Famous birthdays

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Born on April 12

1777 Henry Clay, the "Great Compromiser", American politician and statesman who ran unsuccessfully for president three times.

1791 Francis Preston Blair, Washington Globe newspaper editor.

1838 John Shaw Billings, American librarian, army physician.

1949 Scott Turow, writer and attorney.

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Born on April 13

1721 John Hanson, first U.S. President under the Articles of Confederation.

1732 Frederick Lord North, British prime minister (1770-82).

1743 Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States (1801-09)

1852 Frank W. Woolworth, American retailer.

1866 Butch Cassidy [Robert LeRoy Parker], American outlaw and leader of the Wild Bunch.

1899 Alfred Butts, inventor of the board game Scrabble.

1906 Samuel Beckett, playwright, Nobel Prize winner (Waiting for Godot).

1909 Eudora Welty, Southern writer (Delta Wedding, The Optimist's Daughter).

1922 John Gerard Braine, British novelist (Room at the Top).

1939 Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, Nobel laureate.

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Born on April 16

1660 Hans Sloane, physician, naturalist, founder of the British Museum.

1728 Joseph Black, Scottish chemist and physicist.

1786 Sir John Franklin, arctic explorer.

1800 George Charles Bingham, British soldier, commanded the Light Brigade during the famous charge.

1844 Anatole France, French writer.

1850 Thomas Sidney Gilchrist, British metallurgist and inventor.

1864 Flora Batson, African-American soprano-baritone singer.

1867 Wilbur Wright, designer, builder and flyer of the first airplane.

1871 John Millington Synge, dramatist and poet (Playboy of the Western World).

1889 Charlie Chaplin, film actor and director.

1919 Merce Cuningham, American dancer and choreographer.

1922 Kingsley Amis, British author (Lucky Jim).

1924 Henry Mancini, composer and conductor ("Moon River").

1947 Lew Alcinder (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), professional basketball player.

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Born on April 17

1622 Henry Vaughan, poet

1676 Frederick I, king of Sweden

1741 Samuel Chase, signer of the Declaration of Independence

1820 Alexander Cartwright, sportsman, developed baseball.

1866 Ernest Henry Starling, British physiologist.

1885 Isak Dinesen (Karen Dinesen), Danish writer (Out of Africa).

1894 Nikita S. Khrushchev, Soviet premier (1958-64).

1897 Thornton Wilder, novelist and playwright (Our Town).

1923 Harry Reasoner, American broadcast journalist.

1928 Cynthia Ozick, writer (The Cannibal Galaxy, The Messiah of Stockholm).

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Born on April 18

1480 Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI and a patron of the arts.

1817 George Henry Lewes, philosophical writer.

1857 Clarence S. Darrow, lawyer.

1864 Richard Harding Davis, journalist.

1918 Clifton Keith Hillegass, founder of the study guides known as Cliff's Notes.

1940 Ed Garvey, labor leader.

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Born on April 19

1666 Sarah Kembel Knight, diarist.

1721 Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

1832 Lucretia Rudolph, President Garfield's first lady.

1877 Ole Evinrude, inventor of the first successful outboard motor.

1900 Richard Hughes, English novelist and playwright (A High Wind in Jamaica).

1903 Eliot Ness, Treasury agent during Prohibition.

1905 Tom Hopkinson, British writer.

1912 Glenn T. Seaborg, physicist.

1933 Etheridge Knight, poet.

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Born on April 20

121 Marcus Aurelius, 16th Roman emperor, philosopher.

1745 Philippe Pinel, founder of psychiatry.

1807 Aloysius Bertrand ("Gaspard de la Nuit"), French poet.

1808 Louis-Napoleon (Napoleon III), emperor of France.

1850 Daniel Chester French, sculptor.

1889 Adolf Hitler, Facist dictator of Nazi Germany (1933-1945).

1893 Harold Lloyd, film comedian.

1893 Joan Miró, Spanish painter.

1927 Alex Muller, Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

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Born on April 21

1782 Friedrich Froebel, founder of kindergarten.

1816 Charlotte Bronte, novelist (Jane Eyre).

1838 John Muir, naturalist.

1849 Oskar Hertwig, embryologist.

1864 Max Weber, German sociologist and political economist.

1909 Rollo May, psychologist.

1912 Marcel Camus, French film director (Black Orpheus).

1923 John Mortimor, British barrister and playwright (Rumpole of the Bailey).

1926 Elizabeth II, queen of England.

1932 Elaine May, comedy writer.

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Born on April 22

1451 Isabella I of Castile, Queen of Spain, patron of Christopher Columbus.

1707 Henry Fielding, English novelist (Tom Jones).

1724 Immanuel Kant, German philosopher.

1870 Vladimir Ilich Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov), leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and first head of the U.S.S.R.

1873 Ellen Glassgow, American novelist.

1876 O.E. Rolvaag, novelist (Giants in the Earth).

1899 Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist (Lolita).

1904 J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist, director of the Manhattan Project.

1916 Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.

1918 Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man (8'11.1").

1922 Charles Mingus, jazz bassist.

1943 Louise Gluck, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

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Born on April 23

1547 Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish author (Don Quixote).

1564 William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet.

1791 James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (1857-1861).

1813 Stephen A. Douglas, American politician.

1897 Lucius D. Clay, U.S. military governor of occupied Berlin.

1902 Halldór Laxness, Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic novelist (The Fish Can Sing, Paradise Reclaimed).

1926 J.P. Donlevey, American-born Irish writer (The Ginger Man).

1926 Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Mercury and Gemini astronaut, died in an accident on Apollo 1.

1928 Shirley Temple Black, child actress, later U.S. ambassador.

1932 Jim Fixx, runner and writer who popularized running as a form of exercise in the 1970s.

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Born on April 24

1620 John Graunt, statistician, founder of demography.

1743 Edmund Cartwright, English parson who invented the power loom.

1766 Robert Bailey Thomas, founder of the Farmer's Almanac.

1769 Arthur Wellesley, general during the Napoleonic Wars, Duke of Wellington.

1815 Anthony Trollope, British novelist.

1856 Henri Philippe Pétain, French Marshall, WWI hero, Nazi collaborator.

1900 Elizabeth Goudge, English author.

1904 Willem de Kooning, abstract impressionist painter.

1905 Robert Penn Warren, novelist, America's first poet laureate.

1906 William Joyce, 'Lord Haw-Haw,' British traitor, Nazi propagandist.

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Born on April 25

1214 Louis IX, king of France (1226-1270).

1284 Edward II, king of England (1307-1327).

1599 Oliver Cromwell, lord protector of England (1653-1658).

1873 Howard R. Garis, children's writer.

1873 Walther de la Mare, poet and novelist (Memoir of a Midget, Come Hither).

1874 Guglielmo Marconi, Italian physicist, inventor of the radio.

1892 Maud Hart Lovelace, children's author.

1908 Edward R. Murrow, war correspondent and newscaster.

1912 Gladys L. Presley, mother of Elvis Presley.

1914 Ross Lockridge, Jr., novelist (Raintree Country).

1917 Ella Fitzgerald, American singer.

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Born on April 26

1718 Esek Hopkins, first commodore of the United States Navy.

1785 John James Audubon, artist and naturalist.

1812 Alfred Krupp, German arms merchant.

1822 Frederick Law Olmstead, landscape architect, designed New York's central park.

1875 Syngman Rhee, South Korean statesman.

1893 Anita Loos, novelist and screenwriter (Gentleman Prefer Blondes).

1894 Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader.

1900 Charles Richter, physicist and seismologist.

1914 Bernard Malamud, novelist and short story writer (The Natural).

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Born on April 27

1737 Edward Gibbon, historian (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).

1791 Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and the code.

1822 Ulysses S. Grant, Union general during the American Civil War, 18th President of the United States (1869-1877).

1840 Edward Whymper, the first man to climb the Matterhorn.

1900 Walter Lantz, cartoonist, creator of Woody Woodpecker.

1904 Cecil Day-Lewis, Irish poet, father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

1927 Coretta Scott King, civil rights activist, wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Born on April 28

1442 Edward IV, king of England (1461-1470, 1471-1483), first king of the House of York.

1758 James Monroe, fifth President of the United States (1817-1825).

1878 Lionel Barrymore, American stage, screen and radio actor.

1892 John Jacob Niles, American folk singer and folklorist.

1898 William Soutar, Scottish poet.

1902 Johan Borgen, Norwegian novelist.

1912 Odette Hallowes, British secret agent.

1926 Harper Lee, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (To Kill a Mockingbird).

1930 James Baker III, Cabinet secretary for Presidents Reagan and Bush.

1936 Kenneth White, poet and essayist.

1937 Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq.

1937 Jean Redpath, Scottish folk singer.

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Born on April 29

1745 Oliver Ellsworth, third Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1818 Alexander II, Czar of Russia.

1863 William Randolph Hearst, American newspaper publisher.

1877 Tad Dorgen, cartoonist and columnist.

1879 Sir Thomas Beecham, founder of the London Philharmonic.

1899 Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, renowned jazz composer and musician.

1901 Hirohito, emperor of Japan during and after World War II.

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Born on April 30

1777 Karl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician.

1858 Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, First Lady to President Benjamin Harrison .

1870 Franz Lehár, Hungarian composer (The Merry Widow, The Land of Smiles).

1909 Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands.

1912 Eve Arden (Eunice Quedens), actress.

1933 Willie Nelson, country singer.

1945 Annie Dillard, writer (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).

1954 Jane Campion, New Zealand film director (The Piano, A Portrait of a Lady).

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Born on May 1

1493 Phillippus Paracelsus, physician and alchemist.

1764 Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol.

1769 Arthur Wellsley, Duke of Wellington.

1830 Mother (Mary Harris) Jones, reformer and labor organizer.

1839 Louis-Maire-Hilaire Bernigaud, French chemist, inventor of rayon.

1878 James Graham, inventor of the first naval aircraft-carrying ship and first man to film a total eclipse of the Sun.

1896 Mark Clark, American general during World War II.

1909 Kate Smith, singer.

1916 Glenn Ford, actor (The Blackboard Jungle).

1923 Joseph Heller, American author (Catch 22).

1924 Terry Southern, novelist and screenwriter (Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider).

1940 Bobbie Ann Mason, American writer (Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country).

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Born on May 2

1729 Catherine II, Czarina of Russia.

1837 Henry Martyn Roberts, parlimentarian (Robert's Rules of Order).

1860 William Maddock Bayliss, British physiologist, co-discoverer of hormones.

1866 Jesse Lazear, American physician and researcher of yellow fever.

1877 Vernon Castle, ballroom dancer.

1892 Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron), German fighter ace of World War I.

1895 Lorenz Milton Hart, lyricist, collaborator with Richard Rodgers.

1901 Bing [Harry Lillis] Crosby, singer and actor.

1903 Benjamin Spock, pediatrician, author and activist.

1921 Satyajit Ray, Indian film director (Aparajito, The World of Apu).

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Born on May 3

1469 Niccol Machiavelli, political advisor and writer (The Prince).

1849 Jacob Riis, American reformer (How the Other Half Lives).

1898 Golda Mier, Fourth Prime Minister of Israel (1969-1974).

1912 May Sarton, poet and writer.

1913 William Inge, American playwright (Picnic, Bus Stop).

1919 Betty Compden, lyricist.

1919 Pete Seeger, folksinger and songwriter.

1920 John Lewis, jazz pianist.

1920 Walker Smith, Jr. (Sugar Ray Robinson), champion middleweight boxer.

1933 James Brown, American singer and songwriter.