March 21

Yigael Yadin, the archaeologist known for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the excavation of Masada, was born in Jerusalem.

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and compiler of the Book of Common Prayer, was burned at the stake in Oxford.

William C. Hayes, whose two-volume 'The Scepter of Egypt' surveyed millennia of Egyptian art, was born.

French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier, whose study of heat led to the Fourier series and harmonic analysis, was born in Auxerre, Burgundy.