On this day in history

October 4

28 births · 12 deaths · 5 events

Prev Libra Next

Anniversary highlights

Event anniversary

Space race

69 years ago

Born this day

1822

Rutherford B. Hayes

Died aged 70

Oldest record

737th

Louis X of France

birth anniversary

View profile

Famous births28

1289 · 737 yrs

Louis X of France

Louis X (4 October 1289 – 5 June 1316), known as the Quarrelsome (French: le Hutin), was King of France from 1314 and King of Navarre (as Louis I) from 1305 until his death. He emancipated serfs, who could buy their freedom, and readmitted Jews into the kingdom.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

RoyaltyDied aged 26

View profile

Photo: Anonymous Unknown author · Public domain

1472 · 554 yrs

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder (German: Lucas Cranach der Ältere; c. 1472 – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ArtDied aged 81

View profile

Photo: Lucas Cranach the Younger · Public domain

1542 · 484 yrs

Robert Bellarmine

Robert Bellarmine (Italian: Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino; 4 October 1542 – 17 September 1621) was an Italian Jesuit and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was canonized a saint in 1930 and named Doctor of the Church, one of only 27 at the time.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ReligionDied aged 78

View profile

Photo: Unknown author · CC0

1550 · 476 yrs

Charles IX of Sweden

Charles IX, also Carl (Swedish: Karl IX; 4 October 1550 – 30 October 1611), reigned as King of Sweden from 1604 until 1611. He was the youngest son of King Gustav I (r.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

RoyaltyDied aged 61

View profile

Photo: Unidentified painter · Public domain

1787 · 239 yrs

François Guizot

François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (English: gih-ZOH, French:; 4 October 1787 – 12 September 1874) was a French historian, orator and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics between the July Revolution and the Revolution of 1848.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScholarshipDied aged 86

View profile

Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1804 · 222 yrs

Wilhelm Eduard Weber

Wilhelm Eduard Weber ( WEB-er or VEY-ber; German:; 24 October 1804 – 23 June 1891) was a German physicist and, together with Carl Friedrich Gauss, inventor of the first electromagnetic telegraph.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 86

View profile

Photo: Rudolph Hoffmann / Bernhard Petri · Public domain

1814 · 212 yrs

Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet (French pronunciation:; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism art movement.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ArtDied aged 60

View profile

Photo: Nadar · Public domain

1822 · 204 yrs

Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was the 19th president of the United States, serving from 1877 to 1881. He served as Cincinnati's city solicitor from 1858 to 1861 and was known as a staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsDied aged 70

View profile

Photo: Mathew Benjamin Brady · Public domain

1892 · 134 yrs

Engelbert Dollfuss

Engelbert Dollfuss (alternatively Dollfuß; 4 October 1892 – 25 July 1934) was an Austrian politician and dictator who served as chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 134

View profile

Photo: © Knozer (F. Knozer) · Public domain

1895 · 131 yrs

Richard Sorge

Richard Gustavovich Sorge (Russian: Рихард Густавович Зорге, romanized: Rikhard Gustavovich Zorge; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during World War II and worked undercover as a German journalist in both Nazi Germany and the…

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 131

View profile

Photo: Unknown · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

1895 · 131 yrs

Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent films, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 131

View profile

Photo: Bain News Service · Public domain

1903 · 123 yrs

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was an Austrian lawyer, high-ranking SS official during the Nazi era, major perpetrator of the Holocaust, and convicted war criminal.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 123

View profile

Photo: Unknown photographer (for the NSDAP) · Public domain

Showing 12 of 28

Famous deaths12

1669 · 357 yrs

Rembrandt

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), known mononymously as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ArtDied aged 63

View profile

Photo: Rembrandt · Public domain

1880 · 146 yrs

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MusicDied aged 61

View profile

Photo: Nadar · Public domain

1903 · 123 yrs

Otto Weininger

Otto Weininger (German:; 3 April 1880 – 4 October 1903) was an Austrian philosopher who in 1903 published the book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), which gained popularity after his suicide at the age of 23.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PhilosophyWould be 146

View profile

Photo: Photogravure Richard Paulussen (1852-1906), Wien · Public domain

1904 · 122 yrs

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi ( bar-T(H)OL-dee, French:; 2 August 1834 – 4 October 1904) was a French sculptor and painter. He is best known for designing Liberty Enlightening the World, commonly known as the Statue of Liberty, in New York City, United States.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ArtDied aged 70

View profile

Photo: Nadar · Public domain

1947 · 79 yrs

Max Planck

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (German:; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 89

View profile

Photo: Courtesy of the Clendening History of Medicine Library, University of Kansas Medical Center. · CC BY-SA 3.0

1970 · 56 yrs

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and songwriter. One of the most iconic and successful rock performers of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and her stage presence.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MusicWould be 83

View profile

Photo: Grossman Glotzer Management Corporation · Public domain

1974 · 52 yrs

Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

LiteratureWould be 97

View profile

Photo: Associated Press · Public domain

1989 · 37 yrs

Graham Chapman

Graham Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British actor, comedian and writer. He was one of the six members of the surrealist comedy group Monty Python.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 85

View profile

Photo: Python (Monty) Pictures - Distributed in the USA by Cinema 5 · Public domain

2000 · 26 yrs

Michael Smith

Michael Smith (April 26, 1932 – October 4, 2000) was a British-Canadian biochemist and businessman. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis for his work in developing site-directed mutagenesis.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceWould be 94

View profile

Photo: File:Michael Smith party at Mary Vickers's house.1994, F-109-7-0-0-10 001.jpg : SCWIST Society for Canadian Women in Sci · CC BY-SA 4.0

2009 · 17 yrs

Mercedes Sosa

Haydée Marta Mercedes Sosa Girón (9 July 1935 – 4 October 2009) was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout Latin America and many countries outside the region. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of the nuevo cancionero ('new songbook') movement.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MusicWould be 91

View profile

Photo: Annemarie Heinrich · Public domain

2013 · 13 yrs100 Club

Võ Nguyên Giáp

Võ Nguyên Giáp (chữ Hán: 武元甲, Vietnamese pronunciation:; 25 August 1911 – 4 October 2013) was a Vietnamese general, communist revolutionary and politician. Highly regarded as a military strategist, Giáp led Vietnamese communist military forces to victory in the decades-long Indochina wars.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MilitaryWould be 115

View profile

Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

2014 · 12 yrs

Jean-Claude Duvalier

Jean-Claude Duvalier (French:; 3 July 1951 – 4 October 2014), nicknamed "Baby Doc" (Haitian Creole: Bebe Dòk, French: Bébé Doc), was a Haitian dictator who held the presidency of Haiti from 1971 until he was overthrown by a popular uprising in February 1986.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 75

View profile

Photo: Marcello Casal Jr/ABr · CC BY 3.0

Events5

1936 · 90 yrs

Battle of Cable Street

The Battle of Cable Street was a series of clashes that took place at several locations in the East End of London on Sunday 4 October 1936. The British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by Oswald Mosley, announced a march to celebrate the fourth anniversary of their organisation.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

War

1957 · 69 yrs

Space race

The Space Race (Russian: космическая гонка, romanized: kosmicheskaya gonka, IPA:) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Space

1958 · 68 yrs

Constitution of France

The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic (French: la Constitution de la Cinquième République), and it replaced the Constitution of the Fourth Republic of 1946, keeping its preamble.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Politics

1992 · 34 yrs

El Al Flight 1862

On 4 October 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747-200 cargo aircraft of the Israeli airline El Al, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer (colloquially "Bijlmer") neighbourhood of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The accident is known in Dutch as the Bijlmerramp ("Bijlmer disaster").

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Disaster

2010 · 16 yrs

Ajka alumina plant accident

A caustic waste reservoir chain collapsed at the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant in Ajka, Veszprém County, in western Hungary in October 2010.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Disaster

Nearby dates

Born on October 4? Find your birthday twins →

Share October 4

Living room with framed Who Shares My Birthday poster

Close-up

FrameShown to scale · framed 34 × 46 cmThis is the frame we'll deliver, with a white mount

Printable keepsake

Your birthday twins poster

A personalised A3 framed print of everyone famous born on October 4, what happened on your birthday in history and your zodiac sign. We print and frame it for you and deliver it to your door (UK only).

Name on poster

Your photo

Kept private and only used to make your poster.