Biographies on This Day in History: April 23

Born On
Timothy McVeigh
American terrorist
April 23, 1968 - June 11, 2001
Timothy McVeigh was an American domestic terrorist who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995. The explosion, which killed 168 people, was the deadliest terrorist incident on U.S. soil,...

Died On
James Earl Ray
American assassin
March 10, 1928 - April 23, 1998
James Earl Ray was an American assassin of the African American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray had been a small-time crook, a robber of gas stations and stores, who had served time in...

Born On
J.M.W. Turner
English painter
April 23, 1775 - December 19, 1851
J.M.W. Turner was an English Romantic landscape painter whose expressionistic studies of light, color, and atmosphere were unmatched in their range and sublimity. Turner was the son of a barber. At age...

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P.L. Travers
British author
August 9, 1899 - April 23, 1996
P.L. Travers was an Australian English writer known for her Mary Poppins books, about a magical nanny. The books insightfully explored the fraught relationship between children and adults through a combination...

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Paulette Goddard
American actress
June 3, 1905 - April 23, 1990
Paulette Goddard was an American actress known for her spirited persona and for her association with Charlie Chaplin. Goddard worked as a fashion model in her early teens, and at age 16 she appeared as...

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Orrin Hatch
United States senator
March 22, 1934 - April 23, 2022
Orrin Hatch was an American politician who was the longest-serving Republican senator, representing Utah from 1977 to 2019. He also was president pro tempore of the Senate (2015–19). Hatch, a Mormon, earned...

Born On
Stephen A. Douglas
United States senator
April 23, 1813 - June 3, 1861
Stephen A. Douglas was an American politician, leader of the Democratic Party, and orator who espoused the cause of popular sovereignty in relation to the issue of slavery in the territories before the...

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Otto Preminger
American filmmaker
December 5, 1905 - April 23, 1986
Otto Preminger was an Austrian-born American director who defied Hollywood’s Production Code with a series of controversial films—notably The Moon Is Blue (1953), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and...

Born On
Lester B. Pearson
prime minister of Canada
April 23, 1897 - December 27, 1972
Lester B. Pearson was a Canadian politician and diplomat who served as prime minister of Canada (1963–68). He was prominent as a mediator in international disputes, and in 1957 he was awarded the Nobel...
Died On
Karl Polanyi
Hungarian politician
October 25, 1886 - April 23, 1964
Karl Polanyi was an economic anthropologist and former Hungarian political leader. In college in Budapest Polanyi founded the radical Club Galilei, which would have far-reaching effects on Hungarian intellectual...

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Rupert Brooke
British writer
August 3, 1887 - April 23, 1915
Rupert Brooke was an English poet, a wellborn, gifted, handsome youth whose early death in World War I contributed to his idealized image in the interwar period. His best-known work is the sonnet sequence...

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Boris Godunov
tsar of Russia
c.1551 - April 23, 1605
Boris Godunov was a Russian statesman who was chief adviser to Tsar Fyodor I (reigned 1584–98) and was himself elected tsar of Muscovy (reigning 1598–1605) after the extinction of the Rurik dynasty. His...

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Buster Crabbe
American athlete and actor
February 7, 1908 - April 23, 1983
Buster Crabbe was a swimmer from the United States whose Olympic gold medal led to a long and successful acting career. Olympic Medals Crabbe, who grew up in Hawaii and swam for the University of Southern...

Born On
Lee Miller
American photographer, artist, and model
April 23, 1907 - July 21, 1977
Lee Miller was an American photographer, Surrealist artist, and model. She might have been known primarily as the muse and lover of the Surrealist artist Man Ray had her son, Antony Penrose, not discovered...

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Harold Arlen
American composer
February 15, 1905 - April 23, 1986
Harold Arlen was an American composer, arranger, pianist, and vocalist who contributed such popular songs as “Over the Rainbow,” “Blues in the Night,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “I Love a Parade,” and...

Born On
Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby
British field marshal
April 23, 1861 - May 14, 1936
Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby was a field marshal, the last great British leader of mounted cavalry, who directed the Palestine campaign in World War I. Educated at the Royal Military...

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Charles G. Dawes
30th vice president of the United States
August 27, 1865 - April 23, 1951
Charles G. Dawes was the 30th vice president of the United States (1925–29) in the Republican administration of President Calvin Coolidge. An ambassador and author of the “Dawes Plan” for managing Germany’s...

Born On
Elijah ben Solomon
Lithuanian-Jewish scholar
April 23, 1720 - October 9, 1797
Elijah ben Solomon was the gaon (“excellency”) of Vilna and the outstanding authority in Jewish religious and cultural life in 18th-century Lithuania. Born into a long line of scholars, Elijah traveled...
Born On
George Steiner
American literary critic
April 23, 1929 - February 3, 2020
George Steiner was an influential French-born American literary critic who studied the relationship between literature and society, particularly in light of modern history. His writings on language and...

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David Halberstam
American journalist and author
April 10, 1934 - April 23, 2007
David Halberstam was an American journalist and author who received a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his penetrating coverage of the Vietnam War as a staff reporter (1960–67) for The New York Times. He went...

Born On
Warren Spahn
American baseball player
April 23, 1921 - November 24, 2003
Warren Spahn was an American professional baseball player whose total of 363 major-league victories established a record for left-handed pitchers. His feat of winning 20 or more games in each of 13 seasons...
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Max von Laue
German physicist
October 9, 1879 - April 23, 1960
Max von Laue was a German recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X rays in crystals. This enabled scientists to study the structure of crystals and hence...

Born On
Ngaio Marsh
New Zealand author
April 23, 1895 - February 18, 1982
Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand author known especially for her many detective novels featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard and, in later novels, his wife, Troy. Marsh studied painting in...

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Zhu Xi
Chinese philosopher
October 18, 1130 - April 23, 1200
Zhu Xi was a Chinese philosopher whose synthesis of neo-Confucian thought long dominated Chinese intellectual life. Zhu Xi was the son of a local official. He was educated in the Confucian tradition by...
Born On
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky
Soviet officer
April 23, 1919 - May 1963?
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky was a senior Soviet military intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for the United Kingdom and the United States. He was probably the West’s most valuable double...

Born On
Sanford Ballard Dole
president of the Republic of Hawaii
April 23, 1844 - June 9, 1926
Sanford Ballard Dole was the first president of the Republic of Hawaii (1894–1900), and first governor of the Territory of Hawaii (1900–03) after it was annexed by the United States. The son of American...

Born On
Halldór Laxness
Icelandic writer
April 23, 1902 - February 8, 1998
Halldór Laxness was an Icelandic novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. He is considered the most creative Icelandic writer of the 20th century. Laxness spent most of his youth...
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Konstantinos Karamanlis
Greek statesman
March 8, 1907 - April 23, 1998
Konstantinos Karamanlis was a Greek statesman who was prime minister from 1955 to 1963 and again from 1974 to 1980. He then served as president from 1980 to 1985 and from 1990 to 1995. Karamanlis gave...
Born On
Barry Hannah
American writer
April 23, 1942 - March 1, 2010
Barry Hannah was an American author of darkly comic, often violent novels and short stories set in the Deep South. Hannah was educated at Mississippi College (B.A., 1964) and the University of Arkansas...

Born On
Alphonse Bertillon
French official
April 23, 1853 - February 13, 1914
Alphonse Bertillon was the chief of criminal identification for the Paris police (from 1880) who developed an identification system known as anthropometry, or the Bertillon system, that came into wide...

Born On
Lucius D. Clay
American general
April 23, 1897 - April 16, 1978
Lucius D. Clay was a U.S. Army officer who became the first director of civilian affairs in defeated Germany after World War II. Clay graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York (1918),...
Born On
J.P. Donleavy
Irish-American author
April 23, 1926 - September 11, 2017
J.P. Donleavy was an American-born Irish author of the comic novel The Ginger Man (Paris, 1955; U.S., 1958), which introduced Dangerfield, a crass, comic antihero. Donleavy’s works are noted for their...

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Maurice
stadholder of The Netherlands
November 13, 1567 - April 23, 1625
Maurice was the hereditary stadtholder (1585–1625) of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, or Dutch Republic, and the successor to his father, William I the Silent. His development of military strategy,...
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Henry Vaughan
English poet
April 17, 1622 - April 23, 1695
Henry Vaughan was an Anglo-Welsh poet and mystic remarkable for the range and intensity of his spiritual intuitions. Educated at Oxford and studying law in London, Vaughan was recalled home in 1642 when...

Born On
Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk
Russian chess player
April 23, 1984 -
Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk is a Russian chess player who was the women’s world champion (2008–2010). (Read Garry Kasparov’s Britannica essay on chess & Deep Blue.) Like most elite chess players,...

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Itzhak Ben-Zvi
president of Israel
November 24, 1884 - April 23, 1963
Itzhak Ben-Zvi was the second president of Israel (1952–63) and an early Zionist leader in Palestine, who helped create the political, economic, and military institutions basic to the formation of the...
Born On
Sven Kramer
Dutch skater
April 23, 1986 -
Sven Kramer is a Dutch speed skater who excelled in long-distance events, most notably the 5,000 and 10,000 metres, and who won four speed-skating Olympic gold medals. Sven, the son of former Olympic speed...

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Samuel J. Ervin, Jr.
United States senator
September 27, 1896 - April 23, 1985
Samuel J. Ervin, Jr. was a U.S. senator best known as chairman of the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, which investigated the Watergate scandal during the administration of Richard...

Born On
George Anson, Baron Anson
British admiral
April 23, 1697 - June 6, 1762
George Anson, Baron Anson was a British admiral whose four-year voyage around the world is one of the great tales of naval heroism. The reforms he instituted as a naval administrator increased the efficiency...

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St. Adalbert
bishop of Prague
956 - April 23, 997
St. Adalbert ; canonized 999; feast day, April 23) was the first bishop of Prague to be of Czech origin. Descended from the Slavník princes of Bohemia, he was trained in theology at Magdeburg (Germany)....

Born On
Edwin Markham
American poet
April 23, 1852 - March 7, 1940
Edwin Markham was an American poet and lecturer, best-known for his poem of social protest, “The Man with the Hoe.” The youngest son of pioneer parents, Markham grew up on an isolated valley ranch in the...

Born On
Frank Borzage
American film director and producer
April 23, 1894 - June 19, 1962
Frank Borzage was an American motion-picture director and producer noted for his romantic transcendentalism and technically impeccable filmmaking. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)...

Born On
Marie Taglioni
Italian dancer
April 23, 1804 - April 24, 1884
Marie Taglioni was an Italian ballet dancer whose fragile, delicate dancing typified the early 19th-century Romantic style. Trained chiefly by her father, Filippo Taglioni, she made her debut in Vienna...
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Michael Ramsey, Baron Ramsey of Canterbury
archbishop of Canterbury
November 14, 1904 - April 23, 1988
Michael Ramsey, Baron Ramsey of Canterbury was the archbishop of Canterbury (1961–74), theologian, educator, and advocate of Christian unity. His meeting with Pope Paul VI (March 1966) was the first encounter...

Born On
Michel Fokine
Russian dancer and choreographer
April 23, 1880 - August 22, 1942
Michel Fokine was a dancer and choreographer who profoundly influenced the 20th-century classical ballet repertoire. In 1905 he composed the solo The Dying Swan for the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova....
Born On
Duncan Renaldo
Romanian-born American actor
April 23, 1904? - September 3, 1980
Duncan Renaldo was an actor who was best known for his role in the popular western television series The Cisco Kid (1951–56). Renaldo, who was an orphan, was uncertain of his origins. Romania and Spain...
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Karel Doorman
Dutch admiral
April 23, 1889 - February 27, 1942
Karel Doorman was a Dutch rear admiral who commanded a combined American, British, Dutch, and Australian naval force against a Japanese invasion fleet in the Java Sea during World War II. Intended to halt...

Born On
George
king of Bohemia
April 23, 1420 - March 22, 1471
George was the king of Bohemia from 1458. As head of the conservative Utraquist faction of Hussite Protestants, he established himself as a power when Bohemia was still under Habsburg rule, and he was...

Born On
Maarten Tromp
Dutch admiral
April 23, 1598 - August 9, 1653
Maarten Tromp was a Dutch admiral, the highest ranking sea commander (from 1636) under the stadholder during the Dutch wars with Spain and England during the first half of the 17th century. His victory...

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Charles Frederick Algernon Portal
British air marshal
May 21, 1893 - April 23, 1971
Charles Frederick Algernon Portal was a British air marshal and chief of the British Air Staff during World War II. Portal was educated at Winchester and Christ Church College, Oxford, and joined the Royal...