April 15 birthdays & history

Famous people born on April 15

• 1452Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, and architect
• 1707Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist
• 1894Nikita Khrushchev, Russian general and politician, 7th Premier of the Soviet Union
• 1990Emma Watson, English actress
• 1858Émile Durkheim, French sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher
• 1949Alla Pugacheva, Russian singer-songwriter and actress
• 1469Guru Nanak, the first Sikh guru
• 1931Tomas Tranströmer, Swedish poet, translator, and psychologist Nobel Prize laureate
• 1843Henry James, American novelist, short story writer, and critic
• 1959Emma Thompson, English actress, comedian, author, activist and screenwriter

What happened on April 15

• 1191Henry VI, King of Germany, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1738Serse, an opera by Baroque composer George Frideric Handel loosely based on Xerxes I of Persia, premiered in London.
• 1755A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson was first published, becoming one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of English.
• 1802English poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy encountered a "long belt" of daffodils near Ullswater, inspiring him to pen his best-known work, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud".
• 1817Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf (then called the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons), the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut.
• 1892The General Electric Company is formed.
• 1896Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece.
• 1947Jackie Robinson, the first African American to break the baseball color line, played his first game in Major League Baseball.
• 1955American restaurateur Ray Kroc opened the ninth McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois, an occasion considered to be the founding of the present corporation.
• 1957The Indiaman departed Victoria Coach Station, London, as part of the first UK–India bus service.
• 1958On Walter O'Malley's initiative, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants played the first Major League Baseball game on the U.S. West Coast.
• 1994At a GATT ministerial meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, representatives of 123 countries and the European Communities signed an agreement to establish the World Trade Organization.

Also observed on April 15

• Day of the Sun (North Korea)
• Father Damien Day (Hawaii)
• Jackie Robinson Day (United States)
• National American Sign Language Day (United States)
• Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year; India)
• Universal Day of Culture