Tuesday, 7th April 2026 in Lisbon
Welcome to your daily snapshot of Lissabon! It's World Health Day. Explore 73 historical events, birthdays, deaths, and milestones that shaped this day in Lissabon. From remarkable moments in local and world history to the people who left their mark — find out what makes today special. Today's weather in Lissabon brings drizzly with temperatures between 10°C and 16°C. Tonight's moon is in its waxing crescent phase, and the zodiac sign of the day is Aries. If you're curious about the history of a day — this page brings together everything worth knowing about this Tuesday, 7th April in Lissabon, PT.

Lisbon, situated on the Tagus River estuary in western Portugal, is the country's capital and largest city, known for its historic neighbourhoods and maritime heritage. The weather on this date is drizzly. The sun is in Aries, a fire sign associated with initiative and determination, whilst the moon is in its waxing crescent phase, a period traditionally linked to growth and new beginnings.
On this day
On this date in 1948, the United Nations established the World Health Organization, which became the coordinating authority on international public health and remains the primary agency responsible for pandemic response and global health security today.
In 1896, Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen led an Arctic expedition that reached 86°13.6′N latitude, surpassing the previous Farthest North record by almost three degrees and marking a significant achievement in polar exploration during the era of discovery.
World Health Day
World Health Day is observed on 7 April each year to mark the founding of the World Health Organization in 1948. The day draws attention to a priority health theme determined by the WHO and encourages governments, organisations and individuals to take action on matters affecting public health. Since its establishment, the day has provided a focal point for raising awareness of health issues ranging from disease prevention to healthcare access. Each year's theme reflects emerging or persistent global health challenges.
DayAtlas provides weather conditions, historical events, and notable births and deaths for any date and location, offering users comprehensive daily information across time and geography.
Find out what's happening today in Lissabon.
What the Weather Had in Store for Lissabon on 7th April 2026
A bell cannot ring twice the same way—each sound is its own birth.
Fortune of the Day
7th April in the Stars – Star Sign Aries
Personality Profile
Personality Those born on April 7th blend Aries' impulsive energy with the spiritual depth of Master Number 11. They are visionaries with direct execution power, transforming ideals into concrete action. Their fire burns not just for success, but for meaningful purpose.
Strengths & Weaknesses Their strengths lie in courage, intuition, and the drive to break boundaries. However, impatience and emotional impulsivity can lead to hasty decisions. The challenge is balancing fiery passion with inner wisdom.
Love In relationships, these people bring passionate authenticity and spiritual connection. They seek partners who share their idealistic momentum and offer deep emotional resonance. Their directness can feel harsh without empathy as a filter.
Caree & Finance Professionally, they thrive in roles combining pioneering spirit with higher purpose—entrepreneurship, activism, consulting. Financial success follows their passion, yet impulsive investments need careful review. Their intuition is valuable when paired with data.
Health These dynamic individuals need intense physical outlets and mental challenges. Burnout threatens through overextension; mindfulness and regular inner breaks are essential. Their spiritual nature flourishes through meditation and embodied movement.
That night, the moon was in its waxing crescent phase.
Chinese year of the Horse (Fire).
Fun Facts About 7th April
Name Days in Your Language: Armand, Armanda, Armando, Armin, Armon, Erma, Herman, Herminia, Hermione, Irma
Someone born on this day would be just 57 days old today — roughly 1,387 hours, 83,244 minutes, or 4,994,670 seconds spent on Earth so far.
It's the 97. day of the year. In 2026, 7th April falls on a Tuesday.
There are 268 days still to come.
We’re currently in Week 15 — the year marches on.
Famous Birthdays on 7th April
On this day, 265 notable people were born on 7th April — spanning from 1206 to 1997. From world leaders to artists and scientists, discover who shares this birthday.
07/04/1997
Rafaela Gómez, Ecuadorian tennis player
Rafaela Gómez is an Ecuadorian tennis player.
07/04/1996
Emerson Hyndman, American international soccer player
Emerson Schellas Hyndman is an American professional soccer player who plays as a midfielder.
07/04/1994
Johanna Allik, Estonian figure skater
Johanna Allik born on 7 April 1994 in Tallinn, is an Estonian figure skater. She initially competed in singles skating and achieved two senior international medals. Additionally, she secured the Estonian national silver medal twice, in 2008 and 2010. In 2011, she transitioned to ice dance and, with partner Paul Bellantuono, won the 2012 Estonian junior title. Following a two-season break from competitive skating between 2013 and 2015, she returned to singles skating for the 2015–16 figure skating season.
Aaron Gray, Australian rugby league player
Aaron Gray is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who last played as a centre and on the wing for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the NRL.
Josh Hader, American baseball player
Joshua Ronald Hader is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the Milwaukee Brewers and San Diego Padres. Hader is a six-time All-Star and three-time winner of the National League Reliever of the Year Award.
07/04/1993
Ichinojō Takashi, Mongolian sumo wrestler
Ichinojō Takashi is a former professional sumo wrestler from Arkhangai, Mongolia. He was the second foreign-born wrestler, and the first of non-Japanese descent allowed to debut at an elevated rank in the third makushita division of professional sumo due to his amateur sumo success. Wrestling for Minato stable, he took the second division jūryō championship in only his third professional tournament. In his fifth tournament, his first in the top makuuchi division, he was the runner-up and promoted all the way to sekiwake, his highest rank to date. Ichinojō acquired Japanese citizenship in September 2021, taking the name Miura Takashi . He won the top division championship in July 2022. He was one of the heaviest rikishi in the top division as of September 2020. He retired from active competition in May 2023.
07/04/1992
Andreea Acatrinei, Romanian gymnast
Andreea Roxana Acatrinei is a Romanian artistic gymnast. She won a bronze medal with the Romanian team at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Guilherme Negueba, Brazilian footballer
Guilherme Ferreira Pinto, commonly known as Negueba, is a Brazilian footballer who plays as a winger or an attacking midfielder for Thai League 1 club Ratchaburi.
07/04/1991
Luka Milivojević, Serbian footballer
Luka Milivojević is a Serbian professional footballer who plays for Al-Nasr as a midfielder.
Anne-Marie, English singer-songwriter
Anne-Marie Rose Nicholson is an English singer and songwriter. She has achieved commercial success with songs "Alarm" (2016), "Ciao Adios" (2017), "Friends" (2018), "2002" (2018), "Rewrite The Stars" (2018), "Don't Play" (2021), "Kiss My (Uh-Oh)" (2021), "Psycho" (2022), "Baby Don't Hurt Me" (2023), and "Unhealthy" (2023). She was featured on Clean Bandit's "Rockabye" (2016), which peaked at number one in twenty-seven terrorities, including the United Kingdom. She has released 3 albums: Speak Your Mind (2018), which peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart, Therapy (2021), and Unhealthy (2023), both of which peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart.
07/04/1990
Nickel Ashmeade, Jamaican sprinter
Nickel Ashmeade is a retired Jamaican sprinter who specialised in the 100 and 200 meters.
Anna Bogomazova, Russian-American kick-boxer, martial artist, and wrestler
Anna Bogomazova, known professionally as Anya Zova, is a Russian comedian, actress, producer and former athlete, born in the Soviet Union and raised by a Ukrainian mother and Russian father. She worked in the WWE competing in their developmental territory NXT Wrestling, under the ring name Anya. Bogomazova graduated Russian school and won the Russian Kickboxing Cup in 2011 with a second place. In 2020, Anya made her television debut on NBC's award-winning comedy, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and appeared on the hit CBS series TV series MacGyver. In April 2022, she toured local clubs with her own comedy show about Russia and her life there.
Sorana Cîrstea, Romanian tennis player
Sorana Mihaela Cîrstea is a Romanian professional tennis player. In singles, she achieved a career-high ranking of World No. 18 on 18th May 2026. In doubles, her career-best ranking is World No. 35, which she reached on 9th March 2009.
Trent Cotchin, Australian footballer
Trent William Cotchin is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is an All-Australian, a three-time Richmond best and fairest winner, a Brownlow medallist, and a three-time premiership winning captain. Cotchin represented the Victorian Metro side at the 2007 AFL Under 18 Championships and captained the Vic Metro side at 2006 Under 16 Championships. He played for the Northern Knights in the TAC Cup as a junior, before being drafted to Richmond with the second overall pick in the 2007 national draft. He led the club to a 37-year drought-breaking premiership in 2017 before taking them again to a premiership in 2019 and 2020.
07/04/1989
Franco Di Santo, Argentinian footballer
Franco Matías Di Santo is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a striker.
Mitchell Pearce, Australian rugby league player
Mitchell Pearce is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who last played as a scrum-half for the Catalans Dragons in the Super League.
Teddy Riner, French judoka
Teddy Pierre-Marie Riner is a French heavyweight judoka. A nine-time world champion in the heavyweight (+100 kg) division, two-time openweight world champion, and one-time world champion with the French men's team, he is the first and only judoka in history to win twelve gold medals at the World Judo Championships. He won the gold medal in the Men's +100 kg event at the Summer Olympics three times and, as a member of the French team, in the mixed team event twice. Additionally, he is a two-time Olympic bronze medalist, a five-time European champion, a four-time World Masters gold medalist, and an eleven-time Grand Slam winner in his weight category.
07/04/1988
Antonio Piccolo, Italian footballer
Antonio Piccolo is an Italian footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder.
Ed Speleers, English actor and producer
Edward John Speleers is an English actor. He is best known for playing the title role in the 2006 film Eragon, Jimmy Kent in the TV series Downton Abbey, and antagonist Stephen Bonnet in the TV series Outlander. He has also appeared as Rhys Montrose in the fourth season of You (2023) and Jack Crusher in the third season of Star Trek: Picard (2023).
07/04/1987
Martín Cáceres, Uruguayan footballer
José Martín Cáceres Silva is a Uruguayan professional footballer who plays for Liga AUF Uruguaya club Juventud. Mainly a centre-back, he can also play on either flank, mostly as a right-back.
Eelco Sintnicolaas, Dutch decathlete
Eelco Sintnicolaas is a Dutch track and field athlete, specialising in the decathlon.
Jamar Smith, American football player
Jamar Desean Smith is an American professional basketball player who last played for Pallacanestro Reggiana of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A (LBA). Standing at 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m), he plays the shooting guard position. He played collegiate basketball at Illinois and then at Southern Indiana.
07/04/1986
Brooke Brodack, American comedian
Brooke Allison Brodack, known online as Brookers, is one of the earliest YouTubers. Brodack, a receptionist from Holden, Massachusetts, first began uploading short comedy skits to YouTube in September 2005. She was offered a contract from NBC show host Carson Daly in 2006, before YouTubers were able to monetize their videos in December 2007, but nothing came of it. Brodack briefly had the most-subscribed YouTube channel for a period of 43 days from July 3, 2006, to August 15, 2006, during which it became the first channel to reach 10,000 subscribers. It was the first time the most subscribed YouTube channel was officially held by a channel of a female individual. The New Yorker called her "the first real YouTube star," in a December 2006 article.
Jack Duarte, Mexican actor, singer, and guitarist
Robert Jack Duarte Wallace is a Mexican actor and singer. He is known for his acting performance in the Mexican telenovela Rebelde as "Tomas Goycolea" and as a member of the Mexican-Argentine pop band, Eme 15.
Andi Fraggs, English singer-songwriter and producer
Andi Fraggs is an English singer-songwriter and music producer. After contributing to musical projects featured on television and radio in the UK and the US, Andi released his first solo single in 2010. His debut album, Always First, followed in 2012 and included the popular single "Beautiful Feeling". Fraggs has performed at many notable venues and events around the UK, and supported such artists as Toyah Willcox, Hazel O'Connor, David Hoyle and Go West. In 2015, he took part in the national selections to represent Moldova at the Eurovision Song Contest with "One Song". His second album, Pure, was released in 2016.
Christian Fuchs, Austrian footballer
Christian Fuchs is an Austrian football manager and former player who is the manager of EFL League Two club Newport County. A left back, Fuchs was part of the Leicester City 2015–16 Premier League winning squad and captained the Austria national team at UEFA Euro 2016.
Choi Si-won, South Korean singer and actor
Choi Si-won, known mononymously as Siwon, is a South Korean singer, songwriter, model, and actor, known for his work as a member of South Korean boy group Super Junior. Choi was a special representative for UNICEF Korea from 2015 to 2019, before being chosen as a UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office ambassador in November 2019.
07/04/1985
KC Concepcion, Filipino actress and singer
Maria Kristina Cassandra "KC" Cuneta Concepcion is a Filipino actress, singer, dancer, television host, entrepreneur, socialite, and humanitarian. She has starred in films For The First Time (2008) and When I Met U (2009), and television series such as Lovers in Paris (2009), Huwag Ka Lang Mawawala (2013), and Ikaw Lamang (2014).
Humza Yousaf, Scottish politician
Humza Haroon Yousaf is a Scottish politician who served as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from March 2023 to May 2024. He served under his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon as justice secretary from 2018 to 2021 and then as health secretary from 2021 to 2023. He served as Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow Pollok from 2016 to 2026, having previously been a regional MSP for Glasgow from 2011 to 2016.
07/04/1984
Hiroko Shimabukuro, Japanese singer
Hiroko Shimabukuro , best known mononymously as hiro, is a Japanese singer. She debuted as a member of the popular girl group Speed in 1996. In 1998, hiro released her first solo song, "Mitsumete Itai", as a B-side to Speed's single "All My True Love". She made her official solo debut in 1999 with the single "As Time Goes By", which sold 800,000 copies in Japan. In 2022 she released her fourth studio album called "0".
07/04/1983
Hamish Davidson, Australian musician
The Davidson Brothers are an Australian bluegrass and country music duo. Originally from Yinnar, Victoria, the brothers are Hamish and Lachlan Davidson. They have written and performed together since their youth, and "are multi-instrumentalists on banjo, fiddle, and mandolin and have won many awards on the country circuit". They released their first album, Blue Spruce, in 1999 when they were both in their early teens. This was the beginning of what would span into numerous recordings and national awards. "With their dynamic brand of classic bluegrass and more contemporary newgrass music, the pair has not only blitzed the Australian country music industry, but has attracted plenty of attention in the United States and Europe as well."
Franck Ribéry, French footballer
Franck Henry Pierre Ribéry is a French former professional footballer who primarily played as a winger, preferably on the left side, and was known for his pace, energy, skill, and precise passing. He is regarded as one of the best players of his generation and one of the greatest wingers in the history of the sport.
Jon Stead, English footballer
Jonathan Graeme Stead is an English football coach and former professional player. He is currently first-team coach at Huddersfield Town.
Jakub Smrž, Czech motorcycle rider
Jakub 'Kuba' Smrž is a professional motorcycle road racer. He competed in the Superbike World Championship, aboard a Yamaha YZF-R1. For 2017 and 2018 he rode a BMW S1000RR in the British Superbike Championship, but in June 2018 he suffered a serious shoulder injury when guest-riding for Czech BMW team Mercury Racing in the Oschersleben eight-hour event in Germany. Luke Hedger rode Smrž' machine in his absence.
Janar Talts, Estonian basketball player
Janar Talts is a former Estonian professional basketball player who is the sporting director of University of Tartu basketball team. Standing at 2.07 m, he played at the power forward and center positions. He represented the Estonian national basketball team internationally.
07/04/1982
Silvana Arias, Peruvian actress
Silvana Arias is a Peruvian actress. She is best known for playing the roles of Susana Peña on María Emilia: Querida (1999), Lucía Reyes on Soledad, Jimena Arismendi on Gata salvaje, and Paloma Lopez-Fitzgerald on Passions.
Sonjay Dutt, American wrestler
Retesh Bhalla is an American professional wrestler signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW) as a producer and manager. He is best known for his time with Total Nonstop Action / Impact Wrestling under the ring name Sonjay Dutt. He also worked for WWE as a producer from 2019 to 2021.
Kelli Young, English singer
Kelli Young is an English singer. She is best known as member of the pop group Liberty X.
07/04/1981
Hitoe Arakaki, Japanese singer
Hitoe Arakaki is a Japanese singer. She was the oldest member of the Japanese pop group Speed, which disbanded in 2000 and reformed in 2009. She was born in Okinawa, Japan, and is also known purely by her first name, Hitoe.
Kazuki Watanabe, Japanese songwriter and guitarist (died 2000)
Kazuki Watanabe , known by his stage name Kazuki (華月), was a Japanese musician known as guitarist and lead songwriter of the visual kei rock band Raphael. The group became quite popular, with all their releases entering the top 40 of the Oricon chart, before disbanding after Kazuki died at the age of 19.
Vanessa Olivarez, American singer-songwriter, and actress
Vanessa Denae Olivarez is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is the vocalist, songwriter, and autoharpist for the country bands Granville Automatic and Mama's Blue Dress, has written songs for the country duo Sugarland, and was in the Top 12 of the second season of the television series American Idol in 2003.
Suzann Pettersen, Norwegian golfer
Suzann Pettersen is a Norwegian former professional golfer. She played mainly on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour, and was also a member of the Ladies European Tour. Her career-best world ranking was second and she held that position several times, most recently from August 2011 until February 2012. She retired on 15 September 2019 after holing the winning putt for the European team at the 2019 Solheim Cup, notwithstanding that she had been away from golf for almost 20 months on maternity leave prior to the event.
07/04/1980
Dragan Bogavac, Montenegrin footballer
Dragan Bogavac is a Montenegrin former professional footballer who played as a striker.
Bruno Covas, Brazilian lawyer, politician (died 2021)
Bruno Covas Lopes was a Brazilian lawyer, economist, and politician who was a member of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and served as the mayor of São Paulo from 2018 until his death in 2021.
Tetsuji Tamayama, Japanese actor
Tetsuji Tamayama is a Japanese TV, film actor and model. He joined modeling competitions and was active in Checkmate and other fashion magazines. In 2001, Tamayama debuted in Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger as GaoSilver. He continued to star in more movies and TV dramas such as Casshern, Tokyo Love Cinema, and Rockers.
07/04/1979
Adrián Beltré, Dominican-American baseball player
Adrián Beltré Pérez is a Dominican former professional baseball third baseman. Beltré played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox, and Texas Rangers in Major League Baseball (MLB). He is regarded as one of the greatest third basemen of all time.
Patrick Crayton, American football player
Patrick Jamel Crayton is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL) for the Dallas Cowboys and San Diego Chargers. He played college football for the Northwestern Oklahoma State Rangers.
Pascal Dupuis, Canadian ice hockey player
Pascal Dupuis is a Canadian ice hockey coach and former professional ice hockey winger who is the assistant coach for the Shawinigan Cataractes of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). Undrafted out of the 1997 NHL entry draft, he played 15 seasons in the NHL for the Minnesota Wild, New York Rangers, Atlanta Thrashers, and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Danny Sandoval, Venezuelan-American baseball player
Danny E. Sandoval is a Venezuelan former infielder in Major League Baseball. Listed at 5' 11", 190 lb., he was a switch-hitter and threw right-handed.
07/04/1978
Jo Appleby, English soprano
Jo Appleby is an English soprano from Thornton, Lancashire, England. She is a former member of operatic pop group Amici Forever.
Duncan James, English singer-songwriter and actor
Duncan Matthew James Inglis is an English singer, actor and television presenter. He is a member of the boy band Blue and later played the role of Ryan Knight in the British soap opera Hollyoaks.
Lilia Osterloh, American tennis player
Lilia Osterloh is a former tennis player from the United States.
07/04/1977
Tama Canning, Australian-New Zealand cricketer
Tamahau Karangatukituki Canning is an Australian-born former New Zealand cricketer who played four One Day Internationals.
Karin Haydu, Slovak actress
Karin Haydu is a Slovak actress.
07/04/1976
Kevin Alejandro, American actor and producer
Kevin Michael Alejandro is an American actor and director. He has worked in TV since 2003, with some film credits.
Martin Buß, German high jumper
Martin Buß is a German high jumper who won the gold medal at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is a five-time outdoor national champion for Germany in the men's high jump event and three-time champion at the German Indoor Athletics Championships.
Jessica Lee, English lawyer and politician
Jessica Katherine Lee, Lady Harrington of Watford is a British former Conservative Party politician. She was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Erewash in Derbyshire in 2010. She served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, before stepping down for the 2015 general election.
Aaron Lohr, American actor
Aaron Lohr is an American actor.
Barbara Jane Reams, American actress
Barbara Jane Reams, is a former American television actress.
Gang Qiang, Chinese anchor
Gang Qiang is an anchor for China Central Television.
07/04/1975
Karin Dreijer Andersson, Swedish singer-songwriter and producer
Karin Elisabeth Dreijer is a Swedish singer-songwriter and record producer. Dreijer was one half of the electronic music duo the Knife, formed with their brother Olof Dreijer. They released their debut solo album under the alias Fever Ray in January 2009. Their second studio album, Plunge, under the same alias, was released in October 2017.
Ronde Barber, American football player and sportscaster
Jamael Orondé Barber is an American former professional football player who played 16 seasons in the National Football League (NFL) with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He played college football for the Virginia Cavaliers, earning third-team All-American honors twice. Barber played the cornerback position for the majority of his career and transitioned to safety for his final season.
Tiki Barber, American football player and journalist
Atiim Kiambu "Tiki" Barber Sr. is an American former professional football player who spent his entire 10-year career as a running back for the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Virginia Cavaliers. Barber was selected by the Giants in the second round of the 1997 NFL draft. He retired from the NFL at the end of the 2006 NFL postseason as the Giants' all-time rushing and reception leader. He is the only player in NFL history to have 10,000 rushing yards, 5,000 receiving yards, and 1,000 return yards. Barber was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.
Ronnie Belliard, American baseball player
Ronald Belliard is an American former professional baseball second baseman. He played 13 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1998 to 2010 for the Milwaukee Brewers, Colorado Rockies, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Cardinals, Washington Nationals and the Los Angeles Dodgers. He batted and threw right-handed. Belliard was born in The Bronx, New York.
John Cooper, American singer-songwriter and bass player
John Landrum Cooper is an American musician. He is the lead vocalist, bassist, and co-founder of Christian rock band Skillet. In addition, Cooper is the frontman of nu metal side project Fight the Fury.
Simon Woolford, Australian rugby league player
Simon Woolford is an Australian professional rugby league coach who was most recently the head coach of the Huddersfield Giants in the Super League, and a former professional rugby league footballer.
07/04/1973
Marco Delvecchio, Italian footballer
Marco Delvecchio is an Italian retired professional footballer who played as a forward. Although he played for several Italian clubs throughout his career, he spent most of it at Roma, where he is still remembered by the club's fans for his ease in scoring against rivals Lazio in the Derby della Capitale, and for the contributions he made to the club's league title victory in 2001. At international level, he represented Italy on 22 occasions between 1998 and 2004, scoring 4 goals, taking part at UEFA Euro 2000, reaching the final of the tournament, in which he scored, and at the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Dutch lawyer and politician, Dutch Minister of Defence
Jeanine Antoinette Hennis-Plasschaert is a Dutch politician and diplomat who has been serving as United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon since May 2024. She is a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
Carole Montillet, French skier
Carole Montillet-Carles is a French World Cup alpine ski racer and Olympic gold medalist.
Christian O'Connell, British radio DJ and presenter
Christian Liam O'Connell is an Australia-based British radio disc jockey (DJ), television host, writer and comedian.
Brett Tomko, American baseball player
Brett Daniel Tomko is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Oakland Athletics, Texas Rangers, and Kansas City Royals.
07/04/1972
Tim Peake, British astronaut
Major Timothy Nigel Peake is a retired British European Space Agency astronaut, Army Air Corps officer and author.
07/04/1971
Guillaume Depardieu, French actor (died 2008)
Guillaume Jean Maxime Antoine Depardieu was a French actor, winner of a César Award, and the oldest child of Gérard Depardieu.
Victor Kraatz, German-Canadian figure skater
Victor Kraatz, is a Canadian former ice dancer. In 2003, he and his partner, Shae-Lynn Bourne, became the first North American ice dancers to win a World Championship.
07/04/1970
Leif Ove Andsnes, Norwegian pianist and educator
Leif Ove Andsnes is a Norwegian pianist and chamber musician. Andsnes has made several recordings for Virgin and EMI. In 2012, he signed with Sony Classical, and recorded for the label the "Beethoven Journey" project, which included the five piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The works were recorded over three years, beginning with Nos. 1 and 3 in 2012, followed by Nos. 2 and 4 in 2013 and the Fifth Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy in 2014. He is represented by IMG.
Alexander Karpovtsev, Russian ice hockey player and coach (died 2011)
Alexander Georgievich Karpovtsev was a Russian ice hockey player and an assistant coach for Ak Bars Kazan and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). In the National Hockey League (NHL), he played for the New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Islanders, and Florida Panthers. He, Alexei Kovalev, Sergei Zubov and Sergei Nemchinov were the first Russian players to have their names engraved on the Stanley Cup, winning it in 1994 with the Rangers. He was traded by the Maple Leafs to the Blackhawks for Bryan McCabe after a contract dispute where Karpovstev was seeking a salary that would have made him the highest paid defender on the team.
07/04/1969
Ricky Watters, American football player
Richard James Watters is an American former professional football player who was a running back for the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, and Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL). Watters played college football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, where he was a wide receiver on the school's 1988 national champion team. In the NFL, he won a second championship in Super Bowl XXIX with the 49ers.
07/04/1968
Duncan Armstrong, Australian swimmer and sportscaster
Duncan John D'Arcy Armstrong is an Australian former competitive swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder. Armstrong is best remembered for winning a gold and silver medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics.
Jennifer Lynch, American director, producer, and screenwriter
Jennifer Chambers Lynch is an American filmmaker and author. The eldest child of filmmaker David Lynch, she made her directorial debut with the film Boxing Helena (1993), which was a critical and commercial failure; despite winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, it earned her a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director. The negative reception and controversy surrounding the film led to Lynch taking a 15-year hiatus from filmmaking.
Jože Možina, Slovenian historian, sociologist and journalist
Jože Možina is a Slovenian historian, sociologist and journalist. Jože Možina was born in 1968 in Šempeter pri Novi Gorici, Slovenia.
Vasiliy Sokov, Russian triple jumper
Vasiliy Viktorovich Sokov is a triple jumper who represented the USSR and later Russia.
07/04/1967
Artemis Gounaki, Greek-German singer-songwriter
Artemis Gounaki is a Greek-German singer, vocal coach, songwriter, composer, and arranger who has done much of her work in Greek. Gounaki's father was born on the Greek island of Crete.
Bodo Illgner, German footballer
Bodo Illgner is a German former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. During his career he played for 1. FC Köln and Real Madrid, and helped West Germany to the 1990 World Cup, where he became the first goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet in a World Cup final.
Simone Schilder, Dutch tennis player
Simone Schilder is a former Dutch tennis player. She won a total of two singles and eight doubles ITF titles in her career. On 4 July 1988, she reached a singles ranking high of world No. 164. On 14 August 1989, she peaked at No. 71 in the doubles rankings.
07/04/1966
Richard Gomez, Filipino actor and politician
Richard Frank Icasiano Gomez is a Filipino actor, TV host, politician, and épée fencer. He has been serving as the Representative of Leyte's 4th district since 2022, and was mayor of Ormoc from 2016 to 2022.
Zvika Hadar, Israeli entertainer
Zvika Hadar is an Israeli actor, comedian and television host.
Béla Mavrák, Hungarian tenor singer
Béla Mavrák is a Hungarian tenor singer.
Gary Wilkinson, English snooker player
Gary Wilkinson is an English former professional snooker player. He was the runner-up of the 1991 British Open, and twice a quarter-finalist at the World Snooker Championship. He was ranked fifth in the world during the 1991/1992 season.
07/04/1965
Bill Bellamy, American comedian, actor, and producer
William Bellamy is an American actor and stand-up comedian. Bellamy first gained national notoriety on HBO's Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam, where he is credited for creating or coining the phrase "booty call", described as a late night call to a potential paramour with the intention of meeting strictly for sex.
Rozalie Hirs, Dutch composer and poet
Rozalie Hirs is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music and a poet. The principal concerns of her work are the adventure of listening, reading, and the imagination.
Alison Lapper, English painter and photographer
Alison Lapper MBE is a British artist. She is the subject of the sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant, which was displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square from September 2005 until late 2007. She and her late son Parys featured in the BBC docuseries Child of Our Time.
Nenad Vučinić, Serbian-New Zealand basketball player and coach
Nenad Vučinić is a Serbian-New Zealand basketball coach and former player. He was once interim head coach for the Philippines men's national basketball team, with Chot Reyes replacing him in the following 2022 FIBA Asia Cup.
07/04/1964
Jace Alexander, American actor and director
Jason "Jace" Alexander is an American former actor and television director. In 2015, Alexander was arrested for the downloading and file sharing of child pornography, and later pleaded guilty to one count of promoting a sexual performance by a child and one count of possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child.
Russell Crowe, New Zealand-Australian actor
Russell Ira Crowe is an actor and film director. His work on screen has earned him various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a British Academy Film Award.
Steve Graves, Canadian ice hockey player
Stephen Graves is a Canadian former professional ice hockey left wing. He played 35 games in the National Hockey League with the Edmonton Oilers between 1983 and 1988.
07/04/1963
Jaime de Marichalar, Spanish businessman
Jaime de Marichalar y Sáenz, Lord of Tejada, is the former husband of the Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo, the eldest daughter of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain.
Nick Herbert, English businessman and politician, Minister for Policing
Nicholas Le Quesne Herbert, Baron Herbert of South Downs, is a British Conservative Party politician and was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Arundel and South Downs from 2005 to 2019. He was Minister of State for Police and Criminal Justice, with his time split between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, from 2010 to 2012. On 5 November 2019 he announced his decision not to stand for re-election in the 2019 general election. On 31 July 2020 Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Herbert would enter the House of Lords.
Dave Johnson, American decathlete and educator
David Allen Johnson is a former Olympic decathlete from the United States. A native of Montana, he grew up in Missoula and Corvallis, Oregon. He was part of Reebok's "Dan & Dave" advertising campaign, with fellow decathlete Dan O'Brien, leading up to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, where he won a bronze medal in the decathlon. After retiring from competitive athletics he became a school teacher and administrator, serving as athletic director of Corban University in Salem, Oregon starting in 2009. Johnson accepted a position as Director with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Oregon in June 2012. On November 14, 2012, Johnson resigned from Corban to devote more time to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He now coaches pole vault & hurdles at South Salem High School.
07/04/1962
Jon Cruddas, English lawyer and politician
Jonathan Cruddas is a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Dagenham and Rainham, formerly Dagenham, between 2001 and 2024.
Andrew Hampsten, American cyclist
Andrew Hampsten is an American former professional road bicycle racer who won the 1988 Giro d'Italia and the Alpe d'Huez stage of the 1992 Tour de France. Between 1986–1994 he finished in the Top 10 of eight Grand Tours.
07/04/1961
Thurl Bailey, American basketball player and actor
Thurl Lee Bailey Sr. is an American former professional basketball player. A power forward, his National Basketball Association (NBA) career spanned from 1983 to 1999 with the Utah Jazz and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Bailey has been a broadcast analyst for the Utah Jazz and the University of Utah— in addition to work as an inspirational speaker, singer, songwriter, and film actor. Bailey garnered the nickname "Big T" during his basketball career.
Pascal Olmeta, French footballer
Pascal Olmeta is a French former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper for Marseille and Lyon in the 1990s.
Brigitte van der Burg, Tanzanian-Dutch geographer and politician
Brigitte Ingrid van der Burg is a Dutch politician. As a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy she was an MP between 30 November 2006 and 23 March 2017. She focused on matters of the Dutch Royal House, local government finance, youth policy, organization of the Dutch government, consultancy and Kingdom relations.
07/04/1960
Buster Douglas, American boxer and actor
James "Buster" Douglas is an American former professional boxer who competed between 1981 and 1999. He reigned as undisputed world heavyweight champion in 1990 after defeating Mike Tyson in what is regarded as one of the greatest upsets in sports history.
Sandy Powell, English costume designer
Sandy Powell is a British costume designer. She has received numerous accolades, including three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Film Awards, and two Costume Designers Guild Awards. She has been honored with the Costume Designers Guild Career Achievement Award in 2010 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 2023. Powell was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2025.
07/04/1958
Brian Haner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
Brian Elwin Haner Sr., also known as Guitar Guy or Papa Gates, is an American musician, comedian, and author. Haner is known for touring with fellow stand-up comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, as in the 2008 Christmas program, Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special. He is also a noted session musician for Avenged Sevenfold, which his son, Brian Haner Jr., is the lead guitarist.
Hindrek Kesler, Estonian architect
Hindrek Kesler is an Estonian architect.
07/04/1957
Kim Kap-soo, South Korean actor
Kim Kap-soo is a South Korean actor. Since his acting debut in 1977, Kim has had a long career on the stage, in television dramas and film. In addition to acting full-time, he also has his own master class acting studio.
Thelma Walker, British politician
Thelma Doris Walker is a British politician, formerly the Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Colne Valley from 2017 to 2019. Before her political career, she worked as a teacher for 34 years and later as an independent consultant.
07/04/1956
Annika Billström, Swedish businesswoman and politician, 16th Mayor of Stockholm
Annika Billström is a Swedish politician. She was the first female mayor of Stockholm, serving between 2004 and 2006. She is a member of the Social Democrats.
Christopher Darden, American lawyer and author
Christopher Allen Darden is an American lawyer, author, and lecturer. He worked for 15 years in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, where he gained national attention as a co-prosecutor in the murder trial of O. J. Simpson.
Georg Werthner, Austrian decathlete
Dr. Georg Werthner is an Austrian decathlete. He is notable for being the first athlete to finish four Olympic decathlons. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Daley Thompson crossed the finish-line a little more than 18 seconds after him to become the second athlete to do this.
07/04/1955
Tim Cochran, American mathematician and academic (died 2014)
Thomas "Tim" Daniel Cochran was a professor of mathematics at Rice University specializing in topology, especially low-dimensional topology, the theory of knots and links and associated algebra.
Gregg Jarrett, American lawyer and journalist
Gregory Walter Jarrett is an American conservative news commentator, author and attorney. He joined Fox News in November 2002, after working at local NBC and ABC TV stations for over ten years, as well as national networks Court TV and MSNBC.
07/04/1954
Jackie Chan, Hong Kong martial artist, actor, stuntman, director, producer, and screenwriter
Chan Kong-sang, also known as Fang Shilong and known professionally as Jackie Chan and Sing Lung, is a Hong Kong martial artist, actor and filmmaker, known for his slapstick, acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, and innovative stunts, which he typically performs himself. With a film career spanning more than sixty years, he is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential martial artists in the history of cinema. Films in which he has appeared have grossed over $6 billion worldwide.
Tony Dorsett, American football player
Anthony Drew Dorsett Sr. is an American former professional football running back who played in the National Football League (NFL) for the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos.
07/04/1953
Santa Barraza, American mixed media artist
Santa Barraza is an American mixed-media artist and painter who is well known for her colorful, retablo style painting. A Chicana, Barraza pulls inspiration from her own mestiza ancestry and from pre-Columbian art. Barraza is considered to be an important artist in the Chicano art movement. The first scholarly treatment of a Chicana artist is about her and is called Santa Barraza, Artist of the Borderlands, which describes her life and body of work. Barraza's work is collected by the Mexic-Arte Museum, and other museums around the United States and internationally. She currently lives in Kingsville, Texas.
Douglas Kell, English biochemist and academic
Douglas Bruce Kell is a British biochemist and Professor of Systems Biology in the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Systems Biology, University of Liverpool part of the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool. He was previously at the School of Chemistry at the University of Manchester, based in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) where he founded and led the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology (MCISB). He served as chief executive officer (CEO) of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) from 2008 to 2013.
07/04/1952
David Baulcombe, English geneticist and academic
Sir David Charles Baulcombe is a British plant scientist and geneticist. As of October 2024 he was Head of Group, Gene Expression, in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and the Edward Penley Abraham Royal Society Research Professor and Regius Professor of Botany Emeritus at Cambridge. He held the Regius botany chair in that department from 2007 to 2020..
Jane Frederick, American hurdler and heptathlete
Jane Wardell Frederick is a former heptathlete from the United States who twice held the world record.
Gilles Valiquette, Canadian actor, singer, and producer
Gilles Valiquette is a Canadian rock musician, stage actor and record producer.
Dennis Hayden, American actor
Dennis Hayden is an American actor, producer and writer. He played Eddie, one of the main terrorists in the 1988 action film Die Hard.
07/04/1951
Bruce Gary, American drummer (died 2006)
Bruce Gary was an American musician who was best known as the drummer for the music group the Knack. He was nominated for two Grammy Awards as a stage performer, producer, and recording artist.
Janis Ian, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
Janis Ian is an American singer-songwriter who was most commercially successful in the 1960s and 1970s. Her signature songs are the 1966/67 hit "Society's Child " and the 1975 Top Ten single "At Seventeen", from her seventh studio album Between the Lines, which in September 1975 reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.
07/04/1950
Brian J. Doyle, American press secretary
Brian James Doyle is a former Deputy Press Secretary for the United States Department of Homeland Security. In 2006, he was indicted for seducing a 14-year-old girl, who was actually a sheriff's deputy working undercover, on the internet. He was arrested on April 4, 2006, at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Five months later, he pled no contest. On November 17, 2006, he was sentenced to five years in prison with ten years of probation, and he was registered as a sex offender. Doyle was incarcerated at Wakulla Correctional Institution Annex outside of Tallahassee, Florida. He was released from prison on January 15, 2011.
Neil Folberg, American-Israeli photographer
Neil Folberg is an American-Israeli photographer and gallerist.
07/04/1949
Mitch Daniels, American academic and politician, 49th Governor of Indiana
Mitchell Elias Daniels Jr. is an American former academic administrator, businessman, author, and retired politician. A Republican, he served as the 49th governor of Indiana from January 2005 to January 2013 and as the 12th president of Purdue University from January 2013 to December 2022 and will become the interim president of Purdue in July 2026 after the departure of Mung Chiang from the position.
07/04/1948
John Oates, American singer-songwriter guitarist, and producer
John William Oates is an American musician, best known as half of the rock and soul duo Hall & Oates along with Daryl Hall. He has played rock, R&B, and soul music, serving as a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer.
Arnie Robinson, American athlete (died 2020)
Arnie Paul Robinson Jr. was an American athlete. He won a bronze medal in the long jump at the 1972 Olympics and a gold medal in 1976.
Ecaterina Andronescu, Romanian politician
Ecaterina Andronescu is a Romanian engineer, professor, and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), she sat in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies from 1996 to 2008, representing Bucharest, and was a Senator from 2008 until 2020, for the same city. In the Adrian Năstase cabinet, she was Education Minister from 2000 until June 2003. She held the same position in the cabinet of Emil Boc from 2008 to 2009, in the Victor Ponta cabinet during 2012, and finally in the Viorica Dăncilă cabinet for under 9 months between November 2018 and August 2019. She is married and has one child.
07/04/1947
Patricia Bennett, American singer
The Chiffons were an American girl group originating from the Bronx, a borough of New York City, in 1960.
Florian Schneider, German singer and drummer (died 2020)
Florian Schneider-Esleben was a German musician. He is best known as one of the founding members and leaders of the electronic band Kraftwerk, performing his role with the band until his departure in 2008.
Michèle Torr, French singer and author
Michèle Torr is a French singer and author, best known in non-Francophone countries for her participation in the Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg in 1966 and for Monaco in 1977.
07/04/1946
Zaid Abdul-Aziz, American basketball player
Zaid Abdul-Aziz is an American former professional basketball player. He was known as Don Smith until he changed his name when he converted to Islam in 1976.
Colette Besson, French runner and educator (died 2005)
Colette Besson was a French athlete, the surprise winner of the 400 m at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
Herménégilde Chiasson, Canadian poet, playwright, and politician, 29th Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick
Herménégilde Chiasson is a Canadian poet, playwright and visual artist of Acadian origin. Born in Saint-Simon, New Brunswick, he was the 29th Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick between 2003 and 2009. He is also currently a professor at Université de Moncton.
Robert Metcalfe, American engineer and entrepreneur
Robert "Bob" Melancton Metcalfe is an American engineer and entrepreneur who contributed to the development of the internet in the 1970s. He co-invented Ethernet, co-founded 3Com, and formulated Metcalfe's law, which describes the effect of a telecommunications network. Metcalfe has also made several predictions which failed to come to pass, including forecasting the demise of the internet during the 1990s.
Dimitrij Rupel, Slovenian politician and diplomat
Dimitrij Rupel is a Slovenian politician.
Stan Winston, American special effects designer and makeup artist (died 2008)
Stanley Winston was an American television and film special make-up effects artist, best known for his work in the Terminator series, the first three Jurassic Park films, Aliens, The Thing, the first two Predator films, Inspector Gadget, Iron Man, and Edward Scissorhands. He won four Academy Awards for his work.
07/04/1945
Megas, Icelandic singer-songwriter
Magnús Þór Jónsson, better known by the stage name Megas, is an Icelandic vocalist, songwriter, and writer.
Gerry Cottle, English circus owner (died 2021)
Gerald Ward Cottle was a British circus owner and the owner of the Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset. He presented the Moscow State Circus and Chinese State Circus in Britain, founded Gerry Cottle's Circus, and co-founded The Circus of Horrors.
Marilyn Friedman, American philosopher and academic
Marilyn Ann Friedman is an American philosopher. She holds the W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
Martyn Lewis, Welsh journalist and author
Sir Martyn John Dudley Lewis is a Welsh television news presenter and broadcast journalist who anchored ITN news bulletins between 1978 and 1986 and BBC News television shows from 1986 to 1999. Lewis attended Dalriada School and Trinity College, Dublin, before working as a freelance correspondent for BBC Northern Ireland and Harlech Television (HTV). He joined ITN in 1970 and headed its Northern Bureau from 1971 to 1978. Between 1978 and 1986, Lewis was an anchor for ITN's News at 5.45 and half-hour News at Ten bulletins, writing stories for the "And finally..." segment that features positive stories at the end of each News at Ten programme.
Joël Robuchon, French chef and author (died 2018)
Joël Robuchon was a French chef and restaurateur. He was named "Chef of the Century" by the guide Gault Millau in 1989, and awarded the Meilleur Ouvrier de France in cuisine in 1976. He published several cookbooks, two of which have been translated into English, chaired the committee for the Larousse Gastronomique, and hosted culinary television shows in France. He operated more than a dozen restaurants across Bangkok, Bordeaux, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, London, Macau, Madrid, Monaco, Montreal, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo, and New York City. His restaurants have been acclaimed, and he held 31 Michelin Guide stars among them by the time of his death in 2018, the most any restaurateur has ever held. He is considered to be one of the greatest chefs of all time.
Werner Schroeter, German director and screenwriter (died 2010)
Werner Schroeter was a German film director, screenwriter, and opera director known for his stylistic excess. Schroeter was cited by Rainer Werner Fassbinder as an influence both on his own work and on German cinema at large.
Hans van Hemert, Dutch songwriter and producer (died 2024)
Hans van Hemert was a Dutch record producer and songwriter. Mouth and MacNeal and Luv' are among the pop acts he produced. He won an ASCAP award for the song "How Do You Do" by Mouth and MacNeal. and composed three songs for the Eurovision Song Contest.
07/04/1944
Shel Bachrach, American insurance broker, investor, businessman and philanthropist (died 2024)
Sheldon Jay Bachrach was an American insurance broker, investor, businessman, and philanthropist.
Warner Fusselle, American sportscaster (died 2012)
Warner Fusselle was an American sportscaster remembered for contributions to the television shows This Week in Baseball and Major League Baseball Magazine, and for his memorable Southern voice. He was an announcer for several Minor League Baseball teams such as the Spartanburg Phillies, Richmond Braves, and the Brooklyn Cyclones from 2001 until his death from a heart attack at age 68. He was also a radio broadcaster for the Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association until they folded operations in 1976.
Oshik Levi, Israeli singer and actor
Osher "Oshik" Levi is an Israeli singer, actor, and entertainer.
Julia Phillips, American film producer and author (died 2002)
Julia Phillips was an American film producer and author. She co-produced with her husband Michael three prominent films of the 1970s—The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—and was the first female producer to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, received for The Sting.
Gerhard Schröder, German lawyer and politician, 7th Chancellor of Germany
Gerhard Fritz Kurt "Gerd" Schröder is a German former politician and lobbyist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. From 1999 to 2004, he was also the Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). As chancellor, he led a coalition government of the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens. Since leaving public office, Schröder has worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom.
Bill Stoneman, American baseball player and manager
William Hambly Stoneman III is an American former professional baseball player and executive who, during his eight-year (1967–1974) pitching career in Major League Baseball, threw two no-hitters; then, as general manager of the Anaheim Angels (1999–2007), presided over the franchise's first-ever World Series championship in 2002. He later served briefly as the Angels' interim general manager from July 1 to October 4 of 2015.
07/04/1943
Mick Abrahams, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2025)
Michael Timothy Abrahams was an English musician, best known for being the original guitarist for Jethro Tull from 1967 to 1968 and the leader of Blodwyn Pig.
Dennis Amiss, English cricketer and manager
Dennis Leslie Amiss is a former English cricketer and cricket administrator. He played for both Warwickshire and England. Amiss is known for scoring the first ever century in ODI history, which was also his debut match. A right-handed batsman, he was a stroke maker particularly through extra cover and midwicket – his two favourite areas to score runs. He was an accomplished batsman in all forms of the game. He averaged 42.86 in first-class, 35.06 in List-A, 46.30 in Tests and 47.72 in One Day Internationals. In first-class cricket he scored 102 centuries, and his England record amassed over 50 Tests ranks him with the best England has produced.
07/04/1942
Jeetendra, Indian actor, TV and film producer
Ravi Kapoor, publicly known as Jeetendra is an Indian actor who is known for his work in Hindi cinema. He is regarded as one of the greatest stars of Hindi cinema. He is noted for his acting, style and dance. He has worked in more than 200 films in a career spanning over six decades.
07/04/1941
James Di Pasquale, American composer
James Di Pasquale is an American musician and composer of contemporary classical music and music for television and films.
Peter Fluck, English puppet maker and illustrator
Peter Nigel Fluck is a British caricaturist and one half of the partnership known as Luck and Flaw, creators of the popular satirical TV puppet show Spitting Image.
Cornelia Frances, English-Australian actress (died 2018)
Cornelia Frances Zulver,, credited professionally as Cornelia Frances, was an English-Australian actress. After starting her career in small cameos in films in her native England, she became best known for her acting career in Australia after emigrating there in the 1960s, particularly her iconic television soap opera roles with portrayals of nasty characters.
Gorden Kaye, English actor (died 2017)
Gordon Irving Kaye, known professionally as Gorden Kaye, was an English actor. He was best known for playing womanising café owner René Artois in the television comedy series 'Allo 'Allo!.
07/04/1940
Marju Lauristin, Estonian academic and politician, 1st Estonian Minister of Social Affairs
Marju Lauristin is an Estonian politician, and former Member of the European Parliament and Minister of Social Affairs. She is a member of the Social Democratic Party, part of the Party of European Socialists. Lauristin is currently a member of the Tartu city council.
07/04/1939
Francis Ford Coppola, American director, producer, and screenwriter
Francis Ford Coppola is an American filmmaker. One of the leading figures of the New Hollywood, Coppola is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. His accolades include five Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Palmes d'Or, in addition to nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award. Coppola was also honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2010, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2024, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2025. Four of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
David Frost, English journalist and game show host (died 2013)
Sir David Paradine Frost was an English television host, journalist, comedian, and writer. He rose to prominence during the satire boom in the United Kingdom when he was chosen to host the satirical programme That Was the Week That Was in 1962. His success on this show led to work as a host on American television.
Gary Kellgren, American record producer, co-founded Record Plant (died 1977)
Gary Kellgren was an American audio engineer and co-founder of The Record Plant recording studios, along with businessman Chris Stone.
Brett Whiteley, Australian painter (died 1992)
Brett Whiteley was an Australian artist. He is represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries, and was twice winner of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes. He held many exhibitions, and lived and painted in Australia as well as Italy, the United Kingdom, Fiji and the United States.
07/04/1938
Jerry Brown, American lawyer and politician, 34th and 39th Governor of California
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected secretary of state of California in 1970; Brown later served as the mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007 and the attorney general of California from 2007 to 2011. He was both the oldest and sixth-youngest governor of California due to the 28-year gap between his second and third terms. Upon completing his fourth term in office, Brown became the fourth-longest-serving governor in U.S. history, serving 16 years and 5 days in office.
Spencer Dryden, American drummer (died 2005)
Spencer Charles Dryden was an American musician best known as the drummer for Jefferson Airplane and New Riders of the Purple Sage. He also played with Dinosaurs, and the Ashes. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Jefferson Airplane.
Freddie Hubbard, American trumpet player and composer (died 2008)
Frederick Dewayne Hubbard was an American jazz trumpeter. He played bebop, hard bop, and post-bop styles from the early 1960s onwards. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives for modern jazz and bebop.
Iris Johansen, American author
Iris Johansen is an American writer of crime fiction, suspense fiction, and romance novels.
07/04/1937
Charlie Thomas, American singer (died 2023)
Charles Nowlin Thomas was an American singer best known for his work with The Drifters. Thomas was performing with The Five Crowns at the Apollo Theater in 1958 when George Treadwell fired his group, called The Drifters. Treadwell recruited the Five Crowns to become the new Drifters.
07/04/1935
Bobby Bare, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
Robert Joseph Bare Sr. is an American country music singer and songwriter, best known for the songs "Marie Laveau", "Detroit City", and "500 Miles Away from Home". He is the father of Bobby Bare Jr., also a musician.
Hodding Carter III, American journalist and politician, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs (died 2023)
William Hodding Carter III was an American journalist and politician who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs under President Jimmy Carter. He frequently appeared on the news and provided updates during the Iran hostage crisis.
07/04/1934
Ian Richardson, Scottish-English actor (died 2007)
Ian William Richardson CBE was a Scottish actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Conservative politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC's House of Cards (1990–1995) television trilogy, as well as the pivotal spy Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979). His other notable screen work included a portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in two films, as well as significant roles in Brazil, M. Butterfly, and Dark City.
07/04/1933
Wayne Rogers, American actor, investor, and producer (died 2015)
William Wayne McMillan Rogers III was an American actor, known for playing the roles of Captain "Trapper" John McIntyre in the CBS television series M*A*S*H and of Dr. Charley Michaels on House Calls (1979–1982).
Sakıp Sabancı, Turkish businessman and philanthropist (died 2004)
Sakıp Sabancı was a Turkish business tycoon and philanthropist.
07/04/1932
Cal Smith, American singer and guitarist (died 2013)
Calvin Grant Shofner, known professionally as Cal Smith, was an American country musician.
07/04/1931
Donald Barthelme, American short story writer and novelist (died 1989)
Donald Barthelme Jr. was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, was managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1961–1962), co-founder of Fiction, and a professor at various universities. He also was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.
Daniel Ellsberg, American activist and author (died 2023)
Daniel Ellsberg was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
Ted Kotcheff, Canadian film and television director (died 2025)
William Theodore Kotcheff was a Canadian director and producer of film, television, and theatre. He worked at various times in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He was known for having directed such films as the seminal Australian New Wave picture Wake in Fright (1971), the Mordecai Richler adaptations The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) and Joshua Then and Now (1985), the original Rambo film First Blood (1982), and the comedies Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), North Dallas Forty (1979), and Weekend at Bernie's (1989).
07/04/1930
Jane Priestman, English interior designer (died 2021)
Jane Priestman OBE was a British designer who worked in design and architecture. She was appointed an OBE in 1991 for her work in design and an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University in 1998.
Yves Rocher, French businessman, founded the Yves Rocher Company (died 2009)
Yves Rocher was a French businessman and founder of the cosmetics company that bears his name. He was a pioneer of the modern use of natural ingredients in cosmetics.
Andrew Sachs, German-English actor and screenwriter (died 2016)
Andreas Siegfried Sachs, known professionally as Andrew Sachs, was a German-born British actor. He made his name on British television and found his greatest fame for his portrayal of the comical Spanish waiter Manuel in Fawlty Towers.
Roger Vergé, French chef and restaurateur (died 2015)
Roger Vergé was a French chef and restaurateur. The Gault Millau described him as "the very incarnation of the great French chef for foreigners".
07/04/1929
Bob Denard, French soldier (died 2007)
Robert Denard was a French mercenary. He served as the de facto military leader of the Comoros twice with him first serving from 13 May 1978 to 15 December 1989 and again briefly from 28 September to 5 October in 1995. Sometimes known under the aliases Gilbert Bourgeaud and Saïd Mustapha Mhadjou, he was known for having performed various jobs in support of Françafrique—France's sphere of influence in its former colonies in Africa—for Jacques Foccart, co-ordinator of President Charles de Gaulle's African policy.
Joe Gallo, American gangster (died 1972)
Joseph Gallo, also known as "Crazy Joe", was an American mobster and captain in the Colombo crime family of New York City.
07/04/1928
James Garner, American actor, singer, and producer (died 2014)
James Scott Garner was an American actor. He played leading roles in more than fifty theatrical films, including The Great Escape (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Victor/Victoria (1982), and Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He also starred on television in Maverick and The Rockford Files.
Alan J. Pakula, American director, producer, and screenwriter (died 1998)
Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Associated with the New Hollywood movement, his best-known works include his critically acclaimed "paranoia trilogy": the neo-noir mystery Klute (1971), the conspiracy thriller The Parallax View (1974), and the Watergate scandal drama All the President's Men (1976). His other notable films included Comes a Horseman (1978), Starting Over (1979), Sophie's Choice (1982), Presumed Innocent (1990), and The Pelican Brief (1993).
James White, Northern Irish author and educator (died 1999)
James White was a Northern Irish author of science fiction. He was born in Belfast and returned there after spending some early years in Canada. After a few years working in the clothing industry, he worked at Short Brothers Ltd., an aircraft company based in Belfast, from 1965 until taking early retirement in 1984 as a result of diabetes. White married Margaret Sarah Martin, another science fiction fan, in 1955 and the couple had three children. He died of a stroke.
07/04/1927
Babatunde Olatunji, Nigerian-American drummer, educator, and activist (died 2003)
Michael Babatunde Olatunji was a Nigerian drummer, educator, social activist, and recording artist.
Leonid Shcherbakov, Russian triple jumper (died 2004)
Leonid Mikhailovich Shcherbakov (Russian: Леонид Михайлович Щербаков, was a Russian retired triple jumper who won a silver medal at the 1952 Olympics. He broke the world record in 1953 and won the European title in 1950 and 1954. Domestically he won eight consecutive Soviet titles in 1949–56.
07/04/1925
Chaturanan Mishra, Indian trade union leader and politician (died 2011)
Chaturanan Mishra was an Indian politician and trade unionist. Mishra, who was born in Nahar, Madhubani District, was a key leader of the Communist Party of India in Bihar, and served as the Agriculture Minister of India in the United Front government.
Jan van Roessel, Dutch footballer (died 2011)
Jan van Roessel was a Dutch footballer who played as a forward.
07/04/1924
Johannes Mario Simmel, Austrian-English author and screenwriter (died 2009)
Johannes Mario Simmel, also known as J. M. Simmel, was an Austrian writer.
07/04/1922
Mongo Santamaría, Cuban-American drummer (died 2003)
Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez was a Cuban percussionist and bandleader who spent most of his career in the United States. Primarily a conga drummer, Santamaría was a leading figure in the pachanga and boogaloo dance crazes of the 1960s. His biggest hit was his rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man", which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. From the 1970s, he recorded mainly salsa and Latin jazz, before retiring in the late 1990s.
07/04/1921
Feza Gürsey, Turkish mathematician and physicist (died 1992)
Feza Gürsey was a Turkish mathematician and physicist. Among his contributions to theoretical physics, his work on the chiral model and on SU(6) symmetry of the quark model are the most well-known.
07/04/1920
Ravi Shankar, Indian-American sitar player and composer (died 2012)
Pandit Ravi Shankar was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known exponent of Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. He is also the father of American singer Norah Jones and British-American musician and sitar player Anoushka Shankar.
07/04/1919
Roger Lemelin, Canadian author and screenwriter (died 1992)
Roger Lemelin, was a Quebec novelist, television writer and essayist.
Edoardo Mangiarotti, Italian fencer (died 2012)
Edoardo Mangiarotti was an Italian fencer. He won a total of 39 Olympic and World championship medals, more than any other fencer in the history of the sport. His Olympic medals include one individual gold, five team golds, five silver, and two bronze medals from 1936 to 1960, making him the second-most decorated Italian Olympian of all time and the twelfth-most decorated Olympian of all time.
07/04/1918
Bobby Doerr, American baseball player and coach (died 2017)
Robert Pershing Doerr was an American professional baseball second baseman and coach. He played his entire 14-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career for the Boston Red Sox (1937–1951). A nine-time MLB All-Star, Doerr batted over .300 three times, drove in more than 100 runs six times, and set Red Sox team records in several statistical categories despite missing one season due to military service during World War II. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1986.
07/04/1917
R. G. Armstrong, American actor and playwright (died 2012)
Robert Golden Armstrong Jr. was an American character actor and playwright. A veteran performer who appeared in dozens of Westerns during his 40-year career, he may be best remembered for his work with director Sam Peckinpah.
07/04/1916
Anthony Caruso, American actor (died 2003)
Anthony Caruso was an American character actor in more than one hundred American films. He was known for his villains and gangsters, including the first season of Walt Disney's Zorro as Captain Juan Ortega, and in numerous films noirs.
07/04/1915
Stanley Adams, American actor and screenwriter (died 1977)
Stanley Adams was an American actor and screenwriter. He appeared in several films, including Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Lilies of the Field (1963). On television, he is probably best known for his guest appearance in the 1967 Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" and the 1973 Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles" in which he portrayed outer space peddler Cyrano Jones, purveyor of tribbles. Concurrent with his acting career, Adams also maintained a career as a freelance television scriptwriter from the mid-1950s through the early 70s, writing for shows such as It's Always Jan, Mister Ed, Dr. Kildare, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Star Trek, The Outsider, The Flying Nun, Mannix, The Name of the Game, and others. Although he did appear in guest roles in many of these series, Adams generally did not appear as an actor in episodes he wrote.
Billie Holiday, American singer-songwriter and actress (died 1959)
Billie Holiday was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made significant contributions to jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, inspired a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.
Henry Kuttner, American author (died 1958)
Henry Kuttner was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror.
07/04/1914
Ralph Flanagan, American pianist, composer, and conductor (died 1995)
Ralph Elias Flenniken, known professionally as Ralph Flanagan, was an American big band leader, pianist, composer, and arranger for the orchestras of Hal McIntyre, Sammy Kaye, Blue Barron, Charlie Barnet, and Alvino Rey.
Domnitsa Lanitou-Kavounidou, Greek sprinter (died 2011)
Domnitsa Lanitou-Kavounidou was a Greek sprinter. She competed in the women's 100 metres at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
07/04/1913
Louise Currie, American actress (died 2013)
Louise Currie was an American film actress, active from 1940 into the early 1950s.
Charles Vanik, American soldier, judge, and politician (died 2007)
Charles Albert Vanik was a Democratic politician from Ohio. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1955 to 1981.
07/04/1910
Melissanthi, Greek poet, teacher and journalist (died 1990)
Melissanthi was the pen name used by Eve Chougia-Skandalaki, a Greek poet, teacher and journalist. Some sources say that she died in 1990. Her first name also appears as Ivi or Hebe; her surname also appears as Koúyia or Koughia.
07/04/1909
Robert Charroux, French author and critic (died 1978)
Robert Charroux was the best-known pen-name of Robert Joseph Grugeau. He was a French author known for his writings on the ancient astronaut theme.
07/04/1908
Percy Faith, Canadian composer, conductor, and bandleader (died 1976)
Percy Faith was a Canadian-American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of instrumental ballads and Christmas standards. He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format. He became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. Although his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the swing era, he refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s.
Pete Zaremba, American hammer thrower (died 1994)
Peter Timothy Zaremba was an American athlete who competed mainly in the hammer throw. He was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area steel town of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. He competed for the United States in the 1932 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, United States in the hammer throw where he won the bronze medal. He graduated from NYU with an engineering degree.
07/04/1904
Roland Wilson, Australian economist and statistician (died 1996)
Sir Roland Wilson was a senior Australian public servant and economist.
07/04/1903
M. Balasundaram, Sri Lankan lawyer and politician (died 1965)
Murugesu Balasundaram was a Ceylon Tamil lawyer, politician and Member of Parliament.
Edwin T. Layton, American admiral (died 1984)
Edwin Thomas Layton was a rear admiral in the United States Navy. Layton is most noted for his work as an intelligence officer before and during World War II. He was the father of the historian Edwin T. Layton, Jr.
07/04/1902
Eduard Eelma, Estonian footballer (died 1941)
Eduard Eelma until 1937 Eduard-Vilhelm Ellmann, was an Estonian footballer — one of the most famous before World War II. He played 60 times for Estonia national football team and with 21 goals, was their record goalscorer during the country's first period of independence.
07/04/1900
Adolf Dymsza, Polish actor (died 1975)
Adolf Dymsza was a Polish comedy actor of both the pre-World War II and post-war eras. He starred in both theatre and film productions, mainly before World War II. He and Kazimierz Krukowski performed as the duo Lopek and Florek in kleynkunst productions at Qui Pro Quo and other noted Warsaw cabarets. Another pseudonym was "Dodek." He was arguably the most popular Polish comic actor of the 1930s, Andrzej Wajda remarked once, that for him Dymsza and Eugeniusz Bodo were symbols of pre-war Polish cinema in general. To this day he is considered the king of Polish film comedy.
Tebbs Lloyd Johnson, English race walker (died 1984)
Terence Lloyd "Tebbs Lloyd" Johnson was a British speed-walker.
07/04/1899
Robert Casadesus, French pianist and composer (died 1972)
Robert Marcel Casadesus was a French pianist and composer. He was the most prominent member of a distinguished musical family, being the nephew of Henri Casadesus and Marius Casadesus, husband of Gaby Casadesus, and father of Jean Casadesus.
07/04/1897
Erich Löwenhardt, Polish-German lieutenant and pilot (died 1918)
Oberleutnant Erich Loewenhardt was a German soldier and military aviator who fought in the First World War and became a fighter ace credited with 54 confirmed aerial victories. Originally enlisting in an infantry regiment even though he was only 17, he fought in the Battle of Tannenberg, winning a battlefield commission on 2 October 1914. He would serve in the Carpathians and on the Italian Front before being medically discharged in mid-1915. Following a five month recuperation, Loewenhardt joined the Imperial German Air Service in 1916. After serving as an aerial observer and reconnaissance pilot, he underwent advanced training to become a fighter pilot with Jagdstaffel 10 in March 1917. Between 24 March 1917 and 10 August 1918, Loewenhardt shot down 45 enemy airplanes, as well as destroying nine observation balloons. Shortly after his final victory, he was killed in a collision with another German pilot.
Walter Winchell, American journalist and radio host (died 1972)
Walter Winchell was an American syndicated newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator. Originally a vaudeville performer, Winchell began his newspaper career as a Broadway reporter, critic and columnist for New York tabloids. He rose to national celebrity in the 1930s with Hearst newspaper chain syndication and a popular radio program. He was known for an innovative style of gossipy staccato news briefs, jokes, and Jazz Age slang. Biographer Neal Gabler said that his popularity and influence "turned journalism into a form of entertainment".
07/04/1896
Frits Peutz, Dutch architect, designed the Glaspaleis (died 1974)
F.P.J. Peutz was a Dutch architect.
07/04/1895
John Bernard Flannagan, American soldier and sculptor (died 1942)
John Bernard Flannagan was an American sculptor. Along with Robert Laurent and William Zorach, he is known as one of the first practitioners of direct carving in the United States.
Margarete Schön, German actress (died 1985)
Margarete Schön was a German stage and film actress whose career spanned nearly fifty years. She is internationally recognized for her role as Kriemhild in director Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen series of two silent fantasy films, Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge.
07/04/1893
José Sobral de Almada Negreiros, Portuguese artist (died 1970)
José Sobral de Almada Negreiros, usually known as Almada Negreiros, was a Portuguese artist. He was born in the colony of Portuguese São Tomé and Príncipe, the son of a Portuguese father, António Lobo de Almada Negreiros, and a Santomean mother, Elvira Freire Sobral. Besides literature and painting, Almada developed ballet choreographies, and worked on tapestry, engraving, murals, caricature, mosaic, azulejo and stained glass.
Allen Dulles, American lawyer and diplomat, 5th Director of Central Intelligence (died 1969)
Allen Welsh Dulles was an American lawyer who was the first civilian director of central intelligence (DCI), and its longest serving director. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw numerous activities, such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the Project MKUltra mind control program, and the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. As a result of the failed invasion of Cuba, Dulles was forced to resign by President John F. Kennedy and was replaced with John McCone for the remainder of the Kennedy administration.
07/04/1892
Julius Hirsch, German footballer (died 1945)
Julius Hirsch was a German international footballer. A Jew, he was executed at Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust. He helped the Karlsruher FV win the 1910 German football championship, and also played for the Germany national team, including at the 1912 Summer Olympics. He then joined SpVgg Fürth, with whom he won the 1914 German football championship.
07/04/1891
Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish businessman, founded the Lego Group (died 1958)
Ole Kirk Christiansen was a Danish carpenter. In 1932, he founded the construction toy company Lego, later known as the Lego Group. Christiansen transformed his small woodworking shop, which initially sold household products, into a manufacturer of wooden toys. By 1934, he had officially named the company Lego and established its fundamental principles. The business shifted to producing plastic bricks after the acquisition of a plastic moulding injection machine in 1947. Following his death in 1958, the company's management was handed over to his son, Godtfred.
07/04/1890
Paul Berth, Danish footballer (died 1969)
Paul Ludvig Laurits Berth was a Danish amateur Association football player, who played 26 games and scored one goal for the Denmark national team, with whom he won a silver medal at the 1912 Summer Olympics.
Victoria Ocampo, Argentine writer (died 1979)
Ramona Victoria Epifanía Rufina Ocampo was an Argentine writer and intellectual. Best known as an advocate for others and as publisher of the literary magazine Sur, she was also a writer and critic in her own right and one of the most prominent South American women of her time. Her sister was Silvina Ocampo, also a writer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 and 1974.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas, American journalist and activist (died 1998)
Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an American journalist, author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over one hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring (1962). Her books, stories, and journalism career brought her influence in Miami, enabling her to advance her causes.
07/04/1889
Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1957)
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral, was a Chilean poet-diplomat, journalist and educator. She read widely in theosophy, became a member of the Secular Franciscan Order or Third Franciscan order in 1925, but rarely attended mass. She was the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world". Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences. She also wrote an immense body of prose, about 800 articles that circulated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, on a range of topics: geography, education, profiles of her fellow writers, politics, and more. Her image is featured on the 5,000 Chilean peso banknote.
07/04/1886
Ed Lafitte, American baseball player and soldier (died 1971)
Edward Francis Lafitte was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball who played with the Detroit Tigers (1909–12), Brooklyn Tip-Tops (1914–15), and Buffalo Blues (1915). Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, at his family's home located at 319 Bourbon Street, he batted and threw right-handed.
07/04/1884
Clement Smoot, American golfer (died 1963)
Clement Eyer Smoot was an American golfer who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics.
07/04/1883
Gino Severini, Italian-French painter and author (died 1966)
Gino Severini was an Italian painter and a leading member of the Futurist movement. For much of his life, he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with neo-classicism and the "return to order" in the decade after the First World War. During his career, he worked in a variety of media, including mosaic and fresco. He showed his work at major exhibitions, including the Rome Quadrennial, and won art prizes from major institutions.
07/04/1882
Bert Ironmonger, Australian cricketer (died 1971)
Herbert Ironmonger was an Australian cricketer. He played Test cricket from 1928 to 1933, playing his last Test at the age of 50. He is the second-oldest Test cricketer.
Kurt von Schleicher, German general and politician, 23rd Chancellor of Germany (died 1934)
Kurt Ferdinand Friedrich Hermann von Schleicher was a German military officer and the penultimate chancellor of Germany during the Weimar Republic. A rival for power with Adolf Hitler, Schleicher was assassinated by Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS) during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.
07/04/1876
Fay Moulton, American sprinter, football player, coach, and lawyer (died 1945)
Fay R. Moulton was an American Olympic sprinter, college football player and coach, and lawyer. He served as the fifth head football coach at Kansas State Agricultural College, holding the position for one season in 1900 and compiling a record of 2–4. Moulton medaled as a sprinter at the 1904 Summer Olympics and the 1906 Intercalated Games.
07/04/1874
Frederick Carl Frieseke, German-American painter (died 1939)
Frederick Carl Frieseke was an American Impressionist painter who spent most of his life as an expatriate in France. An influential member of the Giverny art colony, his paintings often concentrated on various effects of dappled sunlight.
07/04/1873
John McGraw, American baseball player and manager (died 1934)
John Joseph McGraw was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player and manager who was for almost thirty years manager of the New York Giants. He was also the third baseman of the pennant-winning 1890s Baltimore Orioles teams, noted for their innovative, aggressive play.
07/04/1871
Epifanio de los Santos, Filipino jurist, historian, and scholar (died 1927)
Epifanio de los Santos y Cristóbal, also known as Don Pañong or Don Panyong, was a notable Filipino historian, journalist, and civil servant. He was regarded by some as one of the best Filipino writers of his time.
07/04/1870
Gustav Landauer, German theorist and activist (died 1919)
Gustav Landauer was a German anarchist writer and revolutionary. As one of the leading theorists of anarchism in Germany at the turn of the 20th century, he advocated a form of libertarian socialism that rejected both capitalism and Marxist historical materialism. Landauer's philosophy synthesized anarchism with romanticism, mysticism, and a non-racist, communitarian interpretation of völkisch thought, emphasizing spiritual renewal and the creation of decentralized, autonomous communities. He briefly served as Commissioner for Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 before he was assassinated by Freikorps soldiers.
07/04/1867
Holger Pedersen, Danish linguist and academic (died 1953)
Holger Pedersen was a Danish linguist who made significant contributions to language science and wrote about thirty authoritative works concerning several languages. He was born in Gelballe, Denmark, and died in Hellerup, next to Copenhagen.
07/04/1860
Will Keith Kellogg, American businessman, founded the Kellogg Company (died 1951)
Will Keith Kellogg was an American industrialist in food manufacturing, who founded the Kellogg Company, which produces a wide variety of popular breakfast cereals. He was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and practiced vegetarianism as a dietary principle taught by his church. He also founded the Kellogg Arabian Ranch, which breeds Arabian horses. Kellogg was a philanthropist and started the Kellogg Foundation in 1934 with a $66-million donation.
07/04/1859
Walter Camp, American football player and coach (died 1925)
Walter Chauncey Camp was an American college football player and coach, and sports writer known as the "Father of American Football". Among a long list of inventions, he created the sport's line of scrimmage and the system of downs. With John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner, Fielding H. Yost, Curly Lambeau, and George Halas, Camp was one of the most accomplished persons in the early history of American football. He attended Yale College, where he played and coached college football. Camp's Yale teams of 1888, 1891, and 1892 have been recognized as national champions. Camp was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach during 1951.
07/04/1848
Randall Davidson, Scottish archbishop (died 1930)
Randall Thomas Davidson, 1st Baron Davidson of Lambeth, was an Anglican bishop who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1903 to 1928. He was the longest-serving holder of the office since the Reformation, and the first to retire from it.
07/04/1817
Francesco Selmi, Italian chemist and patriot (died 1881)
Francesco Selmi was an Italian chemist and patriot, one of the founders of colloid chemistry.
07/04/1811
Hasan Tahsini, Albanian astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher (died 1881)
Hoxhë Hasan Tahsini or simply Hoxha Tahsim was an Albanian alim, astronomer, mathematician and philosopher. He was the first rector of Istanbul University and one of the founders of the Central Committee for Defending Albanian Rights. Tahsini is regarded as one of the most prominent scholars of the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century.
07/04/1803
James Curtiss, American journalist and politician, 11th Mayor of Chicago (died 1859)
James Curtiss was an American politician who twice served as Mayor of Chicago, Illinois for the Democratic Party.
Flora Tristan, French author and activist (died 1844)
Flore Célestine Thérèse Henriette Tristán y Moscoso, better known as Flora Tristan, was a French-Peruvian writer and socialist activist. She made important contributions to early feminist theory. She argued that the progress of women's rights was directly related to the progress of the working class. She wrote several works, the best known of which are Peregrinations of a Pariah (1838), Promenades in London (1840), and The Workers' Union (1843). Tristan was the grandmother of the painter Paul Gauguin.
07/04/1780
William Ellery Channing, American preacher and theologian (died 1842)
William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton (1786–1853), one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. Channing was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. His religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists although he never countenanced their views, which he saw as extreme. His espousal of the developing philosophy and theology of Unitarianism was displayed especially in his "Baltimore Sermon" of May 5, 1819, given at the ordination of the theologian and educator Jared Sparks (1789–1866) as the first minister of the newly organized First Independent Church of Baltimore.
07/04/1772
Charles Fourier, French philosopher (died 1837)
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker, and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of his views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become mainstream in modern society. For instance, Fourier is credited with having originated the word feminism in 1837.
07/04/1770
William Wordsworth, English poet (died 1850)
William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
07/04/1763
Domenico Dragonetti, Italian bassist and composer (died 1846)
Domenico Carlo Maria Dragonetti was an Italian double bass virtuoso and composer with a three string double bass. He stayed for thirty years in his hometown of Venice, Republic of Venice and worked at the Opera Buffa, at the Chapel of San Marco and at the Grand Opera in Vicenza. By that time he had become notable throughout Europe and had turned down several opportunities, including offers from the Tsar of Russia. In 1794, he finally moved to London to play in the orchestra of the King's Theatre, and settled there for the remainder of his life. In fifty years, he became a prominent figure in the musical events of the English capital, performing at the concerts of the Philharmonic Society of London as well as in more private events, where he would meet the most influential persons in the country, like the Prince Consort and the Duke of Leinster. He was acquainted with composers Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, whom he visited on several occasions in Vienna, and to whom he showed the possibilities of the double bass as a solo instrument. His ability on the instrument also demonstrated the relevance of writing scores for the double bass in the orchestra separate from that of the cello, which was the common rule at the time. He is also remembered today for the Dragonetti bow, which he developed throughout his life.
07/04/1727
Michel Adanson, French botanist, entomologist, and mycologist (died 1806)
Michel Adanson was an 18th-century French botanist and naturalist who traveled to Senegal to study flora and fauna. He proposed a "natural system" of taxonomy distinct from the binomial system forwarded by Linnaeus. The standard author abbreviation Adans. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
07/04/1718
Hugh Blair, Scottish minister and author (died 1800)
Hugh Blair FRSE was a Scottish minister of religion, author and rhetorician, considered one of the first great theorists of written discourse.
07/04/1713
Nicola Sala, Italian composer and theorist (died 1801)
Nicola Sala was an Italian composer and music theorist. He was born in Tocco Caudio and died in Naples. He was chapel-master and professor at Naples, having devoted himself to the collection of the finest models of printed music.
07/04/1652
Pope Clement XII (died 1740)
Pope Clement XII, born Lorenzo Corsini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 July 1730 to his death in February 1740.
07/04/1648
John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, English poet and politician, Lord President of the Council (died 1721)
John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby was a British military officer, writer and Tory politician who served as Lord Privy Seal and Lord President of the Council. He was also known by his original title, Lord Mulgrave.
07/04/1644
François de Neufville, duc de Villeroy, French general (died 1730)
François de Neufville, 2nd Duke of Villeroy was a French Royal Army officer and nobleman.
07/04/1613
Gerrit Dou, Dutch painter (died 1675)
Gerrit Dou, also known as Gerard Douw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his trompe-l'œil "niche" paintings and candlelit night-scenes with strong chiaroscuro. He was a student of Rembrandt.
07/04/1539
Tobias Stimmer, Swiss painter and illustrator (died 1584)
Tobias Stimmer was a Swiss painter and illustrator. His most famous work is the paintings on the Strasbourg astronomical clock.
07/04/1506
Francis Xavier, Spanish missionary and saint, co-founded the Society of Jesus (died 1552)
Francis Xavier, venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Navarrese cleric and missionary. He co-founded the Society of Jesus and, as a representative of the Portuguese Empire, led the first Christian mission to Japan.
07/04/1470
Edward Stafford, 2nd Earl of Wiltshire (died 1498)
Edward Stafford, 2nd Earl of Wiltshire KB was an English nobleman.
07/04/1330
John, 3rd Earl of Kent, English nobleman (died 1352)
John, an English nobleman, was the Earl of Kent (1331–1352) and 4th Baron Wake of Liddell (1349–1352). His promising career was cut short by an untimely death at the age of twenty-two.
07/04/1206
Otto II Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria (died 1253)
Otto II, called the Illustrious, was the Duke of Bavaria from 1231 and Count Palatine of the Rhine from 1228. He was the son of Louis I and Ludmilla of Bohemia and a member of the Wittelsbach dynasty.
Lives Remembered on 7th April
On 7th April, 139 remarkable people passed away — from 30 to 2026. Remember the lives and legacies of those we lost on this day.
07/04/2026
Mircea Lucescu, Romanian football player and manager (born 1945)
Mircea Lucescu was a Romanian professional football player and manager.
07/04/2025
William Finn, American composer and lyricist (born 1952)
William Alan Finn was an American composer and lyricist. He was best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical, A New Brain (1998), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005).
Greg Millen, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster (born 1957)
Gregory H. Millen was a Canadian hockey commentator-analyst and professional ice hockey goaltender who played 14 seasons for six teams in the National Hockey League (NHL). During his career as a colour commentator, he worked on regional telecasts for the Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs and Calgary Flames, and on national telecasts on Hockey Night in Canada and the NHL on Sportsnet.
07/04/2024
Jerry Grote, American baseball player (born 1942)
Gerald Wayne Grote was an American professional baseball catcher. He played in Major League Baseball from 1963 through 1981 for the Houston Colt .45s, New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Kansas City Royals.
Joe Kinnear, Irish football player and manager (born 1946)
Joseph Patrick Kinnear was an Irish professional football manager and player. As a defender, Kinnear spent the majority of his career spanning ten seasons with Tottenham Hotspur and one with Brighton & Hove Albion. With Tottenham he won the FA Cup, the League Cup twice, the Charity Shield, and the UEFA Cup. After Spurs, Kinnear played for Brighton for the 1975–76 season. Having been born in Dublin, Kinnear played and was capped 26 times for the Republic of Ireland national team. After his playing career, he managed India, Nepal, Doncaster Rovers, Wimbledon, Luton Town, Nottingham Forest, and Newcastle United.
07/04/2023
Ben Ferencz, American lawyer (born 1920)
Benjamin Berell Ferencz was an American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen trial, one of the 12 subsequent Nuremberg trials held by US authorities at Nuremberg, Germany. When the Einsatzgruppen reports were discovered, Ferencz pushed for a trial based on their evidence. When confronted with a lack of staff and resources, he personally volunteered to serve as the prosecutor.
Philippe Bouvatier, French cyclist (born 1964)
Philippe Bouvatier was a French professional road bicycle racer. He competed in the team time trial event at the 1984 Summer Olympics.
07/04/2021
Tommy Raudonikis, Australian rugby league player and coach (born 1950)
Thomas Walter Raudonikis was an Australian rugby league footballer and coach. He played 40 International games and World Cup games as Australia representative halfback and captained his country in two matches of the 1973 Kangaroo tour.
07/04/2020
John Prine, American country folk singer-songwriter (born 1946)
John Edward Prine was an American singer-songwriter of country-folk music. Widely cited as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation, Prine was known for his signature blend of humorous lyrics about love, life, and current events, often with elements of social commentary and satire, as well as sweet songs and melancholy ballads. He was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death.
Herb Stempel, American television personality (born 1926)
Herbert Milton Stempel was an American television game show contestant and subsequent whistleblower on the fraudulent nature of the industry, in what became known as the 1950s quiz show scandals. His rigged six-week appearance as a winning contestant on the 1950s show Twenty-One ended in an equally rigged defeat by Columbia University teacher and literary scion Charles Van Doren.
07/04/2019
Seymour Cassel, American actor (born 1935)
Seymour Joseph Cassel was an American actor who appeared in over 200 films and television shows, with a career spanning over 50 years. He first came to prominence in the 1960s in the pioneering independent films of writer/director John Cassavetes. The first of these was Too Late Blues (1961), followed by Faces (1968), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and won a National Society of Film Critics Award. Cassel went on to appear in Cassavetes's Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Opening Night (1977), and Love Streams (1984).
07/04/2017
Nicolae Șerban Tanașoca, Romanian historian and philologist (born 1941)
Nicolae Șerban Tanașoca was a Romanian historian and philologist. An ethnic Aromanian, he specialized in the study of classical philology, Byzantine and Ottoman studies and cultures of the Balkans, including the Aromanians.
07/04/2015
Tim Babcock, American soldier and politician, 16th Governor of Montana (born 1919)
Timothy Milford Babcock was an American politician, the 16th governor of the state of Montana, from 1962 to 1969.
José Capellán, Dominican-American baseball player (born 1981)
José Francisco Capellán was a Dominican professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball from 2004 to 2008 for the Atlanta Braves, Milwaukee Brewers, Detroit Tigers and Colorado Rockies. He also played with the Hanhwa Eagles of the KBO League.
Stan Freberg, American puppeteer, voice actor, and singer (born 1926)
Stan Freberg was an American voice actor, satirist, singer, radio personality, and advertising creative director.
Richard Henyekane, South African footballer (born 1983)
Richard Henyekane was a South African professional footballer who also represented the national team.
Geoffrey Lewis, American actor (born 1935)
Geoffrey Bond Lewis was an American actor. He appeared in more than 200 films and television shows, and was principally known for his film roles alongside Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford. He often portrayed villains or eccentric characters.
07/04/2014
George Dureau, American painter and photographer (born 1930)
George Valentine Dureau was an American artist whose long career was most notable for charcoal sketches and black and white photography of poor white and black athletes, dwarfs, and amputees. Robert Mapplethorpe is said to have been inspired by Dureau's amputee and dwarf photographs, which showed the figures as "exposed and vulnerable, playful and needy, complex and entirely human individuals."
James Alexander Green, American-English mathematician and academic (born 1926)
James Alexander "Sandy" Green FRS was a mathematician and professor at the Mathematics Institute at the University of Warwick, who worked in the field of representation theory.
V. K. Murthy, Indian cinematographer (born 1923)
Venkatarama Pandit Krishnamurthy known professionally as V. K. Murthy, was an Indian cinematographer. Murthy, a one-time violinist and jailed freedom fighter, was Guru Dutt's regular cameraman on his movies. He provided some of Indian cinema's most notable images in starkly contrasted black and white. He also shot India's first cinemascope film, Kaagaz Ke Phool. For his contribution to film industry, particularly Indian film industry he was awarded the IIFA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. In 2010, he was honoured with the Dada Saheb Phalke Award for his contributions to Indian cinema.
Zeituni Onyango, Kenyan-American computer programmer (born 1952)
Zeituni Onyango was the half-aunt of United States President Barack Obama; she was born into the Luo tribe in Kenya. Born during the British rule of the Protectorate of Kenya, Onyango was the half-sister of Barack Obama Sr., father to the president. The younger Obama refers to her as "Aunti Zeituni" in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. In 2002 she applied for political asylum in the United States but was denied. She became notable when her case was leaked in the final days of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign in which Barack Obama was the Democratic candidate, attracting international media attention.
John Shirley-Quirk, English opera singer (born 1931)
John Stanton Shirley-Quirk CBE was an English bass-baritone. A member of the English Opera Group from 1964 to 1976, he gave premiere performances of several operatic and vocal works by Benjamin Britten, recording these and other works under the composer's direction. He also sang and recorded a wide range of works by other composers, ranging from Handel through Tchaikovsky to Henze.
George Shuffler, American guitarist (born 1925)
George Shuffler was an American bluegrass guitar player and an early practitioner of the crosspicking style. During his career Shuffler played with The Bailey Brothers, The Stanley Brothers and Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys. He was a 2007 recipient of the North Carolina Heritage Award and in 2011 was elected to the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
Josep Maria Subirachs, Spanish sculptor and painter (born 1927)
Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar was a Spanish sculptor and painter of the late 20th century. His best known work is probably the Passion Facade of the basilica of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. He was controversial, as he did not make any concessions to the style of the architect who designed the building, Antoni Gaudí.
Royce Waltman, American basketball player and coach (born 1942)
Royce Waltman was an American college basketball coach, best known for his time as head coach at Indiana State University from 1997 to 2007. Previously, he coached the University of Indianapolis from 1992 to 1997 and DePauw University from 1987 to 1992. He returned to coach Indianapolis for the 2007–8 season, before retiring.
07/04/2013
Marty Blake, American businessman (born 1927)
Marty Blake was a general manager of the Atlanta Hawks franchise, and the NBA's longtime Director of Scouting. He was a recipient of the Basketball Hall of Fame's John Bunn Award.
Les Blank, American director and producer (born 1935)
Les Blank was an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians.
Andy Johns, English-American record producer (born 1950)
Jeremy Andrew Johns was a British sound engineer and record producer who worked on several well-known rock albums, including the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. (1972), Television's Marquee Moon (1977), and a series of albums by Led Zeppelin during the 1970s.
Lilly Pulitzer, American fashion designer (born 1931)
Lillian Pulitzer Rousseau was an American entrepreneur, fashion designer, and socialite. She founded Lilly Pulitzer, Inc., a clothing brand known for resort-inspired apparel, accessories, and other wares featuring vibrant prints.
Irma Ravinale, Italian composer and educator (born 1937)
Irma Ravinale was an Italian composer and music educator. She taught at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome. Ravinale has received many awards for her compositions, and was awarded the Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the silver medal for merit from the School of Art and Culture in Rome, and a Gold Medal for culture and the arts.
Mickey Rose, American screenwriter (born 1935)
Michael "Mickey" Rose was an American comedy writer, screenwriter and film director.
Carl Williams, American boxer (born 1959)
Carl Williams, nicknamed "the Truth", was an American boxer who competed as a professional from 1982 to 1997. He challenged twice for heavyweight world titles; the IBF title against Larry Holmes in 1985; and the undisputed title against Mike Tyson in 1989. At regional level he held the USBA heavyweight title from 1987 to 1991.
07/04/2012
Steven Kanumba, Tanzanian actor and director (born 1984)
Steven Charles Kanumba was a Tanzanian actor and director of Sukuma heritage, born in Shinyanga Region. Kanumba died in 2012 at the age of 28, for which actress Elizabeth Michael was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison in November 2017. Over 30,000 people were estimated to have attended his funeral. He was described as "Tanzania's most popular film star", and appeared in Nollywood films.
Satsue Mito, Japanese zoologist and academic (born 1914)
Satsue Mito was a Japanese school teacher and primate researcher. She helped with the Kyoto University Primatology group studying wild monkeys on an island called Kōjima, in Miyazaki Prefecture. She identified every monkey in the island and recorded their relationships. She discovered the origin and spreading of sweet potato washing by monkeys. She was an instructor of Kyoto University working with other researchers between 1970 and 1984.
Ignatius Moses I Daoud, Syrian cardinal (born 1930)
Ignatius Basile Moses I Daoud was Patriarch of Antioch for the Syrian Catholic Church, a cardinal-bishop, and Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches in the Catholic Church.
David E. Pergrin, American colonel and engineer (born 1917)
Colonel David E. Pergrin was commanding officer of the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion of the United States Army during World War II. Before the war he earned an engineering degree at Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1940. While at Penn State he participated in the ROTC program. In addition, Pergrin played on the university's football team, was elected to the Tau Beta Pi and Chi Epsilon engineering honor societies, and was senior class president. Before graduation he was voted Outstanding Non-Fraternity senior. In his role as senior class president, he presented the university with the Class of 1940 gift – the Nittany Lion Shrine, a 14-ton limestone monument symbolizing the Penn State tradition. However, the monument was not officially dedicated until 1942.
Bashir Ahmed Qureshi, Pakistani politician (born 1959)
Bashir Khan Qureshi was a Sindhi nationalist who served as the leader of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), a Sindhi nationalist movement in Sindh, founded by G. M. Syed. He was assassinated at the age of 54 years on 7 April 2012.
Mike Wallace, American television news journalist (born 1918)
Myron Leon Wallace was an American broadcast journalist, and television personality. Known for his investigative journalism, he interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers during his seven-decade career. He was one of the original correspondents featured on CBS news program 60 Minutes, which debuted in 1968. Wallace retired as a regular full-time correspondent in 2006, but still appeared occasionally on the series until 2008. He is the father of Chris Wallace.
07/04/2011
Pierre Gauvreau, Canadian painter (born 1922)
Pierre Saint-Mars Gauvreau was a Canadian painter and writer who also worked in film and television production.
07/04/2009
Dave Arneson, American game designer, co-created Dungeons & Dragons (born 1947)
David Lance Arneson was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's fundamental early role-playing game (RPG) genre work pioneered now-archetypical devices, such as: cooperative play to develop a storyline instead of individual competitive play to "win"; and adventuring in dungeon, town, and wilderness settings as presented by a neutral judge who doubles as the voice and consciousness of all characters aside from the player characters.
07/04/2008
Ludu Daw Amar, Burmese journalist and author (born 1915)
Ludu Daw Amar was a dissident writer and journalist based in Mandalay, Burma. She was married to fellow writer and journalist Ludu U Hla and was the mother of popular writer Nyi Pu Lay. She is best known for her outspoken anti-government views and left-wing journalism. She also produced work on traditional Burmese arts, including theatre, dance, and music, and translated several works from English, both fiction and non-fiction.
07/04/2007
Johnny Hart, American author and illustrator (born 1931)
John Lewis Hart was an American cartoonist noted as the creator of the comic strips B.C. and The Wizard of Id. Brant Parker co-produced and illustrated The Wizard of Id. Hart was recognized with several awards, including the Swedish Adamson Award and five from the National Cartoonists Society. In his later years, he was known for incorporating Christian themes and messages into his strips and seeming to denigrate other religions. Hart was referred to by Chuck Colson in a Breakpoint column as "the most widely read Christian of our time", over C. S. Lewis, Frank E. Peretti, and Billy Graham.
Barry Nelson, American actor (born 1917)
Robert Haakon Nielsen, known as Barry Nelson, was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is noted as the first actor to portray Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond, in the 1954 American television adaptation of Casino Royale. He is also known for playing Stuart Ullman in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 psychological horror film The Shining. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for the Broadway musical The Act (1977).
07/04/2005
Cliff Allison, English race car driver (born 1932)
Henry Clifford Allison was a British racing driver from England, who participated in Formula One during seasons 1958 to 1961 for the Lotus, Scuderia Centro Sud, Ferrari and UDT Laystall teams. He was born and died in Brough, Westmorland.
Grigoris Bithikotsis, Greek singer-songwriter (born 1922)
Grigoris Bithikotsis was a Greek laiko singer/songwriter with a career spanning five decades. He is considered one of the most important figures in Greek popular music.
Bob Kennedy, American baseball player, coach, and manager (born 1920)
Robert Daniel Kennedy was an American professional baseball right fielder/third baseman, manager and executive in Major League Baseball.
Melih Kibar, Turkish composer and educator (born 1951)
Melih Kibar was a Turkish composer.
07/04/2004
Victor Argo, American actor (born 1934)
Victor Argo was an American actor of Puerto Rican descent who usually played the part of a tough bad guy in his movies. He is best known for Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Hot Tomorrows (1977), Raw Deal (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), King of New York (1990), and McBain (1991).
Konstantinos Kallias, Greek politician (born 1901)
Konstantinos Kallias was a Greek politician.
07/04/2003
Cecile de Brunhoff, French pianist and author (born 1903)
Cécile de Brunhoff was a French storyteller and the creator of the original Babar story. She was also a classically trained pianist.
David Greene, English-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1921)
Lucius David Syms-Greene, known as David Greene, was a British television and film director, and actor.
07/04/2002
John Agar, American actor (born 1921)
John George Agar Jr. was an American film and television actor. He is best known for starring alongside John Wayne in the films Sands of Iwo Jima, Fort Apache, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. In his later career he was the star of B movies, such as Tarantula!, The Mole People, The Brain from Planet Arous, Revenge of the Creature, Flesh and the Spur and Hand of Death. He was the first husband of Shirley Temple.
07/04/2001
David Graf, American actor (born 1950)
Paul David Graf was an American actor, best known for his role as Sgt. Eugene Tackleberry in the Police Academy series of films.
Beatrice Straight, American actress (born 1914)
Beatrice Whitney Straight was an American theatre, film, television and radio actress and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was both an Academy Award and Tony Award winner, as well as a Primetime Emmy Award nominee.
07/04/1999
Heinz Lehmann, German-Canadian psychiatrist and academic (born 1911)
Heinz Edgar Lehmann was a German-born Canadian psychiatrist best known for his use of chlorpromazine for the treatment of schizophrenia in 1950s and "truly the father of modern psychopharmacology."
07/04/1998
Alex Schomburg, Puerto Rican painter and illustrator (born 1905)
Alexander A. Schomburg, born Alejandro Schomburg y Rosa, was a Puerto Rican commercial artist and comic-book artist and painter whose career lasted over 70 years.
07/04/1997
Luis Aloma, Cuban-American baseball player (born 1923)
Luis Alomá Barba, nicknamed "Witto", was a Cuban-born relief pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for the Chicago White Sox from 1950 through 1953. Alomá batted and threw right-handed. He was born in Havana. He would also pitch in farm systems for the Washington Senators and the Detroit Tigers. His first game was on April 19 at the age of 26, and his last game August 30, 1953.
Georgy Shonin, Ukrainian-Russian general, pilot, and astronaut (born 1935)
Georgy Stepanovich Shonin was a Soviet cosmonaut, who flew on the Soyuz 6 space mission.
07/04/1995
Philip Jebb, English architect and politician (born 1927)
Philip Vincent Belloc Jebb was a British architect and Liberal Party politician.
07/04/1994
Lee Brilleaux, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1952)
Lee Brilleaux was an English rhythm-and-blues singer and musician with the band Dr. Feelgood.
Albert Guðmundsson, Icelandic footballer, manager, and politician (born 1923)
Albert Sigurður Guðmundsson was an Icelandic professional footballer who played for, amongst others, Rangers, Arsenal, Nancy and A.C. Milan. After retiring from his sporting career, he became a politician and was a member of Alþingi for 15 years, serving as Minister of Finance of Iceland and Minister of Industry.
Golo Mann, German historian and author (born 1909)
Golo Mann was a popular German historian and essayist. After completing a doctorate in philosophy under Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg, in 1933 he fled Hitler's Germany. He followed his father, the writer Thomas Mann, and other members of his family in emigrating first to France, then to Switzerland and, on the eve of war, to the United States. From the late 1950s he re-established himself in Switzerland and West Germany as a literary historian.
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Rwandan chemist, academic, and politician, Prime Minister of Rwanda (born 1953)
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, sometimes known as Madame Agathe, was a Rwandan political figure. She served as Prime Minister of Rwanda from 18 July 1993 until her assassination on 7 April 1994 during the opening stages of the Rwandan genocide. She was also Rwanda's acting head of state in the hours leading up to her death.
07/04/1992
Ace Bailey, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (born 1903)
Irvine Wallace "Ace" Bailey was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. He played for the Toronto Maple Leafs for eight seasons, from 1926 to 1933. His playing career ended with a hit from Eddie Shore in a game against the Boston Bruins; he was severely injured with a fractured skull when Shore hit Bailey from behind in retaliation for a check by teammate King Clancy. Bailey fell, fracturing his skull upon hitting the ice, and was knocked unconscious. Bailey is the first professional sports player to have a jersey number retired in his honour. Bailey led the NHL in scoring in 1929, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1975.
Antonis Tritsis, Greek high jumper and politician, 71st Mayor of Athens (born 1937)
Antonis Tritsis was a Greek politician and urban planner, born and raised in the town of Argostoli on the island of Cephalonia.
07/04/1991
Memduh Ünlütürk, Turkish general (born 1913)
Memduh Ünlütürk was a Turkish general associated with the Counter-Guerrilla and the anti-communist Ziverbey interrogations following the 1971 coup. He was assassinated at his Istanbul home by members of the left-wing revolutionary group Dev Sol. It has been suggested that he was assassinated to protect the secrets of the Turkish deep state; Dev-Sol (DHKP/C) has been accused of links to the Ergenekon organization.
07/04/1990
Ronald Evans, American captain, engineer, and astronaut (born 1933)
Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. was an American electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, officer and aviator in the United States Navy, and NASA astronaut. As Command Module Pilot on Apollo 17 he was one of the 24 Apollo astronauts to fly to the Moon, and one of the 12 to do so without landing.
07/04/1986
Leonid Kantorovich, Russian mathematician and economist (born 1912)
Leonid Vitalyevich Kantorovich was a Soviet mathematician and economist, known for his theory and development of techniques for the optimal allocation of resources. He is regarded as the founder of linear programming. He was the winner of the Stalin Prize in 1949 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1975.
07/04/1985
Carl Schmitt, German philosopher and jurist (born 1888)
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist and political theorist. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism.
07/04/1984
Frank Church, American soldier, lawyer, and politician (born 1924)
Frank Forrester Church III was an American politician and lawyer. From 1957 to 1981, he served as a U.S. senator from Idaho, and is currently the last Democrat to do so. He was the longest serving Democratic senator from the state and the only Democrat from the state who served more than two terms in the Senate. Church was a prominent figure in American foreign policy and established a reputation as a member of the party's liberal wing.
07/04/1982
Harald Ertl, Austrian race car driver and journalist (born 1948)
Harald Ertl was an Austrian racing driver and motorsport journalist. He was born in Zell am See and attended the same school as Grand Prix drivers Jochen Rindt, Helmut Marko and Niki Lauda.
07/04/1981
Kit Lambert, English record producer and manager (born 1935)
Christopher Sebastian "Kit" Lambert was an English record producer, record label owner and the manager of the Who.
Norman Taurog, American director and screenwriter (born 1899)
Norman Rae Taurog was an American film director and screenwriter. From 1920 to 1968, Taurog directed 180 films. At the age of 32, he received the Academy Award for Best Director for Skippy (1931), becoming the youngest person to win the award for eight and a half decades. He was later nominated for Best Director for the film Boys Town (1938). He directed some of the best-known actors of the twentieth century, including his nephew Jackie Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Deanna Durbin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley and Vincent Price. Taurog directed six Martin and Lewis films, and nine Elvis Presley films, more than any other director.
07/04/1972
Joe Gallo, American gangster (born 1929)
Joseph Gallo, also known as "Crazy Joe", was an American mobster and captain in the Colombo crime family of New York City.
Abeid Karume, Tanzanian politician, 1st President of Zanzibar (born 1905)
Abeid Amani Karume was a Tanzanian politician and statesman who served as the first president of Zanzibar and vice-president of Tanzania from 1964 until his assassination in 1972.
07/04/1968
Edwin Baker, Canadian co-founder of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) (born 1893)
Edwin Albert Baker, was a Canadian co-founder of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).
Jim Clark, Scottish race car driver (born 1936)
James Clark was a British racing driver from Scotland who competed in Formula One from 1960 to 1968. Clark won two Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles, which he won in 1963 and 1965 with Lotus, and—at the time of his death—held the records for most wins (25), pole positions (33), and fastest laps (28), among others. In American open-wheel racing, Clark won the Indianapolis 500 in 1965 with Lotus, becoming the first non-American winner of the race in 49 years.
07/04/1966
Walt Hansgen, American race car driver (born 1919)
Walter Edwin Hansgen was an American racecar driver. His motorsport career began as a road racing driver, he made his Grand Prix debut at 41, and he died aged 46, several days after crashing during testing for the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans.
07/04/1965
Roger Leger, Canadian ice hockey player (born 1919)
Joseph Ernest Roger Léger was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. He played 187 games in the National Hockey League with the Montreal Canadiens and New York Rangers from 1943 to 1950. He was born in L'Annonciation, Quebec.
07/04/1960
Henri Guisan, Swiss general (born 1874)
Henri Guisan was a Swiss military officer who held the office of General of the Swiss Armed Forces during the Second World War. He was the fourth and the most recent person to be appointed to the rarely used Swiss rank of general, and was possibly Switzerland's most famous soldier. He is best remembered for effectively mobilizing the Swiss military and population in order to prepare resistance against a possible invasion by Nazi Germany in 1940. Guisan was voted the fourth-greatest Swiss figure of all time in 2010.
07/04/1956
Fred Appleby, English runner (born 1879)
Frederick Appleby was a British long-distance runner. In 1902, Appleby set a world record for 15 miles and twice defeated the leading distance runner of the time, Alfred Shrubb. Appleby competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics as a marathoner but failed to finish.
07/04/1955
Theda Bara, American actress (born 1885)
Theda Bara was an American silent film and stage actress. Bara was one of the more popular actresses of the silent era and one of cinema's early sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp", later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles based in exoticism and sexual domination.
07/04/1950
Walter Huston, Canadian-American actor and singer (born 1883)
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian actor and singer. Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son John Huston. He is the patriarch of the four generations of the Huston acting family, including his son John, grandchildren Anjelica Huston and Danny Huston, as well as great-grandchild Jack Huston.
07/04/1949
John Gourlay, Canadian soccer player (born 1872)
John Bell Gourlay was a Canadian amateur soccer player who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics. He was born in Ontario and died in North Vancouver. In 1904 he was a captain of the Galt F.C. team, which won the gold medal in the soccer tournament. He played all two matches as a defender.
07/04/1947
Henry Ford, American engineer and businessman, founded the Ford Motor Company (born 1863)
Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911, he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Ford Model T and other automobiles.
07/04/1943
Jovan Dučić, Serbian-American poet and diplomat (born 1871)
Jovan Dučić was a Bosnian Serb poet-diplomat and academic.
Alexandre Millerand, French lawyer and politician, 12th President of France (born 1859)
Alexandre Millerand was a French politician who served as President of France from 1920 to 1924, having previously served as Prime Minister of France earlier in 1920. His participation in Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet at the start of the 20th century, alongside the Marquis de Galliffet, who had directed the repression of the 1871 Paris Commune, sparked a debate in the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and in the Second International about the participation of socialists in bourgeois governments.
07/04/1939
Joseph Lyons, Australian educator and politician, 10th Prime Minister of Australia (born 1879)
Joseph Aloysius Lyons was an Australian politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Australia, from 1932 until his death in 1939. He held office as the inaugural leader of the United Australia Party (UAP), having previously led the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) before the Australian Labor Party split of 1931. He served as the 26th premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928.
07/04/1938
Suzanne Valadon, French painter (born 1865)
Marie-Clémentine "Suzanne" Valadon was a French painter who was born at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.
07/04/1932
Grigore Constantinescu, Romanian priest and journalist (born 1875)
Grigore D. Constantinescu was a priest and journalist from Romania. He was the director of Glasul Basarabiei.
07/04/1928
Alexander Bogdanov, Russian physician, philosopher, and author (born 1873)
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov, born Alexander Malinovsky, was a Russian and later Soviet physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and Bolshevik revolutionary. He was a polymath who pioneered blood transfusion, as well as general systems theory, and made important contributions to cybernetics.
07/04/1922
James McGowen, Australian politician, 18th Premier of New South Wales (born 1855)
James Sinclair Taylor McGowen was an Australian politician. He served as premier of New South Wales from 1910 to 1913, the first member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to hold the position, and was a key figure in the party's early history in New South Wales.
07/04/1920
Karl Binding, German lawyer and jurist (born 1841)
Karl Ludwig Lorenz Binding was a German jurist known as a promoter of the theory of retributive justice. His influential book, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, written together with the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, was used by the Nazis to justify their Aktion T4 euthanasia program.
07/04/1918
David Kolehmainen, Finnish wrestler (born 1885)
David "Tatu" Kolehmainen was a Finnish wrestler. He competed in the lightweight event at the 1912 Summer Olympics.
George E. Ohr, American potter (born 1857)
George Edgar Ohr was an American ceramic artist and the self-proclaimed "Mad Potter of Biloxi" in Mississippi. In recognition of his innovative experimentation with modern clay forms from 1880 to 1910, some consider him a precursor to the American Abstract-Expressionism movement.
07/04/1917
Spyridon Samaras, Greek composer and playwright (born 1861)
Spyridon-Filiskos Samaras was a Greek composer particularly admired for his operas. His compositions were praised worldwide during his lifetime and he is arguably the most important composer of the Ionian School. Among his best-known works are the operas Flora mirabilis (1886) and Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle (1905). He also composed the music for the Olympic Hymn.
07/04/1891
P. T. Barnum, American businessman and politician, co-founded The Barnum & Bailey Circus (born 1810)
Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding with James Anthony Bailey the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was also an author, publisher, and philanthropist, although he said of himself: "I am a showman by profession ... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me." The adage "there's a sucker born every minute" has frequently been attributed to him, although no evidence exists that he had coined the phrase.
07/04/1889
Youssef Bey Karam, Lebanese soldier and politician (born 1823)
Youssef Bey Karam was a Lebanese Maronite notable for fighting in the 1860 civil conflict and leading a rebellion in 1866–1867 against Ottoman rule in Mount Lebanon. His proclamations have been interpreted as an early expression of Lebanese nationalism.
Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, Mexican politician and president, 1872-1876 (born 1823)
Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada y Corral was a Mexican liberal politician and jurist who served as the 31st president of Mexico from 1872 to 1876.
07/04/1885
Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold, German physiologist and zoologist (born 1804)
Prof Karl (Carl) Theodor Ernst von Siebold FRS(For) HFRSE was a German physiologist and zoologist. He was responsible for the introduction of the taxa Arthropoda and Rhizopoda, and for defining the taxon Protozoa specifically for single-celled organisms.
07/04/1884
Maria Doolaeghe, Flemish novelist (born 1803)
Maria Doolaeghe was a Flemish writer.
07/04/1879
Begum Hazrat Mahal, Begum of Awadh, was the second wife of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (born 1820)
Begum Hazrat Mahal, also known as the Begum of Awadh, was the second wife of Nawab of Awadh Wajid Ali Shah, and the regent of Awadh in 1857–1858. She is known for the leading role she had in the rebellion against the British East India Company during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
07/04/1868
Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Irish-Canadian journalist, activist, and politician (born 1825)
Thomas D'Arcy McGee was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was an Irish Catholic who opposed British rule in Ireland, and was part of the Young Ireland attempts to overthrow British rule and create an independent Irish Republic. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, after which some of his political positions reversed. He remained ardently Catholic, but his Irish nationalism moderated. He became disgusted with American republicanism, Anti-Catholicism, and classical liberalism. McGee became intensely monarchistic in his political beliefs and in his religious support for the embattled Pope Pius IX.
07/04/1858
Anton Diabelli, Austrian composer and publisher (born 1781)
Anton Diabelli was an Austrian music publisher, editor and composer. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of the waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his set of thirty-three Diabelli Variations.
07/04/1850
William Lisle Bowles, English poet and critic (born 1762)
William Lisle Bowles was an English priest, poet and critic.
07/04/1849
Pedro Ignacio de Castro Barros, Argentinian priest and politician (born 1777)
Pedro Ignacio de Castro Barros was an Argentine statesman and priest. He was a representative to the Congress of Tucumán which on 9 July 1816 declared the Independence of Argentina.
07/04/1836
William Godwin, English journalist and author (born 1756)
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for two books that he published within the space of a year: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, an attack on political institutions, and Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, an early mystery novel that criticizes aristocratic privilege. Based on the success of both works, Godwin featured prominently in the radical circles of London in the 1790s. He wrote prolifically in the genres of novels, history and demography throughout his life.
07/04/1833
Antoni Radziwiłł, Lithuanian composer and politician (born 1775)
Prince Antoni Henryk Radziwiłł was a Polish–Lithuanian and Prussian noble, aristocrat, musician, and politician. Initially a hereditary Duke of Nieśwież and Ołyka, as a scion of the Radziwiłł family he also held the honorific title of a Reichsfürst of the Holy Roman Empire. Between 1815 and 1831 he acted as Duke-Governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen, an autonomous province of the Kingdom of Prussia created out of Greater Polish lands annexed in the Partitions of Poland.
07/04/1823
Jacques Charles, French physicist and mathematician (born 1746)
Jacques Alexandre César Charles was a French inventor, scientist, and balloonist. Charles wrote almost nothing about mathematics, and most of what has been credited to him was due to mistaking him with another Jacques Charles, also a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, entering on 12 May 1785.
07/04/1811
Garsevan Chavchavadze, Georgian diplomat and politician (born 1757)
Prince Garsevan Chavchavadze was a Georgian nobleman (tavadi), politician and diplomat primarily known as the Georgian ambassador to Imperial Russia.
07/04/1804
Toussaint Louverture, Haitian general (born 1743)
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, also known as Toussaint L'Ouverture or Toussaint Bréda, was a Haitian general and the most prominent leader of the Haitian Revolution. During his life, Louverture first fought and allied with Spanish forces against Saint-Domingue Royalists, then joined with Republican France, becoming Governor-General-for-life of Saint-Domingue, and lastly fought against Bonaparte's republican troops. As a revolutionary leader, Louverture displayed military and political acumen that helped transform the fledgling slave rebellion into a revolutionary movement. Along with Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Louverture is now known as one of the "Fathers of Haiti" and a figure of Haitian mythology, where he was celebrated as a founder of the black nation.
07/04/1801
Noël François de Wailly, French lexicographer and author (born 1724)
Noël François de Wailly was a French grammarian and lexicographer.
07/04/1789
Abdul Hamid I, Ottoman sultan (born 1725)
Abdülhamid I or Abdul Hamid I was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1774 to 1789. A devout and pacifist sultan, he inherited a bankrupt empire and sought military reforms, including overhauling the Janissaries and navy. Despite internal efforts and quelling revolts in Syria, Egypt, and Greece, his reign saw the critical loss of Crimea and defeat by Russia and Austria. The 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca granted Russia territorial and religious influence. He died soon after the fall of Ochakov in 1788.
Petrus Camper, Dutch physician, anatomist, and physiologist (born 1722)
Petrus Camper FRS, was a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist and a naturalist in the Age of Enlightenment. He was one of the first to take an interest in comparative anatomy, palaeontology, and the facial angle. He was among the first to mark out an "anthropology," which he distinguished from natural history. He studied the orangutan, the Javan rhinoceros, and the skull of a mosasaur, which he believed was a whale.
07/04/1782
Taksin, Thai king (born 1734)
Taksin the Great or the King of Thonburi was a Thai Chinese general who became the only King of Thonburi that ruled Siam from 1767 to 1782.
07/04/1779
Martha Ray, English singer (born 1746)
Martha Ray was a British singer of the Georgian era. Her father was a corsetmaker and her mother was a servant in a noble household. Good-looking, intelligent, and a talented singer, she came to the attention of many of her father's patrons. She is best known for her affair with John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. She lived with him as his mistress from the age of seventeen, while his wife was suffering from mental illness. She gave birth to nine children, five of whom survived, including the lawyer and philanthropist Basil Montagu. During this time, she conducted a successful singing career, for which she became well known, as well as completing her education with Lord Sandwich's support.
07/04/1767
Franz Sparry, Austrian composer and director (born 1715)
Franz Sparry was a composer of the Baroque period.
07/04/1766
Tiberius Hemsterhuis, Dutch philologist and critic (born 1685)
Tiberius Hemsterhuis was a Dutch philologist and critic.
07/04/1761
Thomas Bayes, English minister and mathematician (born 1701)
Thomas Bayes was an English statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister who is known for formulating a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem.
07/04/1747
Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau (born 1676)
Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau was a German prince of the House of Ascania and ruler of the Principality of Anhalt-Dessau from 1693 to 1747. He was also a Generalfeldmarschall in the Prussian Army. Nicknamed "the Old Dessauer", he possessed good abilities as a field commander, but was mainly remembered as a talented drillmaster who modernized the Prussian infantry.
07/04/1739
Dick Turpin, English criminal (born 1705)
Richard Turpin was an English highwayman whose exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft. Turpin may have followed his father's trade as a butcher early in his life but, by the early 1730s, he had joined a gang of deer thieves and, later, became a poacher, burglar, horse thief, and killer. He is also known for a fictional 200-mile (320 km) overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess, a story that was made famous by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost 100 years after Turpin's death.
07/04/1719
Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, French priest and saint, founded the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (born 1651)
Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was a French priest, educational reformer, and founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He is a saint of the Catholic Church and the patron saint for teachers of youth.
07/04/1668
William Davenant, English poet and playwright (born 1606)
Sir William Davenant, also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum.
07/04/1663
Francis Cooke, English-American settler (born 1583)
Francis Cooke was a Leiden Separatist, who went to America in 1620 on the Pilgrim ship Mayflower, which arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts. He was a founding member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a signer of the Mayflower Compact.
07/04/1661
Sir William Brereton, 1st Baronet, English commander and politician (born 1604)
Sir William Brereton, 1st Baronet, was an English religious Independent, author, and landowner from Cheshire. He was Member of Parliament for Cheshire at various times between 1628 and 1653, and during the First English Civil War, commander of Parliamentarian forces in the North Midlands.
07/04/1658
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Spanish mystic and philosopher (born 1595)
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg y Ottín was a Spanish Jesuit, polymath and mystic.
07/04/1651
Lennart Torstensson, Swedish field marshal and engineer (born 1603)
Lennart Torstensson, Swedish Field Marshal and later Governor-General of Pomerania, Västergötland, Dalsland, Värmland and Halland. He adapted the use of artillery on the battlefield, making it a more mobile weapon than previously known. Torstensson achieved important victories in the Thirty Years' War and in Sweden's war against Denmark (1643-45), which is named the Torstenson War after him. The period of his supreme command marks one of the most successful chapters in the military history of the Swedish army.
07/04/1638
Shimazu Tadatsune, Japanese daimyō (born 1576)
Shimazu Tadatsune was a tozama daimyō of Satsuma, the first to hold it as a formal fief (han) under the Tokugawa shogunate, and the first Japanese to rule over the Ryūkyū Kingdom. As lord of Satsuma, he was among the most powerful lords in Japan at the time, and formally submitted to Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1602, to prove his loyalty, being rewarded as a result with the name Matsudaira Iehisa; Matsudaira being a branch family of the Tokugawa, and "Ie" of "Iehisa" being taken from "Ieyasu", this was a great honor. As of 1603, his holdings amounted to 605,000 koku.
07/04/1614
El Greco, Greek-Spanish painter and sculptor (born 1541)
Doménikos Theotokópoulos, most widely known as El Greco, was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. El Greco was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters often adding the word Κρής, which means "Cretan" in Ancient Greek.
07/04/1606
Edward Oldcorne, English martyr (born 1561)
Edward Oldcorne alias Hall was an English Jesuit priest. He was known to people who knew of the Gunpowder Plot to destroy the Parliament of England and kill King James I; and although his involvement is unclear, he was caught up in the subsequent investigation. He is a Roman Catholic martyr and was beatified in 1929.
07/04/1501
Minkhaung II, king of Ava (born 1446)
Minkhaung II was king of Ava from 1480 to 1501. His 20-year reign was the beginning of the decline of Ava's hold on Upper Burma. Yamethin, a region to the east of Ava, revolted upon Minkhaung's accession to the Ava throne and stayed independent throughout Minkhaung's reign. The southern regions of Prome and Tharrawaddy revolted in 1482, and also stayed independent. By the mid-1490s, the Shan states of Mohnyin, Mogaung, Momeik and Kale (Kalay) had also broken away, and begun raiding northern Ava territories. Minkhaung increasingly came to rely on Mingyi Nyo, the Viceroy of Toungoo, for military assistance. By the end of his reign, Toungoo was equally powerful as its nominal overlord Ava.
07/04/1499
Galeotto I Pico, Duke of Mirandola (born 1442)
Galeotto I Pico della Mirandola was an Italian condottiero and nobleman, Signore of Mirandola and Concordia. He was noted by contemporaries for his tyranny. The son of Gianfrancesco I Pico, Galeotto initially allied himself to the Duchy of Ferrara, first fighting for Duke Borso d'Este and then Ercole I d'Este, with whom he formed a strong bond. In 1486, he switched allegiance to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. He fought his brother Antonio for the Signoria of Mirandola. He was ultimately successful in the last battle, taking his brother's place in 1491, which was reaffirmed two years later. He died in 1499 and was succeeded by his son Giovanni Francesco.
07/04/1498
Charles VIII of France (born 1470)
Charles VIII, called the Affable, was King of France from 1483 to his death in 1498. He succeeded his father Louis XI at the age of 13. His elder sister Anne acted as regent jointly with her husband Peter II, Duke of Bourbon until 1491, when the young king turned 21 years of age. During Anne's regency, the great lords rebelled against royal centralisation efforts in a conflict known as the Mad War (1485–1488), which resulted in a victory for the royal government.
07/04/1340
Bolesław Jerzy II of Mazovia (born 1308)
Yuri II Boleslav, was a prince and Dominus of Ruthenia in 1325–1340. He was the son of Trojden I, Duke of Masovia, a member of the Piast dynasty and the grandson of Yuri I of Galicia. His murder prompted a war of succession, known as the Galicia–Volhynia Wars.
07/04/1206
Frederick I, Duke of Lorraine
Frederick I was the duke of Lorraine from 1205 to his death. He was the second son of Matthias I and Bertha, daughter of Frederick II, Duke of Swabia. He succeeded his brother, Simon II, who had already given him the county of Bitche in 1176 and had recognised him over the northern, germanophone half of Lorraine by the Treaty of Ribemont of 1179. Judith had wanted him to succeed to all their father's inheritance, but a three-year civil war only secured him Bitche and a half-portion.
07/04/1201
Baha al-Din Qaraqush, regent of Egypt and builder of the Cairo Citadel
Baha al-Din Qaraqush al-Asadi al-Rumi al-Maliki al-Nasiri was a eunuch military commander in the service of Saladin. He served as palace chamberlain and gaoler of the deposed Fatimid dynasty, and undertook for his master the construction of the Citadel of Cairo and the fortification of Acre. After Saladin's death, he served as regent of Egypt for the Ayyubid sultans al-Aziz Uthman and al-Mansur, until he was forced to retire. He died in 1201. Although highly esteemed by contemporaries and historians, his posthumous reputation derives chiefly from a satirical pamphlet by a political opponent that lampoons him as a stupid and tyrannical monarch.
07/04/0924
Berengar I of Italy (born 845)
Berengar I was King of Italy from 887 and Holy Roman Emperor from 915 until his death in 924. He is usually known as Berengar of Friuli, since he ruled the March of Friuli from 874 until at least 890, but he had lost control of the region by 896.
07/04/0821
George the Standard-Bearer, archbishop of Mytilene (born c. 776)
Saint George the Standard-Bearer, also known as Saint George the Confessor, was the Archbishop of Mytilene from 804 until his deposition in 815. He is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and his feast day is 7 April.
07/04/0030
Jesus Christ (possible date of the crucifixion) (born circa 4 BC)
AD 30 (XXX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Vinicius and Longinus. The denomination AD 30 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Celebrations & Special Days Worldwide on 7th April
Christian feast days: Aibert of Crespin
Aibert of Crespin, was a Benedictine monastic and hermit revered for his intense life of prayer, asceticism and devotion to Mary. His biography was written by a contemporary, Robert, Archdeacon of Oostrevand.
Christian feast days: Blessed Alexander Rawlins
Alexander Rawlins was an English Roman Catholic martyr, beatified in 1929.
Christian feast days: Blessed Edward Oldcorne and Blessed Ralph Ashley
Edward Oldcorne alias Hall was an English Jesuit priest. He was known to people who knew of the Gunpowder Plot to destroy the Parliament of England and kill King James I; and although his involvement is unclear, he was caught up in the subsequent investigation. He is a Roman Catholic martyr and was beatified in 1929.
Christian feast days: Brynach
Saint Brynach was a 6th-century Welsh saint. He is traditionally associated with Pembrokeshire, where several churches are dedicated to him.
Christian feast days: Hegesippus
Hegesippus, also known as Hegesippus the Nazarene, was a Christian writer of the early Church who, in spite of his Greek name, may have been a Jewish convert and certainly wrote against heresies of the Gnostics and of Marcion.
Christian feast days: Henry Walpole
Henry Walpole, SJ was an English Jesuit martyr, executed at York for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy.
Christian feast days: Hermann Joseph
Hermann Joseph, was a German Premonstratensian canon regular and mystic. Never formally canonized, in 1958 his status as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church was formally recognized by Pope Pius XII.
Christian feast days: Jean-Baptiste de La Salle
Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was a French priest, educational reformer, and founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He is a saint of the Catholic Church and the patron saint for teachers of youth.
Christian feast days: Blessed Maria Assunta Pallotta
Beatification is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their name. Beati is the plural form, referring to those who have undergone the process of beatification; they possess the title of "Blessed" before their names and are often referred to in English as "a Blessed" or, plurally, "Blesseds".
Christian feast days: Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow (Eastern Orthodox Church, Episcopal Church (USA))
Tikhon of Moscow, born Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin, was a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). On 5 November 1917 (OS) he was selected the 11th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, after a period of about 200 years of the Synodal rule in the ROC. He was canonised as a confessor by the ROC in 1989.
Christian feast days: April 7 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
April 6 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - April 8
Flag Day (Slovenia)
A flag day is a flag-related holiday, a day designated for flying a certain flag or a day set aside to celebrate a historical event such as a nation's adoption of its flag.
Women's Day (Mozambique)
World Health Day (International observance)
World Health Day is a global health awareness day celebrated every year on 7 April, under the sponsorship of the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as other related organizations.
What Happened on 7th April?
73 significant events took place on Friday, 7th April — stretching from 451 to 2022. Explore the moments that shaped history on this day.
07/04/2022
Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed for the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first black female justice.
Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson is an American lawyer and jurist who is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Joe Biden on February 25, 2022, and confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn into office that same year. She is the first Black woman, the first former federal public defender, and the sixth woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
07/04/2021
COVID-19 pandemic: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announces that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
07/04/2020
COVID-19 pandemic: China ends its lockdown in Wuhan.
The global COVID-19 pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It spread to other parts of Asia and then worldwide in early 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 and assessed it as having become a pandemic on 11 March. The WHO declared that the public health emergency caused by COVID-19 had ended in May 2023.
COVID-19 pandemic: Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigns for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on USS Theodore Roosevelt and the dismissal of Brett Crozier.
Thomas B. Modly is an American businessman and former government official who served as acting United States Secretary of the Navy from November 24, 2019, to April 7, 2020.
07/04/2018
Former Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is arrested for corruption by determination of Judge Sérgio Moro, from the "Car-Wash Operation". Lula stayed imprisoned for 580 days, before being released by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
Brazilians are citizens and people associated with Brazil. This connection can be historic, cultural or civic. Most Brazilians share a common culture, history, ancestry and language, being all source of them being Brazilian. Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many ethnic origins.
Syria launches the Douma chemical attack during the Eastern Ghouta offensive of the Syrian Civil War.
On 7 April 2018, a chemical warfare attack was launched in the city of Douma, Syria by the military of the Ba'athist regime led by Bashar al-Assad. Medics and witnesses reported that it caused the deaths of between 40 and 50 people and injuries to possibly well over 100. The attack was attributed to the Syrian Army by rebel forces in Douma, and by the United States, British, and French governments. A two-year long investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) concluded in January 2023 that the Syrian Air Force perpetrated the attack, dropping two cylinders, one of which hit the rooftop floor of a three-storey residential building and released chlorine gas. On 14 April 2018, the United States, France and the United Kingdom carried out a series of military strikes against two alleged chemical weapons facilities of the Syrian government.
07/04/2017
A man deliberately drives a hijacked truck into a crowd of people in Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people and injuring fifteen others.
On 7 April 2017, a vehicle-ramming terrorist attack took place in central Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. A hijacked truck was deliberately driven into crowds along Drottninggatan before being crashed into an Åhléns department store. Five people were killed and 14 others were seriously injured.
U.S. President Donald Trump orders the 2017 Shayrat missile strike against Syria in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack.
Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.
07/04/2011
The Israel Defense Forces use their Iron Dome missile system to successfully intercept a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza, marking the first short-range missile intercept ever.
The Israel Defense Forces, alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym Tzahal (צה״ל), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and the Israeli Navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security apparatus. The IDF is headed by the chief of the general staff, who is subordinate to the defense minister.
A gunman opens fire at an elementary school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing twelve children and injuring 22 others before committing suicide.
On the morning of 7 April 2011, a school shooting occurred at the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School, an elementary school in Realengo, a western neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Twelve students were killed, and 22 others seriously wounded by 23-year-old Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, a former student who committed the attack with two revolvers. Oliveira was intercepted by the police but committed suicide before being arrested. It was the first reported mass shooting at a school to not be tied to gang violence in Brazil. It is the second deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in Brazilian history, surpassed only by the 1997 São Gonçalo do Amarante massacre.
07/04/2009
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered to the north by Ecuador and Colombia, to the east by Brazil, to the southeast by Bolivia, to the south by Chile, and to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country, with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west, to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country, to the tropical Amazon basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon River. Peru has a population of over 32 million, and its capital and largest city is Lima. At 1,285,216 km2 (496,225 sq mi), Peru is the 19th largest country in the world, and the third largest in South America.
Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent.
Protests against the April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election results began on 6 April 2009 in major cities of Moldova before the final official results were announced. The demonstrators claimed that the election, which saw the governing Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) win a majority of seats, were fraudulent, and alternatively demanded a recount, a new election, or resignation of the government. Similar demonstrations took place in other major Moldovan cities, including the country's second largest, Bălți, where over 1,000 people protested.
07/04/2005
First release of Git distributed version control system.
Git is a distributed version control software system that is capable of managing versions of source code or data. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively.
07/04/2003
Iraq War: U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime falls two days later.
The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a protracted armed conflict in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States–led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. During the US occupation of Iraq, the conflict persisted as an insurgency that arose against coalition forces and the newly established Iraqi government. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing Islamic State insurgency.
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide demands reparations of $21 billion from France for the Haitian independence debt.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a Haitian former Salesian priest and politician who served as president of Haiti in 1991, from 1993 to 1994, from 1994 to 1996, and from 2001 to 2004. He was in exile after the 1991 military coup until 1994 and again after his overthrow in 2004 until 2011. Aristide was a member of the Lavalas Political Organization before he founded the party Fanmi Lavalas in 1996.
07/04/2001
NASA launches the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and space. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NASA operates ten field centers across the U.S. and is organized into three mission directorates: Human Spaceflight, Research and Technology, and Science. Established in 1958, NASA succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the U.S. space program a distinct civilian orientation focused on peaceful applications. Since then, it has led most American spaceflight programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the Apollo program, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS) and the ongoing multi-national Artemis program.
07/04/1999
Turkish Airlines Flight 5904 crashes near Ceyhan in southern Turkey, killing six people.
Turkish Airlines Flight 5904 was a Boeing 737-400 on an international repositioning flight from Adana Şakirpaşa Airport in Adana, Turkey, to King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which crashed on 7 April 1999 in the vicinity of Ceyhan, Adana Province, in southern Turkey, eight minutes after takeoff. The flight was on its way to Saudi Arabia to pick up pilgrims from Jeddah, and as such took off without any passengers on board. All six crew members were killed in the accident.
07/04/1995
First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.
The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a conflict between the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. The conflict ended in a peace treaty that saw Russian forces withdraw from the territory only for them to invade again three years later sparking the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009.
07/04/1994
Rwandan genocide: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda, and soldiers kill the civilian Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the Tutsi genocide, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were systematically killed by Hutu militias. While the Rwandan Constitution states that over 1 million people were killed, most scholarly estimates suggest between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died, mostly men. The genocide was marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbours, and widespread sexual violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 women raped.
Auburn Calloway attempts to destroy Federal Express Flight 705 in order to allow his family to benefit from his life insurance policy.
On April 7, 1994, Federal Express Flight 705, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 cargo jet carrying electronics equipment across the United States from Memphis, Tennessee, to San Jose, California, was the subject of a hijack attempt by Auburn R. Calloway, a Federal Express employee facing possible dismissal for falsifying his flight hours. Calloway boarded the scheduled flight as a deadhead passenger carrying a guitar case concealing several hammers and a speargun. He planned to crash the aircraft hoping he would appear to be an employee killed in an accident, so his family could collect on a $2.5 million life insurance policy provided by Federal Express. Calloway tried to switch off the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR) before takeoff, but the flight engineer noticed and turned it back on, believing he had neglected to turn it on. Once airborne, he attempted to kill the crew with hammers so their injuries would appear consistent with an accident rather than a hijacking. Despite severe injuries, the crew fought back, subdued Calloway, and landed the aircraft safely.
07/04/1990
A fire breaks out on the passenger ferry Scandinavian Star, killing 159 people.
A ferry is a boat or ship that transports passengers, and occasionally vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with multiple stops, like those in Venice, Italy, is sometimes referred to as a water taxi or water bus.
John Poindexter is convicted for his role in the Iran–Contra affair. In 1991 the convictions are reversed on appeal.
John Marlan Poindexter is a retired United States naval officer and Department of Defense official. He was Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor during the Reagan administration. He was convicted in April 1990 of multiple felonies as a result of his actions in the Iran–Contra affair, but his convictions were reversed on appeal in 1991. During the George W. Bush administration, he served a brief stint as the director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office. He is the father of NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain Alan G. Poindexter.
07/04/1989
Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway, killing 42 sailors.
The K-278 Komsomolets was the Project-685 Plavnik, nuclear-powered attack submarine of the Soviet Navy; the only submarine of her design class.
07/04/1988
Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov orders the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Dmitry Timofeyevich Yazov was a Marshal of the Soviet Union. A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Yazov served as Minister of Defence from 1987 until he was arrested for his part in the 1991 August coup, four months before the fall of the Soviet Union. Yazov was the last person to be appointed to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union on 28 April 1990 and the only Marshal born in Siberia. At the time of his death on 25 February 2020, he was the last living Marshal of the Soviet Union.
07/04/1983
During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
STS-6 was the sixth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 4, 1983, the mission deployed the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-1, into orbit, before landing at Edwards Air Force Base on April 9, 1983. STS-6 was the first Space Shuttle mission during which a Extravehicular activity was conducted, and hence was the first in which the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) was used.
07/04/1982
Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh is arrested.
Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was an Iranian politician who served as a close aide of Ayatollah Khomeini during his 1978 exile in France and was foreign minister during the Iran hostage crisis following the Iranian Revolution. In 1982, he was executed for allegedly plotting the assassination of Ayatollah Khomeini and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
07/04/1980
During the Iran hostage crisis, the United States severs relations with Iran.
The Iran hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 52 of them being held until January 20, 1981. The incident occurred after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line stormed and occupied the building in the months following the Iranian Revolution. With support from Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Iranian Revolution and would eventually establish the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran, the hostage-takers demanded that the United States extradite Iranian king Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been granted asylum by the Carter administration for cancer treatment. Notable among the assailants were Hossein Dehghan, Mohammad Ali Jafari, and Mohammad Bagheri. The hostage crisis contributed to a dramatic decline in Iran–United States relations. After 444 days, it came to an end with the signing of the Algiers Accords between the Iranian and American governments; Pahlavi had died in Cairo, Egypt, on July 27, 1980.
07/04/1978
Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.
A neutron bomb, officially defined as a type of enhanced radiation weapon (ERW), is a low-yield thermonuclear weapon designed to maximize lethal neutron radiation in the immediate vicinity of the blast while minimizing the physical power of the blast itself. The neutron release generated by a nuclear fusion reaction is intentionally allowed to escape the weapon, rather than being absorbed by its other components. The neutron burst, which is used as the primary destructive action of the warhead, is able to penetrate enemy armor more effectively than a conventional warhead, thus making it more lethal as a tactical weapon.
07/04/1977
German Federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light.
Siegfried Buback was the Attorney General of West Germany from 1974 until his murder in 1977.
07/04/1976
Member of Parliament and suspected spy John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party after being arrested for faking his own death.
John Thomson Stonehouse was a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician, businessman and minister who was a member of the Cabinet under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He is remembered for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974. It is alleged that Stonehouse had been an agent for Czechoslovak military intelligence.
07/04/1972
Vietnam War: Communist forces overrun the South Vietnamese town of Loc Ninh.
The Viet Cong (VC) was an epithet and umbrella term to refer to the communist-led armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. It was formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and conducted military operations under the name of the Liberation Army of South Vietnam (LASV). The movement fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the VC controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the VC was an insurgency indigenous to the South that represented the legitimate rights of people in South Vietnam, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the modern Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a communist rule.
07/04/1971
Vietnam War: President Richard Nixon announces his decision to quicken the pace of Vietnamization.
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.
07/04/1969
The Internet's symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1.
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that comprises private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information services and resources, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, discussion groups, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing.
07/04/1968
Two-time Formula One British World Champion Jim Clark dies in an accident during a Formula Two race in Hockenheim.
Formula One (F1) is the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel, single-seater formula racing cars run by Formula One Group and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one of the world's premier forms of motorsport since its inaugural running in 1950 and is often considered to be the pinnacle of motorsport. The word formula in the name refers to the set of rules all participant cars must follow. A Formula One season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix. Grands Prix take place in multiple countries and continents on either purpose-built circuits or closed roads.
07/04/1965
Representatives of the National Congress of American Indians testify before members of the US Senate in Washington, D.C., against the termination of the Colville tribe.
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is an American Indian and Alaska Native rights organization. It was founded in 1944 to represent the tribes and resist U.S. federal government pressure for termination of tribal rights and assimilation of their people. These were in contradiction of their treaty rights and status as sovereign entities. The organization continues to be an association of federally recognized and state-recognized Indian tribes.
07/04/1964
IBM announces the System/360.
International Business Machines Corporation, doing business as IBM, is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries; for 29 consecutive years, from 1993 to 2021, it held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business.
07/04/1956
Francoist Spain agrees to surrender its protectorate in Morocco.
Francoist Spain, also known as the Franco dictatorship, officially the Spanish State, was a state in Spanish history established in Nationalist-held territories of Spain ruled by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 and then comprising the whole of Spain from 1939 until Franco's death in 1975.
07/04/1954
United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference.
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. A General of the Army, Eisenhower was the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. His successful leadership in Operation Torch (1942–1943) and Operation Overlord was pivotal to the Allied victory in World War II.
07/04/1948
The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has six regional offices and 150 field offices worldwide. Only sovereign states are eligible to join, and it is the largest intergovernmental health organization at the international level.
07/04/1946
The Soviet Union annexes East Prussia as the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.
07/04/1945
World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato, one of the two largest ever constructed, is sunk by United States Navy aircraft during Operation Ten-Go.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.
07/04/1944
In the Fragheto massacre, soldiers belonging to the German 356th Infantry Division kill 30 Italian civilians and 15 partisans near Casteldelci in central-northern Italy.
The Fragheto massacre was the massacre of 30 Italian civilians and 15 partisans in Fragheto, a frazione of Casteldelci in central-northern Italy, on 7 April 1944, during World War II, by soldiers of the German 356th Infantry Division. After partisans belonging to the Eighth Garibaldi Brigade ambushed troops approaching the hamlet, fourteen soldiers of the Sturmbattaillon OB Sudwest conducted house-to-house searches and summarily killed civilians. Representing 40% of the hamlet's population, many of the victims were elderly people, women, or children. A further seven partisans and one civilian were shot the next day at Ponte Carrattoni, at the confluence of the Senatello and Marecchia.
07/04/1943
The Holocaust in Ukraine: In Terebovlia, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress and march through the city to the nearby village of Plebanivka, where they are shot and buried in ditches.
The Holocaust saw the systematic mass murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, the Crimean General Government and some areas which were located to the east of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, in the Transnistria Governorate and Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region and Carpathian Ruthenia during World War II. The listed areas are currently parts of Ukraine.
Ioannis Rallis becomes collaborationist Prime Minister of Greece during the Axis Occupation.
Ioannis Rallis was the third and last collaborationist prime minister of Greece during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II, holding office from 7 April 1943 to 12 October 1944, succeeding Konstantinos Logothetopoulos in the Nazi-controlled Greek puppet government in Athens.
The National Football League makes helmets mandatory.
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins annually with a three-week preseason in August, followed by an 18-week regular season, which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one bye week. Seven teams from each conference, including the four division winners and three wild card teams, then advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament, which culminates in the Super Bowl, played in early February between the winners of the AFC and NFC championship games. The NFL is headquartered in New York City.
07/04/1940
Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
07/04/1939
Benito Mussolini declares an Italian protectorate over Albania and forces King Zog I into exile.
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician, journalist, and dictator who led Italy as Il Duce from 1922 until his overthrow in 1943. He founded fascism in 1919 with the creation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which became the National Fascist Party (PNF) in 1921. Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister of Italy after the March on Rome in 1922, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. He oversaw Italy's participation in World War II as a prominent member of the Axis Powers, and was summarily executed near the end of the war in 1945.
Italy invades Albania.
The Italian invasion of Albania was a brief military campaign which was launched by Italy against Albania in 1939. The conflict was a result of the imperialistic policies of the Italian prime minister and dictator Benito Mussolini. Albania was rapidly occupied, its ruler King Zog I went into exile in the neighboring Kingdom of Greece, and the country was made a part of the Italian Empire as a protectorate in personal union with the Italian Crown.
07/04/1933
Prohibition in the United States is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution. (Now celebrated as National Beer Day in the United States.)
The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933.
Nazi Germany issues the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banning Jews and political dissidents from civil service posts.
Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.
07/04/1926
Violet Gibson attempts to assassinate Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini.
Violet Albina Gibson was an Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Benito Mussolini in 1926. She was released without charge but spent the rest of her life in a psychiatric hospital in England.
07/04/1922
Teapot Dome scandal: United States Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall leases federal petroleum reserves to private oil companies on excessively generous terms.
The Teapot Dome scandal was a political corruption scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Warren G. Harding. It centered on Albert B. Fall, the interior secretary, who had leased petroleum reserves designated for the Navy at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison, but no one was convicted of paying the bribes.
07/04/1906
Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.
Mount Vesuvius is a somma–stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of several volcanoes forming the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera, resulting from the collapse of an earlier, much higher structure.
The Algeciras Conference gives France and Spain control over Morocco.
The Algeciras Conference of 1906 took place in Algeciras, Spain, and lasted from 16 January to 7 April. The purpose of the conference was to find a solution to the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905 between France and Germany, which arose as Germany responded to France's effort to establish a protectorate over the independent state of Morocco. Germany was not trying to stop French expansion. Its goal was to enhance its own international prestige, and it failed badly. The result was a much closer relationship between France and Britain that strengthened the Entente Cordiale since both London and Paris were increasingly suspicious and distrustful of Berlin.
07/04/1868
Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, is assassinated by a Fenian activist.
Thomas D'Arcy McGee was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was an Irish Catholic who opposed British rule in Ireland, and was part of the Young Ireland attempts to overthrow British rule and create an independent Irish Republic. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, after which some of his political positions reversed. He remained ardently Catholic, but his Irish nationalism moderated. He became disgusted with American republicanism, Anti-Catholicism, and classical liberalism. McGee became intensely monarchistic in his political beliefs and in his religious support for the embattled Pope Pius IX.
07/04/1862
American Civil War: The Union's Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio defeat the Confederate Army of Mississippi near Shiloh, Tennessee.
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.
07/04/1831
Pedro II becomes emperor of the Empire of Brazil.
Dom Pedro II, known as "the Magnanimous", was the second and final emperor of the Empire of Brazil. He reigned from 1831 until his deposition in the military coup of 1889, presiding over the longest and most stable reign in Brazilian history.
07/04/1824
The Mechanics' Institution is established in Manchester, England at the Bridgewater Arms hotel, as part of a national movement for the education of working men. The institute is the precursor to three Universities in the city: the University of Manchester, UMIST and the Metropolitan University of Manchester (MMU).
Mechanics' institutes, also known as mechanics' institutions, sometimes simply known as institutes, and also called schools of arts, were educational establishments originally formed to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects, to working men in Victorian-era Britain and its colonies. They were often funded by local industrialists on the grounds that they would ultimately benefit from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees. The mechanics' institutes often included libraries for the adult working class, and were said to provide them with an alternative pastime to gambling and drinking in pubs.
07/04/1805
Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select group of U.S. Army and civilian volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. Clark, along with 30 others, set out from Camp Dubois, Illinois, on May 14, 1804, met Lewis and ten other members of the group in St. Charles, Missouri, then went up the Missouri River. The expedition crossed the Continental Divide of the Americas near the Lemhi Pass, eventually coming to the Columbia River, and the Pacific Ocean in 1805. The return voyage began on March 23, 1806, at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, ending six months later on September 23.
German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premieres his Third Symphony, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer, conductor, and pianist. Mentored during the Classical period, Beethoven's musical style was a key driver of the transition to Romantic music, and the expansion of popular forms such as the symphony and string quartet. His compositions have attracted casual and scholarly interest, and remain among the most performed in the world.
07/04/1798
The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and the Spanish Empire. It is expanded in 1804 and again in 1812.
The Territory of Mississippi was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that was created under an organic act passed by the Congress of the United States. It was approved and signed into law by President John Adams on April 7, 1798.
07/04/1795
The French First Republic adopts the kilogram and gram as its primary unit of mass.
In the history of France, the French Republic, retroactively referred to as the First Republic and sometimes referred to in historiography as Revolutionary France, was founded on 21 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire on 18 May 1804 under Napoléon Bonaparte, although the form of government changed several times.
07/04/1790
Russo-Turkish war (1787–1792): Greek privateer Lambros Katsonis loses three of his ships in the Battle of Andros.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792 involved an unsuccessful attempt by the Ottoman Empire to regain lands lost to the Russian Empire in the course of the previous Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). It took place concomitantly with the Austro-Turkish War (1788–1791), the Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790), and the Theatre War.
07/04/1788
Settlers establish Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement created by U.S. citizens in the recently organized Northwest Territory.
This is a list of early settlers of Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement created by United States citizens after the establishment of the Northwest Territory in 1787. The settlers included soldiers of the American Revolutionary War and members of the Ohio Company of Associates.
07/04/1767
End of Burmese–Siamese War (1765–1767).
The Burmese–Siamese War of 1765–1767, also known as the war of the second fall of Ayutthaya was the second military conflict between Burma under the Konbaung dynasty and Ayutthaya Kingdom under the Siamese Ban Phlu Luang dynasty that lasted from 1765 until 1767; the war ended the 417-year-old Ayutthaya Kingdom.
07/04/1724
Premiere performance of Bach's St John Passion, BWV 245, at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.
The structure of the St John Passion, BWV 245, a sacred oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach first performed in Leipzig on Good Friday 1724, is "carefully designed with a great deal of musico-theological intent". Some main aspects of the structure are shown in tables below.
07/04/1541
Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies.
Francis Xavier, venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Navarrese cleric and missionary. He co-founded the Society of Jesus and, as a representative of the Portuguese Empire, led the first Christian mission to Japan.
07/04/1521
Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu.
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer best known for planning and leading the 1519–1522 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he became the first European to encounter the Strait of Magellan, performed the first European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and made the first known European contact with the Philippines. Magellan himself was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, but his crew, commanded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522, achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history.
07/04/1449
Felix V abdicates his claim to the papacy, ending the reign of the final Antipope.
Amadeus VIII, nicknamed the Peaceful, was Count of Savoy from 1391 to 1416 and Duke of Savoy from 1416 to 1440. He was the first to hold the ducal title, granted by Emperor Sigismund. Known for his diplomatic temperament and administrative reforms, he strengthened the state's institutions and fostered internal peace.
07/04/1348
Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV charters Prague University.
Charles IV was Holy Roman Emperor from 1355 until his death in 1378. He was elected King of Germany in 1346 and became King of Bohemia that same year. He was a member of the House of Luxembourg from his father's side and the Bohemian House of Přemyslid from his mother's side; he emphasized the latter due to his lifelong affinity for the Bohemian side of his inheritance, and also because his direct ancestors in the Přemyslid line included two saints.
07/04/1141
Empress Matilda becomes the first female ruler of England, adopting the title "Lady of the English".
Empress Matilda, also known as Empress Maud, was Holy Roman Empress as the consort of Emperor Henry V from 1110 until his death in 1125, and was subsequently a claimant to the English throne, and Lady of the English, during the civil war known as the Anarchy. Following the death of her father, King Henry I of England, as his only surviving child and nominated heir, she asserted her right to the English throne. However, her cousin Stephen of Blois usurped the crown.
07/04/0529
First Corpus Juris Civilis, a fundamental work in jurisprudence, is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.
The Corpus Juris Civilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Roman Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred to metonymically after one of its parts, the Code of Justinian.
07/04/0451
Attila the Hun captures Metz in France, killing most of its inhabitants and burning the town.
Attila, frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in early 453. He was also the leader of an empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Gepids, among others, in Central and Eastern Europe.