Home About us Products Services Contact us Bookmark
:: wikimiki.org ::
Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин; March 9, 1934 – March 27, 1968), was a Soviet cosmonaut who in 1961 became the first human to travel into space.

Early Life

Yuri Gagarin was born in Klushino near Gzhatsk (the town would be renamed Gagarin in 1968 to honour Yuri), and his parents worked on a collective farm. While manual labourers are described in official reports as "peasants", this is something of an exaggeration; his mother was reportedly a voracious reader, and his father a skilled carpenter. Yuri was the third of four children, and his elder sister helped raise him while his parents worked. Like millions of Russians, the Gagarin family suffered great hardship in World War II. His two elder siblings were taken away to Germany in 1943, and did not return until after the war. His teachers described Gagarin as intelligent and hard-working, if occasionally mischievous. His mathematics teacher flew in the Red Army Air Force during the war, which presumably made some substantial impression on the young Gagarin. After starting an apprenticeship in a metalworks, Gagarin was selected for further training at a high technical school in Saratov. While there, he joined the "AeroClub", and learned to fly a light aircraft, a hobby that began to take up an increasing proportion of his time. Through dint of effort, rather than brilliance, he reportedly mastered both; in 1955, after completing his technical schooling, he entered military flight training at the Orenburg Pilot's School. While there he met Valentina Gorycheva, whom he married in 1957, after gaining his pilot's wings in a MiG-15. After graduating, he was posted at an airbase near Murmansk, where terrible weather made flying risky. As a full-grown man, Gagarin was 5 feet 2 inches (approx. 157.5cm) tall.

Career in Soviet Space Program

Selection and Training

In 1960, an extensive search and selection process saw Gagarin, amongst 20 other cosmonauts, selected for the Soviet space program. Along with the other prospective cosmonauts, he was subjected to a punishing series of experiments designed to test his physical and psychological endurance, as well as training relating to the upcoming flight. Out of the 20 selected, eventually the choice for the first to launch was between Gagarin and Gherman Titov, because of their excellent performance in training, as well as their physical characteristics - space was at a premium in the small Vostok cockpit. The choice of Gagarin, ultimately approved at the highest levels, was probably made due to Gagarin's modest upbringing and genial, outgoing personality, as distinct from the middle-class and somewhat aloof Titov.

Space Flight

Vostok On April 12, 1961, Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1). His call sign in this flight was Cedar (Russian: Кедр). According to international media, from orbit Gagarin made the comment, "I don't see any god up here." There are however no such words in the full verbatim record of Gagarin's conversations with the Earth during the spaceflight [http://gagarin.cbs.org.ru/gagarin/files/efir.doc] While in orbit Gagarin was promoted "in the field" from the lowly rank of Senior Lieutenant to Major - and this was the rank at which TASS announced him in its triumphant statement during the flight. At the time the Soviet authorities thought it was more likely he would perish during his descent than survive. Returning to Earth, Gagarin became very famous. Nikita Khrushchev rushed to his side and Gagarin issued a statement praising the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the "organiser of all our victories". He then toured the world. Khrushchev saw Gagarin's achievement as a vindication of his policy of strengthening the Soviet Union's missile forces at the expense of conventional arms. This policy antagonised the Soviet military establishment and contributed to Khrushchev's eventual downfall.

Post-Space Flight Activities

After the flight, Gagarin became an instant, worldwide celebrity, touring widely to promote the Soviet achievement. He proved quite adept at handling the publicity. However, it appeared to gradually wear him down, and he began to drink heavily - not helped by difficulties in his marriage. In October 1961 he severely injured himself in a drunken holiday escapade with a young nurse in the Crimea. From 1962 he served as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet, but later returned to "Star City", the cosmonaut facility, where he worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft. In 1967, he was selected as backup for the first Soyuz launch. The Soyuz capsule's parachute failed during reentry and the craft crashed, killing Vladimir Komarov.

Death and Legacy

Vladimir Komarov Gagarin then became deputy training director of the establishment. In the process of this, he began to requalify as a fighter pilot. On March 27, 1968 he was killed in a crash of a MiG-15 on a routine training flight near Kirzhach together with his instructor. It is uncertain what caused the crash, but a 1986 inquest suggests that the turbulence from a Su-11 interceptor airplane using its afterburners may have caused Gagarin's plane to go out of control. Weather conditions were also poor, which probably contributed to the inability of Gagarin and the instructor to correct before they crashed. Rumor that he was drunk is incorrect — he passed two medical examinations before the flight, and postmortem tests found no evidence of alcohol or drugs in his system. A new theory, advanced by the original crash investigator in 2005, hypothesises that a cabin vent was accidentally left open by the crew or the previous pilot, thus leading to oxygen deprivation and leaving the crew incapable of controlling the aircraft [http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=352912005]. oxygen deprivation poster featuring Gagarin.]] The Russian press reported he stayed with the aircraft to prevent it hitting a school, although this may have been apocryphal. Although Gagarin is indisputably the first man to survive space travel, there is a conspiracy theory that the Russians had previously launched two human beings into orbit prior to Gagarin, but both cosmonauts died en route or alternatively, one died while one landed off-course and was held by the Chinese government. The subject named most often in these theories is Vladimir Ilyushin, son of the famous Russian airplane designer. The Soviet government then supposedly suppressed this information to prevent bad publicity for their space program. According to Gagarin's biography, Starman, these rumours were likely started in a similar manner to the Roswell conspiracy theories; two Vostok missions, equipped with dummies and tape recordings of the human voice (to check if the radio worked), were made in the period just before Gagarin's flight. Roswell space base, where cosmonauts have been training since 1960. Gagarin, who made history with his 1 hour and 48 minute flight, lost his life in a training accident on March 27, 1968.]]

See also


- Soviet space program
- Space Race
- Yuri's Night is an international celebration held on April 12 every year to commemorate the first human in space and the first space shuttle launch.

References


- Michael D Cole Vostok 1: First Human in Space, Enslow Publishers, Inc. Aldershot, UK, Springfield, New Jersey, 1995. ISBN 0894905414.
- Doran, Jamie, and Bizony, Piers: Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1998 (paperback version, 1999). ISBN 074754278.

External links


- [http://www.abamedia.com/rao/gallery/gagarin/ Yuri Gagarin:His Life in Pictures]
- [http://epizodsspace.testpilot.ru/bibl/gagarin/doroga/obl.html Юрий Гагарин. Дорога в космос] - his book in Russian (HTML)
- [http://www.rgantd.ru/gag70_cd/start_me.htm Photo, Audio and Video with Yuri Gagarin (in Russian)], online version of CD created to his 70th anniv. on the homepage of Russian state archive for scientific-technical documentation (RGANTD).
- [http://www.rtc.ru/encyk/gagarin/main1.shtml Article in online Encyclopedia of cosmonautics] A lot of information about the first human's flight to space (in Russian).
- [http://www.astronautix.com/astros/gagarin.htm Gagarin] - detailed biography at [http://www.astronautix.com Encyclopedia Astronautica]
- [http://www.ffagency.com/gagarin/ List (with photos) of Gagarin statues] Gagarin, Yuri Gagarin, Yuri Gagarin Gagarin, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Yuri ko:유리 가가린 ja:ユーリイ・ガガーリン th:ยูริ กาการิน

Russian language

Russian (Russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, ) is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Irish, respectively. Written examples are attested from the 10th century onwards. While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of the international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of great political importance in the 20th century, Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations. NOTE. Russian is written in a non-Latin script. All examples below are in the Cyrillic alphabet, with transcriptions in IPA.

Classification

Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Belarusian and Ukrainian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. In many places in Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably. The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. Many words in modern literary Russian are closer in form to the modern Bulgarian language than to Ukrainian or Belarusian. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly different meanings. For details, see Historical Sound Changes and History of the Russian language. Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German, and English.

Geographic distribution

Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian. Following the break-up of 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national intercourse throughout the region has continued. In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country where more than third of the population is Russian-speaking, consisting mostly of post-World War II immigrants from Russia and other parts of the former USSR (Belarus, Ukraine). Similarly, in Estonia, the Soviet-era immigrants and their Russian-speaking descendants constitute about one quarter of the country's current population. A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has largely been assimilated during the decade of independence and currently represent less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR, especially in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It was, and still is, widely taught in Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam and Mongolia due to Soviet influence, and is still used as a lingua franca in Afghanistan by various tribes. Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America (especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Miami, and Chicago). In the first two of them, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, live in their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). It is important to note, however, that only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union the overwhelming majority were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat. According to the United States 2000 Census, Russian was reported as language spoken at home by 1.50% of population, or about 4.2 million, placing it as #10 language in the United States. Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling 3 million people. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of Germans, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for temporary employment. But many are well-off Russian families acquiring property and getting education. Earlier, the descendants of the Russian émigrés tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Now, when the border is more open, Russian is likely to survive longer, especially when many of the emigrants visit their homelands at least once a year and also have access to Russian websites and TV channels. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian:

Official status

Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukraine) and the unrecognized Moldovan Republic of Transnistria. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for many of the both native and RSL (Russian as a second language) speakers in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics. 97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia received their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians was 80% in Russia, 11% in Belarus, 27% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia.

Dialects

Despite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a large number of dialects exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of the Russian language into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region. Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language. Also cf. Moscow pronunciation of "-чн-", e.g. "булошная" (buloshnaya - bakery) instead of "булочная" (bulochnaya). The northern dialects typically pronounce unstressed clearly (the phenomenon called okanye оканье); the southern palatalize the final and aspirate the into . It should be noted that some of these features are also present in modern Ukrainian, indicating a linguistic continuum or strong influence one way or the other. Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the twentieth century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка ), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989, after four decades of preparatory work. The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect.

Derived languages


- Fenia or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary.
- Surzhyk is a Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine
- Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.
- Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with Russian vocabulary and Norwegian grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegians in Svalbard and Kola Peninsula.
- Runglish: Russian-English pidgin.

Writing system

Alphabet

Runglish publication describing the "Slavonic" language.]] Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include or , і , and or . The yers ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ultra-short or reduced , (conventional transcription, not IPA). For information on an informal approach on transliterating Russian into English, see the article Transliteration of Russian into English.

Orthography

Russian spelling is reasonably phonetic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonetics, morphology, etymology, and grammar, and, like that of most living languages, has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points. The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990's has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted. The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German models.

Sounds

The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled by about 1400. The language possesses five vowels, which are written with different letters depending on whether or not the preceding consonant is palatalized. The consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized pairs, which are traditionally called hard and soft. (The 'hard' consonants are sometimes said to be velarized, but this is only the case for /l/.) The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels (except /u/) tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. Russian syllable structure can be quite complex with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to 4 consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant the stucture can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

Consonants

Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of the consonants. While /k/, /ɡ/, /x/ do have palatalized allophones , only might be considered a phoneme, though it is marginal and generally not considered distinctive. It should be noted that palatalization is a phonological concept, and not all 'soft' consonants are phonetically palatalized. The velar and labial consonants are truly palatalized, which means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. The coronal stops, however, are phonetically laminal. In addition, in the case of /t/ and /d/, the tongue is raised enough to produce frication, thus making affricate-like. (There is no contrast between frication and no frication, though, as /ts/ is never palatalized.) are postalveolar with a flat tongue (laminal retroflex).

Grammar

Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses
- a highly synthetic morphology
- a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements:
  - a polished vernacular foundation;
  - a Church Slavonic inheritance;
  - a Western European style. The spoken language has been influenced by the literary, but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.

Vocabulary

Western European See History of Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language. The total number of words in Russian is difficult to reckon because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds, diminutives, etc. (see Word Formation under Russian grammar). The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of Pushkin, are as follows: Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain as many as 350,000 to 500,000 words. (As a historical aside, Dahl was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective русский, which was at that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox Eastern Slavic subjects of the Empire, as well as to its one official language, be spelled руский with one s, in accordance with ancient tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the language". He was contradicted by the philologist Grot, who distinctly heard the s lengthened or doubled.)

The language of abuse and invective

Main article: Mat (language) Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (артистическая ругань ) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out. The ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (трёхэтажный мат ).

Proverbs and sayings

Main article: Russian proverbs, Russian sayings Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица ) and sayings (поговоркa ). These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source.

History and examples

See also: Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods.
- Origins
- The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries)
- Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries)
- The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)
- Empire (18th-19th centuries)
- Soviet period and beyond (20th century) See also:
- Examples of literary language (12-20th century) Judging by the historical records, by approximately 1000 AD the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking a closely related group of dialects. The political unification of this region into Kievan Rus, from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988-9 and the establishment of Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and simultaneously the literary language began to be modified in its turn to become more nearly Eastern Slavic. Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100, and the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth century. After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" in the late fourteenth century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. There is some consensus that Russian and Ukrainian can be considered distinct languages from this period at the latest. The official language remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotrytsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature. The political reforms of Peter the Great were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French, less often German, on an everyday basis. The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century. The political upheavals of the early twentieth century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Political circumstances and Soviet accomplishments in military, scientific, and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a world-wide if occasionally grudging prestige, especially during the middle third of the twentieth century. Since the collapse of 1990-91, fashion for ways and things Western, economic uncertainties and difficulties within the educational system have made for inevitable rapid change in the language. Russian today is a tongue in great flux.

References

The following serve as references for both this article and the related articles listed below that describe the Russian language:

In English


- B. Comrie, G. Stone, M. Polinsky, The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century, 2nd. ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996
- W.K. Matthews, Russian Historical Grammar, London, University of London, Athlone Press, 1960
- T.R. Carleton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, Columbus, Ohio : Slavica Publishers, 1991
- A. Stender-Petersen, Anthology of old Russian literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954

In Russian


- Иванов В.В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. "Просвещение", М., 1990.
- Цыганенко Г. П. Этимологический словарь русского языка. Киев, 1970.
- Т. Н. Михельсон, Рассказы русских летописей XV–XVII веков. М., 1978
- Н.М. Шанский, В.В. Иванов, Т.В. Шанская. Краткий этимологический словарь русского языка. М. 1961.
- А. Шицгал, Русский гражданский шрифт, "Исскуство", Москва, 1958, 2-e изд. 1983.
- Л. П. Жуковская, отв. ред. Древнерусский литературный язык и его отношение к старославянскому. М., «Наука», 1987. Many further references are listed in the books above.

See also

Language description


- Russian alphabet
- Russian grammar
- Russian orthography
- Russian phonetics
- History of Russian language

Related languages


- East Slavic languages
- Church Slavonic language
- Great Russian language
- Old Church Slavonic language
- Old Russian language

Other


- List of Russian language topics
- List of English words of Russian origin
- Russian literature
- Russian humour
- Russian proverbs
- Reforms of Russian orthography
- Transliteration of Russian into English
- Volapuk encoding
- Non-native pronunciations of English
- List of commonly confused homonyms in Russian
- Common phrases in different languages
- Runglish

External links


- [http://www.declan-software.com/russian Russian language learning software]
- [http://www.russianlessons.net/ Online Russian language lessons]
- [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=81 All free Russian dictionaries]
- [http://overstuffed-closet.net/russian The Russian Language Fanlisting]
- [http://www.speakrus.ru/dict/ Free downloadable vocabularies of the Russian language]
- [http://RusWin.net Cyrillic (Russian)]
- [http://www.masterrussian.com MasterRussian.com - vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links]
- [http://www.ifstudio-translations.com/ Free Russian translations.]
- [http://tinyurl.com/5lhlp Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian language]
- [http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in Russian]
- [http://www.gramota.ru "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.lib.ru "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com)]
- [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/ Reference Grammar]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian - English Dictionary]
- [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian Generator for Russian typographical filler text]
- [http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm G. Weber, "Top Languages"]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian]
- [http://www.linguarus.com Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning)]
- [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/russian.php Russian courses]
- [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category]
- [http://www.language-usa.com/ Russian Translation USA]
- [http://runglish1.narod.ru Runglish]
- [http://www.orlandorussians.com/ Russian Language Groups in America]
- [http://www.russki-mat.net/ Multilingual Russian slang dictionaries]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition Category:Languages of Belarus Category:Languages of Finland Category:Languages of Russia Category:Languages of Ukraine Category:Languages of Kazakhstan Category:Languages of Georgia Category:Languages of Armenia Category:Languages of Azerbaijan Category:Languages of Turkmenistan Category:Languages of Uzbekistan Category:Languages of Moldova Category:Languages of Tajikistan Category:Languages of Kyrgyzstan Category:Languages of Estonia Category:Languages of Latvia Category:Languages of Lithuania Category:Languages of China Category:Languages of Mongolia Category:Languages of Afghanistan Category:Languages of Bulgaria Category:Russian language Category:East Slavic languages ko:러시아어 ms:Bahasa Russia ja:ロシア語 simple:Russian language th:ภาษารัสเซีย

1934

1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January-April


- January 1 - Alcatraz becomes a federal prison.
- January 1 - Nazi Germany passes the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring."
- January 7 - First Flash Gordon comic strip is published.
- January 10 - Execution of Marinus van der Lubbe
- January 24 - Einstein visits White House
- January 26 - The Apollo Theater opens in Harlem, New York City.
- February 9 - Gaston Doumergue forms a new government in France
- February 12 - The Export-Import Bank is incorporated.
- February 12 to February 16 - Austrian Civil War
- February 23 - Léopold III becomes King of Belgium.
- March 1 - Manchuria becomes Manchukuo
- March 3 - John Dillinger escapes from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, using a wooden pistol
- March 8 - Prince Sigvard of Sweden loses his titles because of his marriage
- March 20 - All the police forces in Germany come under command of Heinrich Himmler
- April 1 - Clyde Barrow and Henry Methvin kill two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas.
- April 6 - Rudyard Kipling and William Butler Yeats are awarded the Gothenburg Prize for Poetry.
- April 19 - Surgeon R.K. Wilson allegedly takes a photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.
- April 22 - John Dillinger and two others shoot their way out of the FBI ambush in northern Wisconsin

May-June


- May 7 - Pearl of Lao-Tze, 24 x 14 cm, is found in a giant clam off Palawan, Philippines
- May 11 - Dust Bowl: A strong two-day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl.
- May 15 - The United States Department of Justice offers a $25,000 reward for John Dillinger.
- May 15 - Kārlis Ulmanis establishes an authoritarian government in Latvia.
- May 23 - Near their hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana, FBI men ambush bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and fire, killing them.
- May 24 - Tomás Masaryk re-elected president of Czechoslovakia
- May 28 - Near Callander, Ontario, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Olivia and Elzire Dionne later becoming the first quintuplets to survive infancy.
- June 6 - New Deal: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
- June 9 - Release of the animated short The Wise Little Hen, directed by Bert Gillett for the Silly Symphonies series, featuring the debut of Donald Duck.
- June 10 - Italy beat Czechoslovakia 2-1 after extra time to win the 1934 World Cup.
- June 12 - Political parties banned in Bulgaria
- June 27 - Emir of Yemen and ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia conclude a peace treaty
- June 30 - The Nazi SA camp Oranienburg becomes national camp, taken over by the SS.
- June 30 - Night of the Long Knives - Nazis purge the SA

July-September


- July 10 - German social democrat and author Erich Mühsam killed in Oranienburg concentration camp
- July 17 - Supreme court of North Dakota declares lieutenant governor of the state, Ole Olsen, the legitimate governor and tells William Langer to resign. Langer proceeds to declare North Dakota independent. He revokes the declaration after the Supreme Court justices meet him
- July 19 - Francisco Sá Carneiro, Prime Minister of Portugal (1980; died in office).
- July 22 - Outside Chicago, Illinois's Biograph Theatre, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.
- July 25 - Austrian Nazis assassinate chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss during a failed coup attempt.
- August 2 - Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany, becoming head of state as well as Chancellor.
- August 19 - The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.
- September 8 - Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner Morro Castle kills 134 people.
- September 19 - Soviet Union joins the League of Nations
- September 21 - Hurricane in Honshu, Japan - 4000 dead
- November 27 - A running gun battle between FBI agents and bank robber Baby Face Nelson results in the death of one FBI agent and the mortal wounding of special agent Sam Cowley, who is still able to mortally shoot Nelson.
- September 28 - Afghanistan joins the League of Nations
- September 28 - Trial for the custody of young Gloria Vanderbilt begins - it lasts seven weeks and ends with a compromise
- September 29 - Stanley Matthews makes his England debut, beginning a record 23-year international career

October-December


- October 2 - Tornado in Osaka and Kyoto and destroys the rice harvest - 1660 dead, 5400 injured
- October 6 - Catalonian separatists rebel
- October 9 - King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French foreign minister Louis Barthou are assassinated during the king's state visit in Marseille
- October 16 - The Long March of Chinese communists begins
- November 13 - Italian government decrees that teachers must use a military or party uniform in a class
- November 21 - MCC makes an ultimately controversial decision to alter the lbw rule so a batsman can be lbw to a ball pitching outside off stump. The change is later blamed for many problems developing during the 1950s - primarily negative bowling outside leg stump to a field of short-leg fieldsmen.
- November 23 - An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovers an Italian garrison at Walwal, which lay well within Ethiopian territory. This encounter leads to the Abyssinia Crisis.
- December 1 - In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergei Kirov is shot dead at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad by Leonid Nikolayev (it is widely thought that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered this murder).
- December 5 - Abyssinia Crisis: Ethiopian and Italian troops exchange gunfire. Reported casualties for the Ethiopians are 150, and for the Italians 50.
- December 14 - Female suffrage in Turkey
- December 18 - Low-key fascist conference in Moreaux
- December 27 - Persia becomes Iran
- December 29 - Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

Unknown dates


- The sonoluminescence effect is discovered.
- First Jay Gordon record is made.
- The GPU becomes the NKVD.
- The Maginot Line is finished.
- Abidjan becomes the capital of the French colony of Côte d'Ivoire.

Births

January


- January 7 - Charlie Jenkins, American runner
- January 9 - Bart Starr, American football player
- January 11 - Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada
- January 16 - Marilyn Horne, American mezzo-soprano
- January 18 - Raymond Briggs, English writer and illustrator
- January 20 - Tom Baker, English actor
- January 22 - Bill Bixby, American television actor (d. 1993)
- January 24 - Stanisław Grochowiak, Polish poet and dramatist (d. 1976)

February


- February 5 - Hank Aaron, baseball player
- February 7 - Earl King, American musician (d. 2003)
- February 10 - Fleur Adcock, New Zealand poet
- February 11 - Tina Louise, American actress
- February 11 - Mary Quant, English fashion designer
- February 11 - John Surtees, British race car driver
- February 12 - Bill Russell, American basketball player
- February 13 - George Segal, American actor
- February 14 - Michel Corboz, Swiss conductor
- February 14 - Florence Henderson, American television actress
- February 15 - Niklaus Wirth, Swiss computer scientist
- February 17 - Alan Bates, English actor (d. 2003)
- February 17 - Barry Humphries, Australian actor and comedian
- February 20 - Bobby Unser, American race car driver
- February 21 - Rue McClanahan, American actress
- February 22 - Sparky Anderson, baseball manager
- February 24 - Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister of Italy (d. 2000)
- February 24 - Renata Scotto, Italian soprano
- February 27 - Ralph Nader, American consumer activist

March-April


- March 1 - Jean-Michel Folon, Belgian sculptor (d. 2005)
- March 1 - Joan Hackett, American actress (d. 1983)
- March 4 - Janez Strnad, Slovenian physicist
- March 5 - Daniel Kahneman, Israeli economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- March 7 - Willard Scott, American television broadcaster
- March 9 - Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut (d. 1968)
- March 11 - Sam Donaldson, American reporter
- March 13 - Barry Hughart, American author
- March 16 - Ray Hnatyshyn, Canadian Governor-General (d. 2002)
- March 20 - Willie Brown, Mayor of San Francisco, California
- March 22 - Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator from Utah
- March 26 - Alan Arkin, American actor
- March 31 - Shirley Jones, American singer and actress
- March 31 - Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- April 1 - Rod Kanehl, baseball player (d. 2004)
- April 2 - Paul Joseph Cohen, American mathematician
- April 2 - Brian Glover, British actor and wrestler (d. 1997)
- April 3 - Jane Goodall, English zoologist
- April 24 - Shirley MacLaine, American actress
- April 29 - Otis Rush, American musician

May-August


- May 3 - Henry Cooper, British boxer
- May 9 - Alan Bennett, British actor and writer
- May 13 - Leon Wagner, baseball player (d. 2004)
- May 14 - Siân Phillips, Welsh actress
- May 19 - Jim Lehrer, American television journalist
- May 21 - Bengt I. Samuelsson, Swedish biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- May 22 - Peter Nero, American pianist
- May 23 - Robert Moog, American inventor of the synthesizer
- May 27 - Harlan Ellison, American writer
- May 28 - Dionne quintuplets, world's first surviving quintuplets
- May 30 - Aleksei Leonov, cosmonaut
- June 3 - Rolland D. McCune, American theologian
- June 6 - King Albert II of Belgium
- June 16 - William Forsyth Sharpe, American economicst, Nobel Prize laureate
- June 26 - Jeremy Wolfenden, British journalist (d. 1965)
- June 30 - Harry Blackstone Jr., American magician (d. 1997)
- July 1 - Jean Marsh, British actress
- July 11 - Giorgio Armani, Italian fashion designer
- July 12 - Van Cliburn, American pianist
- July 13 - Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, Nobel Prize laureate
- July 13 - Aleksei Yeliseyev, cosmonaut
- July 14 - John Tyndall, British politician (d. 2005)
- July 15 - Harrison Birtwistle, English composer
- August 2 - Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
- August 18 - Roberto Clemente, Puerto Rican Major League Baseball player (d. 1972)

September-December


- September 2 - Dominic Chianese, American actor
- September 4 - Clive Granger, Welsh-born economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- September 7 - Little Milton, American musician
- September 8 - Peter Maxwell Davies, English composer
- September 10 - Charles Kuralt, American journalist (d. 1997)
- September 17 - Maureen Connolly, American tennis player (d. 1969)
- September 20 - Sophia Loren, Italian actress
- October 1 - Chuck Hiller, baseball player (d. 2004)
- October 2 - Earl Wilson, baseball player (d. 2005)
- October 17 - Rico Rodriguez, Jamaican trombonist
- October 18 - Chuck Swindoll, American evangelist
- October 26 - Roy Ascott, British artist
- October 30 - Frans Brüggen, Dutch flutist, recorder player, and conductor
- November 1 - Umberto Agnelli, Swiss-born automobile executive (d. 2004)
- November 9 - Carl Sagan, American astronomer (d. 1996)
- November 12 - Charles Manson, serial killer
- November 24 - Alfred Schnittke, Volga German composer (d. 1998)
- December 2 - Andre Rodgers, baseball player (d. 2004)
- December 3 - Viktor Gorbatko, cosmonaut
- December 4 - Wink Martindale, American game show host and disc jockey
- December 9 - Judi Dench, English actress
- December 9 - Junior Wells, American harmonica player (d. 1998)
- December 10 - Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1994)
- December 16 - Elgin Baylor, American basketball player
- December 18 - Boris Volynov, cosmonaut
- December 19 - Al Kaline, baseball player
- December 27 - Larissa Latynina, Russian gymnast
- December 28 - Maggie Smith, English actress
- December 30 - Joseph P. Hoar, U.S. Marine commander
- December 30 - John Norris Bahcall, American astrophysicist (d. 2005)
- December 30 - Del Shannon, American singer (d. 1990)

Unknown dates


- Jayakanthan, Tamil writer

Deaths


- January 10 - Marinus van der Lubbe, Dutch communist accused of setting fire to the Reichstag (executed) (b. 1909)
- January 29 - Fritz Haber, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)
- February 17 - Albert I of Belgium (b. 1875)
- February 23 - Edward Elgar, English composer (b. 1857)
- March 15 - Davidson Black, Cnadian-born Paleoanthropologist (b.1884).
- March 29 - Otto Hermann Kahn, German-born millionaire philanthropist (b. 1867)
- May 23 - Clyde Barrow, American outlaw (shot) (b. 1909)
- May 23 - Bonnie Parker, American outlaw (shot) (b. 1910)
- May 25 - Gustav Holst, English composer (b. 1874)
- May 30 - Togo Heihachiro, Japanese admiral (b. 1848)
- June 10 - Frederick Delius, English composer (b. 1862)
- June 11 - Lev Vygotsky, Russian developmental psychologist (b. 1896)
- July 4 - Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Polish-born scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and physics (b. 1867)
- July 8 - Benjamin Baillaud, French astronomer (b. 1848)
- July 22 - John Dillinger, American criminal (b. 1903)
- July 25 - François Coty, French perfume manufacturer (b. 1874)
- July 25 - Englebert Dolfuss, Chancellor of Austria (assassinated) (b. 1892)
- July 25 - Nestor Makhno, Ukrainian anarchist (b. 1889)
- July 26 - Winsor McCay, American comic creator and animator (b. 1871)
- July 28 - Marie Dressler, Canadian actress (b. 1868)
- August 2 - Paul von Hindenburg, German general and politician (b. 1847)
- September 2 - Alcide Nunez, American musician (b. 1884)
- October 17 - Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist and neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1852)
- November 2 - Edmond James de Rothschild, French philanthropist (b. 1845)
- November 16 - Alice Liddell, English schoolgirl, inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (b. 1852)
- December 1 - Sergei Kirov, Soviet leader (b. 1886)

Nobel Prizes


- Physics - not awarded
- Chemistry - Harold Clayton Urey
- Medicine - George Hoyt Whipple, George Richards Minot, William Parry Murphy
- Literature - Luigi Pirandello
- Peace - Arthur Henderson Category:1934 ko:1934년 ms:1934 ja:1934年 simple:1934 th:พ.ศ. 2477

March 27

March 27 is the 86th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (87th in Leap years). There are 279 days remaining.

Events


- 1306 - Robert I of Scotland and Elizabeth de Burgh are crowned king and Queen of the Scots.
- 1513 - (not 1512 as often cited) - Explorer Juan Ponce de León sights North America (specifically Florida) for the first time, mistaking it for another island.
- 1625 - Charles I becomes King of England and Scotland.
- 1782 - Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 1794 - The government of the United States establishes a permanent United States Navy and authorizes the building of six frigates.
- 1794 - Denmark and Sweden form a neutrality compact.
- 1814 - War of 1812: In central Alabama, United States forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
- 1836 - Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre - Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas.
- 1846 - Mexican-American War: Siege of Fort Texas.
- 1851 - First reported case of Europeans seeing Yosemite Valley.
- 1871 - First international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.
- 1890 - A tornado strikes Louisville, Kentucky, killing 76 and injuring 200.
- 1918 - Moldova and Bessarabia join Romania.
- 1923 - FART construction completed.
- 1938 - Battle of Tai er zhuang
- 1941 - Britain supports Peter II of Yugoslavia in a coup in Yugoslavia.
- 1942 - World War II: United Kingdom forces raid the U-boat base at St. Nazaire, France.
- 1945 - World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins.
- 1952 - Sun Records begins operations.
- 1958 - Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union.
- 1963 - Dr Beeching issues a report calling for huge cuts to the United Kingdom's rail network. See Beeching axe.
- 1964 - The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
- 1969 - Mariner 7 is launched.
- 1976 - The first 4.6 miles of the Washington, DC subway system is opened.
- 1977 - Tenerife disaster: Two jumbo jets collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583.
- 1980 - The Norwegian oil platform Alexander Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.
- 1986 - Car bomb explodes at Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, killing 1 police officer, Angela Taylor and injuring 21 people.
- 1988 - Moudud Ahmed becomes Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
- 1989 - Generations, the first American soap opera to have an entire black family in its original core cast, commences telecasts on NBC.
- 1990 - Propaganda: The United States begins broadcasting TV Martí to Cuba.
- 1993 - Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People's Republic of China.
- 1993 - Albert Zafy becomes President of Madagascar.
- 1993 - Mahamane Ousmane becomes President of Niger.
- 1994 - One of the biggest tornado outbreaks in recent memory hits the Southeastern United States. One tornado slams into a church in Piedmont, Alabama during Palm Sunday services killing 20 and injuring 90.
- 2002 - Passover Massacre: A suicide bomber kills 29 people in Netanya, Israel.
- 2003 - An explosion in the Nitrochimie dynamite factory in Billy-Berclau, France kills 4 people. Somebody lit a match.
- 2004 - HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.

Births


- 972 - King Robert I of France (d. 1031)
- 1416 - Antonio Squarcialupi, Italian composer (d. 1480)
- 1627 - Stephen Fox, English politician (d. 1716)
- 1702 - Johann Ernst Eberlin, German composer (d. 1762)
- 1712 - Claude Bourgelat, French veterinary surgeon (d. 1779)
- 1714 - Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, Italian theologian and historian (d. 1795)
- 1730 - Thomas Tyrwhitt, English classical scholar (d. 1786)
- 1746 - Michael Bruce, Scottish poet (d. 1767)
- 1765 - Franz Xaver von Baader, German philosopher and theologian (d. 1841)
- 1785 - King Louis XVII of France (d. 1795)
- 1797 - Alfred de Vigny, French author (d. 1863)
- 1809 - Baron Haussmann, French civic planner (d. 1891)
- 1810 - William Hepworth Thompson, English classical scholar (d. 1886)
- 1813 - Nathaniel Currier, American illustrator (d. 1888)
- 1817 - Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli, Swiss biologist (d. 1891)
- 1845 - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1923)
- 1847 - Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
- 1851 - Vincent d'Indy, French composer and teacher (d. 1931)
- 1857 - Karl Pearson, English statistician (d. 1936)
- 1860 - Frank Frost Abbott, American classical scholar (d. 1924)
- 1863 - Sir Henry Royce, English automobile pioneer (d. 1933)
- 1869 - James McNeill, Irish politician (d. 1938)
- 1871 - Heinrich Mann, German writer (d. 1950)
- 1882 - Ferde Grofé, American composer (d. 1972)
- 1883 - Marie Under, Estonian author and poet (d. 1980)
- 1886 - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, German architect (d. 1969)
- 1893 - Karl Mannheim, Hungarian sociologist (d. 1947)
- 1899 - Gloria Swanson, American actress (d. 1983)
- 1901 - Carl Barks, American illustrator (d. 2000)
- 1901 - Sasaki Naojiro, Japanese author (d. 1943)
- 1901 - Erich Ollenhauer, German politician (d. 1963)
- 1901 - Eisaku Sato, Prime Minister of Japan, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1975)
- 1901 - Kenneth Slessor, Australian poet (d. 1971)
- 1905 - Elsie MacGill, Canadian aeronautical engineer (d. 1980)
- 1906 - Pee Wee Russell, American musician (d. 1969)
- 1909 - Golo Mann, German historian (d. 1994)
- 1912 - James Callaghan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 2005)
- 1914 - Richard Denning, American actor (d. 1998)
- 1914 - Budd Schulberg, American screenwriter and novelist
- 1915 - Junior Lockwood, American musician
- 1917 - Cyrus Vance, American politician (d. 2002)
- 1921 - Harold Nicholas, American dancer (d. 2000)
- 1922 - Stefan Wul, French author (d. 2003)
- 1923 - Endo Shusaku, Japanese author (d. 1996)
- 1923 - Louis Simpson, Jamaican-born poet
- 1924 - Sarah Vaughan, American singer (d. 1990)
- 1927 - Mstislav Rostropovich, Russian cellist and conductor
- 1931 - David Janssen, American actor (d. 1980)
- 1935 - Abelardo Castillo, Argentine writer
- 1935 - Julian Glover, British actor
- 1939 - Cale Yarborough, American race car driver
- 1941 - Ivan Gašparovič, President of Slovakia
- 1942 - John E. Sulston, British chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 1942 - Michael York, English actor
- 1947 - Brian Jones, British balloonist
- 1950 - Tony Banks, English musician (Genesis)
- 1952 - Maria Schneider, French actress
- 1956 - Leung Kwok Hung, Hong Kong political activist
- 1957 - Nick Hawkins, British politician
- 1961 - Tak Matsumoto, Japanese guitarist (B'z)
- 1962 - Jann Arden, Canadian musician
- 1963 - Quentin Tarantino, American actor, director, writer, and producer
- 1963 - Xuxa, Brazilian television personality
- 1966 - Paula Trickey, American actress
- 1967 - Talisa Soto, American actress
- 1968 - Sadie Frost, British actress
- 1968 - Sandra Hess, Swiss-born actress and model
- 1969 - Keith Flint, Member of British group The Prodigy
- 1970 - Mariah Carey, American singer
- 1970 - Princess Leila of Iran (d. 2001)
- 1971 - David Coulthard, Scottish race car driver
- 1972 - Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Dutch football striker
- 1975 - Fergie, American musician (Black Eyed Peas)

Deaths


- 1191 - Pope Clement III
- 1350 - King Alfonso XI of Castile, (b. 1312)
- 1378 - Pope Gregory XI
- 1462 - Vasili II of Russia, Grand Prince of Moscow (b. 1415)
- 1482 - Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold and wife of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1457)
- 1555 - William Hunter, protestant martyr
- 1615 - Margaret of Valois, queen of Henry IV of France (b. 1553)
- 1625 - King James I of England and Ireland, James VI of Scotland (b. 1566)
- 1635 - Robert Naunton, English politician (b. 1563)
- 1697 - Simon Bradstreet, English colonial magistrate (b. 1603)
- 1757 - Johann Stamitz, Czech-born composer (b. 1717)
- 1770 - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Italian artist (b. 1696)
- 1809 - Joseph-Marie Vien, French painter (b. 1716)
- 1827 - François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, French social reformer (b. 1747)
- 1836 - James Fannin, Texas revolutionary (b. 1804)
- 1843 - Karl Salomo Zachariae von Lingenthal, German jurist (b. 1769)
- 1849 - Archibald Acheson, 2nd Earl of Gosford (b. 1776)
- 1850 - Wilhelm Beer, German astronomer (b. 1797)
- 1864 - Jean-Jacques Ampère, French scholar (b. 1800)
- 1865 - Petrus Hoffman Peerlkamp, Dutch scholar (b. 1786)
- 1873 - Amedée Simon Dominique Thierry, French journalist and historian (b. 1797)
- 1875 - Edgar Quinet, French historian (b. 1803)
- 1878 - Sir George Gilbert Scott, English architect (b. 1811)
- 1889 - John Bright, English statesman (b. 1811)
- 1910 - Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, American scientist and engineer (b. 1835)
- 1918 - Henry Adams, American historian (b. 1838)
- 1923 - Sir James Dewar, Scottish chemist (b. 1842)
- 1924 - Walter Parratt, English composer (b. 1841)
- 1927 - Joe Start, baseball player (b. 1842)
- 1931 - Arnold Bennett, British novelist (b. 1867)
- 1940 - Michael Joseph Savage, Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1872)
- 1967 - Jaroslav Heyrovský, Czech chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1890)
- 1967 - Jim Thompson, American designer (disappeared) (b. 1906)
- 1968 - Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut (b. 1934)
- 1969 - B. Traven, German writer
- 1972 - Sharkey Bonano, American musician (b. 1904)
- 1972 - M. C. Escher, Dutch artist (b. 1898)
- 1977 - A. P. Hamann, American politician
- 1977 - Diana Hyland, American actress (b. 1936)
- 1981 - Mao Dun, Chinese writer (b. 1895)
- 1989 - Jack Starrett, American actor and director (b.