Honorable Mention: March 7, 1671: Rob Roy MacGregor. The legendary Scottish outlaw of the early 18th Century was a real person.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1998: Amanda Gorman. She was just 22 and looked even younger when she read her poem "The Hill We Climb" at President Joe Biden's Inauguration in 2021.
Somewhat Honorable Mention: March 7, 1964: Bret Easton Ellis. The author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho is one of those cases where we have to ask whether the artist has gone so far that no amount of talent can excuse it.
Dishonorable Mention: March 7, 1963: E.L. James. No, the author of the Fifty Shades trilogy doesn't go as far as Ellis. But she's not as good, either.
Dishonorable Mention: March 7, 1904: Reinhard Heydrich. Military governor of Czechoslovakia during World War II, he was assassinated by Resistance fighters. In alternate history stories where the Nazis won the war, he usually ends up being in the inner circle, sometimes even Hitler's successor. He certainly had the ideology for it.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1925: René Gagnon. Although he did fight in the Battle of Iwo Jima, he was incorrectly identified as one of the 6 U.S. Marines who raised the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi.
10. March 7, 1940: Daniel J. Travanti. He won 2 Emmy Awards starring as Captain Frank Furillo on the 1980s NBC police drama Hill Street Blues.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1873: Madame Sul-Te-Wan. Born Nellie Crawford, in 1915 she appeared in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, becoming the 1st black woman signed to a film contract: $25 a week. (About $700 in 2022 money.) Silent film legend Lillian Gish said, "We never did discover the origin of her name. No one was bold enough to ask."
She mostly played maid roles, but she was always working. In 1954, she played the grandmother of Dorothy Dandridge's character in Carmen Jones, which led to the erroneous rumor that she actually was Dandridge's grandmother. She did have 3 children, one of whom became an actor, Onest Coleman. They both appeared in the original 1933 version of King Kong.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1908: Anna Magnani. Considered Italy's answer to Greta Garbo, she was known as La Lupa, the She-Wolf.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1964: Wanda Sykes. She is one of the funniest people alive.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1970: Rachel Weisz. She won an Oscar for starring in The Constant Gardner, and her husband is Bond. James Bond. Well, Daniel Craig, anyway.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1974: Jenna Fischer. She played Pam Beesly on The Office, and Darlene Madison Cox in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1980: Laura Prepon. She played Donna Pinciotti on That '70s Show.
9. March 7, 1792: John Herschel. He went into the family business: His father, William Herschel, was an astronomer who discovered the planet Uranus. He was also one of the top mathematicians of his time, and invented blueprints.
8. March 7, 1945: Bob Herbert. He wrote a column for the New York Daily News from 1976 to 1993, and then for The New York Times until 2011.
7. March 7, 1850: Champ Clark. First elected to Congress in 1896, James Beauchamp Clark of Missouri led the Democratic caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1909 until his death in 1921, including serving as Speaker from 1911 to 1919. In 1912, he was nearly nominated for President, but Woodrow Wilson overtook him in delegates. He used his post as Speaker to pass much of Wilson's legislation.
6. March 7, 1942: Michael Eisner. He took The Walt Disney Company to heights even Uncle Walt himself couldn't have imagined. On his watch, the company became the owners of ABC, ESPN, the Muppets franchise, the Star Wars franchise and Marvel Comics.
5. March 7, 1934: Willard Scott. From 1963 to 1969, he was the original Ronald McDonald in McDonald's commercials. From 1980 to 1996, he was the weatherman on NBC's The Today Show.
4. March 7, 1952: Ernie Isley. He was too young to be on the first few hits of The Isley Brothers. But, at age 17, he played lead guitar on "It's Your Thing," and he wrote their best song of the 1970s, "That Lady." Speaking of which...
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1962: Taylor Dayne. She proved for women what Billy Joel proved for men: You can be a Jewish kind from Long Island, and still make it big in the music business if you have enough talent.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1945: Arthur Lee. Leader of the Los Angeles rock band Love, he was one of the earliest psychedelic performers.
3. March 7, 1956: Bryan Cranston."Say my name." You're Dalton Trumbo, Gus Grissom, Lyndon Johnson, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Diamond, Dr. Tim Whatley, Hal, Santa Claus and Lucifer. But, most of all, you're Walter White, a.k.a. Heisenberg, the anti-hero of Breaking Bad.
2. March 7, 1950: Franco Harris. The running back began his career by winning NFL Rookie of the Year in 1972, and scoring a touchdown on one of the most famous plays in football history, "The Immaculate Reception" in the AFC Divisional Playoff. He ended it trying to become the NFL's all-time leading rusher with the Seattle Seahawks, falling 188 yards short.
In between, he made 9 Pro Bowls, and helped the Pittsburgh Steelers win 4 Super Bowls. The 1st time, Super Bowl IX, he was named the game's Most Valuable Player. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 89th on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1915: Pete Gray. He lost his right arm in a train accident as a boy, but the manpower drain of World War II enabled him to play 77 games as an outfielder in the major leagues, with the 1945 St. Louis Browns.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1922: Andy Phillip. A 5-time All-Star, he reached the 1954 and '55 NBA Finals with the Fort Wayne Pistons, then won the title with the 1957 Boston Celtics. He's in the Basketball Hall of Fame, and while the Celtics retired his Number 17, they did it for John Havlicek.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1933: Jackie Blanchflower. The halfback was one of manager Matt Busby's "Busby Babes" that led Manchester United to the 1956 and '57 Football League titles. He survived the Munich Air Disaster of 1958, but sustained injuries that ended his playing career. They also denied him the chance to play alongside his brother Danny that Summer, when Northern Ireland made the World Cup.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1950: J.R. Richard. Another tragedy. From 1971 until the 1980 MLB All-Star Game, he was one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball. But he suffered a stroke, and never played again.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1952: Lynn Swann. Harris' teammate on those 4 Steeler Super Bowl wins, he was named MVP of Super Bowl X. Like Harris, he is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1960: Joe Carter. With 396 career home runs, he didn't quite get to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But he was involved in the final play of the World Series in back-to-back years: Catching the final out for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1992, and hitting the home run that won it for them in 1993.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1960: Ivan Lendl. From 1985 to 1990, he won 3 U.S. Opens, 3 French Opens and 2 Australian Opens. He was 0-for-2 in Wimbledon Finals.
Honorable Mention: March 7, 1968: Jeff Kent. A 5-time All-Star, he hit 351 home runs as a 2nd baseman, an all-time record, 377 in total. He was the National League Most Valuable Player with the 2000 San Francisco Giants.
1. March 7, 1850: Tomáš Masaryk. He served in the national legislature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fighting for the rights of Czechs and Slovaks. (His hometown, Hodonín, is in the present-day Czech Republic, but on the border with Slovakia.) During World War I, when the Empire was on its last legs, he became the foremost advocate for Czech independence.
From 1918 to 1935, he was the 1st President of Czechoslovakia. He is considered the country's founding father, and is treated as one of the founding fathers of the current nations that once made up Yugoslavia.
Still alive as of this writing: Gorman, Ellis, James, Travanti, Sykes, Weisz, Fischer, Prepon, Herbert, Eisner, Isley, Dayne, Cranston, Harris, Swann, Carter, Lendl, Kent.