Biographies on This Day in History: March 1
Born On
Lupita Nyong’o
Kenyan actress
March 1, 1983 -
Lupita Nyong’o is a Kenyan actress known for her ability to inhabit a diverse range of characters. She won an Academy Award for her film debut in 12 Years a Slave (2013), and her later credits include...
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Ron Howard
American filmmaker and actor
March 1, 1954 -
Ron Howard is an American filmmaker who first achieved fame as a child actor and later became a respected director. Howard’s parents were in show business, and he made his first screen appearance, in Frontier...
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Glenn Miller
American composer and musician
March 1, 1904 - December 16, 1944
Glenn Miller was an American big band leader, arranger, composer, and trombonist, considered the premier musical symbol of the World War II generation. Miller began studies at the University of Colorado...
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Jackie Coogan
American actor
October 26, 1914 - March 1, 1984
Jackie Coogan was the first major Hollywood child star, who rose to fame in the silent-film era and was best known as the sad-eyed waif of The Kid (1921) and similar movies. The son of a vaudevillian and...
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Leopold II
Holy Roman emperor
May 5, 1747 - March 1, 1792
Leopold II was the Holy Roman emperor from 1790 to 1792, one of the most capable of the 18th-century reformist rulers known as the “enlightened despots.” The third son of the Habsburg Maria Theresa and...
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Gabriele D’Annunzio
Italian writer and political leader
March 12, 1863 - March 1, 1938
Gabriele D’Annunzio was an Italian poet, novelist, dramatist, short-story writer, journalist, military hero, and protofascist political leader. He was the leading writer of Italy in the late 19th and early...
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Donald Kent Slayton
American astronaut
March 1, 1924 - June 13, 1993
Donald Kent Slayton was an American astronaut who was one of the original seven Project Mercury astronauts in 1959 but did not make a space flight until 1975. Slayton joined the U.S. air force in 1942...
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Ralph Ellison
American author and educator
March 1, 1914 - April 16, 1994
Ralph Ellison was an American writer who won eminence with his first novel (and the only one published during his lifetime), Invisible Man (1952). Ellison left Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute...
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Robert H. Bork
United States jurist
March 1, 1927 - December 19, 2012
Robert H. Bork was an American legal scholar, federal judge, and onetime U.S. solicitor general (1973–77) whose nomination to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court by Republican Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1987...
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Georg Simmel
German sociologist
March 1, 1858 - September 26, 1918
Georg Simmel was a German sociologist and Neo-Kantian philosopher whose fame rests chiefly on works concerning sociological methodology. He taught philosophy at the Universities of Berlin (1885–1914) and...
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George Herbert
British poet
April 3, 1593 - March 1, 1633
George Herbert was an English religious poet, a major metaphysical poet, notable for the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words. A younger brother of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury,...
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Alain Resnais
French film director
June 3, 1922 - March 1, 2014
Alain Resnais was a French motion-picture director who was a leader of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) of unorthodox, influential film directors appearing in France in the late 1950s. His major works included...
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Pete Rozelle
American sports executive
March 1, 1926 - December 6, 1996
Pete Rozelle was an American sports executive who, as commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) from 1960 to 1989, oversaw a period of enormous growth for professional gridiron football. He negotiated...
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Martial
Roman poet
March 1, 38 or 41 - c.103
Martial was a Roman poet who brought the Latin epigram to perfection and provided in it a picture of Roman society during the early empire that is remarkable both for its completeness and for its accurate...
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Alfred Korzybski
American philosopher
July 3, 1879 - March 1, 1950
Alfred Korzybski was a Polish-born American scientist and philosopher. During World War I, Korzybski served in the intelligence department of the Russian army general staff and in 1915 was sent on a military...
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Oskar Kokoschka
Austrian painter and writer
March 1, 1886 - February 22, 1980
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian painter and writer who was one of the leading exponents of Expressionism. In his early portraits, gesture intensifies the psychological penetration of character; especially...
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Harry Caray
American sportscaster
March 1, 1914 - February 18, 1998
Harry Caray was an American sportscaster who gained national prominence for his telecasts of Chicago Cubs baseball games on Chicago-based superstation WGN during the 1980s and ’90s. After failing to become...
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Jacques Rivette
French director
March 1, 1928 - January 29, 2016
Jacques Rivette was a French film director associated with the New Wave film movement and known for his experimental evocative style. Before becoming a director, Rivette had a career as a writer and film...
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Minnie Miñoso
Cuban baseball player
November 29, 1925 - March 1, 2015
Minnie Miñoso was a Cuban professional baseball player known for his speed and baserunning ability and who was the first Black major league star from Latin America. Miñoso began his career playing on teams...
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Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
Japanese author
March 1, 1892 - July 24, 1927
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke was a prolific Japanese writer known especially for his stories based on events in the Japanese past and for his stylistic virtuosity. As a boy Akutagawa was sickly and hypersensitive,...
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Lytton Strachey
British biographer
March 1, 1880 - January 21, 1932
Lytton Strachey was an English biographer and critic who opened a new era of biographical writing at the close of World War I. Adopting an irreverent attitude to the past and especially to the monumental...
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Homer Plessy
American shoemaker
March 17, 1863 - March 1, 1925
Homer Plessy was an American shoemaker who was best known as the plaintiff in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which sanctioned the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine...
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Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach
queen of Great Britain
March 1, 1683 - November 20, 1737
Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach was the wife of King George II of Great Britain (reigned 1727–60). Beautiful and intelligent, she exercised an influence over her husband that was decisive in establishing...
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Robert Lowell
American poet
March 1, 1917 - September 12, 1977
Robert Lowell was an American poet noted for his complex, autobiographical poetry. The publication of his collection Life Studies (1959) is regarded as a watershed moment in American literature. It is...
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Zhores Alferov
Russian physicist
March 15, 1930 - March 1, 2019
Zhores Alferov was a Soviet physicist who, with Herbert Kroemer and Jack S. Kilby, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000 for their work that laid the foundation for the modern era of computers...
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Dixie Dean
British football player
1907 - March 1, 1980
Dixie Dean was a British football (soccer) player, remembered as one of the great centre forwards of his time. Dean first worked as a railway apprentice but at age 16 turned to professional soccer and...
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Francesco Redi
Italian physician and poet
February 18, 1626 - March 1, 1697
Francesco Redi was an Italian physician and poet who demonstrated that the presence of maggots in putrefying meat does not result from spontaneous generation but from eggs laid on the meat by flies. He...
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Edwin Herbert Land
American inventor and physicist
May 7, 1909 - March 1, 1991
Edwin Herbert Land was an American inventor and physicist whose one-step process for developing and printing photographs culminated in a revolution in photography unparalleled since the advent of roll...
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A.W.N. Pugin
British architect and author
March 1, 1812 - September 14, 1852
A.W.N. Pugin was an English architect, designer, author, theorist, and leading figure in the English Roman Catholic and Gothic revivals. Pugin was the son of the architect Augustus Charles Pugin, who gave...
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Augustus Saint-Gaudens
American sculptor
March 1, 1848 - August 3, 1907
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was generally acknowledged to be the foremost American sculptor of the late 19th century, noted for his evocative memorial statues and for the subtle modeling of his low reliefs....
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Giacomo Balla
Italian artist
July 24, 1871 - March 1, 1958
Giacomo Balla was an Italian artist and founding member of the Futurist movement in painting. Balla had little formal art training, having attended briefly an academy in Turin. He moved to Rome in his...
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Mustafa al-Barzani
Kurdish military leader
March 14, 1903 - March 1, 1979
Mustafa al-Barzani was a Kurdish military leader who for 50 years strove to create an independent nation for the millions of Kurds living on the borders of Iran, Iraq, and the Soviet Union. The son of...
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João Goulart
Brazilian politician
March 1, 1918 - December 6, 1976
João Goulart was a reformist president of Brazil (1961–64) until he was deposed. The son of a wealthy rancher, Goulart graduated from the law school of Porto Alegre University in 1939. As a protégé of...
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William Dean Howells
American author and critic
March 1, 1837 - May 11, 1920
William Dean Howells was a U.S. novelist and critic, the dean of late 19th-century American letters, the champion of literary realism, and the close friend and adviser of Mark Twain and Henry James. The...
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Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff
Dutch chemist
August 30, 1852 - March 1, 1911
Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff was a Dutch physical chemist and the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1901), for his work on rates of chemical reaction, chemical equilibrium, and osmotic pressure....
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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...
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Richard Wilbur
American poet
March 1, 1921 - October 14, 2017
Richard Wilbur was an American poet associated with the New Formalist movement. Wilbur was educated at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, and Harvard University, where he studied literature. He fought...
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Deb Fischer
United States senator
March 1, 1951 -
Deb Fischer is an American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2012 and began representing Nebraska in that body the following year. In 2024 Fischer won reelection against...
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Francisco de Almeida
viceroy of India
c.1450 - March 1, 1510
Francisco de Almeida was a soldier, explorer, and the first viceroy of Portuguese India. After Almeida had achieved fame in the wars against the Moors, the Portuguese king Manuel I made him viceroy of...
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Thomas Adès
British composer, pianist, and conductor
March 1, 1971 -
Thomas Adès is a British composer, pianist, and conductor whose diverse compositional oeuvre, ranging from solo pieces to operas, established him as one of the most-skilled classical music artists of his...
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George Grossmith
British comedian
December 9, 1847 - March 1, 1912
George Grossmith was an English comedian and singer who created many of the chief characters in the original productions of Gilbert and Sullivan light operas. After several years of journalistic work,...
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Francisco Solano López
dictator of Paraguay
July 24, 1826 - March 1, 1870
Francisco Solano López was the dictator of Paraguay during the Paraguayan War (also known as the War of the Triple Alliance), in which Paraguay was practically destroyed by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay....
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Lou Gerstner
American businessman
March 1, 1942 -
Lou Gerstner is an American businessman best known for the pivotal role he played in revitalizing the ailing IBM in the mid-1990s; he served as CEO of the company from 1993 to 2002. Gerstner studied engineering...
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Thomas Earnshaw
English watchmaker
February 4, 1749 - March 1, 1829
Thomas Earnshaw was an English watchmaker, the first to simplify and economize in producing chronometers so as to make them available to the general public. Earnshaw became an apprentice at the age of...
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Shoghi Effendi Rabbānī
Bahāʾī leader
March 1, 1897 - November 4, 1957
Shoghi Effendi Rabbānī was the leader of the international Bahāʾī faith, who held the title of Guardian of the Cause of God from 1921 until his death. Shoghi Effendi spent his early childhood in Acre....
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Bertrand Piccard
Swiss aviator
March 1, 1958 -
Bertrand Piccard is a Swiss aviator who on March 20, 1999, with copilot Brian Jones, completed the first nonstop circumnavigation of the globe by balloon. The trip, begun by Piccard and Jones on March...
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Ernesto Cardenal
Nicaraguan poet and priest
January 20, 1925 - March 1, 2020
Ernesto Cardenal was a Nicaraguan poet and revolutionary and a Roman Catholic priest who became a widely admired and controversial figure in 20th-century Central American politics. He was active in the...
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Wilford Woodruff
American religious leader
March 1, 1807 - September 2, 1898
Wilford Woodruff was the fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), who issued the proclamation that relinquished the church practice of polygyny, or polygamy as it...
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Alexandre Yersin
French bacteriologist
September 23, 1863 - March 1, 1943
Alexandre Yersin was a Swiss-born French bacteriologist and one of the discoverers of the bubonic plague bacillus, Pasteurella pestis, now called Yersinia pestis. Yersin studied medicine at the universities...
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John Jacob Niles
American musician
April 28, 1892 - March 1, 1980
John Jacob Niles was an American folksinger, folklorist, and composer of solo and choral songs. Niles came from a musical family. His great-grandfather was a composer, organist, and cello manufacturer;...