Anniversaries 3 February

Birth

Samuel Butler (poet)81

poet and satirist 1612–1680

Gideon Mantell19

British scientist and obstetrician 1790–1852

Felix Mendelssohn4

German composer, pianist and conductor 1809–1847

Horace Greeley18

American politician and publisher 1811–1872

Frederick William Robertson50

British writer and theologian 1816–1853

William Arthur (minister)15

Wesleyan Methodist minister and author 1819–1901

Elizabeth Blackwell9

England-born American physician, abolitionist, women's righ… 1821–1910

Walter Bagehot42

British journalist, businessman, and essayist 1826–1877

Edward Macnaghten, Baron Macnaghten8

Anglo-Irish rower, barrister, politician and Lord of Appeal… 1830–1913

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury112

British politician 1830–1903

Ogden Rood1

American physicist 1831–1902

Sidney Lanier15

American musician, poet 1842–1881

Francis Joseph Sherman1

Canadian writer 1871–1926

Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard2

Royal Flying Corps commander and first Royal Air Force Chie… 1873–1956

Gertrude Stein160

American art collector and experimental writer of novels, p… 1874–1946

Georg Trakl5

austrian poet 1887–1914

Norman Rockwell6

Armatian 1894–1978

Alvar Aalto1

Finnish architect and designer 1898–1976

James A. Michener55

American author 1907–1997

Simone Weil193

French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist 1909–1943

Michel Thomas4

American linguist and language teacher 1914–2005

Richard Yates24

Novelist, short story writer 1926–1992

Joan Lowery Nixon2

American children's writer and journalist 1927–2003

Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)1

1932–2014

Howard Phillips (politician)2

American politician 1941–2013

Neil Bogart2

American music executive 1943–1982

Louis Kauffman2

American mathematician 1945

Lex Donaldson4

British-Australian organizational sociologist 1947

Paul Auster9

novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter 1947

Henning Mankell7

Swedish crime writer, children's author, leftist activist a… 1948–2015

Tomislav Sunić1

Croatian-American writer, translator and professor 1953

Julie Gold5

American musician 1956

Nathan Lane17

American actor 1956

N. Gregory Mankiw16

American economist 1958

Jim Balsillie2

Canadian businessman 1961

Salil Shetty3

human rights campaigner 1961

Raghuram G. Rajan11

Indian economist 1963

Warwick Davis2

English actor and television presenter 1970

Sarah Kane22

playwright from England 1971–1999

Jesper Kyd12

musician 1972

Isa Chandra Moskowitz3

American food writer 1973

Ransom Riggs13

American writer 1979

Death

George Crabbe20

English poet, surgeon, and clergyman 1754–1832

Jean-Baptiste Biot2

French scientist 1774–1862

Henry James Sumner Maine3

British comparative jurist and historian 1822–1888

Fukuzawa Yukichi12

Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur … 1835–1901

Oliver Heaviside8

electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist 1850–1925

Woodrow Wilson156

American politician, 28th president of the United States (i… 1856–1924

James Kenneth Stephen6

English poet, tutor to Prince Albert Victor 1859–1892

Harold L. Ickes7

American politician 1874–1952

Stringfellow Barr1

American writer 1897–1982

Choudhry Rahmat Ali2

Pakistani politician 1897–1951

Ernst Mayr8

German-American Evolutionary Biologist 1904–2005

Bohumil Hrabal6

Czech bookwriter and writer 1914–1997

Samuel Youd4

British writer 1922–2012

Charlie Sifford3

professional golfer 1922–2015

Julie Adams2

American actress 1926–2019

George Steiner74

American writer 1929–2020

Buddy Holly12

American singer-songwriter 1936–1959

Muhammad Alauddin Siddiqui1

Islamic Sufi Scholar 1936–2017

John Hirst15

Australian historian 1942–2016

Kristoff St. John2

American actor 1966–2019