Portal:Biography/Selected anniversaries/February 8

Births

• 1677 – Jacques Cassini, French astronomer (d. 1756)
• 1820 – William Tecumseh Sherman, American Union general (d. 1891) (pictured)
• 1834 – Dmitri Mendeleyev, Russian chemist (d. 1907)
• 1931 – James Dean, American actor (d. 1955)
• 1955 – John Grisham, American writer

Deaths

• 1587 – Mary, Queen of Scots executed (b. 1542)
• 1725 – Tsar Peter I of Russia (b. 1672)
• 1957 – Walther Bothe, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1891)
• 1957 – John von Neumann, Hungarian-born mathematician and physicist (b. 1903)
• 1999 – Iris Murdoch, Irish author (b. 1919)