2 APRIL
748 Charlemagne or Charles the Great; from the latin Carolus Magnus (2 April 748 â 28 January 814), numbered Charles I, was the King of the Franks from 768, the King of the Lombards from 774, and the Emperor of the Romans from 800. During the Early Middle Ages, he united the majority of western and central Europe. He was the first recognised emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire around three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state that Charlemagne founded is called the Carolingian Empire. He was later canonised by Antipope Paschal III.
1814 Henry Lewis Benning (April 2, 1814 â July 10, 1875) was a general in the Confederate States Army. He also was a lawyer, legislator, and judge on the Georgia Supreme Court. He commanded “Benning’s Brigade” during the American Civil War. Following the Confederacy’s defeat at the end of the war, he returned to his native Georgia, where he lived out the rest of his life. Fort Benning is named after him.
1833 Thomas Howard Ruger (April 2, 1833 â June 3, 1907) Born in Lima, New York, he was an American soldier and lawyer who served as a Union general in the American Civil War. After the war, he was a superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
1908 Buddy Ebsen, (born Christian Ludolf Ebsen Jr., April 2, 1908 â July 6, 2003; also known as Frank “Buddy” Ebsen. In 1939 he took up sailing and became so proficient in seamanship that he taught the subject to naval officer candidates. He applied several times for a commission in the Navy in 1941, but was repeatedly turned down. The United States Coast Guard accepted his application for a commission, and he was promptly given the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. This wartime rank was one step up from the rank of ensign, the usual rank given newly appointed naval officers in peacetime. Ebsen served as damage control officer and later as executive officer on the Coast Guard-crewed Navy frigate USS Pocatello, which recorded weather at its “weather station” 1,500 miles west of Seattle. These patrols consisted of 30 days at sea, followed by 10 days in port at Seattle. Ebsen was honorably discharged from the Coast Guard as a lieutenant in 1946.
1910Brigadier-General Paul Triquet VC, CD, (April 2, 1910âAugust 8, 1980), born in Cabano, Quebec, was a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Triquet held the rank of captain at the time of his VC award, and went on to achieve the rank of brigadier-general. Triquet was the only Quebecer to be awarded the VC during the Second World War.
1914 Alec Guinness served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War, initially as a seaman in 1941, receiving a commission as an officer in 1942. He commanded a landing craft at the Allied invasion of Sicily , and later ferried supplies and agents to the Yugoslav partisans in the eastern Mediterranean theatre.
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