The figures born on this day are bound less by shared cruelty than by contested legacy — commanders, administrators, and officials whose records have been argued over for centuries. The most prominent among them is William Bligh, the Royal Navy officer whose name became inseparable from the Bounty mutiny of 1789. History has never settled on Bligh: tyrant to some, a scapegoat to others, and by measurable account one of the most skilled navigators of his era. That tension — between documented harshness and documented competence — runs through the lives of many figures cataloged here, men whose authority outlasted their welcome and whose reputations the historical record has never quite resolved.