William Makepeace Thackeray, prolific novelist, editor, and lecturer, had been born in Calcutta, India on July 18,1811. The six foot three inch author was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Cambridge.  He completed his most famous work, Vanity Fair, which began serialized publication in January 1847.  Overweight and shy of exercise, his health deteriorated and he died suddenly of a stroke in his sleep, aged fifty-two, at his home in London.  He was buried at the Kensal Green Cemetery. (By John Osborne) 

General "Stonewall" Jackson had been hit with three bullets from North Carolina sentries in a "friendly fire" incident following the Battle of Chancellorsville eight days before. He was taken to a building on a plantation near Guinea Station, Virginia where his left arm was amputated. He died there due to complications involving pneumonia and was buried in Lexington, Virginia.  (By John Osborne)   

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was born in April 26,1798 near Paris and became the undisputed leader of the French Romantic School of painting.  His most celebrated painting "Liberty Leading the People" was completed in 1830.  He was a founder member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts a year before his death.  In poor health for much of his later life, he died in Paris and was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. (By John Osborne)

William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco to future California U.S. Senator George Hearst and his wife Phoebe Apperson Hearst.  After an early career in politics in New York, the younger Hearst began to build a publishing empire that eventually numbered thirty newspapers across the country, notable the San Francisco Examiner, New York Morning Journal, Los Angeles Examiner, Chicago Examiner, and the Detroit TImes. He died in 1951. (By John Osborne)