Biographies on This Day in History: March 4
Born On
Rick Perry
American politician
March 4, 1950 -
Rick Perry is an American politician who was the longest-serving governor of Texas (2000–15) and who later was secretary of energy (2017–19) in the administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump. Perry sought...
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Matthew C. Perry
United States naval officer
April 10, 1794 - March 4, 1858
Matthew C. Perry was a U.S. naval officer who headed an expedition that forced Japan in 1853–54 to enter into trade and diplomatic relations with the West after more than two centuries of isolation. Through...
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Bobby Womack
American singer, songwriter, and guitarist
March 4, 1944 - June 27, 2014
Bobby Womack was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose soulful compositions and accomplished musicianship made him one of the most highly regarded rhythm-and-blues (R&B) performers of the...
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Antonin Artaud
French author and actor
September 4, 1896 - March 4, 1948
Antonin Artaud was a French dramatist, poet, actor, and theoretician of the Surrealist movement who attempted to replace the “bourgeois” classical theatre with his “theatre of cruelty,” a primitive ceremonial...
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Ernest Gary Gygax
American entrepreneur
July 27, 1938 - March 4, 2008
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American entrepreneur who in 1974, together with his war-gaming friend David Arneson, created the world’s first fantasy role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), and ultimately...
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James Ellroy
American author
March 4, 1948 -
James Ellroy is an American author known for his best-selling crime and detective novels that examine sinister eras of modern American history, especially police corruption in Los Angeles in the 1940s....
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Miriam Makeba
South African singer
March 4, 1932 - November 10, 2008
Miriam Makeba was a South African-born singer who became known as Mama Afrika, one of the world’s most prominent Black African performers in the 20th century. The daughter of a Swazi mother and a Xhosa...
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William Carlos Williams
American poet
September 17, 1883 - March 4, 1963
William Carlos Williams was an American poet who succeeded in making the ordinary appear extraordinary through the clarity and discreteness of his imagery. His signature poems include “The Red Wheelbarrow”...
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Franz Marc
German artist
February 8, 1880 - March 4, 1916
Franz Marc was a German painter and printmaker who is known for the intense mysticism of his paintings of animals. He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), an association of German...
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John Garfield
American actor
March 4, 1913 - May 21, 1952
John Garfield was an American film and stage actor who is best known for his intense portrayals of rebels and antiheroes. Garfield grew up in the poor Jewish section of New York City’s Lower East Side....
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James Clark
British automobile racer
March 4, 1936 - April 7, 1968
James Clark was a Scottish automobile racer who became the world driving champion in 1963, when he won a record 7 of 10 title events, and in 1965, when he won 6 of 10 as well as the Indianapolis 500-mile...
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Alexander H. Stephens
vice president of Confederate States of America
February 11, 1812 - March 4, 1883
Alexander H. Stephens was a politician who served as vice president of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861–65). Called “Little Ellick” by his colleagues because he weighed...
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Jean-François Champollion
French historian and linguist
December 23, 1790 - March 4, 1832
Jean-François Champollion was a French historian and linguist who founded scientific Egyptology and played a major role in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. At age 16 Champollion had already mastered...
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Louis Buchalter
American crime boss
February 12, 1897 - March 4, 1944
Louis Buchalter was an American organized crime boss and founder of the murder-for-hire organization popularly known as Murder, Inc. Born on New York’s Lower East Side, Buchalter derived his nickname from...
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George Gamow
American physicist
March 4, 1904 - August 19, 1968
George Gamow was a Russian-born American nuclear physicist and cosmologist who was one of the foremost advocates of the big-bang theory, according to which the universe was formed in a colossal explosion...
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Harry A. Blackmun
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
November 12, 1908 - March 4, 1999
Harry A. Blackmun was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1970 to 1994. Blackmun graduated in mathematics from Harvard University in 1929 and received his law degree from that...
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Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
prime minister of Peru and secretary-general of the United Nations
January 19, 1920 - March 4, 2020
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was a Peruvian diplomat, who served as the fifth secretary-general of the United Nations (1982–91) and as prime minister of Peru (2000–01). After attending the Catholic University...
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Bert Williams
Bahamian-born American comedian
November 12, 1874 - March 4, 1922
Bert Williams was a Bahamian-born American comedian and singer who portrayed the slow-witted, shuffling Black man that was then a standard, if racist, role in vaudeville. Williams and his family moved...
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Horton Foote
American playwright and screenwriter
March 14, 1916 - March 4, 2009
Horton Foote was an American playwright and screenwriter who evoked American life in beautifully observed minimal stories and was perhaps best known for his adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. Foote studied...
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Bronson Alcott
American philosopher and educator
November 29, 1799 - March 4, 1888
Bronson Alcott was an American philosopher, teacher, reformer, and member of the New England Transcendentalist group. The self-educated son of a poor farmer, Alcott traveled in the South as a peddler before...
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Sir Charles Scott Sherrington
British physiologist
November 27, 1857 - March 4, 1952
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was an English physiologist whose 50 years of experimentation laid the foundations for an understanding of integrated nervous function in higher animals and brought him (with...
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James Lankford
United States senator
March 4, 1968 -
James Lankford is an American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2014 and began representing Oklahoma the following year. He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives...
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Bernard Haitink
Dutch conductor
March 4, 1929 - October 21, 2021
Bernard Haitink was a Dutch conductor best known for his interpretations of Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Liszt. His conducting, which continued the tradition of Willem...
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Alexander Campbell
American clergyman
September 12, 1788 - March 4, 1866
Alexander Campbell was an American clergyman, writer, and founder of the Disciples of Christ and Bethany College. He was the son of Thomas Campbell (1763–1854), a Presbyterian minister who immigrated in...
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Pearl White
American actress
March 4, 1889 - August 4, 1938
Pearl White was one of the most successful of the early American film stars, who gained international fame for her work in “chapter stories”—long-running melodramatic serials, such as The Perils of Pauline....
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Adolph Gottlieb
American painter
March 14, 1903 - March 4, 1974
Adolph Gottlieb was an American painter important as an early and outstanding member of the New York school of Abstract Expressionists. After study at the Art Students League of New York and in Paris,...
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Alan Sillitoe
British writer
March 4, 1928 - April 25, 2010
Alan Sillitoe was a writer, one of the so-called Angry Young Men, whose brash and angry accounts of working-class life injected new vigour into post-World War II British fiction. The son of a tannery worker,...
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Nikolay D. Kondratyev
Russian economist
March 4, 1892 - 1938?
Nikolay D. Kondratyev was a Russian economist and statistician noted among Western economists for his analysis and theory of major (50-year) business cycles—the so-called Kondratieff waves. Kondratyev...
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Moritz Moszkowski
French-German composer
August 23, 1854 - March 4, 1925
Moritz Moszkowski was a German pianist and composer known for his Spanish dances. Moszkowski studied piano at Dresden and Berlin, where he gave his first concert in 1873. In 1879 he settled in Paris. His...
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Leonard Warren
American singer
April 21, 1911 - March 4, 1960
Leonard Warren was an American operatic baritone known for his work in operas of Ruggero Leoncavallo and Giacomo Puccini. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Warren first studied music at the Greenwich...
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Sir Henry Raeburn
Scottish painter
March 4, 1756 - July 8, 1823
Sir Henry Raeburn was a leading Scottish portrait painter during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In about 1771 Raeburn was apprenticed to the goldsmith James Gilliland and is said to have studied...
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Robert H. Dicke
American physicist
May 6, 1916 - March 4, 1997
Robert H. Dicke was an American physicist noted for his theoretical work in cosmology and investigations centring on the general theory of relativity. He also made a number of significant contributions...
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Richard C. Tolman
American physicist
March 4, 1881 - September 5, 1948
Richard C. Tolman was a U.S. physical chemist and physicist who demonstrated the electron to be the charge-carrying particle in the flow of electricity in metals and determined its mass. Tolman became...
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Robert Southwell
English poet and martyr
1561 - March 4, 1595
Robert Southwell was an English poet and martyr remembered for his saintly life as a Jesuit priest and missionary during a time of Protestant persecution and for his religious poetry. Southwell was educated...
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Louis III, 6 prince de Condé
French prince
October 10, 1668 - March 4, 1710
Louis III, 6e prince de Condé was a prince of Condé who distinguished himself in the Dutch Wars. He was the 5th prince’s second son and eventual successor. He was short, with an enormous head and a yellow...
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Walter Schottky
German physicist
July 23, 1886 - March 4, 1976
Walter Schottky was a German physicist whose research in solid-state physics and electronics yielded many devices that now bear his name. Schottky obtained doctorates in engineering, technology, and natural...
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Nestor Almendros
Spanish cinematographer
October 30, 1930 - March 4, 1992
Nestor Almendros was a cinematographer and recipient of an Oscar from the U.S. Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences for the best cinematography for his work on Days of Heaven (1978). Emigrating...
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Simon van der Meer
Dutch physicist
November 24, 1925 - March 4, 2011
Simon van der Meer was a Dutch physical engineer who in 1984, with Carlo Rubbia, received the Nobel Prize for Physics for his contribution to the discovery of the massive, short-lived subatomic particles...
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Mihály, Count Károlyi
Hungarian statesman
March 4, 1875 - March 20, 1955
Mihály, Count Károlyi was a Hungarian statesman who before World War I desired a reorientation of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy toward friendship with states other than Germany. He also advocated concessions...
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John Henry Wigmore
American legal scholar
March 4, 1863 - April 20, 1943
John Henry Wigmore was an American legal scholar and teacher whose 10-volume Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law (1904–05), usually called Wigmore on Evidence, is...
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Lala Har Dayal
Indian revolutionary
October 14, 1884 - March 4, 1939
Lala Har Dayal was an Indian revolutionary and scholar who was dedicated to the removal of British influence in India. Har Dayal graduated from the Government College, Lahore (University of the Punjab)....
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Hamlin Garland
American writer
September 14, 1860 - March 4, 1940
Hamlin Garland was an American author perhaps best remembered for his short stories and his autobiographical “Middle Border” series of narratives. As his farming family moved progressively westward from...
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Pelagius I
pope
- March 4, 561
Pelagius I was the pope from 556 to 561. His ecclesiastical roles under the popes St. Agapetus I, St. Silverius, and Vigilius were highly important in the history of the church. As a deacon, Pelagius accompanied...
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Dallas Seavey
American sled-dog racer
March 4, 1987 -
Dallas Seavey is an American sled-dog racer who has won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race a record-setting six times (2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2021, and 2024). Seavey is also the youngest racer to have ever...
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Ding Ling
Chinese author
October 12, 1904 - March 4, 1986
Ding Ling was one of China’s most popular 20th-century authors. In her early career, Ding Ling initially wrote highly successful short stories centring on young, unconventional Chinese women. About 1930,...
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Mark Sandrich
American director
October 26, 1901 - March 4, 1945
Mark Sandrich was an American film director who was best known for his Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers musicals, notably Top Hat (1935). Sandrich attended Columbia University before taking his first job in...
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Giorgio Bassani
Italian author
March 4, 1916 - April 13, 2000
Giorgio Bassani was an Italian author and editor noted for his novels and stories examining individual lives played out against the background of modern history. The author’s Jewish heritage and the life...
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James Rowland Angell
American psychologist and educator
May 8, 1869 - March 4, 1949
James Rowland Angell was a psychologist and university president who rebuilt and reorganized Yale University in the 1920s and ’30s. A son of educator James Burrill Angell, the young Angell studied psychology...
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Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo
Madagascan author
March 4, 1901 - June 22, 1937
Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo was a Malagasy writer, one of the most important of African poets writing in French, considered to be the father of modern literature in his native land. Rabéarivelo, a largely...
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Charles H. Goren
American bridge player
March 4, 1901 - April 3, 1991
Charles H. Goren was an American contract bridge authority whose innovative system of point-count bidding and repeated successes in tournaments made him one of the world’s most famous and influential players....