April 6

46 BC – Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger) in the battle of Thapsus.

1199 – King Richard I of England dies from an infection following the removal of an arrow from his shoulder.

1580 – One of the largest earthquakes recorded in the history of England, Flanders, or Northern France, takes place.

1712 – The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 begins near Broadway.

1808 – John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company, that would eventually make him America’s first millionaire.

1841 – President John Tyler is sworn in, two days after having become President upon William Henry Harrison’s death.

1895 – Oscar Wilde is arrested in the Cadogan Hotel, London, after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry.

1896 – In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman emperor Theodosius I.

1909 – Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reach the North Pole.

1930 – At the end of the Salt March, Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.

1965 – Launch of Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.

	Raphael died on his 37th birthday

1998 – Nuclear weapons testing: Pakistan tests medium-range missiles capable of reaching India.

1483 – Raphael, Italian painter and architect (d. 1520)

1773 – James Mill, Scottish historian, economist, and philosopher (d. 1836)

1820 – Nadar, French photographer, journalist, and author (d. 1910)

1888 – Hans Richter, Swiss painter, illustrator, and director (d. 1976)

Harold Edgerton, also known as ‘Papa Flash’ was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1903 – Harold Eugene Edgerton, American engineer and academic (d. 1990)

1928 – James Watson, biologist, geneticist, zoologist, Nobel Prize laureate

1147 – Frederick II, duke of Swabia (b. 1090)

1520 – Raphael, Italian painter and architect (b. 1483)

Other famous people who died on their birthday include William Shakespeare, Ingrid Bergman and Walter Diemer, the gentleman who invented bubble gum who went “pop!” on his 93rd birthday.

1971 – Igor Stravinsky, Russian-American pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1882)

1992 – Isaac Asimov, American science fiction writer (b. 1920)

2015 – Ray Charles, American singer-songwriter and conductor (b. 1918)

2017 – Don Rickles, American actor and comedian (b. 1926)