1820 George F. Root – American composer (d.1895); found fame during the Civil War as the composer of martial songs such as Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! (The Prisoner's Hope), The Vacant Chair, Just before the Battle, Mother, and most famously, The Battle Cry of Freedom, familiar from the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War.
1929 first performance of John Philip Sousa’s march Foshay Tower–Washington Memorial named in honor of an office building in downtown Minneapolis, MN shaped like the Washington Monument, a project of the Roaring 20s businessman, Wilbur Foshay; Sousa never received payment for the commission because Foshay was convicted of mail fraud after being wiped out in the 1929 stock market crash.
1933 premiere of Samuel Barber's first work for orchestra, the Overture to ‘The School for Scandal’, at a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Alexander Smallens conducting; the title refers to the comedy by Richard Sheridan, first performed in London at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1777; the work helped establish Barber’s national reputation.
1943 David Maslanka – American composer (d. 2017); Oberlin grad who wrote for a variety of genres, including works for choir, wind ensemble, chamber music, and symphony orchestra.
1945 David Schiff – American composer (79 years old); best known for his 1979 opera Gimpel the Fool, based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
1969 Lucia and Maria Ahn – Korean-born twin sisters of the Ahn Trio (55 years old); with their sister Angella (violin), they decided to form a trio while earning their master's degrees at Juilliard; the Trio gives workshops and master classes seeking to bring new audiences to classical music.