More on this Day - March, 7 (2024)

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139 Biographies

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Stanley Kubrick

American director

July 26, 1928 - March 7, 1999

Stanley Kubrick was an American motion-picture director and writer whose films are characterized by his dramatic visual style, meticulous attention to detail, and a detached, often ironic or pessimistic...

Bryan Cranston

American actor

March 7, 1956 -

Bryan Cranston is an American actor best known for his intense portrayal of Walter White, a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin, in the television series Breaking Bad (2008–13). Cranston was raised around...

Reinhard Heydrich

German Nazi official

March 7, 1904 - June 4, 1942

Reinhard Heydrich was a Nazi German official who was Heinrich Himmler’s chief lieutenant in the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Echelon”), the paramilitary corps commonly known as the SS. He played a key role...

St. Thomas Aquinas

Italian Christian theologian and philosopher

1224 or 1225 - March 7, 1274

St. Thomas Aquinas ; canonized July 18, 1323; feast day January 28, formerly March 7) was an Italian Dominican theologian, the foremost medieval Scholastic. He developed his own conclusions from Aristotelian...

Piet Mondrian

Dutch painter

March 7, 1872 - February 1, 1944

Piet Mondrian was a painter who was an important leader in the development of modern abstract art and a major exponent of the Dutch abstract art movement known as De Stijl (“The Style”). In his mature...

Rik Mayall

British actor and comedian

March 7, 1958 - June 9, 2014

Rik Mayall was a British comic actor and writer known for playing over-the-top, humorously unlikable characters. He is best known as a cast member and writer for the influential British situation comedy...

Maurice Ravel

French composer

March 7, 1875 - December 28, 1937

Maurice Ravel was a French composer of Swiss-Basque descent, noted for his musical craftsmanship and perfection of form and style in such works as Boléro (1928), Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899;...

Michael Eisner

American executive

March 7, 1942 -

Michael Eisner is an American business and entertainment executive who was known for his role in reviving the fortunes of, successively, the television network ABC, the film studio Paramount Pictures,...

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

British adventurer and writer

March 7, 1944 -

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is a British adventurer, pioneering polar explorer, and writer, who, among his many exploits, in 1979–82 led the first north-south surface circumnavigation of the world (i.e., along...

Antoninus Pius

Roman emperor

September 19, 86 - March 7, 161

Antoninus Pius was a Roman emperor from ad 138 to 161. Mild-mannered and capable, he was the fourth of the “five good emperors” who guided the empire through an 84-year period (96–180) of internal peace...

Viv Richards

Antiguan cricket player

March 7, 1952 -

Viv Richards is a West Indian cricketer, arguably the finest batsman of his generation. The son of Malcolm Richards, Antigua’s leading fast bowler, Viv Richards followed in a family tradition that included...

Gordon Parks

American author, photographer, and film director

November 30, 1912 - March 7, 2006

Gordon Parks was an American author, photographer, and film director who documented African American life. The youngest of 15 children born into a tenant farming family, Parks grew up in poverty and attended...

Paul Winfield

American actor

May 22, 1941 - March 7, 2004

Paul Winfield was an American film and television actor perhaps best known for his role in the film Sounder (1972). Winfield attended high school in Los Angeles, where he first began acting. After attending...

Mikhail Bakhtin

Russian philosopher and literary critic

November 17, 1895 - March 7, 1975

Mikhail Bakhtin was a Russian literary theorist and philosopher of language whose wide-ranging ideas significantly influenced Western thinking in cultural history, linguistics, literary theory, and aesthetics....

Nicéphore Niépce

French inventor

March 7, 1765 - July 5, 1833

Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor who was the first to make a permanent photographic image. The son of a wealthy family suspected of royalist sympathies, Niépce fled the French Revolution but returned...

Franco Harris

American football player

March 7, 1950 - December 21, 2022

Franco Harris was an American gridiron football running back who was a member of four Super Bowl-winning teams (1975, 1976, 1979, 1980) as a Pittsburgh Steeler and who is best known for having taken part...

Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet

English astronomer

March 7, 1792 - May 11, 1871

Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English astronomer and successor to his father, Sir William Herschel, in the field of stellar and nebular observation and discovery. An only child, John was educated...

Harriet Jacobs

American abolitionist and author

1813 - March 7, 1897

Harriet Jacobs was an American abolitionist and autobiographer who crafted her own experiences into Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861), an eloquent and uncompromising slave...

Domenico Montagnana

Italian musical instrument maker

c.1687 - March 7, 1750

Domenico Montagnana was an Italian instrument maker noted for his violins and especially for his cellos. In Venice from about 1699, Montagnana is believed to have been the pupil and assistant of Matteo...

Anna Magnani

Italian actress

March 7, 1908 - September 26, 1973

Anna Magnani was an Italian actress, known for her forceful portrayals of earthy, working-class women. She won the Academy Award for best actress for her performance in The Rose Tattoo (1955). Born out...

Theo van Doesburg

Dutch artist

August 30, 1883 - March 7, 1931

Theo van Doesburg was a Dutch painter, decorator, poet, and art theorist who was the leader of the De Stijl movement. Originally van Doesburg intended to pursue a career in the theatre, but he turned to...

David Baltimore

American virologist

March 7, 1938 -

David Baltimore is an American virologist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1975 with Howard M. Temin and Renato Dulbecco. Working independently, Baltimore and Temin discovered reverse...

Hans Georg Dehmelt

American physicist

September 9, 1922 - March 7, 2017

Hans Georg Dehmelt was a German-born American physicist who shared one-half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1989 with the German physicist Wolfgang Paul. (The other half of the prize was awarded to the...

Georgy Yevgenyevich, Prince Lvov

Russian statesman

November 2, 1861 - March 7, 1925

Georgy Yevgenyevich, Prince Lvov was a Russian social reformer and statesman who was the first head of the Russian provisional government established during the February Revolution (1917). An aristocrat...

Luther Burbank

American plant breeder

March 7, 1849 - April 11, 1926

Luther Burbank was an American plant breeder whose prodigious production of useful varieties of fruits, flowers, vegetables, and grasses encouraged the development of plant breeding into a modern science....

Tomáš Masaryk

president of Czechoslovakia

March 7, 1850 - September 14, 1937

Tomáš Masaryk was the chief founder and first president (1918–35) of Czechoslovakia. Masaryk’s father was a Slovak coachman; his mother, a maid, came from a Germanized Moravian family. Though he was trained...

Publius Septimius Geta

Roman emperor [died 212]

March 7, 189 - December 26, 211

Publius Septimius Geta was a Roman emperor from 209 to 211, jointly with his father, Septimius Severus (reigned 193–211), and his brother, Caracalla (reigned 198–217). The younger son of Septimius Severus...

Wyndham Lewis

British artist and writer

November 18, 1882 - March 7, 1957

Wyndham Lewis was an English artist and writer who founded the Vorticist movement, which sought to relate art and literature to the industrial process. About 1893 Lewis moved to London with his mother...

Kamehameha III

king of Hawaii

March 7, 1814 - December 15, 1854

Kamehameha III was the king of Hawaii from 1825 to 1854, and the brother of Kamehameha II. Only 10 years of age when he succeeded to the throne, he was initially under the regency of Kamehameha I’s favourite...

Anthony Comstock

American social reformer

March 7, 1844 - September 21, 1915

Anthony Comstock was one of the most powerful American reformers, who for more than 40 years led a crusade against what he considered obscenity in literature and in other forms of expression. The epithet...

Georges Perec

French author

March 7, 1936 - March 3, 1982

Georges Perec was a French writer, often called the greatest innovator of form of his generation. Perec was orphaned at an early age: his father was killed in action in World War II, and his mother died...

Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox

English noble

October 8, 1515 - March 7, 1578

Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox was a prominent intriguer in England during the early reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Lady Margaret Douglas was the daughter of Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and...

Aristide Briand

prime minister of France

March 28, 1862 - March 7, 1932

Aristide Briand was a statesman who served 11 times as premier of France, holding a total of 26 ministerial posts between 1906 and 1932. His efforts for international cooperation, the League of Nations,...

Alessandro Manzoni

Italian author

March 7, 1785 - May 22, 1873

Alessandro Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist whose novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) had immense patriotic appeal for Italians of the nationalistic Risorgimento period and is generally ranked...

Abe Kōbō

Japanese author

March 7, 1924 - January 22, 1993

Abe Kōbō was a Japanese novelist and playwright noted for his use of bizarre and allegorical situations to underline the isolation of the individual. He grew up in Mukden (now Shenyang), in Manchuria,...

Sir Edwin Landseer

British painter

March 7, 1802 - October 1, 1873

Sir Edwin Landseer was a British painter and sculptor best known for his paintings of animals. Landseer learned drawing from his father, an engraver and writer, and also studied at the Royal Academy. His...

Clement XIII

pope

March 7, 1693 - February 2, 1769

Clement XIII was the pope from 1758 to 1769. In 1716 Rezzonico, who had studied under the Jesuits in Bologna, was ordained and appointed governor of Rieti, in the Papal States, becoming governor of Fano...

Julius Wagner-Jauregg

Austrian psychiatrist

March 7, 1857 - September 27, 1940

Julius Wagner-Jauregg was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist whose treatment of syphilitic meningoencephalitis, or general paresis, by the artificial induction of malaria brought a previously incurable...

William Donald Hamilton

British naturalist and population geneticist

August 1, 1936 - March 7, 2000

William Donald Hamilton was a British naturalist and population geneticist who found solutions to two of Darwin’s outstanding problems: the evolution of altruism and the evolution of sexual reproduction....

Will H. Hays

American politician

November 5, 1879 - March 7, 1954

Will H. Hays was a prominent American political figure who was president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA, later called the Motion Picture Association of America) from...

Joy Paul Guilford

American psychologist

March 7, 1897 - November 26, 1987

Joy Paul Guilford was an American psychologist and practitioner of psychophysics—the quantitative measurement of subjective psychological phenomena—exemplified by his studies of the relative affectiveness...

William Longsword, 3rd earl of Salisbury

English noble

- March 7, 1226

William Longsword, 3rd earl of Salisbury was the 3rd earl of Salisbury, an illegitimate son of Henry II of England who became a prominent baron, soldier, and administrator under Kings John and Henry III....

Innocent XIII

pope

May 13, 1655 - March 7, 1724

Innocent XIII was the pope from 1721 to 1724. Of noble birth, Conti was papal ambassador to Switzerland and to Portugal before Pope Clement XI made him cardinal (1706) and bishop of Osimo, Papal States...

Cool Papa Bell

American baseball player

May 17, 1903 - March 7, 1991

Cool Papa Bell was an American professional baseball player, reputedly the fastest base runner of all time. Barred from Major League Baseball (MLB) because of the unwritten rule against Black athletes,...

Jean-Pierre Blanchard

French balloonist

July 4, 1753 - March 7, 1809

Jean-Pierre Blanchard was a French balloonist who, with the American physician John Jeffries, made the first aerial crossing of the English Channel. He was also the first to make balloon flights in England,...

Stevie Smith

British poet

September 20, 1902 - March 7, 1971

Stevie Smith was a British poet who expressed an original and visionary personality in her work, combining a lively wit with penetrating honesty and an absence of sentiment. For most of her life Smith...

E.M. Purcell

American physicist

August 30, 1912 - March 7, 1997

E.M. Purcell was an American physicist who shared, with Felix Bloch of the United States, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1952 for his independent discovery (1946) of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids...

Arthur Cecil Pigou

British economist

November 18, 1877 - March 7, 1959

Arthur Cecil Pigou was a British economist noted for his studies in welfare economics. Educated at King’s College, Cambridge, Pigou was considered one of Alfred Marshall’s best students. When Marshall...

Bosley Crowther

American journalist and film critic

July 13, 1905 - March 7, 1981

Bosley Crowther was an American journalist and film critic who authored some 200 film reviews each year for The New York Times as its influential film critic from 1940 to 1967. Crowther served as a general...

Pauline Johnson

Canadian Indian poet

March 10, 1862 - March 7, 1913

Pauline Johnson was a Canadian Indian poet who celebrated the heritage of her people in poems that had immense appeal in her lifetime. The daughter of a Mohawk chief and an English mother, Johnson began...