American politician and actor Ronald Reagan was BOTD in 1911. Born in Tampico, Illinois, he worked as a sports announcer before moving to Hollywood to pursue film acting. After serving in the Army in World War Two, he returned to Hollywood, enthusiastically reporting fellow actors suspected of being Communists, who were subsequently blacklisted. He was elected Governor of California in 1966, running on a conservative law and order platform and cracking down on student protests. In 1980, he won the Republican presidential nomination and defeated Jimmy Carter, ushering in a generation of conservative politics. As President, he cut taxes and promoted economic deregulation, escalated an arms race with the Soviet Union, increased military spending, led wars against Libya, Iran and Iraq, and refused to support trade sanctions against apartheid South Africa, though he was receptive to Gorbachev’s overtures to end the Cold War. With the support of his second wife Nancy Reagan, he led a disastrous and ineffective “War on Drugs”, encouraging teenagers to “Just Say No” while encouraging prosecution of minor drug offences. He largely ignored the HIV/AIDS epidemic, refusing to support research or public health efforts to reduce its transmission. The Reagan administration’s failure to respond to the crisis prompted many grassroots activists, including ACT-UP whose slogan “Silence = Death” was a direct riposte to Reagan’s inaction. In 1986, Reagan publicly mentioned AIDS for the first time. By the end of his presidency in 1989, nearly 100,000 Americans had died of AIDS-related illnesses. In 1994, the Italian fashion brand Benetton featured an image of a sickly Ronald Reagan on the cover of Colors magazine, with a satiric mock biography praising him for “his quick and decisive response to the AIDS epidemic early in his presidency” and for “averting what could have been a global catastrophe costing millions of lives.” Reagan remained a beloved figure of the American right-wing until his death in 2004 aged 93, survived by Nancy and his four children.