Happy Birthday April 4

English sculptor and wood carver Grinling Gibbons was born on April 4, 1648. Widely regarded as the finest-ever woodcarver working in England, most of his work was in lime wood, especially decorative Baroque garlands made up of still-life elements at about life size, made to frame mirrors and decorate the walls of churches and palaces. His exquisite cascades of leaves, flowers and fruit adorn Hampton Park Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and countless other stately homes and churches.

Mental health activist Dorothea Dix was born on April 4, 1802 in the town of Hampden, Maine and spent most of her childhood in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her alcoholic, itinerant worker father Joseph was frequently away from home, but he did foster Dorothea’s lifelong love of books and learning. The thoughtless confinement of mentally ill persons in cells with criminals disturbed her deeply, Through her vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, special hospitals for mental patients were built in more than 15 states and the movement spread to Canada and Europe.

Dix circa 1850-55

James Blyth, inventor of the wind turbine, was born on April 4, 1839 in Marykirk, Scotland. In July 1887 he built a cloth-sailed wind turbine in the garden of his holiday home in Marykirk and used the electricity it produced to charge accumulators; the stored electricity was used to power the lights in his cottage, which thus became the first house in the world to be powered by wind-generated electricity.

For more April 4 anniversaries, including the first Russian reference to Moscow, the staging of the first modern circus and the founding of Microsoft, check out OnThatDay.