What happened on April 8 ?

217 - Caracalla, Roman Emperor (b. 186)

956 - Gilbert of Chalon, Duke of Burgundy

1143 - John II Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor (b. 1087)

1364 - King John II of France (b. 1319)

1461 - Georg Purbach, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1423)

1492 - Lorenzo de Medici, ruler of Florence (b. 1449)

1586 - Martin Chemnitz, Lutheran reformer and theologian (b. 1522)

1587 - John Foxe, English writer (b. 1516)

1691 - Carlo Rainaldi, Italian architect (b. 1611)

1697 - Niels Juel, Danish admiral (b. 1629)

1704 - Hiob Ludolf, German orientalist (b. 1624)

1704 - Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English statesman (b. 1641)

1725 - John Wise, English clergyman (b. 1652)

1848 - Gaetano Donizetti, Italian composer (b. 1797)

1857 - Mangal Pandey, Indian soldier

1861 - Elisha Otis, US elevator builder (b. 1811)

1870 - Charles de Bériot, Belgian composer (b. 1802)

1919 - Loránd Eötvös, Hungarian physicist (b. 1848)

1920 - Charles Tomlinson Griffes, American composer (b. 1884)

1931 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)

1936 - Robert Bárány, Austrian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1876)

1938 - Joe "King" Oliver, American musician (b. 1885)

1950 - Vaslav Nijinsky, Polish-born ballet dancer (b. 1890)

1965 - Lars Hanson, Swedish actor (b. 1886)

1973 - Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist (b. 1881)

1978 - Ford Frick, baseball commissioner (b. 1894)

1981 - Omar Bradley, U.S. general (b. 1893)

1984 - Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1894)

1985 - J. Fred Coots, American songwriter (b. 1897)

1990 - Ryan White, American activist (AIDS) (b. 1971)

1991 - Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin, Norwegian musician (black metal)

1992 - Daniel Bovet, Swiss-born pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1907)

1993 - Marian Anderson, American contralto (b. 1897)

1994 - Kurt Cobain, American musician (b. 1967) (Date is for discovery of body - death probably occurred several days earlier)

1996 - Ben Johnson, American actor (b. 1918)

1997 - Laura Nyro, American singer and composer (b. 1947)

2000 - Claire Trevor, American actress (b. 1910)

2002 - Maria Felix, Mexican actress (b. 1914)

2003 - Anita Borg, American computer scientist (b. 1949)

2004 - Bruce Edwards, golf caddy (b. 1954)

2006 - Gerard Reve, Dutch writer (b. 1923)