Born on May 21

Shinran was a Japanese Buddhist monk of the Kamakura period and a disciple of Hōnen. He founded Jōdo Shinshū, the "True Pure Land School," which teaches salvation through faith alone in the Buddha Amida.

Alexander Pope was a British poet and essayist of the 18th century, a major figure of English Neoclassicism. A master of the rhymed heroic couplet, he is celebrated for his satirical and philosophical poems as well as for his translations of Homer's *Iliad* and *Odyssey*.

Mary Anning was a self-taught English paleontologist who, from childhood, collected fossils along the cliffs of Lyme Regis. She discovered the first complete skeletons of an ichthyosaur and a plesiosaur, revolutionizing the understanding of extinct species. Despite her major contributions, she was long excluded from scientific circles because of her sex and her modest background.

African-American jazz pianist, organist, composer and singer, major figure of stride piano. A virtuoso showman, he marked jazz in the 1920s-1930s with standards like "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose."