April 8 birthdays & history

Famous people born on April 8

• 1938Kofi Annan, Ghanaian economist and diplomat, 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations
• 1859Edmund Husserl, German Jewish-Austrian mathematician and philosopher
• 1892Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, screenwriter and co-founder of United Artists
• 1911Emil Cioran, Romanian-French philosopher and academic
• 1929Jacques Brel, Belgian singer-songwriter and actor
• 1918Betty Ford, American wife of Gerald Ford, 40th First Lady of the United States
• 1968Patricia Arquette, American actress and director
• 1911Melvin Calvin, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1966Robin Wright, American actress, director, producer
• 1986Igor Akinfeev, Russian footballer

What happened on April 8

• 1630Kiliaen van Rensselaer purchased land near present-day Albany, New York, to establish Rensselaerswyck, which became the most successful patroonship under the Dutch West India Company.
• 1812Czar Alexander I, the Russian Emperor and the Grand Duke of Finland, officially announces the transfer of the status of the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki.
• 1820The Venus de Milo, an ancient Greek statue of a woman with its arms missing, was discovered on the island of Milos.
• 1886William Ewart Gladstone introduces the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.
• 1895In Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. the Supreme Court of the United States declares unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional.
• 1904Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan was renamed Times Square after the New York Times building.
• 1904The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sign the Entente cordiale.
• 1911American cartoonist Winsor McCay released the silent short film Little Nemo (featured), one of the earliest animated films.
• 1940The Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party elects Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal as General Secretary, marking the beginning of his 44-year-long tenure as de facto leader of Mongolia.
• 1959A team of computer scientists and others met to discuss the creation of a common business-oriented programming language, which became COBOL.
• 1973The Progress Party was founded in a movie theater in Oslo, Norway.
• 2008On board Soyuz TMA-12, Yi So-yeon became the first Korean astronaut.

Also observed on April 8

• Buddha's Birthday, also known as Hana Matsuri, "Flower Festival" (Japan)
• International Romani Day