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)