer and mathematician (d. 1831)
1767 – Rachel Jackson, American wife of Andrew Jackson (d. 1828)
1777 – David Daniel Davis, Welsh physician and academic (d. 1841)
1789 – Josiah Henson, American minister, author, and activist (d. 1883)
1792 – Thomas Mitchell, Scottish-Australian colonel and explorer (d. 1855)
1801 – Benjamin Wright Raymond, American merchant and politician, 3rd Mayor of Chicago (d. 1883)
1805 – William B. Ogden, American businessman and politician, 1st Mayor of Chicago (d. 1877)
1809 – François-Xavier Garneau, Canadian poet and historian (d. 1866)
1835 – Adah Isaacs Menken, American actress, painter, and poet (d. 1868)
1843 – Edvard Grieg, Norwegian pianist and composer (d. 1907)
1848 – Gheevarghese Mar Gregorios of Parumala, Indian bishop and saint (d. 1902)
1872 – Thomas William Burgess, English swimmer and water polo player (d. 1950)
1875 – Herman Smith-Johannsen, Norwegian-Canadian skier (d. 1987)
1878 – Margaret Abbott, Indian-American golfer (d. 1955)
1881 – Kesago Nakajima, Japanese lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army (d. 1945)
1884 – Harry Langdon, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1944)
1886 – Frank Clement, British racing driver (d. 1970)
1888 – Ramón López Velarde, Mexican poet and author (d. 1921)
1890 – Georg Wüst, German oceanographer and academic (d. 1977)
1894 – Robert Russell Bennett, American composer and conductor (d. 1981)
1894 – Nikolai Chebotaryov, Ukrainian-Russian mathematician and theorist (d. 1947)
1898 – Hubertus Strughold, German-American physiologist and academic (d. 1986)
1900 – Gotthard Günther, German philosopher and academic (d. 1984)
1900 – Otto Luening, German-American composer and conductor (d. 1996)
1901 – Elmar Lohk, Russian-Estonian architect (d. 1963)
1902 – Erik Erikson, German-American psychologist and psychoanalyst (d. 1994)
1906 – Gordon Welchman, English-American mathematician and author (d. 1985)
1906 – Léon Degrelle, Belgian SS officer (d. 1994)
1907 – James Robertson Justice, English actor and educator (d. 1975)
1909 – Elena Nikolaidi, Greek-American soprano and educator (d. 2002)
1910 – David Rose, English-American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1990)
1911 – Wilbert Awdry, English author, co-created Thomas the Tank Engine (d. 1997)
1913 – Tom Adair, American songwriter, composer, and screenwriter (d. 1988)
1914 – Yuri Andropov, Russian politician (d. 1984)
1914 – Saul Steinberg, Romanian-American cartoonist (d. 1999)
1914 – Hilda Terry, American cartoonist (d. 2006)
1915 – Nini Theilade, Danish ballet dancer, choreographer, and educator (d. 2018)
1915 – Thomas Huckle Weller, American biologist and virologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2008)
1916 – Olga Erteszek, Polish-American fashion designer (d. 1989)
1916 – Horacio Salgán, Argentinian pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 2016)
1916 – Herbert A. Simon, American political scientist and economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2001)
1917 – John Fenn, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2010)
1917 – Michalis Genitsaris, Greek singer-songwriter (d. 2005)
1917 – Lash LaRue, American actor and producer (d. 1996)
1918 – François Tombalbaye, Chadian politician, 1st President of Chad (d. 1975)
1920 – Keith Andrews, American race car driver (d. 1957)
1920 – Alla Kazanskaya, Russian actress (d. 2008)
1920 – Sam Sniderman, Canadian businessman, founded Sam the Record Man (d. 2012)
1920 – Alberto Sordi, Italian actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2003)
1921 – Erroll Garner, American pianist and composer (d. 1977)
1922 – Jaki Byard, American pianist and composer (d. 1999)
1923 – Erland Josephson, Swedish actor and director (d. 2012)
1923 – Ninian Stephen, English-Australian lieutenant, judge, and politician, 20th Governor-General of Australia (d. 2017)
1924 – Hédi Fried, Swedish author and psychologist
1924 – Ezer Weizman, Israeli general and politician, 7th President of Israel (d. 2005)
1925 – Richard Baker, English journalist and author (d. 2018)
1925 – Attilâ İlhan, Turkish poet, author, and critic (d. 2005)
1926 – Alfred Duraiappah, Sri Lankan Tamil lawyer and politician (d. 1975)
1927 – Ross Andru, American illustrator (d. 1993)
1927 – Ibn-e-Insha, Indian-Pakistani poet and author (d. 1978)
1927 – Hugo Pratt, Italian author and illustrator (d. 1995)
1930 – Miguel Méndez, American author and academic (d. 2013)
1930 – Marcel Pronovost, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 2015)
1931 – Joseph Gilbert, English air marshal
1931 – Brian Sewell, English art dealer and critic (d. 2015)
1932 – David Alliance, Baron Alliance, Iranian-English businessman and politician
1932 – Mario Cuomo, American lawyer and politician, 52nd Governor of New York (d. 2015)
1932 – Zia Fariduddin Dagar, Indian singer (d. 2013)
1932 – Bernie Faloney, American-Canadian football player and sportscaster (d. 1999)
1933 – Mohammad-Ali Rajai, Iranian politician, 2nd President of Iran (d. 1981)
1933 – Predrag Koraksić Corax, Serbian political caricaturist
1934 – Ruby Nash Garnett, American R&B singer
1936 – William Levada, American cardinal
1937 – Pierre Billon, Swiss-Canadian author and screenwriter
1937 – Waylon Jennings, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2002)
1938 – Billy Williams, American baseball player and coach
1939 – Ward Connerly, American activist and businessman, founded the American Civil Rights Institute
1941 – Neal Adams, American illustrator
1941 – Harry Nilsson, American singer-songwriter (d. 1994)
1942 – Ian Greenberg, Canadian broadcaster, founded Astral Media
1942 – John E. McLaughlin, American diplomat
1942 – Peter Norman, Australian sprinter (d. 2006)
1943 – Johnny Hallyday, French singer and actor (d. 2017)
1943 – Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Danish politician, 38th Prime Minister of Denmark
1944 – Robert D. Keppel, American police officer and academic
1945 – Miriam Defensor Santiago, Filipino judge and politician (d. 2016)
1945 – Robert Sarah, Guinean cardinal
1945 – Lawrence Wilkerson, American colonel
1946 – Noddy Holder, English rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor
1946 – John Horner, American paleontologist and academic
1946 – Demis Roussos, Egyptian-Greek singer-songwriter and bass player (d. 2015)
1947 – John Hoagland, American photographer and journalist (d. 1984)
1948 – Mike Holmgren, American football player and coach
1948 – Alan Huckle, English politician and diplomat, Governor of Anguilla
1948 – Henry McLeish, Scottish footballer, academic, and politician, 2nd First Minister of Scotland
1949 – Dusty Baker, American baseball player and manager
1949 – Simon Callow, English actor and director
1949 – Russell Hitchcock, Australian singer-songwriter
1949 – Jim Varney, American actor, comedian, and screenwriter (d. 2000)
1950 – Uğur Erdener, Turkish ophthalmologist and professor
1950 – Juliana Azumah-Mensah, Ghanaian nurse and politician
1950 – Deney Terrio, American choreographer and host of the television musical variety series Dance Fever
1950 – Lakshmi Mittal, Indian-English businessman
1951 – Jane Amsterdam, American magazine and newspaper editor (Manhattan, inc., New York Post)
1951 – Vance A. Larson, American painter (d. 2000)
1951 – John Redwood, English politician, Secretary of State for Wales
1951 – Steve Walsh, American rock singer-songwriter and musician
1952 – Satya Pal Jain, Indian lawyer and politician, Additional Solicitor General of India
1953 – Vilma Bardauskienė, Lithuanian long jumper
1953 – Marc Brickman, American lighting and production designer
1953 – Eje Elgh, Swedish racing driver and sportscaster
1953 – Xi Jinping, Chinese engineer and politician, General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of China
1953 – Raphael Wallfisch, English cellist and educator
1954 – Jim Belushi, American actor
1954 – Terri Gibbs, American country music singer and keyboard player
1954 – Paul Rusesabagina, Rwandan humanitarian
1954 – Zdeňka Šilhavá, Czech discus thrower and shot putter
1954 – Beverley Whitfield, Australian swimmer (d. 1996)
1955 – Polly Draper, American actress, producer, and screenwriter
2015 – Kirk Kerkorian, American businessman, founded the Tracinda Corporation (b. 1917)
2016 – Lois Duncan, American author (b. 1934)
2018 – Matt “Guitar” Murphy, American Blues guitarist (The Blues Brothers) (b. 1929)
2019 – Franco Zeffirelli, Italian film director (b. 1923)
Holidays and observances on June 15
Arbor Day (Costa Rica)
Christian feast day:
Abraham of Clermont (or of St Cyriacus)
Alice (or Adelaide) of Schaerbeek
Augustine of Hippo (Eastern Orthodox Church)
Blessed Albertina Berkenbrock
Blessed Clement Vismara
Edburga of Winchester
Evelyn Underhill (Church of England and The Episcopal Church)
Germaine Cousin
Landelin (of Crespin or of Lobbes)
Trillo
Vitus (Guy), Modestus and Crescentia
June 15 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of Valdemar and Reunion Day (Flag Day) (Denmark)
Earliest day on which Father’s Day can fall, while June 21 is the latest; celebrated on the third Sunday in June. (United States, and most other countries.)
671 – Emperor Tenji of Japan introduces a water clock (clepsydra) called Rokoku. The instrument, which measures time and indicates hours, is placed in the capital of Ōtsu.
1190 – Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.
1329 – The Battle of Pelekanon results in a Byzantine defeat by the Ottoman Empire.
1523 – Copenhagen is surrounded by the army of Frederick I of Denmark, as the city will not recognise him as the successor of Christian II of Denmark.
1539 – Council of Trent: Pope Paul III sends out letters to his bishops, delaying the Council due to war and the difficulty bishops had traveling to Venice.
1596 – Willem Barents and Jacob van Heemskerk discover Bear Island.
1619 – Thirty Years’ War: Battle of Záblatí, a turning point in the Bohemian Revolt.
1624 – Signing of the Treaty of Compiègne between France and the Netherlands.
1692 – Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for “certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries”.
1719 – Jacobite risings: Battle of Glen Shiel
1782 – King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (Rama I) of Siam (modern day Thailand) is crowned.
1786 – A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.
1793 – The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. A year later, it becomes the first public zoo.
1793 – French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety installing the revolutionary dictatorship.
1805 – First Barbary War: Yusuf Karamanli signs a treaty ending the hostilities between Tripolitania and the United States.
1829 – The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place on the Thames in London.
1838 – Myall Creek massacre: Twenty-eight Aboriginal Australians are murdered.
1854 – The United States Naval Academy graduates its first class of students.
1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Big Bethel: Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce in Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Brice’s Crossroads: Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest defeat a much larger Union force led by General Samuel D. Sturgis in Mississippi.
1868 – Mihailo Obrenović III, Prince of Serbia is assassinated.
1871 – Sinmiyangyo: Captain McLane Tilton leads 109 US Marines in a naval attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.
1878 – League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stefano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in the Balkans were being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece.
1886 – Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 153 people and burying the famous Pink and White Terraces. Eruptions continue for three months creating a large, 17 km long fissure across the mountain peak.
1898 – Spanish–American War: In the Battle of Guantánamo Bay, U.S. Marines begin the American invasion of Spanish-held Cuba.
1916 – The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire was declared by Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca.
1918 – The Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István sinks off the Croatian coast after being torpedoed by an Italian MAS motorboat; the event is recorded by camera from a nearby vessel.
1924 – Fascists kidnap and kill Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
1935 – Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson.
1935 – Chaco War ends: A truce is called between Bolivia and Paraguay who had been fighting since 1932.
1940 – World War II: The Kingdom of Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
1940 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy’s actions in his “Stab in the Back” speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.
1940 – World War II: Military resistance to the German occupation of Norway ends.
1942 – World War II: The Lidice massacre is perpetrated as a reprisal for the assassination of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.
1944 – World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children massacred at Oradour-sur-Glane, France.
1944 – World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece, 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.
1944 – In baseball, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game.
1945 – Australian Imperial Forces land in Brunei Bay to liberate Brunei.
1947 – Saab produces its first automobile.
1957 – John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a stunning upset in the 1957 Canadian federal election, ending 22 years of Liberal Party government.
1963 – The Equal Pay Act of 1963, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex, was signed into law by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program.
1964 – United States Senate breaks a 75-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill’s passage.
1967 – The Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire.
1977 – James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee. He is recaptured three days later.
1980 – The African National Congress in South Africa publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela.
1982 – Lebanon War: The Syrian Arab Army defeats the Israeli Defense Forces in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub.
1990 – British Airways Flight 5390 lands safely at Southampton Airport after a blowout in the cockpit causes the captain to be partially sucked from the cockpit. There are no fatalities.
1991 – Eleven-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard is kidnapped in South Lake Tahoe, California; she would remain a captive until 2009.
1994 – China conducts a nuclear test for DF-31 warhead at Area C (Beishan), Lop Nur, its prominence being due to the Cox Report.
1996 – Peace talks begin in Northern Ireland without the participation of Sinn Féin.
1997 – Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen’s family members.
1999 – Kosovo War: NATO suspends its airstrikes after Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.
2001 – Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon’s first female saint, Saint Rafqa.
2002 – The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.
2003 – The Spirit rover is launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.
2009 – James Wenneker von Brunn, who was 88-years-old, opened fire inside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and fatally shot Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. Other security guards returned fire, wounding von Brunn, who was apprehended.
2019 – An Agusta A109E Power crashed onto the AXA Equitable Center on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, which sparked a fire on the top of the building. The pilot of the helicopter was killed.
Births on June 10
867 – Emperor Uda of Japan (d. 931)
940 – Abu al-Wafa’ Buzjani, Persian mathematician and astronomer (d. 998)
1213 – Fakhr-al-Din Iraqi, Persian poet and philosopher (d. 1289)
1465 – Mercurino Gattinara, Italian statesman and jurist (d. 1530)
1513 – Louis, Duke of Montpensier (1561–1582) (d. 1582)
1557 – Leandro Bassano, Italian painter (d. 1622)
1632 – Esprit Fléchier, French bishop and author (d. 1710)
1688 – James Francis Edward Stuart, claimant to the English and Scottish throne (d. 1766)
1713 – Princess Caroline of Great Britain (d. 1757)
1716 – Carl Gustaf Ekeberg, Swedish physician and explorer (d. 1784)
1753 – William Eustis, American physician and politician, 12th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1825)
1804 – Hermann Schlegel, German ornithologist and herpetologist (d. 1884)
1819 – Gustave Courbet, French-Swiss painter and sculptor (d. 1877)
1825 – Sondre Norheim, Norwegian-American skier (d. 1897)
1832 – Edwin Arnold, English poet and journalist (d. 1904)
1832 – Nicolaus Otto, German engineer (d. 1891)
1832 – Stephen Mosher Wood, American lieutenant and politician (d. 1920)
1835 – Rebecca Latimer Felton, American educator and politician (d. 1930)
1839 – Ludvig Holstein-Ledreborg, Danish lawyer and politician, 19th Prime Minister of Denmark (d. 1912)
1840 – Theodor Philipsen, Danish painter (d. 1920)
1843 – Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Austrian composer and conductor (d. 1900)
1854 – Sarah Grand, Irish feminist writer (d. 1943)
1859 – Emanuel Nobel, Swedish-Russian businessman (d. 1932)
1862 – Mrs. Leslie Carter, American actress (d. 1937)
1863 – Louis Couperus, Dutch author and poet (d. 1923)
1864 – Ninian Comper, Scottish architect (d. 1960)
1865 – Frederick Cook, American physician and explorer (d. 1940)
1880 – André Derain, French painter and sculptor (d. 1954)
1882 – Nils Økland, Norwegian Esperantist and teacher (d. 1969)
1884 – Leone Sextus Tollemache, English captain (d. 1917)
1886 – Sessue Hayakawa, Japanese actor and producer (d. 1973)
1891 – Al Dubin, Swiss-American songwriter (d. 1945)
1895 – Hattie McDaniel, American actress (d. 1952)
1897 – Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia (d. 1918)
1898 – Princess Marie-Auguste of Anhalt (d. 1983)
1899 – Stanisław Czaykowski, Polish race car driver (d. 1933)
1901 – Frederick Loewe, Austrian-American composer (d. 1988)
1904 – Lin Huiyin, Chinese architect and poet (d. 1955)
1907 – Fairfield Porter, American painter and critic (d. 1975)
1907 – Dicky Wells, American jazz trombonist (d. 1985)[n 1]
1909 – Lang Hancock, Australian soldier and businessman (d. 1992)
1910 – Frank Demaree, American baseball player and manager (d. 1958)
1910 – Howlin’ Wolf, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1976)
1911 – Ralph Kirkpatrick, American harpsichord player and musicologist (d. 1984)
1911 – Terence Rattigan, English playwright and screenwriter (d. 1977)
1912 – Jean Lesage, Canadian lawyer and politician, 11th Premier of Quebec (d. 1980)
1913 – Tikhon Khrennikov, Russian pianist and composer (d. 2007)
1913 – Benjamin Shapira, German-Israeli biochemist and academic (d. 1993)
1914 – Oktay Rıfat Horozcu, Turkish poet and playwright (d. 1988)
1915 – Saul Bellow, Canadian-American novelist, essayist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2005)
1916 – Peride Celal, Turkish author (d. 2013)
1916 – William Rosenberg, American entrepreneur, founded Dunkin’ Donuts (d. 2002)
1918 – Patachou, French singer and actress (d. 2015)
1918 – Barry Morse, English-Canadian actor and director (d. 2008)
1919 – Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Palestinian physician and politician (d. 2007)
1919 – Kevin O’Flanagan, Irish footballer, rugby player, and physician (d. 2006)
1921 – Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
1921 – Jean Robic, French cyclist (d. 1980)
1922 – Judy Garland, American singer, actress, and vaudevillian (d. 1969)
1922 – Bill Kerr, South African-Australian actor (d. 2014)
1923 – Paul Brunelle, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1994)
1923 – Robert Maxwell, Czech-English captain, publisher, and politician (d. 1991)
1924 – Friedrich L. Bauer, German mathematician, computer scientist, and academic (d. 2015)
1925 – Leo Gravelle, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2013)
1925 – Nat Hentoff, American historian, author, and journalist (d. 2017)
1925 – James Salter, American novelist and short-story writer (d. 2015)
1926 – Bruno Bartoletti, Italian conductor (d. 2013)
1926 – Lionel Jeffries, English actor, screenwriter and film director (d. 2010)
1411 – King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon as they had been doing for centuries.
1561 – The steeple of St Paul’s, the medieval cathedral of London, is destroyed in a fire caused by lightning and is never rebuilt.
1615 – Siege of Osaka: Forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.
1745 – Battle of Hohenfriedberg: Frederick the Great’s Prussian army decisively defeated an Austrian army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine during the War of the Austrian Succession.
1760 – Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia, Canada, taken from the Acadians.
1783 – The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
1784 – Élisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon. Her flight covers four kilometres in 45 minutes, and reached 1,500 metres altitude (estimated).
1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1802 – King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.
1812 – Following Louisiana’s admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.
1825 – General Lafayette, a French officer in the American Revolutionary War, speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.
1855 – Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.
1859 – Italian Independence wars: In the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeat the Austrian army.
1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.
1876 – An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
1878 – Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
1896 – Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
1912 – Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
1913 – Emily Davison, a suffragette, runs out in front of King George V’s horse at The Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness, and dies four days later.
1916 – World War I: Russia opens the Brusilov Offensive with an artillery barrage of Austro-Hungarian lines in Galicia.
1917 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
1919 – Women’s rights: The U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
1920 – Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.
1928 – The President of the Republic of China, Zhang Zuolin, is assassinated by Japanese agents.
1932 – Marmaduke Grove and other Chilean military officers lead a coup d’état establishing the short-lived Socialist Republic of Chile.
1939 – The Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
1940 – World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation ends: British forces complete evacuation of 338,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers, only to the House of Commons, his famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. The Japanese Admiral Chūichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
1943 – A military coup in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo.
1944 – World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German submarine U-505: The first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
1944 – World War II: The United States Fifth Army captures Rome, although much of the German Fourteenth Army is able to withdraw to the north.
1961 – Cold War: In the Vienna summit, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.
1967 – Seventy-two people are killed when a Canadair C-4 Argonaut crashes at Stockport in England.
1970 – Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.
1975 – The Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the U.S. giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights.
1979 – Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown.
1983 – Gordon Kahl, who killed two US Marshals in Medina, North Dakota on February 13, is killed in a shootout in Smithville, Arkansas, along with a local sheriff, after a four-month manhunt.
1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
1988 – Three cars on a train carrying hexogen to Kazakhstan explode in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, USSR, killing 91 and injuring about 1,500.
1989 – Ali Khamenei is elected as the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after the death and funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are suppressed in Beijing by the People’s Liberation Army, with between 241 and 1,000 dead (an unofficial estimate).
1989 – Solidarity’s victory in the first (somewhat) free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland sparks off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe, leads to the creation of the so-called Contract Sejm and begins the Autumn of Nations.
1989 – Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.
1996 – The first flight of Ariane 5 explodes after roughly 37 seconds. It was a Cluster mission.
1998 – Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
2010 – Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.
Births on June 4
1394 – Philippa of England, Queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden (d. 1430)
1489 – Antoine, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1544)
1563 – George Heriot, Scottish goldsmith (d. 1624)
1604 – Claudia de’ Medici, Italian daughter of Christina of Lorraine (d. 1648)
1665 – Zacharie Robutel de La Noue, Canadian captain (d. 1733)
1694 – François Quesnay, French economist and physician (d. 1774)
1704 – Benjamin Huntsman, English inventor and businessman (d. 1776)
1738 – George III of the United Kingdom (d. 1820)
1744 – Patrick Ferguson, Scottish soldier, designed the Ferguson rifle (d. 1780)
1754 – Miguel de Azcuénaga, Argentinian soldier (d. 1833)
1754 – Franz Xaver von Zach, Slovak astronomer and academic (d. 1832)
1787 – Constant Prévost, French geologist and academic (d. 1856)
1801 – James Pennethorne, English architect, designed Victoria Park (d. 1871)
1821 – Apollon Maykov, Russian poet and playwright (d. 1897)
1829 – Jinmaku Kyūgorō, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 12th Yokozuna (d. 1903)
1854 – Solko van den Bergh, Dutch target shooter (d. 1916)
1860 – Alexis Lapointe, Canadian runner (d. 1924)
1861 – William Propsting, Australian politician, 20th Premier of Tasmania (d. 1937)
1866 – Miina Sillanpää, Finnish journalist and politician (d. 1952)
1867 – Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Finnish general and politician, 6th President of Finland (d. 1951)
1873 – Nictzin Dyalhis, American author (d.1942)
1877 – Heinrich Otto Wieland, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1957)
1879 – Mabel Lucie Attwell, English author and illustrator (d. 1964)
1880 – Clara Blandick, American actress (d. 1962)
1885 – Arturo Rawson, Argentinian general and politician, 26th President of Argentina (d. 1952)
1887 – Tom Longboat, Canadian runner and soldier (d. 1949)
1889 – Beno Gutenberg, German-American seismologist (d. 1960)
1903 – Yevgeny Mravinsky, Russian conductor (d. 1988)
1904 – Bhagat Puran Singh, Indian publisher, environmentalist, and philanthropist (d. 1992)
1907 – Jacques Roumain, Haitian journalist and politician (d. 1944)
1907 – Rosalind Russell, American actress (d. 1976)
1907 – Patience Strong, English poet and journalist (d. 1990)
1910 – Christopher Cockerell, English engineer, invented the hovercraft (d. 1999)
1912 – Robert Jacobsen, Danish sculptor and painter (d. 1993)
1915 – Walter Hadlee, New Zealand cricketer (d. 2006)
1915 – Modibo Keïta, Malian educator and politician, 1st President of Mali (d. 1977)
1915 – Nils Kihlberg, Swedish actor, singer, and director (d. 1965)
1916 – Robert F. Furchgott, American biochemist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2009)
1916 – Fernand Leduc, Canadian painter (d. 2014)
1917 – Robert Merrill, American actor and singer (d. 2004)
1921 – Milan Komar, Slovenian-Argentinian philosopher and academic (d. 2006)
1921 – Bobby Wanzer, American basketball player and coach (d. 2016)
1923 – Elizabeth Jolley, English-Australian author and academic (d. 2007)
1923 – Masutatsu Ōyama, Japanese karateka (d. 1994)
1924 – Tofilau Eti Alesana, Samoan politician, 5th Prime Minister of Samoa (d. 1999)
1924 – Dennis Weaver, American actor and director (d. 2006)
1925 – Antonio Puchades, Spanish footballer (d. 2013)
1926 – Robert Earl Hughes, American who was the heaviest human being recorded in the history of the world during his lifetime (d. 1958)
1926 – Ain Kaalep, Estonian poet, playwright, and critic (d. 2020)
1926 – Judith Malina, German-American actress and director, co-founded The Living Theatre (d. 2015)
1927 – Henning Carlsen, Danish director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2014)
1927 – Geoffrey Palmer, English actor
1928 – Ruth Westheimer, German-American therapist and author
1929 – Karolos Papoulias, Greek lawyer and politician, 5th President of Greece
1930 – George Chesworth, English air marshal and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Moray (d. 2017)
1930 – Morgana King, American singer and actress (d. 2018)
1930 – Viktor Tikhonov, Russian ice hockey player and coach (d. 2014)
1931 – Gustav Nossal, Austrian-Australian biologist and academic
1932 – John Drew Barrymore, American actor (d. 2004)
1932 – Oliver Nelson, American saxophonist and composer (d. 1975)
1932 – Maurice Shadbolt, New Zealand author and playwright (d. 2004)
1934 – Monica Dacon, Vincentian educator and politician, 6th Governor-General of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
1934 – Daphne Sheldrick, Kenyan-British conservationist and author (d. 2018)
1935 – Colette Boky, Canadian soprano and actress
1935 – Berhanu Dinka, Ethiopian economist and diplomat (d. 2013)
1936 – Vince Camuto, American fashion designer and businessman, co-founded Nine West (d. 2015)
1936 – Bruce Dern, American actor
1937 – Freddy Fender, American singer and guitarist (d. 2006)
1937 – Mortimer Zuckerman, Canadian-American businessman and publisher, founded Boston Properties
1938 – John Harvard, Canadian journalist and politician, 23rd Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba (d. 2016)
1938 – Art Mahaffey, American baseball player
1939 – Jeremy Browne, 11th Marquess of Sligo, Anglo-Irish peer (d. 2014)
1939 – Denis de Belleval, Canadian civil servant and politician
1939 – Henri Pachard, American director and producer (d. 2008)
1939 – George Reid, Scottish journalist and politician, 2nd Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament
1940 – Ludwig Schwarz, Slovak-Austrian bishop
1941 – Kenneth G. Ross, Australian playwright and screenwriter
1942 – Louis Reichardt, American mountaineer
1942 – Bill Rowe, Canadian lawyer and politician
1943 – John Burgess, Australian radio and television host
1943 – Sandra Haynie, American golfer
1943 – Tom Jaine, English author
1944 – Roger Ball, Scottish saxophonist and songwriter
1944 – Michelle Phillips, American singer-songwriter and actress
1945 – Anthony Braxton, American saxophonist, clarinet player, and composer
1945 – Daniel Topolski, English rower and coach (d. 2015)
1945 – Gordon Waller, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2009)
1947 – Viktor Klima, Austrian businessman and politician, 25th Chancellor of Austria
1948 – Bob Champion, English jockey
1948 – Sandra Post, Canadian golfer and sportscaster
1948 – Jürgen Sparwasser, German footballer and manager
1949 – Gabriel Arcand, Canadian actor
1949 – Mark B. Cohen, American lawyer and politician
1950 – Raymond Dumais, Canadian bishop (d. 2012)
1951 – Leigh Kennedy, American author
1951 – Bronisław Malinowski, Polish runner (d. 1981)
1951 – Melanie Phillips, English journalist and author
1951 – Wendy Pini, American author and illustrator
1951 – David Yip, English actor and playwright
1952 – Bronisław Komorowski, Polish historian and politician, 5th President of Poland
1952 – Dambudzo Marechera, Zimbabwean author and poet (d. 1987)
1953 – Linda Lingle, American journalist and politician, 6th Governor of Hawaii
1953 – Jimmy McCulloch, Scottish musician and songwriter (d. 1979)
1953 – Susumu Ojima, Japanese businessman, founded Huser
1953 – Paul Samson, English guitarist and producer (d. 2002)
1954 – Raphael Ravenscroft, English saxophonist and composer (d. 2014)
1954 – Kazuhiro Yamaji, Japanese actor and voice actor
1955 – Val McDermid, Scottish author
1955 – Mary Testa, American singer and actress
1956 – Keith David, American actor
1956 – John Hockenberry, American journalist and author
1956 – Terry Kennedy, American baseball player and manager
1956 – Joyce Sidman, American author and poet
1957 – Neil McNab, Scottish footballer
1959 – Juan Camacho, Bolivian runner
1959 – Georgios Voulgarakis, Greek politician, 21st Greek Minister for Culture
1960 – Miloš Đelmaš, Serbian footballer and manager
1960 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch, American author
1960 – Paul Taylor, American guitarist and keyboard player
1960 – Bradley Walsh, English television presenter, comedian, singer and former footballer
1961 – El DeBarge, American singer-songwriter and producer
1961 – Ferenc Gyurcsány, Hungarian businessman and politician, 6th Prime Minister of Hungary
1962 – Krzysztof Hołowczyc, Polish race car driver
1962 – Zenon Jaskuła, Polish cyclist
1962 – John P. Kee, American singer-songwriter and pastor
1962 – Junius Ho, Hong Kong solicitor and politician
1963 – Sean Fitzpatrick, New Zealand rugby union player
1963 – Jim Lachey, American football player and sportscaster
1963 – Xavier McDaniel, American basketball player and coach
1964 – Sean Pertwee, English actor
1964 – Kōji Yamamura, Japanese animator, producer, and screenwriter
1965 – Mick Doohan, Australian motorcycle racer
1965 – Andrea Jaeger, American tennis player and preacher
1966 – Cecilia Bartoli, Italian soprano and actress
1966 – Vladimir Voevodsky, Russian mathematician and academic (d. 2017)
1966 – Bill Wiggin, English politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Wales
1967 – Robert S. Kimbrough, American colonel and astronaut
1968 – Roger Lim, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1968 – Niurka Montalvo, Cuban-Spanish long jumper
1968 – Al B. Sure!, American R&B singer-songwriter, keyboard player, and producer
1968 – Scott Wolf, American actor
1969 – Horatio Sanz, Chilean-American actor and comedian
1970 – Deborah Compagnoni, Italian skier
1970 – Richie Hawtin, English-Canadian DJ and producer
1970 – Dave Pybus, English bass player and songwriter
1970 – Izabella Scorupco, Polish-Swedish actress and model
1971 – Joseph Kabila, Congolese soldier and politician, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
1971 – Mike Lee, American lawyer and politician
1971 – Shoji Meguro, Japanese director and composer
1971 – Karl Martin Sinijärv, Estonian journalist and poet
1971 – Noah Wyle, American actor and producer
1972 – Derian Hatcher, American ice hockey defenseman
1972 – Rob Huebel, American comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter
1973 – Mikey Whipwreck, American wrestler and trainer
1974 – Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni, Indian chef (d. 2012)
1974 – Darin Erstad, American baseball player and coach
1974 – Andrew Gwynne, English lawyer and politician
1974 – Janette Husárová, Slovak tennis player
1974 – Buddy Wakefield, American poet and author
1975 – Russell Brand, English comedian and actor
1975 – Henry Burris, American football player
1975 – Angelina Jolie, American actress, filmmaker, humanitarian, and activist
1975 – Dinanath Ramnarine, Trinidadian cricketer
1975 – Alex Wharf, English cricketer
1976 – Kasey Chambers, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist
1976 – Alexei Navalny, Russian lawyer and politician
1976 – Nenad Zimonjić, Serbian tennis player
1977 – Dionisis Chiotis, Greek footballer
1977 – Alex Manninger, Austrian footballer
1977 – Roman Miroshnichenko, Ukrainian guitarist and composer
1977 – Roland G. Fryer Jr., American economist and professor
1978 – Robin Lord Taylor, American actor
1979 – Naohiro Takahara, Japanese footballer
1979 – Daniel Vickerman, South African-Australian rugby player (d. 2017)
1980 – François Beauchemin, Canadian ice hockey player
1981 – Jennifer Carroll, Canadian swimmer
1981 – Giourkas Seitaridis, Greek footballer
1981 – Natalia Vodopyanova, Russian basketball player
1982 – Abel Kirui, Kenyan runner
1982 – Ronnie Prude, American-Canadian football player
1983 – Romaric, Ivorian footballer
1983 – Emmanuel Eboué, Ivorian footballer
1983 – Olha Saladuha, Ukrainian triple jumper
1984 – Enrico Rossi Chauvenet, Italian footballer
1984 – Rainie Yang, Taiwanese actress
1984 – Ian White, Canadian ice hockey player
1985 – Leon Botha, South African painter and DJ (d. 2011)
1985 – Anna-Lena Grönefeld, German tennis player
1985 – Evan Lysacek, American figure skater
1985 – Lukas Podolski, German footballer
1985 – Oddvar Reiakvam, Norwegian politician
1987 – Luisa Zissman, English businesswoman
1987 – Mollie King, English singer-songwriter and model
1988 – Matt Bartkowski, American ice hockey defenseman
1988 – Kimberley Busteed, Australian model
1989 – Federico Erba, Italian footballer
1989 – Paweł Fajdek, Polish hammer thrower
1990 – Zac Farro, American singer and drummer
1990 – Evan Spiegel, American Internet entrepreneur
1991 – Lorenzo Insigne, Italian footballer
1991 – Matt McIlwrick, New Zealand rugby league player
1991 – Ben Stokes, New Zealand-English cricketer
1993 – Jonathan Huberdeau, Canadian ice hockey player
1995 – Shiori Tamai, Japanese singer
1999 – Kim So-hyun, South Korean actress
2004 – Mackenzie Ziegler, American dancer, singer, actress and model
Deaths on June 4
756 – Shōmu, Japanese emperor (b. 701)
863 – Charles, archbishop of Mainz
895 – Li Xi, chancellor of the Tang Dynasty
946 – Guaimar II (Gybbosus), Lombard prince
956 – Muhammad III of Shirvan, Muslim ruler
1039 – Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 990)
1102 – Władysław I Herman, Polish nobleman (b. c. 1044)
1134 – Magnus I of Sweden (b. 1106)
1135 – Emperor Huizong of Song (b. 1082)
1206 – Adela of Champagne (b. 1140)
1246 – Isabella of Angoulême (b. 1188)
1257 – Przemysł I of Greater Poland (b. 1221)
1394 – Mary de Bohun, wife of Henry IV of England (b.c. 1368)
2013 – Walt Arfons, American race car driver (b. 1916)
2013 – Joey Covington, American drummer (b. 1945)
2013 – Hermann Gunnarsson, Icelandic footballer, handball player, and sportscaster (b. 1946)
2013 – Will Wynn, American football player (b. 1949)
2014 – George Ho, American-Hong Kong businessman (b. 1919)
2014 – Nathan Shamuyarira, Zimbabwean journalist and politician, Zimbabwean Minister of Foreign Affairs (b. 1928)
2014 – Sydney Templeman, Baron Templeman, English lawyer and judge (b. 1920)
2014 – Don Zimmer, American baseball player, coach, and manager (b. 1931)
2015 – Marguerite Patten, English economist and author (b. 1915)
2015 – Leonid Plyushch, Ukrainian mathematician and academic (b. 1938)
2015 – Jabe Thomas, American race car driver (b. 1930)
2015 – Anne Warburton, British academic and diplomat, British Ambassador to Denmark (b. 1927)
2016 – Carmen Pereira, Bissau-Guinean politician (b. 1937)
2017 – Juan Goytisolo, Spanish essayist, poet and novelist (b. 1931)
Holidays and observances on June 4
Birthday of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim & Flag Day celebration of the Finnish Defence Forces (Finland)
Christian feast day:
Filippo Smaldone
Francis Caracciolo
Optatus
Petroc of Cornwall
Quirinus of Sescia
Saturnina
June 4 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Emancipation Day or Independence Day, commemorates the abolition of serfdom in Tonga by King George Tupou in 1862, and the independence of Tonga from the British protectorate in 1970. (Tonga)
Flag Day (Estonia)
International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression (International)
National Unity Day (Hungary)
Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day (International)
1096 – Count Emicho enters Mainz, where his followers massacre Jewish citizens.At least 600 Jews are killed.
1120 – Richard III of Capua is anointed as Prince two weeks before his untimely death.
1153 – Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland.
1199 – John is crowned King of England.
1257 – Richard of Cornwall, and his wife, Sanchia of Provence, are crowned King and Queen of the Germans at Aachen Cathedral.
1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon defeats rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing.
1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.
1798 – The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland; Irish rebel leaders defeat and kill a detachment of militia.
1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeat the French at Winterthur, Switzerland.
1813 – War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.
1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.
1863 – American Civil War: First Assault on the Confederate works at the Siege of Port Hudson.
1874 – The first group of Dorsland trekkers under the leadership of Gert Alberts leaves Pretoria.
1883 – Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia.
1896 – The F4-strength St. Louis–East St. Louis tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and causing over $10–million in damage.
1905 – Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins.
1917 – Pope Benedict XV promulgates the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the first comprehensive codification of Catholic canon law in the legal history of the Catholic Church.
1919 – The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.
1927 – The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
1930 – The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.
1933 – New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.
1933 – The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon Three Little Pigs, with its hit song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”
1935 – New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).
1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.
1940 – World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops; two survive.
1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency”.
1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men.
1942 – World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later.
1958 – First flight of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II.
1960 – In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celâl Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.
1962 – The Centralia mine fire is ignited in the town’s landfill above a coal mine.
1965 – Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam.
1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.
1967 – The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.
1971 – The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal.
1971 – Pakistani forces massacre over 200 civilians, mostly Bengali Hindus, in the Bagbati massacre.
1975 – Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, in North Yorkshire, England, kills 33 – the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom.
1980 – The Gwangju Massacre: Airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.
1984 – The Danube-Black Sea canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s.
1996 – First Chechen War: the Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire.
1997 – The 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak occurs, spawning multiple tornadoes in Central Texas, including the F5 that killed 27 in Jarrell.
1998 – Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.
2001 – Members of the Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf seize twenty hostages from an affluent island resort on Palawan in the Philippines; the hostage crisis would not be resolved until June 2002.
2006 – The 6.4 Mw Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of VIII (Damaging), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured.
2016 – Barack Obama is the first president of United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha.
2017 – Andrew Scheer takes over after Rona Ambrose as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
2018 – Maryland Flood Event: A flood occurs throughout the Patapsco Valley causing one death and destroying the entire first floors of buildings on Main Street in Ellicott City and causing cars to overturn.
Births on May 27
742 – Emperor Dezong of Tang (d. 805)
1332 – Ibn Khaldun, Tunisian historian and theologian (d. 1406)
1378 – Zhu Quan, Chinese military commander, historian and playwright (d. 1448)
1519 – Girolamo Mei, Italian historian and theorist (d. 1594)
1537 – Louis IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg (d. 1604)
1576 – Caspar Schoppe, German author and scholar (d. 1649)
1584 – Michael Altenburg, German theologian and composer (d. 1640)
1601 – Antoine Daniel, French-Canadian missionary and saint (d. 1648)
1626 – William II, Prince of Orange (d. 1650)
1627 – Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier (d. 1693)
1651 – Louis Antoine de Noailles, French cardinal (d. 1729)
1652 – Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine of Germany (d. 1722)
1738 – Nathaniel Gorham, American merchant and politician, 14th President of the Continental Congress (d. 1796)
1756 – Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria (d. 1825)
1774 – Francis Beaufort, Irish hydrographer and officer in the Royal Navy (d. 1857)
1794 – Cornelius Vanderbilt, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1877)
1814 – John Rudolph Niernsee, Viennese-born American architect (d.1885)
1815 – Henry Parkes, English-Australian politician, 7th Premier of New South Wales (d. 1896)
1818 – Amelia Bloomer, American journalist and activist (d. 1894)
1819 – Julia Ward Howe, American poet and songwriter (d. 1910)
1827 – Samuel F. Miller, American lawyer and politician (d. 1892)
1832 – Zenas Ferry Moody, American surveyor and politician, 7th Governor of Oregon (d. 1917)
1836 – Jay Gould, American businessman and financier (d. 1892)
1837 – Wild Bill Hickok, American police officer (d. 1876)
1852 – Billy Barnes, English cricketer (d. 1899)
1857 – Theodor Curtius, German chemist (d. 1928)
1860 – Manuel Teixeira Gomes, Portuguese politician, 7th President of Portugal (d. 1941)
1863 – Arthur Mold, English cricketer (d. 1921)
1867 – Arnold Bennett, English author and playwright (d. 1931)
1868 – Aleksa Šantić, Bosnian poet and author (d. 1924)
1871 – Georges Rouault, French painter and illustrator (d. 1958)
1875 – Frederick Cuming, English cricketer (d. 1942)
1876 – Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski, Polish journalist and author (d. 1945)
1876 – William Stanier, English engineer (d. 1965)
1878 – Anna Cervin, Swedish artist (d. 1972)
1879 – Karl Bühler, German-American linguist and psychologist (d. 1963)
1879 – Hans Lammers, German judge and politician (d. 1962)
1883 – Jessie Arms Botke, American painter (d. 1971)
1884 – Max Brod, Czech journalist, author, and composer (d. 1968)
1887 – Frank Woolley, English cricketer (d. 1978)
1888 – Louis Durey, French composer (d. 1979)
1891 – Claude Champagne, Canadian violinist, pianist, and composer (d. 1965)
1891 – Jaan Kärner, Estonian poet and author (d. 1958)
1894 – Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French physician and author (d. 1961)
1894 – Dashiell Hammett, American detective novelist and screenwriter (d. 1961)
1895 – Douglas Lloyd Campbell, Canadian educator and politician, 13th Premier of Manitoba (d. 1995)
1897 – John Cockcroft, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1967)
1897 – Dink Templeton, American rugby player and coach (d. 1962)
1898 – David Crosthwait, American engineer, inventor and writer (d. 1976)
1899 – Johannes Türn, Estonian chess and draughts player (d. 1993)
1900 – Lotte Toberentz, German overseer of the Nazi Uckermark concentration camp (d. 1964)
1900 – Uładzimir Žyłka, Belarusian poet and translator (d. 1933)
1904 – Chūhei Nambu, Japanese jumper and journalist (d. 1997)
1906 – Buddhadasa, Thai monk and philosopher (d. 1993)
1906 – Harry Hibbs, English footballer (d. 1984)
1906 – Antonio Rosario Mennonna, Italian bishop (d. 2009)
1907 – Nicolas Calas, Greek-American poet and critic (d. 1988)
1907 – Rachel Carson, American biologist, environmentalist, and author (d. 1964)
1909 – Dolores Hope, American singer and philanthropist (d. 2011)
1911 – Hubert Humphrey, American journalist and politician, 38th Vice President of the United States (d. 1978)
1911 – Teddy Kollek, Hungarian-Israeli politician, Mayor of Jerusalem (d. 2007)
1911 – Vincent Price, American actor (d. 1993)
1912 – John Cheever, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1982)
1912 – Sam Snead, American golfer and sportscaster (d. 2002)
1912 – Terry Moore, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 1995)
1915 – Ester Soré, Chilean singer-songwriter (d. 1996)
1915 – Herman Wouk, American novelist (d. 2019)
1917 – Harry Webster, English engineer (d. 2007)
1918 – Yasuhiro Nakasone, Japanese commander and politician, 45th Prime Minister of Japan (d. 2019)
1921 – Bob Godfrey, Australian-English animator, director, and voice actor (d. 2013)
1922 – Otto Carius, German lieutenant and pharmacist (d. 2015)
1922 – Christopher Lee, English actor (d. 2015)
1922 – John D. Vanderhoof, American banker and politician, 37th Governor of Colorado (d. 2013)
1923 – Henry Kissinger, German-American political scientist and politician, 56th United States Secretary of State, Nobel Prize laureate
1923 – Sumner Redstone, American businessman and philanthropist
1924 – Jaime Lusinchi, Venezuelan physician and politician, President of Venezuela (d. 2014)
1924 – John Sumner, English-Australian director, founded the Melbourne Theatre Company (d. 2013)
1925 – Tony Hillerman, American journalist and author (d. 2008)
1927 – Jüri Randviir, Estonian chess player and journalist (d. 1996)
1928 – Thea Musgrave, Scottish-American composer and educator
1930 – John Barth, American novelist and short story writer
1930 – William S. Sessions, American civil servant and judge, 8th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
1930 – Eino Tamberg, Estonian composer and educator (d. 2010)
1931 – André Barbeau, French-Canadian neurologist (d. 1986)
1931 – John Chapple, English field marshal and politician, Governor of Gibraltar
1931 – Bernard Fresson, French actor (d. 2002)
1931 – Faten Hamama, Egyptian actress and producer (d. 2015)
1931 – Philip Kotler, American author and professor
1933 – Edward Samuel Rogers, Canadian businessman (d. 2008)
1933 – Manfred Sommer, Spanish author and illustrator (d. 2007)
1934 – Ray Daviault, Canadian-American baseball player
1934 – Harlan Ellison, American author and screenwriter (d. 2018)
1935 – Daniel Colchico, American football player and coach (d. 2014)
1935 – Mal Evans, British road manager of The Beatles (d. 1976)
1935 – Jerry Kindall, American baseball player and coach (d. 2017)
1935 – Ramsey Lewis, American jazz pianist and composer
1935 – Lee Meriwether, American model and actress, Miss America 1955
1936 – Benjamin Bathurst, English admiral
1936 – Louis Gossett, Jr., American actor and producer
1936 – Marcel Masse, Canadian educator and politician, 29th Canadian Minister of National Defence (d. 2014)
1937 – Allan Carr, American playwright and producer (d. 1999)
1939 – Simon Cairns, 6th Earl Cairns, English courtier and businessman
1939 – Yves Duhaime, Canadian captain and politician
1939 – Sokratis Kokkalis, Greek businessman
1939 – Gerald Ronson, English businessman and philanthropist
1939 – Lionel Sosa, Mexican-American advertising and marketing executive
1939 – Don Williams, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2017)
1940 – Mike Gibson, Australian journalist and sportscaster (d. 2015)
1942 – Lee Baca, American police officer
1942 – Piers Courage, English racing driver (d. 1970)
1942 – Roger Freeman, Baron Freeman, English accountant and politician, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
1942 – Robin Widdows, English racing driver
1943 – Cilla Black, English singer and actress (d. 2015)
1943 – Bruce Weitz, American actor
1944 – Chris Dodd, American lawyer and politician
1944 – Ingrid Roscoe, English historian and politician, Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire
1944 – Alain Souchon, French singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor
1945 – Bruce Cockburn, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist
1946 – Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Danish bassist and composer (d. 2005)
1946 – John Williams, English motorcycle racer (d. 1978)
1947 – Peter DeFazio, American politician
1947 – Marty Kristian, German-Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor
1947 – Branko Oblak, Slovenian footballer and coach
1947 – Riivo Sinijärv, Estonian politician, 19th Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs
1948 – Wubbo de Boer, Dutch civil servant (d. 2017)
1948 – Pete Sears, English bass player
1948 – Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, American occultist and author (d. 2014)
1949 – Hugh Lowther, 8th Earl of Lonsdale, English politician
1949 – Christa Vahlensieck, German runner
1950 – Dee Dee Bridgewater, American singer-songwriter and actress
1950 – Makis Dendrinos, Greek basketball player and coach (d. 2015)
1951 – John Conteh, English boxer
1954 – Pauline Hanson, Australian businesswoman, activist, and politician
1954 – Jackie Slater, American football player and coach
1955 – Eric Bischoff, American wrestler, manager, and producer
1955 – Richard Schiff, American actor, director, and producer
1955 – Ian Tracey, English organist and conductor
1956 – Cynthia McFadden, American journalist
1956 – Rosemary Squire, English producer and manager, co-founded Ambassador Theatre Group
1956 – Giuseppe Tornatore, Italian director and screenwriter
1957 – Dag Terje Andersen, Norwegian politician, Norwegian Minister of Labour
1957 – Nitin Gadkari, Indian lawyer and politician, Indian Minister of Transport
1957 – Eddie Harsch, Canadian-American keyboard player and bass player (d. 2016)
1957 – Siouxsie Sioux, English singer-songwriter, musician, and producer
1958 – Nick Anstee, English accountant and politician, 682nd Lord Mayor of London
1958 – Neil Finn, New Zealand singer-songwriter and musician
1958 – Jesse Robredo, Filipino politician, 23rd Filipino Secretary of the Interior (d. 2012)
1960 – Gaston Therrien, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster
1961 – José Luíz Barbosa, Brazilian runner and coach
1961 – Peri Gilpin, American actress
1962 – Marcelino Bernal, Mexican footballer
1962 – Ray Borner, Australian basketball player
1962 – Steven Brill, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1962 – Anthony A. Hyman, Israeli-English biologist and academic
1962 – David Mundell, Scottish lawyer and politician, Secretary of State for Scotland
1962 – Ravi Shastri, Indian cricketer and sportscaster
1963 – Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Cuban pianist and composer
1963 – Maria Walliser, Swiss skier
1964 – Adam Carolla, American actor, producer, and screenwriter
1965 – Pat Cash, Australian-English tennis player and sportscaster
1966 – Heston Blumenthal, English chef and author
1967 – Paul Gascoigne, English international footballer, midfielder, coach, and manager
1967 – Eddie McClintock, American actor
1968 – Jeff Bagwell, American baseball player and coach
1968 – Rebekah Brooks, English journalist
1968 – Harun Erdenay, Turkish basketball player and coach
1968 – Frank Thomas, American baseball player and sportscaster
1969 – Todd Hundley, American baseball player
1969 – Jeremy Mayfield, American race car driver
1969 – Craig Federighi, American computer scientist and engineer
1970 – Michele Bartoli, Italian cyclist
1970 – Tim Farron, English educator and politician
1970 – Joseph Fiennes, English actor
1970 – Alex Archer, American-born Australian musician
1971 – Mathew Batsiua, Nauruan politician
1971 – Paul Bettany, English actor
1971 – Wayne Carey, Australian footballer and coach
1971 – Kaur Kender, Estonian author
1971 – Lisa Lopes, American rapper and dancer (d. 2002)
1971 – Lee Sharpe, English footballer
1971 – Grant Stafford, South African tennis player
1971 – Sophie Walker, British politician, leader of the Women’s Equality Party
1971 – Petroc Trelawny, British radio and television broadcaster
1972 – Todd Demsey, American golfer
1972 – Antonio Freeman, American football player
1972 – Maxim Sokolov, Russian ice hockey player
1973 – Jack McBrayer, American actor and comedian
1973 – Tana Umaga, New Zealand rugby player and coach
1973 – Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek film video, and theatre director, producer and screenwriter
1974 – Skye Edwards, British singer-songwriter
1974 – Denise van Outen, English actress, singer, and television host
1974 – Derek Webb, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1974 – Danny Wuerffel, American football player
1975 – André 3000, American rapper
1975 – Michael Hussey, Australian cricketer
1975 – Jamie Oliver, English chef and author
1975 – Feryal Özel, Turkish astrophysicist, astronomer, and academic
1976 – Marcel Fässler, Swiss racing driver
1977 – Abderrahmane Hammad, Algerian high jumper
1977 – Mahela Jayawardene, Sri Lankan cricketer
1978 – Adin Brown, American soccer player
1979 – Michael Buonauro, American author and illustrator (d. 2004)
1979 – Mile Sterjovski, Australian footballer
1980 – Craig Buntin, Canadian figure skater
1981 – Alina Cojocaru, Romanian ballerina
1981 – Johan Elmander, Swedish footballer
1984 – Blake Ahearn, American basketball player
1984 – Miguel González, Mexican baseball pitcher
1985 – Chiang Chien-ming, Taiwanese baseball player
1985 – Roberto Soldado, Spanish footballer
1986 – Conor Cummins, Manx motorcycle racer
1986 – Bamba Fall, Senegalese basketball player
1986 – Lasse Schöne, Danish footballer
1987 – Gervinho, Ivorian footballer
1987 – Bella Heathcote, Australian actress
1987 – Eric Kolelas, French-English actor and director
1987 – Bora Paçun, Turkish basketball player
1987 – Matt Prior, Australian rugby league player
1987 – Martina Sablikova, Czech speed skater and cyclist
1988 – Vontae Davis, American football player
1988 – Irina Davydova, Russian hurdler
1988 – Garrett Richards, American baseball pitcher
1988 – Tyler Sash, American football player (d. 2015)
1989 – Igor Morozov, Estonian footballer
1990 – Yenew Alamirew, Ethiopian runner
1990 – Chris Colfer, American actor and singer
1990 – Marcus Kruger, Swedish ice hockey player
1991 – Sebastien Dewaest, Belgian footballer
1991 – Tim Lafai, Samoan rugby league player
1991 – Ksenia Pervak, Russian tennis player
1991 – Eneli Vals, Estonian footballer
1992 – Aaron Brown, Canadian sprinter
1992 – Laurence Vincent-Lapointe, Canadian canoer
Deaths on May 27
366 – Procopius, Roman usurper (b. 325)
398 – Murong Bao, emperor of the Xianbei state Later Yan (b. 355)
475 – Eutropius, bishop of Orange
866 – Ordoño I of Asturias (b. 831)
927 – Simeon I of Bulgaria first Bulgarian Emperor (b. 864)
1039 – Dirk III, Count of Holland (b. 981)
1045 – Bruno of Würzburg, imperial chancellor of Italy (b. c. 1005)
1178 – Godfrey van Rhenen, bishop of Utrecht
1240 – William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey (b. 1166)
1444 – John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, English commander (b. 1404)
1508 – Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (b. 1452)
1508 – Lucrezia Crivelli, mistress of Ludovico Sforza (b. 1452)
1525 – Thomas Müntzer, German mystic and theologian (b. 1488)
1541 – Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (b. 1473)
1564 – John Calvin, French pastor and theologian (b. 1509)
1610 – François Ravaillac, French assassin of Henry IV of France (b. 1578)
1624 – Diego Ramírez de Arellano, Spanish sailor and cosmographer (b. c. 1580)
1637 – John Boteler, 1st Baron Boteler of Brantfield, English politician (b. c. 1566)
1661 – Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, Scottish general and politician (b. 1607)
190 – Dong Zhuo has his troops evacuate the capital Luoyang and burn it to the ground.
475 – Byzantine Emperor Basiliscus issues a circular letter (Enkyklikon) to the bishops of his empire, supporting the Monophysite Christological position.
537 – Siege of Rome: The Byzantine general Belisarius receives his promised reinforcements, 1,600 cavalry, mostly of Hunnic or Slavic origin and expert bowmen. He starts, despite shortages, raids against the Gothic camps and Vitiges is forced into a stalemate.
1241 – Battle of Liegnitz: Mongol forces defeat the Polish and German armies.
1288 – Mongol invasions of Vietnam: Yuan forces are defeated by Trần forces in the Battle of Bach Dang in present-day northern Vietnam.
1388 – Despite being outnumbered 16 to 1, forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy are victorious over the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Näfels.
1413 – Henry V is crowned King of England.
1440 – Christopher of Bavaria is appointed King of Denmark.
1454 – The Treaty of Lodi is signed, establishing a balance of power among northern Italian city-states for almost 50 years.
1511 – St John’s College, Cambridge, England, founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, receives its charter.
1585 – The expedition organised by Sir Walter Raleigh departs England for Roanoke Island (now in North Carolina) to establish the Roanoke Colony.
1609 – Eighty Years’ War: Spain and the Dutch Republic sign the Treaty of Antwerp to initiate twelve years of truce.
1609 – Philip III of Spain issues the decree of the “Expulsion of the Moriscos”.
1682 – Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovers the mouth of the Mississippi River, claims it for France and names it Louisiana.
1782 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of the Saintes begins.
1784 – The Treaty of Paris, ratified by the United States Congress on January 14, 1784, is ratified by King George III of the Kingdom of Great Britain, ending the American Revolutionary War. Copies of the ratified documents are exchanged on May 12, 1784.
1860 – On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.
1865 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the war.
1909 – The U.S. Congress passes the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act.
1914 – Mexican Revolution: One of the world’s first naval/air skirmishes takes place off the coast of western Mexico.
1916 – World War I: The Battle of Verdun: German forces launch their third offensive of the battle.
1917 – World War I: The Battle of Arras: The battle begins with Canadian Corps executing a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.
1918 – World War I: The Battle of the Lys: The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps is crushed by the German forces during what is called the Spring Offensive on the Belgian region of Flanders.
1937 – The Kamikaze arrives at Croydon Airport in London. It is the first Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe.
1939 – African-American singer Marian Anderson gives a concert at the Lincoln Memorial after being denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
1940 – World War II: Operation Weserübung: Germany invades Denmark and Norway.
1940 – Vidkun Quisling seizes power in Norway.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Bataan ends. An Indian Ocean raid by Japan’s 1st Air Fleet sinks the British aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and the Australian destroyer HMAS Vampire.
1945 – Execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, anti-Nazi dissident and spy, by the Nazi regime.
1945 – World War II: The German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer is sunk by the Royal Air Force.
1945 – World War II: The Battle of Königsberg, in East Prussia, ends.
1945 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission is formed.
1947 – The Glazier–Higgins–Woodward tornadoes kill 181 and injure 970 in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
1947 – The Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride begins through the upper South in violation of Jim Crow laws. The riders wanted enforcement of the United States Supreme Court’s 1946 Irene Morgan decision that banned racial segregation in interstate travel.
1947 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 22 relating to Corfu Channel incident is adopted.
1948 – Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s assassination provokes a violent riot in Bogotá (the Bogotazo), and a further ten years of violence in Colombia.
1948 – Fighters from the Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, killing over 100.
1952 – Hugo Ballivián’s government is overthrown by the Bolivian National Revolution, starting a period of agrarian reform, universal suffrage and the nationalization of tin mines
1957 – The Suez Canal in Egypt is cleared and opens to shipping following the Suez Crisis.
1959 – Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States’ first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the “Mercury Seven”.
1960 – Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa and architect of apartheid, narrowly survives an assassination attempt by a white farmer, David Pratt in Johannesburg.
1961 – The Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles, once the largest electric railway in the world, ends operations.
1965 – Astrodome opens. First indoor baseball game is played.
1967 – The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) makes its maiden flight.
1969 – The first British-built Concorde 002 makes its maiden flight from Filton to RAF Fairford.
1975 – The first game of the Philippine Basketball Association, the second oldest professional basketball league in the world.
1976 – The EMD F40PH diesel locomotive enters revenue service with Amtrak.
1980 – The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kills philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Bint al-Huda after three days of torture.
1981 – The U.S. Navy nuclear submarine USS George Washington accidentally collides with the Nissho Maru, a Japanese cargo ship, sinking it.
1989 – Tbilisi massacre: an anti-Soviet peaceful demonstration and hunger strike in Tbilisi, demanding restoration of Georgian independence, is dispersed by the Soviet Army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
1990 – An IRA bombing in County Down, Northern Ireland, kills three members of the UDR.
1990 – Thirteen thousand members of the Dene and Métis tribes sign a land claim agreement for 180,000 square kilometres (69,000 sq mi) in the Mackenzie Valley of the western Arctic.
1991 – Georgia declares independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 – A U.S. Federal Court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of drug and racketeering charges. He is sentenced to 30 years in prison.
1999 – Kosovo War: The Battle of Košare begins.
2003 – Iraq War: Baghdad falls to American forces.
2005 – Charles, Prince of Wales marries Camilla Parker Bowles in a civil ceremony at Windsor’s Guildhall.
2009 – In Tbilisi, Georgia, up to 60,000 people protest against the government of Mikheil Saakashvili.
2013 – A 6.1–magnitude earthquake strikes Iran killing 32 people and injuring over 850 people.
2013 – At least 13 people are killed and another three injured after a man goes on a spree shooting in the Serbian village of Velika Ivanča.
2014 – A student stabs 20 people at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania.
2017 – The Palm Sunday church bombings at Coptic churches in Tanta and Alexandria, Egypt, take place.
2017 – After refusing to give up his seat on an overbooked United Airlines flight, Dr. David Dao Duy Anh is forcibly dragged off the flight by aviation security officers, leading to major criticism of United Airlines.
Births on April 9
1285 – Ayurbarwada Buyantu Khan, Emperor Renzong of Yuan (d. 1320)
1458 – Camilla Battista da Varano, Italian saint (d. 1524)
1498 – Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine (d. 1550)
1586 – Julius Henry, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg (d. 1665)
1597 – John Davenport, English minister, co-founded the New Haven Colony (d. 1670)
1598 – Johann Crüger, Sorbian-German composer and theorist (d. 1662)
1624 – Henrik Rysensteen, Dutch military engineer (d. 1679)
1627 – Johann Caspar Kerll, German organist and composer (d. 1693)
1634 – Countess Albertine Agnes of Nassau (d. 1696)
1648 – Henri de Massue, Earl of Galway, French soldier and diplomat (d. 1720)
1649 – James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire (d. 1685)
1654 – Samuel Fritz, Czech Jesuit missionary to South America (d. 1725?)
1680 – Philippe Néricault Destouches, French playwright (d. 1754)
1686 – James Craggs the Younger, English politician, Secretary of State for the Southern Department (d. 1721)
1691 – Johann Matthias Gesner, German scholar and academic (d. 1761)
1717 – Georg Matthias Monn, Austrian organist, composer, and educator (d. 1750)
1770 – Thomas Johann Seebeck, German physicist and academic (d. 1831)
1773 – Étienne Aignan, French author and academic (d. 1824)
1794 – Theobald Boehm, German flute player and composer (d. 1881)
1802 – Elias Lönnrot, Finnish physician and philologist (d. 1884)
1806 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel, English engineer, designed the Clifton Suspension Bridge (d. 1859)
1807 – James Bannerman, Scottish theologian and academic (d. 1868)
1821 – Charles Baudelaire, French poet and critic (d. 1867)
1830 – Eadweard Muybridge, English photographer and cinematographer (d. 1904)
1835 – Leopold II of Belgium (d. 1909)
1835 – Somerset Lowry-Corry, 4th Earl Belmore (d. 1913)
1846 – Paolo Tosti, Italian-English composer and educator (d. 1916)
1848 – Ezequiél Moreno y Díaz, Spanish Augustinian Recollect priest and saint (d. 1906)
1865 – Erich Ludendorff, German general and politician (d. 1937)
1865 – Charles Proteus Steinmetz, Polish-American mathematician and engineer (d. 1923)
1867 – Chris Watson, Chilean-Australian journalist and politician, 3rd Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1941)
1867 – Charles Winckler, Danish tug of war competitor, discus thrower, and shot putter (d. 1932)
1872 – Léon Blum, French lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of France (d. 1950)
1875 – Jacques Futrelle, American journalist and author (d. 1912)
1880 – Jan Letzel, Czech architect (d. 1925)
1882 – Frederick Francis IV, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (d. 1946)
1882 – Otz Tollen, German actor (d. 1965)
1883 – Frank King, American cartoonist (d. 1969)
1887 – Konrad Tom, Polish actor, writer, singer, and director (d. 1957)
1888 – Sol Hurok, Ukrainian-American talent manager (d. 1974)
1893 – Charles E. Burchfield, American painter (d.1967)
1893 – Victor Gollancz, English publisher, founded Victor Gollancz Ltd (d. 1967)
1893 – Rahul Sankrityayan, Indian linguist, author, and scholar (d. 1963)
1895 – Mance Lipscomb, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1976)
1895 – Michel Simon, Swiss-French actor (d. 1975)
1897 – John B. Gambling, American radio host (d. 1974)
1898 – Curly Lambeau, American football player and coach (d. 1965)
1898 – Paul Robeson, American singer, actor, and activist (d. 1976)
1900 – Allen Jenkins, American actor and singer (d. 1974)
1901 – Jean Bruchési, Canadian historian and author (d. 1979)
1901 – Paul Willis, American actor and director (d. 1960)
1902 – Théodore Monod, French explorer and scholar (d. 2000)
1903 – Ward Bond, American actor (d. 1960)
1904 – Sharkey Bonano, American singer, trumpet player, and bandleader (d. 1972)
1905 – J. William Fulbright, American lawyer and politician (d. 1995)
1906 – Rafaela Aparicio, Spanish actress (d. 1996)
1906 – Antal Doráti, Hungarian-American conductor and composer (d. 1988)
1906 – Hugh Gaitskell, British politician and leader of the Labour Party (d. 1963)
1906 – Victor Vasarely, Hungarian-French painter (d. 1997)
1908 – Joseph Krumgold, American author and screenwriter (d. 1980)
1909 – Robert Helpmann, Australian dancer, actor, and choreographer (d. 1986)
1910 – Abraham A. Ribicoff, American lawyer and politician, 4th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (d. 1998)
1912 – Lev Kopelev, Ukrainian-German author and academic (d. 1997)
1915 – Daniel Johnson Sr., Canadian lawyer and politician, 20th Premier of Quebec (d. 1968)
1916 – Julian Dash, American swing music jazz tenor saxophonist (d. 1974)
1916 – Heinz Meyer, German Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper) during World War II (d. 1987)
1916 – Bill Leonard, American journalist (d. 1994)
1917 – Johannes Bobrowski, German songwriter and poet (d. 1965)
1917 – Ronnie Burgess, Welsh international footballer left-half and manager (d. 2005)
1917 – Brad Dexter, American actor (d. 2002)
1917 – Henry Hewes, American theater writer (d. 2006)
1918 – Jørn Utzon, Danish architect, designed the Sydney Opera House (d. 2008)
1919 – J. Presper Eckert, American engineer, invented the ENIAC (d. 1995)
1921 – Jean-Marie Balestre, French businessman (d. 2008)
1921 – Yitzhak Navon, Israeli politician (d. 2015)
1921 – Frankie Thomas, American actor (d. 2006)
1921 – Mary Jackson, African-American mathematician and aerospace engineer (d. 2005)
1922 – Carl Amery, German author and activist (d. 2005)
1923 – Leonard Levy, American historian and author (d. 2006)
1924 – Arthur Shaw, English professional footballer (d. 2015)
1925 – Virginia Gibson, American actress, singer, and dancer (d. 2013)
1925 – Art Kane, American photographer (d. 1995)
1926 – Gerry Fitt, Northern Irish soldier and politician; British life peer (d. 2005)
1926 – Hugh Hefner, American publisher, founded Playboy Enterprises (d. 2017)
1926 – Harris Wofford, American politician, author and civil rights activist (d. 2019)
1927 – Tiny Hill, New Zealand rugby player (d. 2019)
1928 – Paul Arizin, American basketball player (d. 2006)
1928 – Tom Lehrer, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and mathematician
1929 – Sharan Rani Backliwal, Indian sarod player and scholar (d. 2008)
1929 – Fred Hollows, New Zealand-Australian ophthalmologist (d. 1993)
1929 – Paule Marshall, American author and academic (d. 2019)
1930 – Nathaniel Branden, Canadian-American psychotherapist and author (d. 2014)
1930 – F. Albert Cotton, American chemist and academic (d. 2007)
1930 – Jim Fowler, American zoologist and television host (d. 2019)
1930 – Wallace McCain, Canadian businessman, founded McCain Foods (d. 2011)
1931 – Richard Hatfield, Canadian lawyer and politician, 26th Premier of New Brunswick (d. 1991)
1932 – Armin Jordan, Swiss conductor (d. 2006)
1932 – Peter Moores, English businessman and philanthropist (d. 2016)
1932 – Carl Perkins, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1998)
1933 – Jean-Paul Belmondo, French actor and producer
1933 – René Burri, Swiss photographer and journalist (d. 2014)
1933 – Fern Michaels, American author
1933 – Richard Rose, American political scientist and academic
1933 – Gian Maria Volonté, Italian actor (d. 1994)
1934 – Bill Birch, New Zealand surveyor and politician, 38th New Zealand Minister of Finance
1934 – Tom Phillis, Australian motorcycle racer (d. 1962)
1934 – Mariya Pisareva, Russian high jumper
1935 – Aulis Sallinen, Finnish composer and academic
1935 – Avery Schreiber, American actor and comedian (d. 2002)
1936 – Jerzy Maksymiuk, Polish pianist, composer, and conductor
1936 – Valerie Solanas, American radical feminist author, attempted murderer (d. 1988)
1937 – Simon Brown, Baron Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, English lieutenant, lawyer, and judge
1937 – Marty Krofft, Canadian screenwriter and producer
1937 – Valerie Singleton, English television and radio host
1938 – Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russian businessman and politician, 30th Prime Minister of Russia (d. 2010)
1939 – Michael Learned, American actress
1940 – Hans-Joachim Reske, German sprinter
1940 – Jim Roberts, Canadian-American ice hockey player and coach (d. 2015)
1941 – Kay Adams, American singer-songwriter
1942 – Brandon deWilde, American actor (d. 1972)
1942 – Margo Smith, American singer-songwriter
1943 – Leila Khaled, Palestinian activist
1943 – Terry Knight, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2004)
1944 – Joe Brinkman, American baseball player and umpire
1944 – Heinz-Joachim Rothenburg, German shot putter
1945 – Steve Gadd, American drummer and percussionist[9]
1946 – Nate Colbert, American baseball player[10]
1946 – Alan Knott, English cricketer[11]
1946 – Sara Parkin, Scottish activist and politician[12]
1946 – David Webb, English footballer, coach, and manager
1947 – Giovanni Andrea Cornia, Italian economist and academic
1948 – Jaya Bachchan, Indian actress and politician
1948 – Michel Parizeau, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
1948 – Patty Pravo, Italian singer
1949 – Tony Cragg, English sculptor
1952 – Robert Clark, American author
1952 – Bruce Robertson, New Zealand rugby player
1952 – Tania Tsanaklidou, Greek singer and actress
1953 – John Howard, English singer-songwriter and pianist
1953 – Hal Ketchum, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1953 – Stephen Paddock, American mass murderer responsible for the 2017 Las Vegas shooting (d. 2017)
1954 – Ken Kalfus, American journalist and author
1954 – Dennis Quaid, American actor
1954 – Iain Duncan Smith, British soldier and politician, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
1955 – Yamina Benguigui, Algerian-French director and politician
1955 – Joolz Denby, English poet and author
1956 – Miguel Ángel Russo, Argentinian footballer and coach
1956 – Nigel Shadbolt, English computer scientist and academic
1956 – Vahur Sova, Estonian architect
1956 – Marina Zoueva, Russian ice dancer and coach
1957 – Seve Ballesteros, Spanish golfer and architect (d. 2011)
1957 – Martin Margiela, Belgian fashion designer
1957 – Jamie Redfern, English-born Australian television presenter, and pop singer
1958 – Tony Sibson, English boxer
1958 – Nigel Slater, English food writer and author
1959 – Bernard Jenkin, English businessman and politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
1960 – Jaak Aab, Estonian educator and politician, Minister of Social Affairs of Estonia
1961 – Mark Kelly, Irish keyboard player
1961 – Kirk McCaskill, Canadian-American baseball and hockey player
1962 – John Eaves, American production designer and illustrator
1962 – Ihor Podolchak, Ukrainian director, producer, and screenwriter
1962 – Imran Sherwani, English field hockey player
1962 – Jeff Turner, American basketball player, coach, and sportscaster
1963 – Marc Jacobs, American-French fashion designer
1963 – Joe Scarborough, American journalist, lawyer, and politician
1964 – Rob Awalt, German-American football player
1964 – Juliet Cuthbert, Jamaican sprinter
1964 – Peter Penashue, Canadian businessman and politician, 9th Canadian Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs
1964 – Margaret Peterson Haddix, American author
1964 – Rick Tocchet, Canadian-American ice hockey player and coach
1965 – Helen Alfredsson, Swedish golfer
1965 – Paulina Porizkova, Czech-born Swedish-American model and actress
1965 – Jeff Zucker, American businessman
1966 – John Hammond, English weather forecaster
1966 – Cynthia Nixon, American actress
1967 – Natascha Engel, German-English translator and politician
1967 – Sam Harris, American author, philosopher, and neuroscientist
1968 – Jay Chandrasekhar, American actor, comedian, writer and director
1969 – Barnaby Kay, English actor
1969 – Linda Kisabaka, German runner
1970 – Chorão, Brazilian singer-songwriter (d. 2013)
1971 – Peter Canavan, Irish footballer and manager
1971 – Leo Fortune-West, English footballer and manager
1971 – Austin Peck, American actor
1971 – Jacques Villeneuve, Canadian race car driver
1972 – Bernard Ackah, German-Japanese martial artist and kick-boxer
1972 – Siiri Vallner, Estonian architect
1974 – Megan Connolly, Australian actress (d. 2001)
1974 – Jenna Jameson, American actress and pornographic performer
1975 – Robbie Fowler, English footballer and manager
1975 – David Gordon Green, American director and screenwriter
1976 – Kyle Peterson, American baseball player and sportscaster
1977 – Gerard Way, American singer-songwriter and comic book writer
1978 – Kousei Amano, Japanese actor
1978 – Jorge Andrade, Portuguese footballer
1978 – Rachel Stevens, English singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress
1979 – Jeff Reed, American football player
1979 – Keshia Knight Pulliam, American actress
1980 – Sarah Ayton, English sailor
1980 – Luciano Galletti, Argentinian footballer
1980 – Albert Hammond Jr., American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1981 – Milan Bartovič, Slovak ice hockey player
1981 – A. J. Ellis, American baseball player
1981 – Ireneusz Jeleń, Polish footballer
1981 – Dennis Sarfate, American baseball player
1981 – Eric Harris, American mass murderer, responsible for the Columbine High School massacre (d. 1999)
217 – Roman Emperor Caracalla is assassinated. He is succeeded by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus.
632 – King Charibert II is assassinated at Blaye (Gironde), along with his infant son Chilperic.
876 – The Battle of Dayr al-‘Aqul saves Baghdad from the Saffarids.
1093 – The new Winchester Cathedral is dedicated by Walkelin.
1139 – Roger II of Sicily is excommunicated.
1149 – Pope Eugene III takes refuge in the castle of Ptolemy II of Tusculum.
1232 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols begin their siege on Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty.
1271 – In Syria, sultan Baibars conquers the Krak des Chevaliers.
1665 – English colonial patents are granted for the establishment of the Monmouth Tract, for what would eventually become Monmouth County in northeastern New Jersey.
1730 – Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in New York City, is dedicated.
1740 – War of Jenkins’ Ear: Three British ships capture the Spanish third-rate Princesa, taken into service as HMS Princess.
1808 – The Roman Catholic Diocese of Baltimore is promoted to an archdiocese, with the founding of the dioceses of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Bardstown (now Louisville) by Pope Pius VII.
1820 – The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.
1832 – Black Hawk War: Around three-hundred United States 6th Infantry troops leave St. Louis, Missouri to fight the Sauk Native Americans.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Mansfield: Union forces are thwarted by the Confederate army at Mansfield, Louisiana.
1866 – Italy and Prussia ally against the Austrian Empire.
1886 – William Ewart Gladstone introduces the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.
1895 – In Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. the Supreme Court of the United States declares unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional.
1904 – The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sign the Entente cordiale.
1904 – Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times.
1906 – Auguste Deter, the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, dies.
1908 – H. H. Asquith of the Liberal Party takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
1908 – Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School.
1913 – The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution, requiring direct election of Senators, becomes law.
1916 – In Corona, California, race car driver Bob Burman crashes, killing three (including himself), and badly injuring five spectators.
1918 – World War I: Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York City’s financial district.
1924 – Sharia courts are abolished in Turkey, as part of Atatürk’s Reforms.
1929 – Indian independence movement: At the Delhi Central Assembly, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt throw handouts and bombs to court arrest.
1935 – The Works Progress Administration is formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 becomes law.
1942 – World War II: Siege of Leningrad: Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad.
1942 – World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.
1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.
1943 – Otto and Elise Hampel are executed in Berlin for their anti-Nazi activities.
1945 – World War II: After an air raid accidentally destroys a train carrying about 4,000 Nazi concentration camp internees in Prussian Hanover, the survivors are massacred by Nazis.
1946 – Électricité de France, the world’s largest utility company, is formed as a result of the nationalisation of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors.
1950 – India and Pakistan sign the Liaquat–Nehru Pact.
1952 – U.S. President Harry Truman calls for the seizure of all domestic steel mills in an attempt to prevent the 1952 steel strike.
1953 – Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by British Kenya’s rulers.
1954 – A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair Harvard collides with a Trans-Canada Airlines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.
1954 – South African Airways Flight 201 A de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1 crashes into the sea during night killing 21 people.
1959 – A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.
1959 – The Organization of American States drafts an agreement to create the Inter-American Development Bank.
1960 – The Netherlands and West Germany sign an agreement to negotiate the return of German land annexed by the Dutch in return for 280 million German marks as Wiedergutmachung.
1961 – A large explosion on board the MV Dara in the Persian Gulf kills 238.
1964 – The Gemini 1 test flight is conducted.
1968 – BOAC Flight 712 catches fire shortly after takeoff. As a result of her actions in the accident, Barbara Jane Harrison is awarded a posthumous George Cross, the only GC awarded to a woman in peacetime.
1970 – Bahr El-Baqar primary school bombing: Israeli bombers strike an Egyptian school. Forty-six children are killed.
1974 – At Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run to surpass Babe Ruth’s 39-year-old record.
1975 – Frank Robinson manages the Cleveland Indians in his first game as major league baseball’s first African American manager.
1987 – Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigns amid controversy over racially charged remarks he had made while on Nightline.
1992 – Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announces that he has AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.
1993 – The Republic of North Macedonia joins the United Nations.
1999 – Haryana Gana Parishad, a political party in the Indian state of Haryana, merges with the Indian National Congress.
2004 – War in Darfur: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government and two rebel groups.
2006 – Shedden massacre: The bodies of eight men, all shot to death, are found in a field in Shedden, Elgin County, Ontario. The murders are soon linked to the Bandidos Motorcycle Club.
2008 – The construction of the world’s first skyscraper to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain.
2013 – The Islamic State of Iraq enters the Syrian Civil War and begins by declaring a merger with the Al-Nusra Front under the name Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham.
Births on April 8
1320 – Peter I of Portugal (d. 1367)
1408 – Jadwiga of Lithuania, Polish princess (d. 1431)
1435 – John Clifford, 9th Baron de Clifford, English noble (d. 1461)
1533 – Claudio Merulo, Italian organist and composer (d. 1604)
1536 – Barbara of Hesse (d. 1597)
1541 – Michele Mercati, Italian physician and archaeologist (d. 1593)
1580 – William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, English noble, courtier and patron of the arts (d. 1630)
1596 – Juan van der Hamen, Spanish artist (d. 1631)
1605 – Philip IV of Spain (d. 1665)
1605 – Mary Stuart, English-Scottish princess (d. 1607)
1641 – Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English general and politician, Secretary of State for the Northern Department (d. 1704)
1692 – Giuseppe Tartini, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1770)
1726 – Lewis Morris, American judge and politician (d. 1798)
1732 – David Rittenhouse, American astronomer and mathematician (d. 1796)
1761 – William Joseph Chaminade, French priest, founded the Society of Mary (d. 1850)
1770 – John Thomas Campbell, Irish-Australian banker and politician (d. 1830)
1798 – Dionysios Solomos, Greek poet and author (d. 1857)
1818 – Christian IX of Denmark (d. 1906)
1818 – August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist and academic (d. 1892)
1826 – Pancha Carrasco, Costa Rican soldier (d. 1890)
1827 – Ramón Emeterio Betances, Puerto Rican ophthalmologist, journalist, and politician (d. 1898)
1842 – Elizabeth Bacon Custer, American author and educator (d. 1933)
1859 – Edmund Husserl, German Jewish-Austrian mathematician and philosopher (d. 1938)
1864 – Carlos Deltour, French rower and rugby player (d. 1920)
1867 – Allen Butler Talcott, American painter and educator (d. 1908)
1869 – Harvey Cushing, American surgeon and academic (d. 1939)
1871 – Clarence Hudson White, American photographer and educator (d. 1925)
1874 – Manuel Díaz, Cuban fencer (d. 1929)
1874 – Stanisław Taczak, Polish general (d. 1960)
1875 – Albert I of Belgium (d. 1934)
1882 (O.S. 27 March) – Dmytro Doroshenko, Lithuanian-Ukrainian historian and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Prime Minister of Ukraine (d. 1951)
1883 – R. P. Keigwin, English cricketer and academic (d. 1972)
1883 – Julius Seljamaa, Estonian journalist and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia (d. 1936)
1885 – Dimitrios Levidis, Greek-French soldier, composer, and educator (d. 1951)
1886 – Margaret Ayer Barnes, American author and playwright (d. 1967)
1888 – Dennis Chávez, American journalist and politician (d. 1962)
1889 – Adrian Boult, English conductor (d. 1983)
1892 – Richard Neutra, Austrian-American architect, designed the Los Angeles County Hall of Records (d. 1970)
1892 – Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded United Artists (d. 1979)
1896 – Yip Harburg, American composer (d. 1981)
1900 – Marie Byles, Australian solicitor (d. 1979)
1902 – Andrew Irvine, English mountaineer and explorer (d. 1924)
1902 – Maria Maksakova Sr., Russian soprano (d. 1974)
1904 – John Hicks, English economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
1904 – Hirsch Jacobs, American horse trainer (d. 1970)
1905 – Joachim Büchner, German sprinter and graphic designer (d. 1978)
1905 – Helen Joseph, English-South African activist (d. 1992)
1905 – Erwin Keller, German field hockey player (d. 1971)
1906 – Raoul Jobin, Canadian tenor and educator (d. 1974)
1908 – Hugo Fregonese, Argentinian director and screenwriter (d. 1987)
1909 – John Fante, American author and screenwriter (d. 1983)
1910 – George Musso, American football player and police officer (d. 2000)
1911 – Melvin Calvin, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
1911 – Emil Cioran, Romanian-French philosopher and academic (d. 1995)
1912 – Alois Brunner, Austrian-German SS officer (d. 2001 or 2010)
1912 – Sonja Henie, Norwegian-American figure skater and actress (d. 1969)
1914 – María Félix, Yaqui/Basque-Mexican actress (d. 2002)
1915 – Ivan Supek, Croatian physicist, philosopher and writer (d. 2007)
1917 – Winifred Asprey, American mathematician and computer scientist (d. 2007)
1917 – Lloyd Bott, Australian public servant (d. 2004)
1917 – Hubertus Ernst, Dutch bishop (d. 2017)
1917 – Grigori Kuzmin, Russian-Estonian astronomer (d. 1988)
1918 – Betty Ford, American wife of Gerald Ford, 40th First Lady of the United States (d. 2011)
1918 – Glendon Swarthout, American author and academic (d. 1992)
1919 – Ian Smith, Zimbabwean lieutenant and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Rhodesia (d. 2007)
1921 – Franco Corelli, Italian tenor and actor (d. 2003)
1921 – Jan Novák, Czech composer (d. 1984)
1921 – Herman van Raalte, Dutch footballer (d. 2013)
1922 – Carmen McRae, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress (d. 1994)
1923 – George Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 2003)
1923 – Edward Mulhare, Irish-American actor (d. 1997)
1924 – Frédéric Back, German-Canadian animator, director, and screenwriter (d. 2013)
1924 – Anthony Farrar-Hockley, English general and historian (d. 2006)
1924 – Kumar Gandharva, Hindustani classical singer (d. 1992)
1924 – Sara Northrup Hollister, American occultist (d. 1997)
1926 – Henry N. Cobb, American architect and academic, co-founded Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (d. 2020)
1926 – Shecky Greene, American actor
1926 – Jürgen Moltmann, German theologian and academic
1927 – Tilly Armstrong, English author (d. 2010)
1927 – Ollie Mitchell, American trumpet player and bandleader (d. 2013)
1928 – Fred Ebb, American lyricist (d. 2004)
1929 – Jacques Brel, Belgian singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1978)
1929 – Renzo De Felice, Italian historian and author (d. 1996)
1930 – Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma (d. 2010)
1931 – John Gavin, American actor and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Mexico (d. 2018)
1932 – Iskandar of Johor (d. 2010)
1933 – James Lockhart, American scholar of colonial Latin America, especially Nahua peoples (d. 2014)
1934 – Kisho Kurokawa, Japanese architect, designed the Nakagin Capsule Tower and Singapore Flyer (d. 2007)
1935 – Oscar Zeta Acosta, American lawyer and politician (d. 1974)
1935 – Albert Bustamante, American soldier, educator, and politician
1937 – Tony Barton, English footballer, outside right and manager (d. 1993)
1937 – Seymour Hersh, American journalist and author
1937 – Momo Kapor, Serbian author and painter (d. 2010)
1938 – Kofi Annan, Ghanaian economist and diplomat, 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations (d. 2018)
1938 – John Hamm, Canadian physician and politician, 25th Premier of Nova Scotia
1938 – Mary W. Gray, American mathematician, statistician, and lawyer
1939 – John Arbuthnott, Scottish microbiologist and academic
1939 – Trina Schart Hyman, American author and illustrator (d. 2004)
1940 – John Havlicek, American basketball player (d. 2019)
1941 – J. J. Jackson, American soul/R&B singer, songwriter, and arranger
1941 – Vivienne Westwood, English fashion designer
1942 – Tony Banks, Baron Stratford, Northern Irish politician, Minister for Sport and the Olympics (d. 2006)
1942 – Roger Chapman, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1942 – Douglas Trumbull, American director, producer, and special effects artist
1943 – Michael Bennett, American dancer, choreographer, and director (d. 1987)
1943 – Miller Farr, American football player
1943 – James Herbert, English author and illustrator (d. 2013)
1943 – Chris Orr, English painter and illustrator
1944 – Hywel Bennett, Welsh actor (d. 2017)
1944 – Odd Nerdrum, Swedish-Norwegian painter and illustrator
1945 – Derrick Walker, Scottish businessman
1945 – Jang Yong, South Korean actor
1946 – Catfish Hunter, American baseball player (d. 1999)
1946 – Tim Thomerson, American actor and producer
1947 – Tom DeLay, American lawyer and politician
1947 – Steve Howe, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer
1947 – Robert Kiyosaki, American businessman, co-founded Cashflow Technologies
1947 – Pascal Lamy, French businessman and politician, European Commissioner for Trade
1947 – Larry Norman, American singer-songwriter, and producer (d. 2008)
1948 – Barbara Young, Baroness Young of Old Scone, Scottish academic and politician
1949 – K. C. Kamalasabayson, Sri Lankan lawyer and politician, 39th Attorney General of Sri Lanka (d. 2007)
1949 – John Madden, English director and producer
1949 – Brenda Russell, African-American-Canadian singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1949 – John Scott, English sociologist and academic
1950 – Grzegorz Lato, Polish footballer and coach
1951 – Gerd Andres, German politician
1951 – Geir Haarde, Icelandic economist, journalist, and politician, 23rd Prime Minister of Iceland
1951 – Mel Schacher, American bass player
1951 – Joan Sebastian, Mexican singer-songwriter and actor (d. 2015)
1952 – Ahmet Piriştina, Turkish politician (d. 2004)
1954 – Gary Carter, American baseball player and coach (d. 2012)
1954 – Princess Lalla Amina of Morocco (d. 2012)
1954 – G.V. Loganathan, Indian-American engineer and academic (d. 2007)
1955 – Ricky Bell, American football player (d. 1984)
1955 – Gerrie Coetzee, South African boxer
1955 – Ron Johnson, American businessman and politician
1955 – Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist, essayist and poet
1955 – David Wu, Taiwanese-American lawyer and politician
1956 – Michael Benton, Scottish-English paleontologist and academic
1956 – Christine Boisson, French actress
1956 – Roman Dragoun, Czech singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1956 – Jim Piddock, English actor, producer, and screenwriter
1957 – Fred Smerlas, American football player and radio host
1958 – Detlef Bruckhoff, German footballer
1958 – Tom Petranoff, American javelin thrower and coach
1959 – Alain Bondue, French cyclist
1960 – John Schneider, American actor and country singer
1961 – Richard Hatch, American reality contestant
1961 – Brian McDermott, English footballer and manager
1962 – Paddy Lowe, English engineer
1962 – Izzy Stradlin, American guitarist and songwriter
1963 – Tine Asmundsen, Norwegian bassist
1963 – Julian Lennon, English singer-songwriter
1963 – Terry Porter, American basketball player and coach
1963 – Donita Sparks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1963 – Alec Stewart, English cricketer
1963 – Seth Tobias, American businessman (d. 2007)
1964 – Biz Markie, American rapper, producer, and actor
1964 – John McGinlay, Scottish footballer and manager
1965 – Steven Blaney, Canadian businessman and politician, 5th Canadian Minister of Public Safety
1965 – Michael Jones, New Zealand rugby player and coach
1966 – Iveta Bartošová, Czech singer and actress (d. 2014)
1966 – Mark Blundell, English race car driver
1966 – Andy Currier, English rugby league player
1966 – Charlotte Dawson, New Zealand-Australian television host (d. 2014)
1966 – Dalton Grant, English high jumper
1966 – Mazinho, Brazilian footballer, coach, and manager
1966 – Harri Rovanperä, Finnish race car driver
1966 – Evripidis Stylianidis, Greek lawyer and politician, Greek Minister for the Interior
1966 – Robin Wright, American actress, director, producer
1967 – Kenny Benjamin, Antiguan cricketer
1968 – Patricia Arquette, French-Canadian Russian/Polish Jewish-American actress and director
1968 – Patricia Girard, French runner and hurdler
1968 – Tracy Grammer, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1971 – Darren Jessee, American singer-songwriter and drummer
1972 – Paul Gray, American bass player and songwriter (d. 2010)
1972 – Sergei Magnitsky, Russian lawyer and accountant (d. 2009)
1973 – Khaled Badra, Tunisian footballer
1973 – Emma Caulfield, American actress
1974 – Toutai Kefu, Tongan-Australian rugby player
1974 – Nnedi Okorafor, Nigerian-American author and educator
1975 – Anouk, Dutch singer
1975 – Francesco Flachi, Italian footballer
1975 – Timo Pérez, Dominican-American baseball player
1975 – Funda Arar, Turkish singer
1977 – Ana de la Reguera, Mexican actress
1977 – Mehran Ghassemi, Iranian journalist and author (d. 2008)
1977 – Mark Spencer, American computer programmer and engineer
1978 – Daigo, Japanese singer-songwriter, actor, and voice actor
1978 – Bernt Haas, Austrian-Swiss footballer
1978 – Rachel Roberts, Canadian model and actress
1978 – Jocelyn Robichaud, Canadian tennis player and coach
1978 – Evans Rutto, Kenyan runner
1979 – Alexi Laiho, Finnish singer-songwriter and guitarist
1979 – Amit Trivedi, Indian singer-songwriter
1980 – Manuel Ortega, Austrian singer
1980 – Katee Sackhoff, American actress
1980 – Mariko Seyama, Japanese announcer, photographer, and model
1981 – Frédérick Bousquet, French swimmer
1981 – Ofer Shechter, Israeli model, actor, and screenwriter
1982 – Gennady Golovkin, Kazakhstani boxer
1982 – Brett White, Australian rugby league player
1983 – Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova, Russian runner
1984 – Michelle Donelan, British politician
1984 – Ezra Koenig, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1984 – Pablo Portillo, Mexican singer and actor
1984 – Taran Noah Smith, American actor
1985 – Patrick Schliwa, German rugby player
1985 – Yemane Tsegay, Ethiopian runner
1986 – Igor Akinfeev, Russian footballer
1986 – Félix Hernández, Venezuelan-American baseball player
1987 – Royston Drenthe, Dutch footballer
1987 – Jeremy Hellickson, American baseball player
1987 – Sam Rapira, New Zealand rugby league player
1988 – Jenni Asserholt, Swedish ice hockey player
1988 – Kim Myung-sung, South Korean baseball player
1990 – Kim Jong-hyun, South Korean singer (d. 2017)
1993 – Viktor Arvidsson, Swedish ice hockey player
1993 – Zac Santo, Australian rugby league player
1994 – Josh Chudleigh, Australian rugby league player
1995 – Cedi Osman, Turkish professional basketball player
1997 – Saygrace, Australian singer and songwriter
1997 – Arno Verschueren, Belgian professional football player
Deaths on April 8
217 – Caracalla, Roman emperor (b. 188)
622 – Shōtoku, Japanese prince (b. 572)
632 – Charibert II, Frankish king (b. 607)
894 – Adalelm, Frankish nobleman
944 – Wang Yanxi, Chinese emperor
956 – Gilbert, Frankish nobleman
967 – Mu’izz al-Dawla, Buyid emir (b. 915)
1143 – John II Komnenos, Byzantine emperor (b. 1087)
1150 – Gertrude of Babenberg , duchess of Bohemia (b. 1118)
1321 – Thomas of Tolentino, Italian-Franciscan missionary (b. c. 1255)
1338 – Stephen Gravesend, bishop of London
1364 – John II, French king (b. 1319)
1450 – Sejong the Great, Korean king (b. 1397)
1461 – Georg von Peuerbach, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1423)
1492 – Lorenzo de’ Medici, Italian ruler (b. 1449)
1551 – Oda Nobuhide, Japanese warlord (b. 1510)
1586 – Martin Chemnitz, Lutheran theologian and reformer (b. 1522)
1608 – Magdalen Dacre, English noble (b. 1538)
1612 – Anne Catherine of Brandenburg (b. 1575)
1691 – Carlo Rainaldi, Italian architect, designed the Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto (b. 1611)
1309 – Pope Clement V imposes excommunication and interdiction on Venice, and a general prohibition of all commercial intercourse with Venice, which had seized on Ferrara, a papal fiefdom.
1329 – Pope John XXII issues his In Agro Dominico condemning some writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical.
1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León reaches the northern end of The Bahamas on his first voyage to Florida.
1625 – Charles I becomes King of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as claiming the title King of France.
1782 – Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1794 – The United States Government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates.
1809 – Peninsular War: A combined Franco-Polish force defeats the Spanish in the Battle of Ciudad Real.
1814 – War of 1812: In central Alabama, U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
1836 – Texas Revolution: On the orders of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican army massacres 342 Texas POWs at Goliad, Texas.
1866 – President of the United States of America Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866. His veto is overridden by Congress and the bill passes into law on April 9.
1871 – The first international rugby football match, when Scotland defeats England in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.
1884 – A mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, attacks members of a jury which had returned a verdict of manslaughter in what was seen as a clear case of murder; over the next few days the mob would riot and eventually destroy the courthouse.
1886 – Geronimo, Apache warrior, surrenders to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars.
1899 – Emilio Aguinaldo leads Filipino forces for the only time during the Philippine–American War at the Battle of Marilao River.
1915 – Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States is put in quarantine for the second time, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
1918 – The National Council of Bessarabia proclaims union with the Kingdom of Romania.
1938 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Battle of Taierzhuang begins, resulting several weeks later in the war’s first major Chinese victory over Japan.
1941 – World War II: Yugoslav Air Force officers topple the pro-Axis government in a bloodless coup.
1943 – World War II: Battle of the Komandorski Islands: In the Aleutian Islands the battle begins when United States Navy forces intercept Japanese attempting to reinforce a garrison at Kiska.
1945 – World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan’s ports and waterways begins. Argentina declares war on the Axis Powers.
1958 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.
1964 – The Good Friday earthquake, the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
1975 – Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins.
1977 – Tenerife airport disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). Sixty-one survived on the Pan Am flight. This is the deadliest aviation accident in history.
1980 – The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.
1980 – Silver Thursday: A steep fall in silver prices, resulting from the Hunt Brothers attempting to corner the market in silver, leads to panic on commodity and futures exchanges.
1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.
1986 – A car bomb explodes outside Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, Australia, killing one police officer and injuring 21 people.
1990 – The United States begins broadcasting anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba on TV Martí.
1993 – Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People’s Republic of China.
1993 – Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo.
1998 – The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
1999 – Kosovo War: An American Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk is shot down by a Yugoslav SAM, the first and only Nighthawk to be lost in combat.
2000 – A Phillips Petroleum plant explosion in Pasadena, Texas kills one person and injures 71 others.
2002 – Passover massacre: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 people at a Passover seder in Netanya, Israel.
2002 – Nanterre massacre: In Nanterre, France, a gunman opens fire at the end of a town council meeting, resulting in the deaths of eight councilors; 19 other people are injured.
2004 – HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander-class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.
2009 – The dam forming Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Indonesia, fails, killing at least 99 people.
2014 – Philippines signs a peace accord with the largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, ending decades of conflict.
2015 – Al-Shabab militants attack and temporarily occupy a Mogadishu hotel leaving at least 20 people dead.
2016 – A suicide blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, Lahore claims over 70 lives and leaves almost 300 others injured. The target of the bombing are Christians celebrating Easter.
2020 – North Macedonia becomes the 30th member of NATO.
Births on March 27
972 – Robert II, king of France (d. 1031)
1401 – Albert III, duke of Bavaria (d. 1460)
1416 – Francis of Paola, Italian friar and saint, founded Order of the Minims (d. 1507)
1546 – Johannes Piscator, German theologian (d. 1625)
1627 – Stephen Fox, English politician (d. 1716)
1676 – Francis II Rákóczi, Hungarian prince (b. 1676)
1679 – Domenico Lalli, Italian poet and librettist (d. 1741)
1681 – Joaquín Fernández de Portocarrero, Spanish-Italian cardinal (d. 1760)
1702 – Johann Ernst Eberlin, German organist and composer (d. 1762)
1710 – Joseph Abaco, Belgian cellist and composer (d. 1805)
1712 – Claude Bourgelat, French surgeon and author (d. 1779)
1714 – Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, Italian historian and theologian (d. 1795)
1724 – Jane Colden, American botanist and author (d. 1766)
1745 – Lindley Murray, American-English Quaker and grammarian (d. 1826)
1746 – Michael Bruce, Scottish poet and composer (d. 1767)
1746 – Carlo Buonaparte, Corsican-French lawyer and politician (d. 1785)
1765 – Franz Xaver von Baader, German philosopher and theologian (d. 1841)
1781 – Alexander Vostokov, Estonian-Russian philologist and academic (d. 1864)
1784 – Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, Hungarian philologist, orientalist, and author (d. 1842)
1785 – Louis XVII of France (d. 1795)
1797 – Alfred de Vigny, French author, poet, and playwright (d. 1863)
1801 – Alexander Barrow, American lawyer and politician (d. 1846)
1802 – Charles-Mathias Simons, German-Luxembourger jurist and politician, 3rd Prime Minister of Luxembourg (d. 1874)
1809 – Georges-Eugène Haussmann, French engineer, urban planner, and politician (d. 1891)
1811 – Edward William Cooke, English painter and illustrator (d. 1880)
1814 – Charles Mackay, Scottish journalist, anthologist, and author (d. 1889)
1820 – Edward Augustus Inglefield, English admiral and explorer (d. 1894)
1822 – Henri Murger, French novelist and poet (d. 1861)
1824 – Virginia Minor, American women’s suffrage activist (d. 1894)
1839 – John Ballance, Irish-New Zealand journalist and politician, 14th Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1893)
1843 – George Frederick Leycester Marshall, English colonel and entomologist (d. 1934)
1844 – Adolphus Greely, American general and explorer, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1935)
1845 – Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1923)
1845 – Jakob Sverdrup, Norwegian bishop and politician, Norwegian Minister of Education and Church Affairs (d. 1899)
1847 – Otto Wallach, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
1851 – Ruperto Chapí, Spanish composer, co-founded Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (d. 1909)
1851 – Vincent d’Indy, French composer and educator (d. 1931)
1852 – Jan van Beers, Belgian painter and illustrator (d. 1927)
1854 – Giovanni Battista Grassi, Italian physician, zoologist, and entomologist (d. 1925)
1855 – William Libbey, American target shooter, colonel, mountaineer, geographer, geologist, and archaeologist (d. 1927)
1857 – Karl Pearson, English mathematician, eugenicist, and academic (d. 1936)
1859 – George Giffen, Australian cricketer and footballer (d. 1927)
1860 – Frank Frost Abbott, American-Swiss scholar and academic (d. 1924)
1862 – Jelena Dimitrijević, Serbian short story writer, novelist, poet, traveller, social worker, feminist and polyglot (d. 1945)
1862 – Arturo Berutti, Argentinian composer (d. 1938)
1863 – Henry Royce, English engineer and businessman, founded Rolls-Royce Limited (d. 1933)
1866 – John Allan, Australian politician, 29th Premier of Victoria (d. 1936)
1868 – Patty Hill, American songwriter and educator (d. 1946)
1869 – James McNeill, Irish politician, 2nd Governor-General of the Irish Free State (d. 1938)
1869 – J. R. Clynes, English trade unionist and politician, Home Secretary (d. 1949)
1871 – Heinrich Mann, German author and poet (d. 1950)
1871 – Joseph G. Morrison, American captain and Nazarene minister (d. 1939)
1871 – Piet Aalberse, Dutch politician, Minister of Labour (d. 1948)
1875 – Albert Marquet, French painter (d. 1947)
1877 – Oscar Grégoire, Belgian water polo player and swimmer (d. 1947)
1878 – Kathleen Scott, British sculptor (d. 1947)
1879 – Sándor Garbai, Hungarian politician, 19th Prime Minister of Hungary (d. 1947)
1879 – Miller Huggins, American baseball player and manager (d. 1929)
1879 – Edward Steichen, Luxembourger-American painter and photographer (d. 1973)
1881 – Arkady Averchenko, Russian playwright and satirist (d. 1925)
1882 – Thomas Graham Brown, Scottish mountaineer and physiologist (d. 1965)
1883 – Marie Under, Estonian author and poet (d. 1980)
1884 – Gordon Thomson, English rower and lieutenant (d. 1953)
1885 – Julio Lozano Díaz, Honduran accountant and politician, 40th President of Honduras (d. 1957)
1885 – Reginald Fletcher, 1st Baron Winster, English navy officer and politician, Secretary of State for Transport (d. 1961)
1886 – Sergey Kirov, Russian politician (d. 1934)
1886 – Wladimir Burliuk, Ukrainian painter and illustrator (d. 1917)
1886 – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, German-American architect, designed IBM Plaza and Seagram Building (d. 1969)
1887 – Väinö Siikaniemi, Finnish javelin thrower, poet, and translator (d. 1932)
1888 – George Alfred Lawrence Hearne, English-South African cricketer (d. 1978)
1889 – Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Egyptian-Turkish journalist, author, and politician (d. 1974)
1889 – Leonard Mociulschi, Romanian general (d. 1979)
1890 – Harald Julin, Swedish swimmer and water polo player (d. 1967)
1890 – Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton, Scottish admiral (d. 1974)
1891 – Lajos Zilahy, Hungarian novelist and playwright (d. 1974)
1891 – Klawdziy Duzh-Dushewski, Belarusian-Lithuanian architect, journalist, and diplomat, created the Flag of Belarus (d. 1959)
1892 – Ferde Grofé, American pianist and composer (d. 1972)
1892 – Thorne Smith, American author (d. 1934)
1893 – Karl Mannheim, Hungarian-English sociologist and academic (d. 1947)
1893 – G. Lloyd Spencer, American lieutenant and politician (d. 1981)
1893 – George Beranger, Australian-American actor and director (d. 1973)
1894 – René Fonck, French colonel and pilot (d. 1953)
1895 – Roland Leighton, English soldier and poet (d. 1915)
1897 – Douglas Hartree, English mathematician and physicist (d. 1958)
1897 – Fred Keating, American magician, stage and film actor (d. 1961)
1899 – Francis Ponge, French poet and author (d. 1988)
1899 – Herbert Arthur Stuart, German-Swiss physicist and academic (d. 1974)
1899 – Gloria Swanson, American actress and producer (d. 1983)
1901 – Carl Barks, American illustrator and screenwriter (d. 2000)
1901 – Erich Ollenhauer, German politician (d. 1963)
1901 – Eisaku Satō, Japanese politician, 61st Prime Minister of Japan, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1975)
1901 – Kenneth Slessor, Australian journalist and poet (d. 1971)
1902 – Sidney Buchman, American screenwriter and producer (d. 1975)
1902 – Charles Lang, American cinematographer (d. 1998)
1903 – Xavier Villaurrutia, Mexican poet and playwright (d. 1950)
1905 – Leroy Carr, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1935)
1905 – Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, German general (d. 1980)
1905 – Elsie MacGill, Canadian-American author and engineer (d. 1980)
1906 – Pee Wee Russell, American clarinet player, saxophonist, and composer (d. 1969)
1909 – Golo Mann, German historian and author (d. 1994)
1909 – Ben Webster, American saxophonist (d. 1973)
1909 – Valery Marakou, Belarusian poet and translator (d. 1937)
1910 – Ai Qing, Chinese poet and author (d. 1996)
1911 – Veronika Tushnova, Russian poet and physician (d. 1965)
1912 – James Callaghan, English lieutenant and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 2005)
1913 – Theodor Dannecker, German SS officer (d. 1945)
1914 – Richard Denning, American actor (d. 1998)
1914 – Budd Schulberg, American author, screenwriter, and producer (d. 2009)
1915 – Robert Lockwood, Jr., American guitarist (d. 2006)
1917 – Cyrus Vance, American lawyer and politician, 57th United States Secretary of State (d. 2002)
1920 – Colin Rowe, English-American architect, theorist and academic (d. 1999)
1921 – Phil Chess, Czech-American record producer, co-founded Chess Records (d. 2016)
1921 – Moacir Barbosa Nascimento, Brazilian footballer and coach (d. 2000)
1921 – Harold Nicholas, American actor and dancer (d. 2000)
1922 – Dick King-Smith, English author (d. 2011)
1922 – Stefan Wul, French author and surgeon (d. 2003)
1922 – Jules Olitski, Ukrainian-American painter, printmaker, and sculptor (d. 2007)
1923 – Shūsaku Endō, Japanese author (d. 1996)
1923 – Louis Simpson, Jamaican-American poet, translator, and academic (d. 2012)
1924 – Sarah Vaughan, American singer (d. 1990)
1924 – Ian Black, Scottish international footballer, goalkeeper and lawn bowls player (d. 2012)
1924 – Margaret K. Butler, American mathematician and computer programmer (d. 2013)
1926 – Frank O’Hara, American writer (d. 1966)
1927 – Sylvia Anderson, English voice actress, screenwriter, and producer (d. 2016)
1927 – Anthony Lewis, American journalist and academic (d. 2013)
1927 – Mstislav Rostropovich, Russian cellist and conductor (d. 2007)
1928 – Jean Dotto, French cyclist (d. 2000)
1929 – Anne Ramsey, American actress (d. 1988)
1929 – Reg Evans, Australian actor (d. 2009)
1930 – Daniel Spoerri, Romanian-Swiss photographer, writer and artist
1931 – David Janssen, American actor and screenwriter (d. 1980)
1932 – Junior Parker, American singer and harmonica player (d. 1971)
1932 – Bailey Olter, Micronesian politician, 3rd President of the Federated States of Micronesia (d. 1999)
1933 – Lê Văn Hưng, South Vietnamese Brigadier general (d. 1975)
1934 – István Csurka, Hungarian journalist, author, and politician (d. 2012)
1935 – Stanley Rother, American Roman Catholic priest and missionary (d. 1981)
1935 – Julian Glover, English actor
1936 – Malcolm Goldstein, American violinist and composer
1937 – Alan Hawkshaw, English keyboard player and songwriter
1939 – Jay Kim, South Korean-American engineer and politician
1939 – Cale Yarborough, American race car driver and businessman
1940 – Sandro Munari, Italian race car driver
1940 – Austin Pendleton, American actor, director, and playwright
1941 – Ivan Gašparovič, Slovak lawyer and politician, 3rd President of Slovakia
1941 – Liese Prokop, Austrian pentathlete and politician, Austrian Minister of the Interior (d. 2006)
1942 – Michael Jackson, English journalist and author (d. 2007)
1942 – John Sulston, English biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2018)
1942 – Michael York, English actor
1943 – Mike Curtis, American football player and coach (d. 2020)
1944 – Jesse Brown, American marine and politician, 2nd United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs (d. 2002)
1944 – Bryan Campbell, Canadian ice hockey player
1946 – Michael Aris, Cuban-English author and academic (d. 1999)
1947 – Oliver Friggieri, Maltese author, critic, poet and philosopher
1947 – Brian Jones, English balloonist and pilot
1947 – Walt Mossberg, American journalist
1948 – Jens-Peter Bonde, Danish lawyer and politician
1950 – Tony Banks, English keyboardist and songwriter
1950 – Petros Efthymiou, Greek academic and politician, Greek Minister of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs
1950 – Maria Ewing, African-American soprano
1950 – Chris Stewart, English musician and author
1950 – Terry Yorath, Welsh international footballer, Midfielder and international manager
1951 – Andrei Kozyrev, Belgian-Russian politician and diplomat, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Russia
1952 – Annemarie Moser-Pröll, Austrian skier
1952 – Maria Schneider, French actress (d. 2011)
1953 – Herman Ponsteen, Dutch cyclist
1954 – Gerard Batten, English lawyer and politician
1955 – Patrick McCabe, Irish writer
1955 – Mariano Rajoy, Spanish lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of Spain
1955 – Susan Neiman, Jewish American-German philosopher and author
1956 – Leung Kwok-hung, Hong Kong activist and politician
1956 – Thomas Wassberg, Swedish cross country skier
1957 – Kostas Vasilakakis, Greek footballer and manager
1957 – Stephen Dillane, English actor
1958 – Didier de Radiguès, Belgian race car driver and motorcycle racer
1959 – Andrew Farriss, Australian rock musician and multi-instrumentalist
1960 – Hans Pflügler, German footballer
1960 – Renato Russo, Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1996)
1961 – Ellery Hanley, English rugby league player and coach
1961 – Tony Rominger, Swiss professional cyclist
1962 – Jann Arden, Canadian singer-songwriter
1962 – Brett French, Australian rugby league player
1962 – Rob Hollink, Dutch poker player
1962 – John O’Farrell, English journalist and author
1962 – Brad Wright, American-Spanish basketball player
1962 – Kevin J. Anderson, American science fiction writer
1963 – Cory Blackwell, American basketball player
1963 – Randall Cunningham, American football player, coach, and pastor
1963 – Filippos Sachinidis, Greek-Canadian economist and politician
1963 – Gary Stevens, English-Australian footballer and physiotherapist
1963 – Quentin Tarantino, American director, producer, screenwriter and actor
1963 – Xuxa, Brazilian actress, singer, businesswoman and television presenter
1965 – Gregor Foitek, Swiss race car driver
1966 – Žarko Paspalj, Serbian basketball player
1967 – Talisa Soto, American actress
1968 – Irina Belova, Russian heptathlete
1969 – Gianluigi Lentini, Italian footballer and manager
1969 – Pauley Perrette, American actress
1970 – Leila Pahlavi, Princess of Iran (d. 2001)
1970 – Derek Aucoin, Canadian baseball player
1970 – Mariah Carey, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
1970 – Brent Fitz, Canadian-American multi-instrumentalist and recording artist
1970 – Jarrod McCracken, New Zealand rugby league player
1970 – Elizabeth Mitchell, American actress
1970 – Uwe Rosenberg, German game designer, created Bohnanza
1971 – David Coulthard, Scottish race car driver and sportscaster
1971 – Nathan Fillion, Canadian actor
1972 – Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Surinamese-Dutch footballer, coach, and manager
1972 – Charlie Haas, American professional wrestler
1973 – Roger Telemachus, South African cricketer
1974 – Marek Citko, Polish footballer and manager
1974 – George Koumantarakis, Greek-South African footballer
1974 – Gaizka Mendieta, Spanish footballer
1975 – Andrew Blowers, New Zealand rugby player
1975 – Kim Felton, Australian golfer
1975 – Jeff Palmer, American gay porn actor and singer-songwriter
1975 – Fergie, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress
1975 – Christian Fiedler, German footballer and manager
1976 – Roberta Anastase, Romanian politician, 57th President of the Chamber of Deputies of Romania
1980 – Steve Fisher, American author and screenwriter (b. 1912)
1981 – Jakob Ackeret, Swiss engineer and academic (b. 1898)
1982 – Fazlur Khan, Bangladeshi-American engineer and architect, designed the John Hancock Center and Willis Tower (b. 1929)
1987 – William Bowers, American journalist and screenwriter (b. 1916)
1988 – Charles Willeford, American author, poet, and critic (b. 1919)
1989 – May Allison, American actress (b. 1890)
1989 – Malcolm Cowley, American novelist, poet, and literary critic (b. 1898)
1990 – Percy Beard, American hurdler and coach (b. 1908)
1991 – Aldo Ray, American actor (b. 1926)
1992 – Colin Gibson, English footballer (b. 1923)
1992 – Lang Hancock, Australian businessman (b. 1909)
1992 – James E. Webb, American colonel and politician, 16th Under Secretary of State (b. 1906)
1993 – Kamal Hassan Ali, Egyptian general and politician, Prime Minister of Egypt (b. 1921)
1993 – Paul László, Hungarian-American architect and interior designer (b. 1900)
1994 – Elisabeth Schmid, German archaeologist and osteologist (b. 1912)
1994 – Lawrence Wetherby, American lawyer and politician, 48th Governor of Kentucky (b. 1908)
1995 – René Allio, French director and screenwriter (b. 1924)
1997 – Lane Dwinell, American businessman and politician, 69th Governor of New Hampshire (b. 1906)
1997 – Ella Maillart, Swiss skier, sailor, field hockey player, and photographer (b. 1903)
1998 – David McClelland, American psychologist and academic (b. 1917)
1999 – Michael Aris, Cuban-English author and academic (b. 1946)
2000 – George Allen, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (b. 1914)
2000 – Ian Dury, English singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1942)
2002 – Milton Berle, American comedian and actor (b. 1908)
2002 – Dudley Moore, English actor (b. 1935)
2002 – Billy Wilder, Austrian-born American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1906)
2003 – Edwin Carr, New Zealand composer and educator (b. 1926)
2004 – Robert Merle, French author (b. 1909)
2005 – Wilfred Gordon Bigelow, Canadian soldier and surgeon (b. 1913)
2006 – Dan Curtis, American director and producer (b. 1928)
2006 – Stanisław Lem, Ukrainian-Polish author (b. 1921)
2006 – Rudolf Vrba, Czech Holocaust survivor and educator (b. 1924)
2006 – Neil Williams, English cricketer (b. 1962)
2007 – Nancy Adams, New Zealand botanist and illustrator (b. 1926)
2007 – Paul Lauterbur, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1929)
2008 – Jean-Marie Balestre, French businessman (b. 1921)
2009 – Irving R. Levine, American journalist and author (b. 1922)
2010 – Dick Giordano, American illustrator (b. 1932)
2011 – Clement Arrindell, Nevisian judge and politician, 1st Governor-General of Saint Kitts and Nevis (b. 1931)
2011 – Farley Granger, American actor (b. 1925)
2012 – Adrienne Rich, American poet, essayist and feminist (b. 1929)
2013 – Hjalmar Andersen, Norwegian speed skater (b. 1923)
2013 – Yvonne Brill, Canadian-American scientist and engineer (b. 1924)
2013 – Fay Kanin, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1917)
2014 – Richard N. Frye, American scholar and academic (b. 1920)
2014 – James R. Schlesinger, American economist and politician, 12th United States Secretary of Defense and first United States Secretary of Energy (b. 1929)
2015 – Johnny Helms, American trumpet player, bandleader, and educator (b. 1935)
2015 – T. Sailo, Indian soldier and politician, 2nd Chief Minister of Mizoram (b. 1922)
2016 – Mother Angelica, American Roman Catholic religious leader and media personality (b. 1923)
Holidays and observances on March 27
Christian feast day:
Alexander, a Pannonian soldier, martyred in 3rd century.
Amador of Portugal
Augusta of Treviso
Charles Henry Brent (Episcopal Church (USA))
Gelasius, Archbishop of Armagh
John of Egypt
Philetus
Romulus of Nîmes, a Benedictine abbot, martyred c. 730.
708 – Pope Constantine succeeds Pope Sisinnius as the 88th pope.
717 – Theodosius III resigns the throne to the Byzantine Empire to enter the clergy.
919 – Romanos Lekapenos seizes the Boukoleon Palace in Constantinople and becomes regent of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII.
1000 – Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah assassinates the eunuch chief minister Barjawan and assumes control of the government.
1306 – Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scots (Scotland).
1409 – The Council of Pisa opens.
1555 – The city of Valencia is founded in present-day Venezuela.
1576 – Jerome Savage takes out a sub-lease to start the Newington Butts Theatre outside London.
1584 – Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to colonize Virginia.
1655 – Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
1802 – The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a “Definitive Treaty of Peace” between France and the United Kingdom.
1807 – The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
1807 – The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger-carrying railway in the world.
1811 – Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
1821 – Traditional date of the start of the Greek War of Independence. The war had actually begun on 23 February 1821 (Julian calendar).
1845 – New Zealand Legislative Council pass the first Militia Act constituting the New Zealand Army.
1865 – American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces temporarily capture Fort Stedman from the Union.
1894 – Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington, D.C.
1911 – In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
1917 – The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.
1918 – The Belarusian People’s Republic is established.
1924 – On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the Second Hellenic Republic.
1931 – The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
1941 – The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
1947 – An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
1948 – The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
1949 – More than 92,000 kulaks are suddenly deported from the Baltic states to Siberia.
1957 – United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” on obscenity grounds.
1957 – The European Economic Community is established with West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as the first members.
1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
1969 – During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
1971 – The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandon an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
1975 – Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.
1979 – The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
1988 – The Candle demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
1995 – WikiWikiWeb, the world’s first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
1996 – The European Union’s Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
2006 – Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
2006 – Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged 2006 Belarusian presidential election, clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.
Births on March 25
1252 – Conradin, Duke of Swabia (d. 1268)
1259 – Andronikos II Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor (d. 1332)
1297 – Andronikos III Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor (d. 1341)
1297 – Arnošt of Pardubice, Polish archbishop (d. 1364)
1345 – Blanche of Lancaster (d. 1369)
1347 – Catherine of Siena, Italian philosopher, theologian, and saint (d. 1380)
1404 – John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, English military leader (d. 1444)
1414 – Thomas Clifford, 8th Baron de Clifford, English noble (d. 1455)
1434 – Eustochia Smeralda Calafato, Italian saint (d. 1485)
1453 – Giuliano de’ Medici (d. 1478)
1479 – Vasili III of Russia (d. 1533)
1491 – Marie d’Albret, Countess of Rethel (d. 1549)
1510 – Guillaume Postel, French linguist (d. 1581)
1538 – Christopher Clavius, German mathematician and astronomer (d. 1612)
1541 – Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1587)
1545 – John II, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg (d. 1622)
1546 – Giacomo Castelvetro, Italian writer (d. 1616)
1593 – Jean de Brébeuf, French-Canadian missionary and saint (d. 1649)
1611 – Evliya Çelebi, Ottoman Turk traveller and writer (d. 1682)
1636 – Henric Piccardt, Dutch lawyer (d. 1712)
1643 – Louis Moréri, French priest and scholar (d. 1680)
1661 – Paul de Rapin, French soldier and historian (d. 1725)
1699 – Johann Adolph Hasse, German singer and composer (d. 1783)
1741 – Jean-Antoine Houdon, French sculptor and educator (d. 1828)
1745 – John Barry, American naval officer and father of the American navy (d. 1803)
1767 – Joachim Murat, French general (d. 1815)
1782 – Caroline Bonaparte, French daughter of Carlo Buonaparte (d. 1839)
1800 – Ernst Heinrich Karl von Dechen, German geologist and academic (d. 1889)
1808 – José de Espronceda, Spanish poet and author (d. 1842)
1824 – Clinton L. Merriam, American banker and politician (d. 1900)
1840 – Myles Keogh, Irish-American colonel (d. 1876)
1863 – Simon Flexner, American physician and academic (d. 1946)
1867 – Gutzon Borglum, American sculptor, designed Mount Rushmore (d. 1941)
1867 – Arturo Toscanini, Italian-American cellist and conductor (d. 1957)
1868 – Bill Lockwood, English cricketer (d. 1932)
1871 – Louis Perrée, French fencer (d. 1924)
1872 – Horatio Nelson Jackson, American race car driver and physician (d. 1955)
1873 – Rudolf Rocker, German-American author and activist (d. 1958)
1874 – Selim Sırrı Tarcan, Turkish educator and politician (d. 1957)
1876 – Irving Baxter, American jumper and pole vaulter (d. 1957)
1877 – Walter Little, Canadian politician (d. 1961)
1878 – František Janda-Suk, Czech discus thrower and shot putter (d. 1955)
1879 – Amedee Reyburn, American swimmer and water polo player (d. 1920)
1881 – Béla Bartók, Hungarian pianist and composer (d. 1945)
1881 – Patrick Henry Bruce, American painter and educator (d. 1936)
1881 – Mary Webb, English author and poet (d. 1927)
1893 – Johannes Villemson, Estonian runner (d. 1971)
1895 – Siegfried Handloser, German general and physician (d. 1954)
1885 – Jimmy Seed, English international footballer, inside forward and manager (d. 1966)
1897 – Leslie Averill, New Zealand doctor and soldier (d. 1981)
1899 – François Rozet, French-Canadian actor (d. 1994)
1901 – Ed Begley, American actor (d. 1970)
1903 – Binnie Barnes, English-American actress (d. 1998)
1903 – Frankie Carle, American pianist and bandleader (d. 2001)
1903 – Nahum Norbert Glatzer, Ukrainian-American theologian and scholar (d. 1990)
1904 – Pete Johnson, American boogie-woogie and jazz pianist (d. 1967)
1905 – Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, German colonel (d. 1944)
1906 – Jean Sablon, French singer and actor (d. 1994)
1906 – A. J. P. Taylor, English historian and academic (d. 1990)
1908 – David Lean, English director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1991)
1910 – Magda Olivero, Italian soprano (d. 2014)
1910 – Benzion Netanyahu, Polish-Israeli historian and academic (d. 2012)
1912 – Melita Norwood, English civil servant and spy (d. 2005)
1912 – Jean Vilar, French actor and director (d. 1971)
1913 – Reo Stakis, Cypriot-Scottish businessman, founded Stakis Hotels (d. 2001)
1914 – Norman Borlaug, American agronomist and humanitarian, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2009)
1915 – Dorothy Squires, Welsh singer (d. 1998)
1916 – S. M. Pandit, Indian painter and educator (d. 1993)
1918 – Howard Cosell, American soldier, journalist, and author (d. 1995)
1920 – Paul Scott, English author, poet, and playwright (d. 1978)
1920 – Patrick Troughton, English actor (d. 1987)
1920 – Usha Mehta, Gandhian and freedom fighter of India (d. 2000)
1921 – Nancy Kelly, American actress (d. 1995)
1921 – Simone Signoret, French actress (d. 1985)
1922 – Eileen Ford, American businesswoman, co-founded Ford Models (d. 2014)
1923 – Bonnie Guitar, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2019)
1923 – Wim van Est, Dutch cyclist (d. 2003)
1924 – Roberts Blossom, American actor (d. 2011)
1924 – Machiko Kyō, Japanese actress (d. 2019)
1925 – Flannery O’Connor, American short story writer and novelist (d. 1964)
1925 – Anthony Quinton, Baron Quinton, English physician and philosopher (d. 2010)
1925 – Kishori Sinha, Indian politician, social activist and advocate (d. 2016)
1926 – Riz Ortolani, Italian composer and conductor (d. 2014)
1926 – László Papp, Hungarian boxer (d. 2003)
1926 – Jaime Sabines, Mexican poet and politician (d. 1999)
1926 – Gene Shalit, American journalist and critic
1927 – P. Shanmugam, Indian politician, 13th Chief Minister of Puducherry (d. 2013)
1928 – Jim Lovell, American captain, pilot, and astronaut
1928 – Gunnar Nielsen, Danish runner and typographer (d. 1985)
1928 – Hans Steinbrenner, German sculptor (d. 2008)
1929 – Cecil Taylor, American pianist and composer (d. 2018)
1930 – David Burge, American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 2013)
1930 – Carlo Mauri, Italian mountaineer and explorer (d. 1982)
1930 – Rudy Minarcin, American baseball player and coach (d. 2013)
1931 – Humphrey Burton, English radio and television host
1932 – Penelope Gilliatt, English novelist, short story writer, and critic (d. 1993)
1932 – Wes Santee, American runner (d. 2010)
1934 – Johnny Burnette, American singer-songwriter (d. 1964)
1934 – Bernard King, Australian actor and chef (d. 2002)
1994 – Bernard Kangro, Estonian poet and journalist (b. 1910)
1994 – Max Petitpierre, Swiss jurist and politician (b. 1899)
1995 – James Samuel Coleman, American sociologist and academic (b. 1926)
1995 – John Hugenholtz, Dutch engineer (b. 1914)
1996 – John Snagge, English journalist (b. 1904)
1998 – Max Green, Australian lawyer (b. 1952)
1998 – Steven Schiff, American lawyer and politician (b. 1947)
1999 – Cal Ripken, Sr., American baseball player, coach, and manager (b. 1936)
2000 – Helen Martin, American actress (b. 1909)
2001 – Brian Trubshaw, English cricketer and pilot (b. 1924)
2002 – Kenneth Wolstenholme, English journalist and sportscaster (b. 1920)
2005 – Paul Henning, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1911)
2006 – Bob Carlos Clarke, Irish photographer (b. 1950)
2006 – Rocío Dúrcal, Spanish singer and actress (b. 1944)
2006 – Richard Fleischer, American film director (b. 1916)
2006 – Buck Owens, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1929)
2007 – Andranik Margaryan, Armenian engineer and politician, 10th Prime Minister of Armenia (b. 1951)
2008 – Ben Carnevale, American basketball player and coach (b. 1915)
2008 – Thierry Gilardi, French journalist and sportscaster (b. 1958)
2008 – Abby Mann, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1927)
2008 – Herb Peterson, American businessman, created the McMuffin (b. 1919)
2009 – Johnny Blanchard, American baseball player (b. 1933)
2009 – Kosuke Koyama, Japanese-American theologian and academic (b. 1929)
2009 – Dan Seals, American musician (b. 1948)
2009 – Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu, Turkish politician and member of the Parliament of Turkey (b. 1954)
2012 – Priscilla Buckley, American journalist and author (b. 1921)
2012 – Hal E. Chester, American actor, director, and producer (b. 1921)
2012 – John Crosfield, English businessman, founded Crosfield Electronics (b. 1915)
2012 – Edd Gould, English animator and voice actor, founded Eddsworld (b. 1988)
2012 – Antonio Tabucchi, Italian author and academic (b. 1943)
2013 – Léonce Bernard, Canadian politician, 26th Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island (b. 1943)
2013 – Ben Goldfaden, American basketball player and educator (b. 1913)
2013 – Anthony Lewis, American journalist and academic (b. 1927)
2013 – Jean Pickering, English runner and long jumper (b. 1929)
2013 – Jean-Marc Roberts, French author and screenwriter (b. 1954)
2013 – John F. Wiley, American lieutenant, football player, and coach (b. 1920)
2014 – Lorna Arnold, English historian and author (b. 1915)
2014 – Hank Lauricella, American football player and politician (b. 1930)
2014 – Jon Lord, Canadian businessman and politician (b. 1956)
2014 – Sonny Ruberto, American baseball player, coach, and manager (b. 1946)
2014 – Jonathan Schell, American journalist and author (b. 1943)
2014 – Ralph Wilson, American businessman, founded the Buffalo Bills (b. 1918)
2015 – George Fischbeck, American journalist and educator (b. 1922)
2016 – Shannon Bolin, American actress and singer (b. 1917)
2017 – Cuthbert Sebastian, St. Kitts and Nevis politician (b. 1921)
2018 – Zell Miller, American author and politician (b. 1932)
2019 – Scott Walker, American-born British singer-songwriter (b. 1943)[9]
Holidays and observances on March 25
Anniversary of the Arengo and the Feast of the Militants (San Marino)
Christian feast days:
Ælfwold II of Sherborne
Barontius and Desiderius
Blessed Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghattas
Omelyan Kovch (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church)
Dismas, the “Good Thief”
Humbert of Maroilles
Quirinus of Tegernsee
March 25 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Cultural Workers Day (Russia)
Earliest day on which Seward’s Day can fall, while March 31 is the latest; celebrated on the last Monday in March. (Alaska)
Empress Menen’s Birthday (Rastafari)
EU Talent Day (European Union)
Feast of the Annunciation (Christianity), and its related observances (if March 25 falls in Holy Week or Easter Week the feast is moved to the Monday after the 2nd Sunday of Easter):
Historic start of the new year (Lady Day) in England, Wales, Ireland, and the future United States until the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752. (The year 1751 began on 25 March; the year 1752 began on 1 January.) It is one of the four Quarter days in Ireland and England.
International Day of the Unborn Child (international)
Mother’s Day (Slovenia)
Vårfrudagen or Våffeldagen, “Waffle Day” (Sweden, Norway & Denmark)
Freedom Day (Belarus)
International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (international)
International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members (United Nations General Assembly)
Maryland Day (Maryland, United States)
Medal of Honor Day (United States)
Independence Day, celebrates the start of Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, in 1821. (Greece)
