Born on February 7

1477		Sir Thomas More, English statesman and writer, famous for Utopia, later executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII as the head of the church.
1804		John Deere, farm equipment manufacturer
1812		Charles Dickens, prolific English novelist whose stories reflected life in Victorian England. Some of his more famous works include Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities.
1867		Laura Ingalls Wilder, author whose works were the basis for television’s Little House on the Prairie. Charles Dickens was 'an abuser of women', says Miriam Margolyes | via @TelegraphBooks http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/charles-dickens-was-an-abuser-of-women-says-miriam-margolyes/ Margolyes is frank but this is not a heavy, unenjoyable diatribe. She is funny about Dickens. She recognises that turmoil over women was a creative spur for the man who wrote David Copperfield (perhaps Sid James would have been David Coppafeel in Carry On Dickens) and she loves Dickens the writer. Having played his creations on stage, she is able to praise his fictional women. Mrs Sarah Gamp is "a vicious, sublime creation" and the lesbian Miss Wade, from Little Dorrit, was a figure of "power and truth".