Samuel Beckett is born in Dublin (1906), and Van Cliburn wins the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1958). Born on this day: Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Died: Günter Grass, Mario Vargas Llosa and Jean de La Fontaine.
34 events, 75 births and 66 deaths on this date.
The Irish writer who went on to shape modern theatre with Waiting for Godot was born on this day. Written in both English and French, his plays and novels are known for bleak, comic and minimalist work.
Roger Pic · Public domainAn American pianist, Van Cliburn, took the top prize at the first Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow, held amid Cold War tension. His win was a rare cultural moment of American success on Soviet ground, and it made him a star at home.
Union troops took control of Raleigh, the North Carolina capital, as the Civil War neared its end. The city had been largely spared fighting until then, and the occupation came just days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
Poitier became the first Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, taking the prize for Lilies of the Field. The Bahamian-born star's win opened doors that had long been shut to performers like him.
Unknown photographer · Public domain
At 21, Woods won the Masters by a record margin, setting a new low four-round score. It was his first major title, and it signalled the start of a dominant era in men's golf.
A group of American philanthropists, artists and businessmen set up the institution to create a national museum that would educate and inspire the public. Today it is one of the largest art museums anywhere, with collections spanning ancient Egypt to the contemporary world.
Hugo Schneider · CC BY-SA 2.0
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Irish writer who wrote in both English and French and is best known for the tragicomic play Waiting for Godot, which reshaped modern theatre. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.
Roger Pic · Public domain
Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet whose work, rooted in the rural Northern Ireland of his childhood, won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His debut collection, Death of a Naturalist, appeared in 1966.
Sean O'Connor, cropped by Sabahrat · Public domain
Le Clézio is a French-Mauritian novelist and translator, known for stories of exploration and wanderers that won him the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is still alive and has written more than forty works, starting with The Interrogation in 1963.
Holger Motzkau · CC BY-SA 3.0
German novelist whose debut, The Tin Drum, became a landmark of European magic realism and was later made into an Oscar-winning film. He also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999.
Blaues Sofa from Berlin, Deutschland · CC BY 2.0
Peruvian novelist whose books, from The Time of the Hero onward, laid bare power, corruption and political violence in Latin America. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 and was a leading figure of the Latin American Boom.
Bernard Gotfryd · Public domain
Jean de La Fontaine died in Paris, leaving behind his Fables, animal tales with a sly moral that shaped fable writing across Europe. He was a French poet and lawyer whose work was read for generations, and he was admitted to the Académie Française late in life.
Henri Millot · Public domain
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