Famous Birthdays on April 2

Zachary Lane Bryan is an American singer-songwriter. Born in Yokosuka, Japan, and raised in Oologah, Oklahoma, he released two self-produced studio albums, DeAnn (2019) and Elisabeth (2020), before signing with Warner Records to release his third album and major label debut American Heartbreak (2022), which peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and was led by the Billboard Hot 100-top ten single "Something in the Orange". His self-titled fourth album (2023) debuted atop the Billboard 200, while its lead single, "I Remember Everything", peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts simultaneously, also earning him a Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. His fifth studio album, The Great American Bar Scene (2024), peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, and his sixth, With Heaven on Top (2026), debuted at number one.

On January 7, 2026, Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old American woman, was fatally shot by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during Operation Metro Surge. Good was in her car stopped sideways in the street, which led Ross to circle her vehicle on foot. Other agents approached, and one ordered her to get out of the car while reaching through her open window. Good briefly reversed, then began moving forward and to the right, into the direction of traffic. At this point, Ross was at the front-left of the vehicle which was turning away, when he fired three shots, killing her. The killing sparked national protests and multiple investigations.

Max Ernst was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, which left him shocked and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.

Carl Reginald Smith is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as an outfielder and afterwards served as a coach and front office executive. He also played in the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) for two seasons at the end of his playing career. During a seventeen-year MLB career (1966–1982), Smith appeared in 1,987 games, hit 314 home runs with 1,092 RBI and batted .287. He was a switch-hitter who threw right-handed. In his prime, he had one of the strongest throwing arms of any outfielder in the MLB. Smith played at least seventy games in thirteen different seasons, and in every one of those thirteen seasons, his team had a winning record.

William Holman Hunt was an English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, vivid colour, and elaborate symbolism. These features were influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, according to whom the world itself should be read as a system of visual signs. For Hunt, it was the duty of the artist to reveal the correspondence between sign and fact. Of all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt remained most true to their ideals throughout his career. He was always keen to maximise the popular appeal and public visibility of his works.

David Ferrer Ern is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 3 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in July 2013. Ferrer won 27 ATP Tour singles titles, including a Masters 1000 event at the 2012 Paris Masters. He was also the runner-up at the 2013 French Open, the 2007 Tennis Masters Cup, and six Masters events. A three-time Davis Cup champion with Spain, Ferrer has the thirteenth-highest career prize money earnings among male tennis players. With 734 career match wins, he holds the distinction of winning the most matches on the ATP Tour without having won a major; he is widely considered one of the best players not to have won a major.

Francisco José de Paula Santander y Omaña was a Neogranadine military and political leader who served as Vice-President of Gran Colombia between 1819 and 1826, and was later elected by Congress as the President of the Republic of New Granada between 1832 and 1837. Santander played a pivotal role in the Colombian War of Independence being one of the main leaders of the Patriot forces and helped lead the Patriot Army alongside Simón Bolívar to victory. He is often credited with creating the legal foundations for democracy in Colombia, as well as creating the country's first system of public education. For these reasons he is considered a National Hero in Colombia and has thus commonly been known as "The Man of the Laws" as well as the "Organizer of Victory".

Peter Joseph Incaviglia is an American professional baseball coach and former left fielder who is currently the manager for the Cleburne Railroaders of the American Association of Professional Baseball. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for 12 seasons (1986–1998), for six different big league teams, and also spent one year in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). Incaviglia was drafted in the first round by the Montreal Expos in the 1985 Major League Baseball draft out of Oklahoma State University, then was traded later that same year to the Texas Rangers. He debuted in the major leagues on April 8, 1986, without having spent any time in the minor leagues. His last MLB game was on September 27, 1998.

Tua Birgitta Forsström is a Finland-Swedish writer who writes in Swedish. She was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1998 for the poetry collection Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar. Forsström's work is known for its engagement with the Finnish landscape, travel and conflicts within relationships. She often uses quotations in her work, sometimes placing them directly into her poems and at other times using them as introductions or interludes in her sequences. She has used quotations from Egon Friedell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hermann Hesse and Friedrich Nietzsche. In the collection After Spending a Night Among Horses (1997) Forsström uses quotations from the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, they are placed as interludes in a sequence of pieces and sit alone on the page, without direct reference to their source on the page, leaving this to a Notes & Quotations section at the end of the book.

Richard Raymond Radatz was an American relief pitcher in Major League Baseball. Nicknamed "The Monster", the 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m), 230 lb (100 kg) right-hander had a scorching but short-lived period of dominance for the Boston Red Sox in the early 1960s. Radatz is reported to have gotten his nickname during a game against the New York Yankees in Boston in 1963 in which he came in to pitch with the bases loaded and no one out. He consecutively struck out Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Elston Howard, after which Mantle grumbled about Radatz being "that monster". Over his career, Radatz struck out Hall of Famer Mantle 44 times in 63 at-bats.

Samuel Bogart was an itinerant Methodist minister and militia captain from Ray County, Missouri who played a prominent role in the 1838 Missouri Mormon War before later moving to Collin County, Texas, where he became a Texas Ranger and a member of the Texas State Legislature. He is best remembered, however, for his role in leading opposition to Mormon settlers in northwestern Missouri, and for the active role he took in operations against them in the fall of 1838. These operations led to the expulsion of nearly all Mormons from the state following the issuance of Governor Lilburn Boggs' infamous Extermination Order in October of that year.

Linford Christie is a Jamaican-born British former sprinter and athletics coach. He is the only British man to have won gold medals in the 100 metres at all four major competitions open to British athletes: the Olympic Games, the World Championships, the European Championships and the Commonwealth Games. He was the first European athlete to break the 10-second barrier in the 100 m and held the British record in the event for close to 30 years. He is a former world indoor record holder over 200 metres, and a former European record holder in the 60 metres, 100 m and 4 × 100 metres relay.

Rodney Glen King was an African-American man who on March 3, 1991 became a victim of police brutality when he was severely beaten by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) during his arrest after a high-speed pursuit on California's state freeway, Interstate 210 having initially evaded arrest. George Holliday, an uninvolved resident, saw and filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and then sent the footage, which showed an unarmed King on the ground being beaten, to KTLA, a local news station who broadcast the film, which was then rebroadcast by other stations casting a worldwide spotlight on the LAPD and King.

Daniel Okrent is an American writer and editor. He is best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times newspaper, inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several history books.. In November 2011, Last Call won the Albert J. Beveridge prize, awarded by the American Historical Association to the year's best book of American history. In 2019, he published The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America. His most recent book is Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn't Easy (2026).

Jan Tschichold (German pronunciation: [jan ˈtʃɪçɔlt]; born Johannes Tzschichhold;, also known as Iwan Tschichold or Ivan Tschichold, was a German calligrapher, typographer and book designer. He played a significant role in the development of graphic design in the 20th century – first, by developing and promoting principles of typographic modernism, and subsequently idealizing conservative typographic structures. His direction of the visual identity of Penguin Books in the decade following World War II served as a model for the burgeoning design practice of planning corporate identity programs. He also designed the typeface Sabon.

Camille Anna Paglia is an American academic, social critic, and feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.

Serge Gainsbourg was a French singer-songwriter, actor, composer, and director. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French pop, he was renowned for often provocative releases which caused uproar in France, dividing public opinion. His artistic output ranged from his early work in jazz, chanson, and yé-yé to later efforts in rock, zouk, funk, reggae, and electronica. Gainsbourg's varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorise, although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians.

Leon Russell was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling records during his 60-year career that spanned multiple genres, including rock and roll, country, gospel, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, southern rock, blues rock, folk, surf and the Tulsa sound. His recordings earned six gold records and he received two Grammy Awards from seven nominations. In 1973 Billboard named Russell the "Top Concert Attraction in the World". In 2011, he was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Linda Hunt is an American actress. She made her film debut playing Mrs. Oxheart in Popeye (1980). Her portrayal of the male character Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first person to win an Oscar for portraying a character of the opposite sex. Hunt has also appeared in films such as Dune (1984), Silverado (1985), Eleni (1985), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Pocahontas (1995), Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998), and Stranger Than Fiction (2006).