August 4
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
[change] Births
- 1290 - Duke Leopold I of Austria
- 1521 - Pope Urban VII, (d. 1590)
- 1792 - Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (d. 1822)
- 1834 - John Venn, British mathematician (d. 1923)
- 1840 - Richard von Krafft-Ebing, sexologist
- 1859 - Knut Hamsun, Norwegian writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1920 (d. 1952)
- 1899 - Ezra Taft Benson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1994)
- 1900 - Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Mother of the United Kingdom (d. 2002)
- 1901 - Louis Armstrong, jazz musician (d. 1971)
- 1904 - Witold Gombrowicz, Polish novelist and dramatist (d. 1969)
- 1906 - Marie-José Van Sachsen Coburg-Gotha, last Queen of Italy (d. 2001)
- 1906 - Eugen Schuhmacher, zoologist (d. 1973)
- 1908 - Kurt Eichhorn, conductor
- 1909 - Glenn Cunningham, athlete
- 1909 - Otto Steiger, writer
- 1910 - William Schuman, composer (d. 1992)
- 1912 - Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, mathematician, physicist, philosopher and a mountaineer (d. 1999)
- 1912 - Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat (d. 1947 presumed)
- 1913 - Robert Hayden, poet, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (d. 1980)
- 1921 - Maurice Richard, hockey player (d. 2000)
- 1927 - Jess Thomas, American tenor (d. 1993)
- 1929 - Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (d. 2004)
- 1929 - Kishore Kumar, Indian singer and actor (d. 1987)
- 1930 - Götz Friedrich, opera director (d. 2000)
- 1932 - Hans Jürgen Fröhlich, writer
- 1932 - Guillermo Mordillo, graphic artist and cartoonist
- 1936 - Assia Djebar, member of the Académie française
- 1937 - David Bedford, musician
- 1943 - Bjørn Wirkola, Norwegian ski jumper
- 1944 - Richard Belzer, actor and comedian
- 1947 - Klaus Schulze, composer, perforner
- 1955 - Billy Bob Thornton, actor, writer
- 1958 - Mary Decker Slaney, track star
- 1960 - Dean Malenko, professional wrestler
- 1960 - José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spanish Prime Minister
- 1961 - Barack Obama, American politician
- 1962 - Roger Clemens, baseball player
- 1967 - Mike Marsh, American athlete
- 1968 - Marcus Schenkenberg, model
- 1970 - Michael DeLuise, American actor
- 1971 - Jeff Gordon, race car driver
- 1978 - Kurt Busch, race car driver
[change] Deaths
- 1060 - Henry I of France (b. 1008)
- 1113 - Gertrude of Saxony (b. 1030)
- 1265 - Killed in the Battle of Evesham:
- 1306 - Wenceslaus III of Bohemia (b. 1289)
- 1338 - Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk, son of Edward I of England (b. 1300)
- 1526 - Juan Sebastián Elcano, Spanish explorer (b. 1476)
- 1578 - Sebastian of Portugal (b. 1554)
- 1578 - Thomas Stucley, English adventurer
- 1598 - William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, English statesman (b. 1520)
- 1612 - Hugh Broughton, English scholar (b. 1549)
- 1639 - Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Mexican dramatist
- 1718 - René Lepage de Ste-Claire, lord-founder of the town of Rimouski, in New France (b. 1656)
- 1727 - Victor-Maurice, comte de Broglie, French general (b. 1647)
- 1741 - Andrew Hamilton, American lawyer
- 1784 - Giovanni Battista Martini, Italian musician (b. 1706)
- 1792 - John Burgoyne, British general (b. 1723)
- 1795 - Timothy Ruggles, American-born Tory politician (b. 1711)
- 1844 - Jakob Aall, Norwegian journalist and statesman (b. 1773)
- 1873 - Viktor Hartmann, Russian painter (b. 1834)
- 1875 - Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (b. 1805)
- 1900 - Isaac Levitan, Russian painter (b. 1860)
- 1938 - Pearl White, American actress (b. 1889)
- 1957 - Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, President of Brazil (b. 1869)
- 1958 - Ethel Anderson, Australian poet (b. 1883)
- 1967 - Peter Smith, English cricketer (b. 1908)
- 1976 - Roy Herbert Thomson, Canadian publisher (b. 1894)
- 1981 - Melvyn Douglas, American actor (b. 1901)
- 1982 - Bruce Goff, American Architect (b. 1904)
- 1996 - Geoff Hamilton, British gardener and broadcaster (b. 1936)
- 1997 - Jeanne Calment, French supercentenarian; world's oldest ever-human (b. 1875)
- 1998 - Yuri Artyukhin, cosmonaut (b. 1930)
- 1999 - Victor Mature, American actor (b. 1915)
- 2000 - Leslie Glass, American adult film actress (b. 1963)
- 2001 - Lorenzo Music, American actor (b. 1937)
- 2002 - Holly Wells & Jessica Chapman, Soham murder victims (b. 1991, 1991)
- 2003 - Frederick Chapman Robbins, American Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1916)
- 2005 - Anatoly Larkin, Russian-American physicist (b. 1932)