Robert Gerard Sands was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland. Sands helped to plan the 1976 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in Dunmurry, which was followed by a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Sands was arrested while trying to escape and sentenced to 14 years for firearms possession.
Biography from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Also born on March 9
- Bobby Fischer1943 · American chess grandmaster
- Yuri Gagarin1934 · Soviet cosmonaut
- Oscar Isaac1979 · American actor and musician
- Amerigo Vespucci1454 · Italian explorer and navigator
- Vyacheslav Molotov1890 · Soviet politician and diplomat
- Juliette Binoche1964 · French actress
- John Cale1942 · Welsh musician
- Clint Dempsey1983 · American soccer player
Also born in 1954
- Jackie Chan1954 · Hong Kong martial artist and actor
- James Cameron1954 · Canadian filmmaker and explorer
- John Travolta1954 · American actor
- Denzel Washington1954 · American actor
- Oprah Winfrey1954 · American actress and media mogul
- Condoleezza Rice1954 · American diplomat and political scientist
- Hugo Chávez1954 · President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013
- Catherine O'Hara1954 · Canadian and American actress