Famous People Born In 1774

Best known for his exploration of the Pacific Northwest and Oregon, Meriwether Lewis led the legendary Lewis and Clark Expedition. He had also been the governor of Louisiana. His mysterious death at age 35, due to gunshot wounds, sparked a huge debate on whether it was a murder or a suicide.

Caspar David Friedrich was a German painter best remembered for painting mid-period allegorical landscapes. Widely regarded as the most important German painter of his era, Friedrich is celebrated as an important figure of the German Romantic movement. His works have influenced several painters, including Johan Christian Dahl, Arnold Böcklin, and Christiane Pooley.

Charles Bell was a Scottish surgeon, physiologist, anatomist, and neurologist. He was also an artist and philosophical theologian. He discovered the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spinal cord. He is also known for describing Bell's palsy. He played a key role in the creation of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. 

Lalon, also known as Lalon Fakir, or Lalon Shah, was an iconic Baul saint, considered a symbol of Bengali culture. Since his poems and songs belonged to the oral tradition, they weren’t published during his lifetime. Eventually, Rabindranath Tagore published about 200 songs from one of Lalon’s manuscripts.

Irish-born Francis Beaufort grew up to be a British Royal Navy admiral. He also went down in history as the inventor of the Beaufort wind force scale, which was meant for observing wind force at sea. His personal diaries, written in Beaufort cipher, reveal an incestuous relationship with his sister.

German Roman Catholic nun Anne Catherine Emmerich was born on a farm and initially failed to join any religious community due to her poor financial conditions. She later received the stigmata and experienced visions of the Virgin Mary and Passion of Jesus. Her visions apparently inspired the 2004 film The Passion of the Christ.

Trapper-explorer John Colter, who was part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, is remembered as the first white man to visit and describe the Yellowstone National Park. He had a brush with death on three occasions, when he came face-to-face with Indian tribes. He later settled in a Missouri farm.

German geologist and paleontologist Christian Leopold von Buch initially worked as an inspector of mines, before his geological expedition in the Alps. He studied volcanoes in Italy and the Canary Islands and rocks in Scandinavia, too. He is, however, best remembered for defining the Jurassic System.

British financier and economist Thomas Tooke had begun his business career at the tender age of 15. He eventually ended up being the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation governor. Known for his support of free trade, he advocated for the gold standard initially but opposed the 1844 Bank Charter Act.

Hans Järta was a Swedish revolutionary and administrator. He played a major role in the Coup of 1809 which dethroned Gustavus IV Adolphus. Hans Järta was also one of the most important drafters of Sweden's 1809 constitution. He also served as the Governor of Kopparberg County from 1812 to 1822.

Jean-Baptiste Biot was a French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer. He was a co-discoverer of what became known as the Biot-Savart law of magnetostatics. He is also credited with establishing the reality of meteorites. He made major contributions to the fields of optics and magnetism as well. Cape Biot in eastern Greenland is named in his honor.