Famous Birthdays on March 6

Philip Henry Sheridan was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with General-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant, who transferred Sheridan from command of an infantry division in the Western Theater to lead the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the East. In 1864, he defeated Confederate forces under General Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley and his destruction of the economic infrastructure of the Valley, called "The Burning" by residents, was one of the first uses of scorched-earth tactics in the war. In 1865, his cavalry pursued Gen. Robert E. Lee and was instrumental in forcing his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.

Christian Lee Coleman is an American professional track and field sprinter who competes in the 60 metres, 100 m, and 200 m. The 2019 world champion in the 100 meters, he also won gold as part of men's 4 × 100-meter relay. He holds personal bests of 9.76 seconds for the 100 m, which made him the 7th fastest all-time in the history of 100 metres event, and 19.85 for the 200 m. Coleman is the world record holder for the indoor 60 meters with 6.34 seconds. He was the Diamond League champion in 2018 and 2023 and the world number one ranked runner in the men's 100 m for the 2017, 2018 and 2019 seasons.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother's collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15, she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life, she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health.

Richard Douglas Fosbury was an American high jumper, who is considered one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field. He won a gold medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics, revolutionizing the high jump event with a "back-first" technique now known as the Fosbury flop. His method was to sprint diagonally towards the bar, then curve and leap backward over it, which gave him a much lower center of mass in flight than traditional techniques. Debbie Brill was developing her similar "Brill Bend" around the same time. This approach has seen nearly universal adoption since Fosbury's performance in Mexico. Though he never returned to the Olympics, Fosbury continued to be involved in athletics after retirement and served on the executive board of the World Olympians Association.

Wilver Dornell Stargell, nicknamed "Pops" later in his career, was an American professional baseball left fielder and first baseman who spent all of his 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1962–1982) with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Among the most feared power hitters in baseball history, Stargell had the most home runs (296) of any player in the 1970s. During his career, he batted .282 with 2,232 hits, 1,194 runs, 423 doubles, 475 home runs, and 1,540 runs batted in, helping his team win six National League (NL) East division titles, two NL pennants, and two World Series championships in 1971 and 1979, both over the Baltimore Orioles. Stargell was a seven-time All-Star and two-time NL home run leader. In 1979, at the age of 39, he became the first and currently only player to win the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, the NL Championship Series MVP Award and the World Series MVP Award in one season. In 1982, the Pirates retired his uniform number 8. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988 in his first year of eligibility.

William Erwin Eisner was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Agnes Emilia Carlsson, known mononymously as Agnes, is a Swedish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame as the winner of Idol 2005, the second season of the Swedish Idol series. She was then signed to Sony Music, through which she released her self-titled debut album, Agnes, and follow-up, Stronger, both of which topped the Swedish Top 60 Albums Chart. In early 2008, it was announced that Agnes had parted ways with her record label, and was now signed to small independent label Roxy Recordings. Released on 28 October 2008, her third album, Dance Love Pop, reached number five in Sweden, 70 in Austria, 38 in France, 45 in Switzerland and 13 in the United Kingdom. With 200,000 albums sold worldwide this is her most successful album, 50,000 albums were sold in France, 40,000 in Sweden. Its first two singles, "On and On" and "Release Me" became international hits, reaching the top-ten in charts worldwide. "Release Me" topped the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs and peaked at three in the United Kingdom, selling over 4 million copies worldwide.

Robert Moses "Lefty" Grove was an American professional baseball pitcher. After having success in the minor leagues during the early 1920s, Grove became a star in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the American League's Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox. One of the greatest pitchers in history, Grove led the American League in wins in four separate seasons, in strikeouts seven consecutive seasons, and had the league's lowest earned run average a record nine times. Over the course of the three years from 1929 to 1931, he twice won the pitcher's Triple Crown, leading the league in wins, strikeouts, and ERA, while amassing a 79–15 record and leading the Athletics to three straight AL championships. Overall, Grove won 300 games in his 17-year MLB career. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947.

Lorin Varencove Maazel was an American conductor, violinist and composer. He began conducting at the age of eight and by 1953 had decided to pursue a career in music. He had established a reputation in the concert halls of Europe by 1960 but his career in the U.S. progressed far more slowly. He served as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Münchner Philharmoniker and the New York Philharmonic, among other posts. Maazel was well regarded in baton technique and had a photographic memory for scores. Described as mercurial and forbidding in rehearsal, he mellowed in old age.

Derek Drouin is a Canadian retired track and field athlete who competes in the high jump. He won gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics, and was the 2015 World Champion. He also won gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2015 Pan American Games, and won a silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics and a bronze medal at the 2013 World Championships. Drouin was originally awarded the bronze at the 2012 Olympics which was retroactively changed to silver when the original gold medallist Ivan Ukhov was stripped of his medal for doping violations. He was belatedly presented with the upgraded silver in a presentation during the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, one of 10 Olympians who were presented with “reallocated” medals from previous Olympics. He holds both the world decathlon best and the world heptathlon best in the high jump with clearances of 2.28 m and 2.30 m, respectively.

Raymond James O'Connor was an Australian politician who served as the premier of Western Australia from 25 January 1982 to 25 February 1983. He was a member of the Parliament of Western Australia from 1959 to 1984, and a minister in the governments of David Brand and Charles Court. O'Connor was born in Perth and attended schools in the Wheatbelt towns of Narrogin and York as well as St Patrick's Boys' School in Perth, leaving school at the age of 14. He competed in athletics and played Australian rules football as a teenager and young adult, including playing 14 matches for East Perth in the Western Australian National Football League. During World War II, he served in the Second Australian Imperial Force in New Britain and Bougainville.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was an English prince, military leader and statesman. He was the fourth son of King Edward III, and the father of King Henry IV. Because of Gaunt's royal origin, advantageous marriages and some generous land grants, he was one of the richest men of his era and an influential figure during the reigns of both his father and his nephew, Richard II. As Duke of Lancaster, he was the founder of the royal House of Lancaster, whose members ascended the throne after his death. His birthplace, Ghent in Flanders, then known in English as Gaunt, was the origin of his name.

Harald Anton "Toni" Schumacher is a German former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. At club level, he won a Bundesliga title and three DFB-Pokal titles with 1. FC Köln. At international level, he represented West Germany. Schumacher won the 1980 European Championship and reached two World Cup finals, in 1982 and 1986, being on the losing side for both. In the 1982 FIFA World Cup semi-final, he controversially collided with and seriously injured French defender Patrick Battiston. Schumacher was voted German Footballer of the Year in 1984 and 1986. Since April 2012, he has served as vice president at 1. FC Köln.

Donald Herbert Davidson was an American philosopher and the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley (1981–2003), having previously held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Davidson was known for his charismatic personality and difficult writing style, as well as the systematic nature of his philosophy. His work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and action theory. Most of Davidson's influence was on analytic philosophy, his tradition, but his work has attracted attention in continental philosophy.

Robert Reiner was an American filmmaker, actor, and political activist. He directed a series of acclaimed studio films in a career that spanned comedy, drama, romance, and documentary. Reiner received numerous accolades, including winning three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Hugo Award, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and nine Golden Globe Awards. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999 and received the Chaplin Gala Tribute at the Film at Lincoln Center in 2014. Three of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry.

Mário Bližňák is a Slovak former professional ice hockey center. He previously played for the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL). After playing in the Slovak Extraliga, Bližňák was selected by the Canucks in the 2005 NHL entry draft, and moved to North America, joining the Vancouver Giants of the major junior Western Hockey League (WHL) in 2005. Bližňák played three seasons with the Giants, helping them win the Memorial Cup, the national championship for major junior hockey in Canada, in 2007, before joining the Moose in 2008. He is best known as a defensive forward.

Gabriel José García Márquez was a Colombian writer and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo or Gabito throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha Pardo; they had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

Darryl Lynn Hughley is an American actor and stand-up comedian. Hughley is best known as the original host of BET's ComicView from 1992 to 1993, the eponymous character on the ABC/UPN sitcom The Hughleys, and as one of the "Big Four" comedians in The Original Kings of Comedy. Additionally, he has been the host of CNN's D. L. Hughley Breaks the News, a correspondent for The Jay Leno Show on NBC, and a local radio personality and interviewer in New York City. In early 2013, D. L. Hughley landed in ninth place on Dancing with the Stars.

Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini was a Swiss-French military officer who served as a general in French and later in Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the Napoleonic art of war. Jomini was largely self-taught in military strategy, and his ideas are a staple at military academies, the United States Military Academy at West Point being a prominent example; his theories were thought to have affected many officers who later served in the American Civil War. He may have coined the term logistics in his Summary of the Art of War (1838).