Portal:Biography/Selected anniversaries/August 20

Births

 * 1776 - Bernardo O'Higgins, (pictured) South American revolutionary (d. 1842)
 * 1779 - Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (d. 1848)
 * 1833 - Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States (d. 1901)
 * 1845 - St. Albert Chmielowski, Polish Catholic Saint (d. 1916)
 * 1873 - Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen, Finnish architect (d. 1950)
 * 1901 - Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
 * 1910 - Eero Saarinen, Finnish architect (d. 1961)
 * 1913 - Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1994)
 * 1916 - Paul Felix Schmidt, Estonian–German chess player (d. 1984)
 * 1923 - Jim Reeves, American singer (d. 1964)
 * 1941 - Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia (d. 2006)
 * 1943 - Sylvester McCoy, Scottish actor
 * 1944 - Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (d. 1991)
 * 1948 - Robert Plant, English singer (Led Zeppelin)
 * 1974 - Maxim Vengerov, Russian violinist

Deaths

 * 1672 - Johan de Witt, Dutch politician (b. 1625)
 * 1672  - Cornelis de Witt, Dutch politician (b. 1623)
 * 1811 - Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French explorer (b. 1729)
 * 1912 - William Booth, English founder of the Salvation Army (b. 1829)
 * 2001 - Sir Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and science fiction writer (b. 1915)