Famous Birthdays on March 21

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. He is known for his mastery of counterpoint, as heard in The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue. Felix Mendelssohn precipitated the Bach Revival with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. Ever since, Bach has been acclaimed as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

Brian Howard Clough was an English football player and manager, primarily known for his successes as a manager with Derby County and Nottingham Forest. He won the European Cup twice with Nottingham Forest and is one of four managers to have won the English league with two different clubs. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest managers of all time. Charismatic, outspoken and often controversial, his achievements with Derby and Forest, two clubs with little prior history of success, are rated among the greatest in football history. His teams were also noted for playing attractive football and for their good sportsmanship. Despite applying several times and being a popular choice for the job, he was never appointed England manager and has been dubbed the "greatest manager England never had".

Chinenye Joy "Chiney" Ogwumike is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). In 2020, she became the first black woman and the first WNBA player to host a national radio show for ESPN. She was one of the first and youngest commentators ever to be named an NBA analyst for the network covering the NBA, WNBA, and variety of sports, while simultaneously playing in the WNBA. Chiney is a graduate of Stanford University, where she majored in International relations. She played in three Final Fours and finished as the conference leader in scoring and rebounding as of January 3, 2014. As of 2016, Ogwumike was elected vice-president of the WNBA Players Association, and signed an endorsement deal with Adidas. In May 2018, Ogwumike signed a multi-year contract with ESPN to become a full-time basketball analyst.

Sarasvati Ananda Lewis was an American broadcast journalist, veejay and carpenter. She was a two-time NAACP Image Award recipient. Described as "a bright star who was the voice of a generation", Lewis served as a cultural role model and staple television personality for BET and MTV during the late 1990s. She hosted BET's Teen Summit and served as a MTV VJ as well as hosting the network's show Hot Zone as well as occasionally hosting and frequently co-hosting Total Request Live. Lewis hosted The Ananda Lewis Show, a nationally syndicated American television talk show that ran for two seasons. The show reported on serious subjects in contrast to more sensationalized contemporary talk shows such as the Ricki Lake Show and the Jerry Springer Show. After a break from television, she became a correspondent for The Insider. Lewis returned to television in 2019 to host the revival of While You Were Out on TLC.

General Sir Michael David Jackson was a British Army officer and one of its most high-profile generals since the Second World War. Originally commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in 1963, he transferred to the Parachute Regiment in 1970, with which he served two of his three tours of duty in Northern Ireland. On his first, he was present as an adjutant at the events of the Ballymurphy massacre (1971), where eleven unarmed civilians were shot dead by British troops, and then at Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British soldiers opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing fourteen. On his second, he was a company commander in the aftermath of the Warrenpoint ambush (1979), when the IRA killed 18 soldiers with two roadside bombs, the British Army's heaviest single loss of life during the Troubles. He was assigned to a staff post at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1982 before assuming command of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, in 1984. Jackson was posted to Northern Ireland for the third time, as a brigade commander, in the early 1990s.

Jonah Jacob Goldberg is an American conservative journalist, author, and political commentator. The founding editor of National Review Online, from 1998 until 2019, he was an editor at National Review. Goldberg writes a weekly column about politics and culture for the Los Angeles Times. In October 2019, Goldberg became the founding editor of the online opinion and news publication The Dispatch. Goldberg has authored the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Liberal Fascism, released in January 2008; The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, released in 2012; and Suicide of the West, which was published in April 2018 and also became a New York Times bestseller, reaching No. 5 on the list the following month.

Kathleen Effie Widdoes is an American actress. She is known for playing the role of Emma Snyder on the CBS Daytime soap opera As the World Turns. For her work on As the World Turns, she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1986, 1987, and 1991. She also received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1994. Widdoes has appeared in theatrical productions, including The Beggar's Opera (1972), Much Ado About Nothing (1972), Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), The Tower of Evil (1991), Hamlet (1992), and Franny's Way (2002). She has been nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award. She has won two Obie Awards and a Lucille Lortel Award. Widdoes has also appeared in films, including The Group (1966), The Sea Gull (1968), and Courage Under Fire (1996).

Hans Hofmann was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstract Expressionism. Born and educated near Munich, he was active in the early twentieth-century European avant-garde and brought a deep understanding and synthesis of Symbolism, Neo-impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism when he emigrated to the United States in 1932. Hofmann's painting is characterized by its rigorous concern with pictorial structure and unity, spatial illusionism, and use of bold color for expressive means. The influential critic Clement Greenberg considered Hofmann's first New York solo show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century in 1944 as a breakthrough in painterly versus geometric abstraction that heralded abstract expressionism. In the decade that followed, Hofmann's recognition grew through numerous exhibitions, notably at the Kootz Gallery, culminating in major retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1957) and Museum of Modern Art (1963), which traveled to venues throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. His works are in the permanent collections of major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, National Gallery of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago.

Salvador Lutteroth González was a Mexican professional wrestling promoter of the mid-twentieth century. Lutteroth's organization, Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL), was the dominant Mexican wrestling promotional enterprise from its founding in 1933 until Lutteroth left the company in the 1950s. Under its current name of Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), it is, to date, the longest-running active professional wrestling promotion in the world presenting three weekly shows. Lutteroth was known as the father of Mexican professional wrestling or lucha libre and, in his position as promoter and booker of the dominant promotion, was the most powerful man in Mexican wrestling, and one of the most powerful wrestling executives in the world. He was, in large part, responsible for the widespread fame of the most famous Mexican professional wrestlers of the mid-twentieth century, such as Octavio Gaona, the first Mexican wrestler to win the middleweight championship of the world by defeating Gus Kallio, Carlos Tarzán López, El Santo, Gory Guerrero, René Guajardo, Karloff Lagarde, Enrique Llanes, and the international league wrestler Medico Asesino, Rito Romero, Dorrel Dixon and Mil Máscaras, who wrestled in the United States, Japan, and Europe.

Scott Christopher Williams is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Standing at 6' 10", he was capable of playing as a power forward or a center. Early in his professional career, Williams earned three NBA Finals rings as he contributed off the bench during the Chicago Bulls' first three-peat championships from 1991 to 1993. He developed into a front-court reserve during his fifteen seasons in the NBA, where he was known for his hustle and strong defense. Since his retirement, Williams has coached in the NBA Development League and NBA as well as commentating for a variety of NBA teams. Williams is currently the color analyst for the Grand Canyon Antelopes men's basketball team.

Kristýna Plíšková is a Czech former professional tennis player. In her career, she won one singles title and five doubles titles on the WTA Tour, with three titles on the WTA Challenger Tour. She also won nine singles and eight doubles titles on the ITF Circuit. On 31 July 2017, she reached her career-high singles ranking of world No. 35. On 14 June 2021, she peaked at No. 44 in the WTA doubles rankings. Plíšková won the 2010 Wimbledon Championships junior tournament, beating Sachie Ishizu in straight sets. She currently holds the record for the most aces (31) in a match on the WTA Tour, which she set in a second-round match against Monica Puig at the 2016 Australian Open.

Scott Elliott Fahlman is an American computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute and Computer Science Department. He is notable for early work on automated planning and scheduling in a blocks world, on semantic networks, on neural networks, on the programming languages Dylan, and Common Lisp, and he was one of the founders of Lucid Inc. During the period when it was standardized, he was recognized as "the leader of Common Lisp." From 2006 to 2015, Fahlman was engaged in developing a knowledge base named Scone, based in part on his thesis work on the NETL Semantic Network. He also is credited with coining the use of the emoticon.

Patcha Ramachandra Rao was a metallurgist and administrator. He has the unique distinction of being the only vice-chancellor (2002–05) of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) who was also a student (1963–68) and faculty (1964–92) at that institution. From 1992 to 2002, Rao was the director of the National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur. After his tenure as vice-chancellor of B.H.U., in 2005, he took the reins of the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) as its first vice-chancellor. He was to serve DIAT until his superannuation in 2007. From 2007 till the end, Rao was a Raja Ramanna Fellow at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials, in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.

Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese composer and keyboardist best known for his contributions to the Final Fantasy video game series by Square Enix. A self-taught musician, he began playing the piano at the age of twelve. Uematsu joined Square in 1986, where he first met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. The two later worked together on many games at the company, most notably in the Final Fantasy series. After nearly two decades with Square, Uematsu left in 2004 to create his own production company and music label, Dog Ear Records. He has since composed music as a freelancer for other games, including ones developed by Square Enix and Sakaguchi's studio Mistwalker.

Katherine Virginia "Kassie" DePaiva is an American actress and singer. She is best known for playing the roles of Chelsea Reardon on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light, Blair Cramer on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, and Eve Donovan on the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives. She received one Daytime Emmy Award nomination for her role on One Life to Live and two nominations for her role on Days Of Our Lives. DePaiva also starred as Bobby Joe in the horror film Evil Dead II (1986). As a singer, she has released three albums, Naked (2000), No Regrets (2005), and I Want to Love You (2007).

Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury was an American astronomer who was the first to detect and calculate the orbit of a spectroscopic binary. She published an important early catalog of stellar spectra using her own system of stellar classification, which was later adopted by the International Astronomical Union. She also spent many years studying the binary star Beta Lyrae. Maury was part of the Harvard Computers, a group of female astronomers and human computers at the Harvard College Observatory. Dorrit Hoffleit described Maury as an "independent Renegade", suffering at the Observation for her Independence not agreeing with the way Edward Charles Pickering had them working for minimal credit.

Ingrid Kristiansen is a Norwegian former athlete. She was one of the best female long-distance runners during the 1980s. She is a former world record holder in the 5000 metres, 10,000 metres and the marathon. Kristiansen was a World Champion on the track, roads and cross-country, becoming the first athlete to win World titles on all three surfaces. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, she finished fourth in the first women's Olympic marathon. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, she dropped out of the 10,000 metres final while leading. Early in her career, she was also an elite cross country skier, winning several Norwegian titles and a European junior championships.

Fabricio Raúl Jesús Oberto is an Argentine-Italian color analyst and former professional basketball player. At 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m), he played as a center and power forward. With the LNB club Atenas, in his native Argentina, Oberto began playing professionally in 1993, and later played overseas with teams in Spain and Greece. In 2005, Oberto signed with the San Antonio Spurs, a team of the American National Basketball Association (NBA), and won a championship with the Spurs in 2007. He is also a former member of the senior Argentina national basketball team, with whom he won two Olympic medals, including a gold medal in 2004.

Makafan Solomon Alabi is a Nigerian former professional basketball player. He moved to the United States at the age of 17 to attend Montverde Academy. Alabi played college basketball for the Florida State Seminoles where he was a two-time Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) All-Defensive team selection in both his freshman and sophomore years. He was selected by the Dallas Mavericks as the 50th overall pick in the 2010 NBA draft and played two seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Toronto Raptors. Alabi played one season in the NBA Development League and finished his career overseas with stints in Greece, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan.