Friday, 17th April 2026 in Lisbon

On this day, 227 notable people were born on 17th April — spanning from 1277 to 2005. From world leaders to artists and scientists, discover who shares this birthday.

17/04/2005

Antonio Nusa, Norwegian footballer

Antonio Eromonsele Nordby Nusa is a Norwegian professional footballer who plays as a winger or attacking midfielder for Bundesliga club RB Leipzig and the Norway national team. He's been described by many as one of the most exciting young prospects in world football.

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17/04/2001

Shin Ryujin, South Korean rapper, singer and dancer

Shin Ryu-jin, known mononymously as Ryujin, is a South Korean rapper, singer, and dancer. She is a member of the South Korean girl group Itzy, formed by JYP Entertainment in 2019.

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Violette Dorange, French Professional Round the World Sailor

Violette Dorange is a French offshore professional sailor. She is an offshore sailor having competed extensively in the Figaro class before progressing to the IMOCA 60.

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17/04/1998

Anna Odine Strøm, Norwegian ski jumper and two-time Olympic champion

Anna Odine Strøm is a Norwegian ski jumper. She won two gold medals and one silver medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

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Suppapong Udomkaewkanjana (Saint), Thai actor and singer

Suppapong Udomkaewkanjana, nicknamed Saint, is a Thai actor, producer and host. He gained fame through his role as Pete (Pichaya) in the 2018 TV series Love by Chance and as Tutor in the TV series Why R U? (2020).

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17/04/1996

Lorna Fitzgerald, British actress

Lorna Katie Fitzgerald is a British actress from Northampton. Her most notable role to date is that of Abi Branning in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. Since leaving EastEnders in January 2018, Fitzgerald has developed her acting career on the stage and in movies.

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Caitlin Parker, Australian boxer

Caitlin Anne Parker is an Australian amateur boxer, who became the first female boxer from Australia to win an Olympic medal when she took bronze at the 2024 Paris Games. Parker has also won silver and bronze medals at two Commonwealth Games and bronze at the 2014 Youth Olympics.

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Helene Spilling, Norwegian dancer

Helene Spilling Ødegaard is a Norwegian professional dancer. She is best known for her appearances on Skal vi danse, the Norwegian edition of Dancing with the Stars, and was the winner of the 17th season in 2021. During her competitive dancing career, she won the Norwegian dance championship 17 times, and represented Norway in European and world tournaments.

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17/04/1995

Jung Wheein, South Korean singer

Jung Whee-in, known mononymously as Wheein, is a South Korean singer. She rose to prominence in 2014, as a member of the Korean girl group Mamamoo. In 2017, her song "Anymore" with Jung Key, topped the Gaon Charts. In April 2018, she made her debut as a solo artist with her digital single "Easy", peaking at number three in South Korea. In September 2019, Wheein released her first single album Soar.

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17/04/1994

Alanna Goldie, Canadian fencer

Alanna Goldie is a Canadian Olympic fencer.

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Yang Hongseok, South Korean singer and actor

Yang Hong-seok, better known by the mononym Hongseok, is a South Korean singer and actor. He debuted as a vocalist of the group boy band Pentagon in October 2016. Aside from group activities as singer, he has debuted as an actor in the Korean movie, The Love That's Left.

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17/04/1992

Lachlan Maranta, Australian rugby league footballer

Lachlan Maranta is a professional Rugby league footballer who plays on the wing for the Wynnum Manly Seagulls in the Queensland Cup.

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Jo Jinho, South Korean singer

Jo Jin-ho, commonly known by the mononym Jinho, is a South Korean singer, songwriter, composer, vocal coach and member of South Korean boy group Pentagon under Cube Entertainment. In 2023, he participated in the JTBC singing competition program Phantom Singer 4, where his quartet Crezl ultimately placed third and officially debuted.

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17/04/1990

Jonathan Brown, Welsh footballer

Jonathan David Brown is a Welsh professional footballer and former Wales under-21 international who plays as a winger.

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17/04/1989

Paraskevi Papachristou, Greek triple jumper

Paraskevi "Voula" Papachristou is a Greek triple jumper and long jumper. She won two gold medals at the European Athletics U23 Championships and took the third place at the 2016 World indoor Championships. She was removed from the Greek team for the 2012 London Olympics by the Greek Olympic Committee after making a racist comment online. At the 2016 Summer Olympics' final in Rio de Janeiro, she took the 8th place. In 2018 she was the European Champion in Berlin with a jump of 14,60 metres.

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Avi Kaplan, singer and songwriter

Avriel Benjamin Kaplan is an American singer-songwriter. He is known for being the former vocal bass of the a cappella group Pentatonix from 2011 to 2017. As a part of the group, he released five studio albums, won three Grammy Awards, and sold over six million albums.

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17/04/1988

Takahiro Moriuchi, Japanese singer-songwriter

Takahiro Moriuchi , known professionally as Taka, is a Japanese singer and musician who is the lead vocalist of the Japanese rock band One Ok Rock. Moriuchi is the band's main lyricist and composer. In 2017, Kerrang! magazine placed him at number 27 on their list of the "50 Greatest Rockstars in the World". He was also listed by Rock Sound magazine as one of "50 Most Influential Figures in Rock".

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17/04/1986

Romain Grosjean, French race car driver

Romain David Jeremie Grosjean is a French and Swiss racing driver, who competes in the IMSA SportsCar Championship for Lamborghini and serves as a driver in the IndyCar Series for Dale Coyne. Grosjean competed under the French flag in Formula One between 2009 and 2020, and the IndyCar Series from 2021 to 2024 and in 2026.

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17/04/1985

Rooney Mara, American actress

Patricia Rooney Mara is an American actress. Her accolades include nominations for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a British Academy Film Award.

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Luke Mitchell, Australian actor and model

Luke Mitchell (born 17 April 1985) is an Australian actor. He attended the Film and Television Studio International, and won the role of Chris Knight in Neighbours in 2008. Mitchell appeared as Will in the third season of H2O: Just Add Water in 2009. He starred as Romeo Smith in Home and Away from 2009 to 2013. The role saw Mitchell win the Most Popular New Male Talent Logie Award in 2010.

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Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, French tennis player

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is a French former professional tennis player. He was ranked as high as world No. 5 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which he achieved in February 2012. Tsonga won 18 singles titles on the ATP Tour, including two Masters 1000 titles, and reached a major final at the 2008 Australian Open.

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17/04/1984

Pablo Sebastián Álvarez, Argentinian footballer

Pablo Sebastián Álvarez Valeira is an Argentine former football player, who played as a defender. He also holds a Spanish passport in accordance with his descent.

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Jed Lowrie, American baseball player

Jed Carlson Lowrie is an American former professional baseball infielder. He played 14 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros, Oakland Athletics, and New York Mets.

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Raffaele Palladino, Italian footballer

Raffaele Palladino is an Italian professional football coach and former player who is the head coach of Serie A club Atalanta.

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17/04/1983

Stanislav Chistov, Russian ice hockey player

Stanislav Mikhailovich Chistov is a Russian former professional ice hockey player.

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Roberto Jiménez, Peruvian footballer

Roberto Carlos Jiménez Jiménez is a Peruvian former professional footballer who played as a forward.

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Andrea Marcato, Italian rugby player

Andrea Marcato is an Italian rugby union coach and former international player. He won 16 caps for Italy and played in the 2008 and 2009 Six Nations Championships. After the end of his playing career he began coaching as the head coach of Petrarca Rugby, a position held from 2017 to 2024; since then Marcato has been assistant coach of the U-20 Italian national team.

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17/04/1982

Brad Boyes, Canadian ice hockey player

Bradley Keith Boyes is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player, who spent thirteen seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of seven different teams.

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Chuck Kobasew, Canadian ice hockey player

Nicholas James Kobasew is a Canadian former professional ice hockey right winger who played eleven seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL).

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Tyron Woodley, American mixed martial artist

Tyron Lakent Woodley is an American professional mixed martial artist and professional boxer. He is a former UFC Welterweight Champion who defended his title four times. A professional since 2009, Woodley also competed at Strikeforce and was an NCAA Division I collegiate wrestler for the Missouri Tigers, becoming a two-time All-American and Big 12 Conference champion.

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17/04/1981

Jenny Meadows, English runner

Jennifer Brenda "Jenny" Meadows is a retired British athlete. Her main event was the 800 metres although earlier in her career she also competed over the 400 metres. In the 800 m she won a bronze medal at the 2009 World Championships, and a silver at the 2010 World Indoor Championships. At the European Athletics Championships, Meadows took silver outdoors in 2010 and gold indoors in 2011. She also had some international success as part of the Great Britain women's 4 × 400 metres relay squad.

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Hanna Pakarinen, Finnish singer-songwriter

Hanna Helena Pakarinen is a Finnish pop and pop-rock singer who rose to fame as the winner of the first series of the Finnish singing competition Idols in 2004. Since then, she has represented Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 in her homeland, and has sold over 91,000 certified records in Finland, which places her among the top 50 best-selling female soloists in her home country.

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Ryan Raburn, American baseball player

Ryan Neil Raburn is an American former professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals. While primarily an outfielder, he played every position except for catcher and shortstop during his career.

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Chris Thompson, English runner

Christopher Peter Thompson is a British former long-distance runner, who won the silver medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2010 European Athletics Championships in Barcelona, on 27 July 2010 behind his compatriot Mo Farah. He competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Olympics.

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Zhang Yaokun, Chinese footballer

Zhang Yaokun is a retired Chinese footballer.

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17/04/1980

Fabián Vargas, Colombian footballer

Fabián Andrés Vargas Rivera is a Colombian former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He spent most of his professional career playing for América de Cali and Boca Juniors, making more than 100 appearances for both clubs. He also played for Internacional, Almería, AEK Athens, Independiente, Barcelona SC, Millonarios, and La Equidad. At international level, he played for the Colombia national team 41 times and also captained the side.

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Curtis Woodhouse, English footballer, boxer, and manager

Curtis Woodhouse is an English former professional footballer turned professional boxer and football manager, most recently in charge of Marske United. Woodhouse played football as a central midfielder, and competed as a light-welterweight boxer. He is the former British light-welterweight champion. His career in the Football League spanned across nine seasons, earning four caps for the England under-21 football team. Woodhouse's professional boxing record stands at 29 fights 22 wins, 13 of which are by knock-out, and 7 defeats.

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17/04/1979

Eric Brewer, Canadian ice hockey player

Eric Peter Brewer is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who was a defenceman for sixteen seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 2000 to 2015. He is an NHL All-Star and Olympic gold medalist.

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Marija Šestak, Serbian-Slovenian triple jumper

Marija Šestak is a Serbian-born Slovenian triple jumper.

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17/04/1978

Monika Bergmann-Schmuderer, German skier

Monika Bergmann-Schmuderer is a retired German alpine skier and gold medal winner at FIS Alpine World Ski Championships.

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Lindsay Hartley, American actress

Lindsay Korman is an American actress. She first came to attention with three long-running soap opera roles: Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald on Passions, Cara Castillo on All My Children, and Arianna Hernandez on Days of Our Lives. Since leaving soap operas, Korman has appeared in a number of made for television films on the Lifetime network.

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Daniel Hensel, German composer and musicologist

Daniel Hensel is a German composer, VJ, musicologist and music theorist. He is known as a composer of expressive works of all musical genres whose works can be dedicated to "a thread of a tradition leading from Schubert via Mahler to Hensel's teacher Schedl in presence.[...]" His style contains all kinds of material, such as traditional tonal or harmonic as well as noise and electronic material. His works are published by Musikverlag Doblinger in Vienna.

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Jason White, Scottish rugby player

Jason Phillip Randall White is a Scottish former rugby union footballer. He was a utility forward who played in the second or back row of the scrum – lock, flanker, or number eight. White played at club level for Glasgow Caledonians ; the French Top 14 side ASM Clermont Auvergne; and English Premiership side Sale Sharks. He won 77 caps playing for Scotland, captaining the side on 19 occasions.

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17/04/1977

Chad Hedrick, American speed skater

Chad Hedrick is an American inline speed skater and ice speed skater. He was born in Spring, Texas.

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Frederik Magle, Danish composer, organist, and pianist

Frederik Reesen Magle is a Danish composer, concert organist, and pianist. He writes contemporary classical music as well as fusion of classical music and other genres. His compositions include orchestral works, cantatas, chamber music, and solo works, including several compositions commissioned by the Danish royal family. Magle has gained a reputation as an organ virtuoso, and as a composer and performing artist who does not refrain from venturing into more experimental projects – often with improvisation – bordering jazz, electronica, and other non-classical genres.

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17/04/1976

Maurice Wignall, Jamaican hurdler and long jumper

Maurice Andre Wignall is a Jamaican hurdling athlete.

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17/04/1975

Heidi Alexander, English politician

Heidi Alexander is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Transport since November 2024. A member of the Labour Party, she has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Swindon South since 2024. Previously she was the MP for Lewisham East from 2010 to 2018.

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Travis Roy, American ice hockey player (died 2020)

Travis Matthew Roy was an American college ice hockey player, author and philanthropist.

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17/04/1974

Mikael Åkerfeldt, Swedish singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer

Lars Mikael Åkerfeldt is a Swedish musician. He is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter for the progressive metal band Opeth. A former vocalist for the death metal supergroup Bloodbath, he was also the guitarist for the "one-off" band Steel, and a member of the collaboration Storm Corrosion with Steven Wilson.

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Victoria Beckham, English singer and fashion designer

Victoria Caroline, Lady Beckham, is an English fashion designer, singer, and television personality. She rose to prominence in the 1990s as a member of the pop group the Spice Girls, in which she was nicknamed Posh Spice. After the Spice Girls disbanded in 2000, Beckham signed with Virgin Records to release her debut solo album Victoria Beckham, which produced two UK Top 10 singles. Beckham has also become an internationally recognised style icon and fashion designer.

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17/04/1973

Katrin Koov, Estonian architect

Katrin Koov is an Estonian architect.

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Brett Maher, Australian basketball player and sportscaster

Brett Steven Maher is an Australian retired professional basketball player. He played his entire seventeen-year career for his hometown Adelaide 36ers in the National Basketball League (NBL) from 1992 to 2009. Maher also represented Australia at the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympic Games, as well as at the 1998 FIBA World Championship.

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Theo Ratliff, American basketball player

Theophalus Curtis Ratliff is an American former professional basketball player who played 16 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

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17/04/1972

Gary Bennett, American baseball player

Gary David Bennett Jr. is an American former professional baseball catcher, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for several teams, from 1995 to 1996 and 1998 to 2008.

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Tony Boselli, American football player and sportscaster

Don Bosco Anthony Boselli Jr. is an American professional football executive and former offensive tackle who is the executive vice president of football operations for the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL). Boselli played in the NFL for seven seasons with the Jaguars. He played college football for the USC Trojans, winning the Morris Trophy in 1994. Boselli was the first player drafted by the Jaguars, who selected him second overall in the 1995 NFL draft.

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Jennifer Garner, American actress

Jennifer Anne Garner is an American actress. Born in Houston, Texas and raised in Charleston, West Virginia, Garner studied theater at Denison University and began acting as an understudy for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City. She had a starring role on the Fox teen drama series Time of Your Life (1999–2000) and supporting roles in the films Pearl Harbor (2001) and Catch Me If You Can (2002).

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Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lankan cricketer

Deshabandu Muttiah Muralitharan is a Sri Lankan cricket coach, businessman and former professional cricketer. Averaging over six wickets per Test match, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport. He is the only bowler to take 800 Test wickets and more than 530 One Day International (ODI) wickets. As of 2026, he has taken more wickets in international cricket than any other bowler. Muralitharan was a part of the Sri Lankan team that won the 1996 Cricket World Cup and the team which was joint-winners with India of the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy.

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Yuichi Nishimura, Japanese footballer and referee

Yuichi Nishimura is a Japanese football referee. He has refereed in the Japanese J. League Division 1 since 1999 and has been a full international referee for FIFA since 2004.

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Terran Sandwith, Canadian ice hockey player

Terran Sandwith is a Canadian former professional ice hockey defenceman who played eight games in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Edmonton Oilers during the 1997–98 season.

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17/04/1971

Claire Sweeney, English actress

Claire Jayne Sweeney is an English actress, singer, and television personality. Known for her portrayal of Lindsey Corkhill on Channel 4's Brookside (1991–2003), she also played Roxie Hart in Chicago and starred in touring productions of Guys and Dolls (2006), Tell Me on a Sunday (2011), Legally Blonde (2011), and Educating Rita (2012). She was a panellist on ITV's Loose Women between 2003 and 2005, and presented 60 Minute Makeover from 2004 to 2006. Her debut album, Claire, reached number 15 on the UK Albums Chart in 2002. Sweeney has portrayed Cassie Plummer on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street since 2023. Her other credits include Candy Cabs (2011), Scarborough (2019), and The Good Ship Murder (2023–2024).

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17/04/1970

Redman, American rapper, producer, and actor

Reginald Noble, better known by his stage name Redman, is an American rapper and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an artist on Def Jam Recordings.

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17/04/1968

Julie Fagerholt, Danish fashion designer

Julie Fagerholt is a Danish fashion designer and founder of the luxury clothing brand Heartmade. She also creates haute couture. Her customers include Queen Mary of Denmark.

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Phil Henderson, American basketball player and coach (died 2013)

Phillip Terry Henderson was an American basketball player. He was best known for his collegiate career at Duke University, where he led the Blue Devils to three consecutive NCAA Final Four appearances. He was a second round pick of the Dallas Mavericks in the 1990 NBA draft, but never played in the NBA.

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Eric Lamaze, Canadian jockey

Eric Lamaze is a Canadian showjumper and Olympic champion. He won individual gold and team silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, riding Hickstead. Lamaze has won three Olympic medals, as well as four Pan American Games medals and one World Equestrian Games bronze. He is considered one of Canada's best showjumpers. He is currently banned from participating in equestrian activities until 2027.

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Roger Twose, New Zealand cricketer

Roger Graham Twose is an English-born New Zealand former cricketer, who played 16 Test matches and 87 One Day Internationals for New Zealand in the mid-1990s. In February 2021, Twose was appointed as the director of New Zealand Cricket. Twose was a member of the New Zealand team that won the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy.

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Richie Woodhall, English boxer and trainer

Richie Woodhall is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1990 to 2000. He held the WBC super-middleweight title from 1998 to 1999, as well as the Commonwealth middleweight title from 1992 to 1995, and the European middleweight title from 1995 to 1996. As an amateur, Woodhall won a gold medal at the 1990 Commonwealth Games and bronze at the 1988 Summer Olympics, both in the light-middleweight division.

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17/04/1967

Henry Ian Cusick, Peruvian-Scottish actor

Henry Ian Cusick is a Peruvian-Scottish actor of television, film, and theatre and a television director best known as Desmond Hume in Lost, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. He also starred as Jesus in The Gospel of John, Stephen Finch on Scandal, Marcus Kane on The 100, Dr. Jonas Lear in The Passage, and Russell "Russ" Taylor on MacGyver.

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Kimberly Elise, American actress

Kimberly Elise Trammel is an American actress. She made her feature-film debut in Set It Off (1996), and later received critical acclaim for her performance in Beloved (1998).

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Marquis Grissom, American baseball player and coach

Marquis Deon Grissom is an American former professional baseball center fielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Montreal Expos, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Francisco Giants between 1989 and 2005.

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Ian Jones, New Zealand rugby player

Ian Donald Jones is a former New Zealand rugby union player. He played 79 tests for the All Blacks. He is one of New Zealand's most capped locks and formed one of the most famous lock pairings in international rugby, often partnered with Robin Brooke in the All Blacks from 1992 to 1998. What Jones lacked in size he more than made up for in skill, Jones was picked over physically intimidating locks such as Mark Cooksley who was the tallest All Black ever. Jones made his All Black debut Saturday, 16 June 1990 v Scotland at Dunedin. At the time he was 23 years, 60 days old.

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Barnaby Joyce, Australian politician, 17th Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce is an Australian politician who served as the deputy prime minister of Australia and the leader of the National Party from 2016 to 2018 and from 2021 to 2022. A member of One Nation, he has been the member of parliament (MP) for the New South Wales division of New England since 2013. Joyce previously held various ministerial positions in the Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison governments.

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Liz Phair, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

Elizabeth Clark Phair is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Phair was raised primarily in the Chicago area. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1990, she attempted to start a musical career in San Francisco; however, she returned to her home in Chicago, where she began self-releasing audio cassettes under the name Girly-Sound. The tapes led to a recording contract with the independent record label Matador Records.

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17/04/1966

Vikram, Indian actor and singer

Kennedy John Victor, known professionally as Vikram, is an Indian actor and playback singer who predominantly works in Tamil cinema. One of the highest paid actors, he is also among the most decorated actors in Indian cinema, with laurels including nine Filmfare Awards South, a National Film Award, four Tamil Nadu State Film Awards and the Kalaimamani Award from the Government of Tamil Nadu. Based on the earnings of Indian celebrities, Vikram was included in the Forbes India Celebrity 100 list for 2016 and 2018.

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17/04/1964

Ken Daneyko, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster

Kenneth Stephen Daneyko is a Canadian former professional ice hockey defenceman. He played his entire career with the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League (NHL), winning three Stanley Cup championships with the team. He has been nicknamed "Mr. Devil" by Devils fans, as he currently holds both the franchise record for games played as a Devil with 1,283 games and in penalty minutes with 2,516. Daneyko now provides colour analysis alongside Don La Greca during broadcasts of Devils games on MSG Sportsnet.

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Maynard James Keenan, American singer-songwriter and producer

Maynard James Keenan is an American musician who is the lead singer of the rock bands Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer.

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Rachel Notley, Canadian politician

Rachel Anne Notley is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who was the 17th premier of Alberta from 2015 to 2019 and leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP) from 2014 to 2024. Notley was the member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Edmonton-Strathcona from 2008 to 2024.

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Lela Rochon, American actress

Lela Rochon Fuqua is an American actress. She is best known for her starring role as Robin Stokes in the 1995 romantic drama film Waiting to Exhale. Rochon also had roles in the films Harlem Nights (1989), Boomerang (1992), The Chamber (1996), Gang Related (1997), Knock Off (1998), Why Do Fools Fall in Love (1998), and Any Given Sunday (1999).

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17/04/1962

Paul Nicholls, English jockey and trainer

Paul Frank Nicholls is a British National Hunt horse trainer with stables at Ditcheat, Somerset. A relatively successful jump jockey, Nicholls has become the leading National Hunt trainer of his generation in Britain, finishing the 2007–08 season with 155 winners and a record £4 million in prize money. As of April 2023, he has trained over 3,500 winners, won the 2012 Grand National, four Cheltenham Gold Cups and has been crowned British jump racing Champion Trainer fourteen times.

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17/04/1961

Norman Cowans, Jamaican-English cricketer

Norman George Cowans is a former cricketer who mainly played as a right-arm fast bowler. He was the 500th cricketer to play Test cricket for England, featuring between 1982 and 1985 in 19 Test matches and 23 One Day Internationals. Cowans also played first-class and List A cricket for both Middlesex and Hampshire.

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Boomer Esiason, American football player and sportscaster

Norman Julius "Boomer" Esiason is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons, primarily with the Cincinnati Bengals. He played college football for the Maryland Terrapins and was selected in the second round of the 1984 NFL draft by the Bengals, where he spent 10 seasons. Esiason was also a member of the New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals.

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Bella Freud, English fashion designer

Isobel Lucia Freud, is a London-based fashion designer. Her work is known for its playful and often humorous use of language. She is the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. She is also famous for her podcast, Fashion Neurosis.

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17/04/1960

Vladimir Polyakov, Russian pole vaulter

Vladimir Polyakov is a retired Soviet pole vaulter who represented the Soviet Union and later Russia. On 26 June 1981 he managed to clear 5.81 metres, beating Thierry Vigneron's six-day-old world record. Two years later Polyakov lost the record to Pierre Quinon, who jumped 5.82. Polyakov won a silver medal at the 1982 European Championships, and won the European Indoor Championships in 1983.

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17/04/1959

Sean Bean, English actor

Sean Bean is an English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he made his professional debut in a production of Romeo and Juliet in 1983 at The Watermill Theatre. Retaining his Yorkshire accent, he first found mainstream success for his portrayal of Richard Sharpe in the ITV series Sharpe, which originally ran from 1993 to 1997.

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Jimmy Mann, Canadian ice hockey player

James Edward Mann is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played 293 games in the National Hockey League. He played for the Winnipeg Jets, Quebec Nordiques and the Pittsburgh Penguins. He makes regular appearances with a program for charity, called Oldtimers Hockey Challenge.

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Li Meisu, Chinese shot putter

Li Meisu is a retired Chinese shot putter who won the bronze medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.

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17/04/1958

Laslo Babits, Canadian javelin thrower (died 2013)

Laslo Babits was a male javelin thrower from Canada. He competed for his native country at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, finishing in 8th place. He set his personal best in 1984.

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17/04/1957

Teri Austin, Canadian actress

Teresa "Teri" Austin is a Canadian animal care activist and former actress. She had her greatest acting success in the 1980s and 1990s, and is best known for her role as Jill Bennett in the CBS primetime soap opera Knots Landing, and as co-host of the Canadian reality series Thrill of a Lifetime.

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Afrika Bambaataa, American disc jockey (died 2026)

Lance Taylor, known professionally as Afrika Bambaataa, was an American disc jockey, rapper and record producer. He was notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenced the development of hip-hop culture. Bambaataa was one of the originators of breakbeat DJing.

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Dwane Casey, American basketball coach

Dwane Lyndon Casey is an American retired basketball coach who most recently served as the head coach of the Detroit Pistons before transitioning to a front office position with the team. He is a former NCAA basketball player and coach, having played and coached NCAA basketball for over a decade before moving on to the NBA. He was previously the head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Toronto Raptors, with whom he won the NBA Coach of the Year Award in 2018.

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Nick Hornby, English novelist, essayist, lyricist, and screenwriter

Nicholas Peter John Hornby is an English writer. He is best known for his memoir Fever Pitch (1992) and novels High Fidelity (1995) and About a Boy (1998), all of which were adapted into feature films. Hornby's work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists. His books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide as of 2018. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, Hornby was named the 29th most influential person in British culture. He has received two Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nominations for An Education (2009), and Brooklyn (2015).

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Julia Macur, English lawyer and judge

Dame Julia Wendy Macur, DBE, known as The Rt Hon Lady Justice Macur, was a British judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. Between April 2017 and December 2019, she was the Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales.

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Frank McDonough, British historian

Frank McDonough is a British historian of the Third Reich and international history.

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17/04/1956

Colin Tyre, Lord Tyre, Scottish lawyer and judge

Colin Jack Tyre, Lord Tyre, is a Scottish lawyer, former President of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, and a Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland.

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17/04/1955

Todd Lickliter, American basketball player and coach

Todd Arlan Lickliter is the former head coach of the Evansville Purple Aces men's basketball team of the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC). He was previously the head coach of Marian University, the University of Iowa, and Butler University men's basketball teams. He spent the 2011–12 season as an assistant coach at Miami (Ohio).

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Pete Shelley, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2018)

Pete Shelley was an English singer, songwriter and guitarist. He formed early punk band Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto in 1976, and became the lead singer and guitarist in 1977 when Devoto left. The group released their biggest hit "Ever Fallen in Love " in 1978. The band broke up in 1981 and reformed at the end of the decade. Shelley also had a solo career; his song "Homosapien" charted in Australasia and Canada in 1981 and 1982.

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Mike Stroud, English physician and explorer

Michael Adrian Stroud, OBE, FRCP is a professor of medicine and nutrition at Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, England. He has interests in gastroenterology and human health under extreme conditions. After semi-retirement in 2016, he works part time.

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17/04/1954

Riccardo Patrese, Italian race car driver

Riccardo Gabriele Patrese is an Italian former racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1977 to 1993. Patrese was runner-up in the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1992 with Williams, and won six Grands Prix across 17 seasons.

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Roddy Piper, Canadian professional wrestler and actor (died 2015)

Roderick George Toombs, known by his ring name "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, was a Canadian professional wrestler and actor.

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Michael Sembello, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

Michael Andrew Sembello is an American singer, guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter, composer and producer.

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17/04/1952

Joe Alaskey, American voice actor (died 2016)

Joseph Francis Alaskey III was an American actor and comedian. He was one of Mel Blanc's successors at the Warner Bros. Animation studio until his death. He alternated with Jeff Bergman, Greg Burson, Jim Cummings, Bob Bergen, Maurice LaMarche and Billy West in voicing Warner Bros. cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Speedy Gonzales, Taz, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, among many others. He also voiced Plucky Duck on Tiny Toon Adventures from 1990 to 1995. Alaskey was the second actor to voice Grandpa Lou Pickles on Nickelodeon's Rugrats. He would later reprise his role in the spin-off series All Grown Up!.

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Pierre Guité, Canadian ice hockey player

Pierre Guité is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played 377 games in the World Hockey Association. He played for the Quebec Nordiques, Michigan Stags, Baltimore Blades, Cincinnati Stingers and Edmonton Oilers. He was traded from the Nordiques to the financially troubled Stags, along with Michel Rouleau and Alain Caron, for Marc Tardif, just weeks before the Stags folded and the league took over the team, moving it to Baltimore.

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John McColl, English general and politician, Lieutenant Governor of Jersey

General Sir John Chalmers McColl, is a retired senior British Army officer and a past Lieutenant Governor of Jersey. McColl previously served as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2007 to 2011.

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Željko Ražnatović, Serbian commander "Arkan" (died 2000)

Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, was a Serbian warlord, mobster and head of the Serb Volunteer Guard during the Yugoslav Wars, considered one of the most feared and effective paramilitary forces during the wars. His paramilitary unit was responsible for numerous crimes in Eastern Bosnia, including murder, pillaging, rape and ethnic cleansings. Arkan was one of the most feared, celebrated and iconic figures in Serbia during his time.

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John Robertson, Scottish businessman and politician

John Webster Robertson is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Anniesland and Glasgow North West from 2000 to 2015. Until 2010, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Yvette Cooper.

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17/04/1951

Olivia Hussey, Argentinian-English actress (died 2024)

Olivia Hussey was an Argentine and British actress. The daughter of Argentine singer Osvaldo Ribó and Englishwoman Alma Joy Hussey, Hussey was born in Buenos Aires and spent most of her early life in her mother's native England. She aspired to become an actress at a young age and studied drama at London's Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.

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Börje Salming, Swedish ice hockey player and businessman (died 2022)

Anders Börje Salming was a Swedish Sámi ice hockey player. He was a defenceman who played professionally for 23 seasons, for the clubs Brynäs IF, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, and AIK. He spent 16 seasons with the Maple Leafs, who retired his number 21 in 2016. Salming holds several Maple Leafs records, including the most assists.

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17/04/1948

Jan Hammer, Czech pianist, composer, and producer

Jan Hammer is a Czech-American musician, composer, and record producer. He rose to prominence while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra during the early 1970s, as well as with his film scores for television and film including "Miami Vice Theme" and "Crockett's Theme", from the 1980s television program Miami Vice. He has continued to work as both a musical performer and producer.

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Alice Harden, American educator and politician (died 2012)

Alice Varnado Harden was a Democratic member of the Mississippi Senate, representing the 28th District from 1988 until her death. She lived in Jackson and represented Hinds County.

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Pekka Vasala, Finnish runner

Pekka Antero Vasala is a retired Finnish middle-distance athlete who won an Olympic gold medal in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Vasala had a brilliant three-month period in 1972 when he won an Olympic gold medal at 1,500 meters and set a new European record in the 800 meters running 1:44.5. The time was only 0.2 seconds off the world record. His Olympic gold would be his only major international medal. He retired in 1974.

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17/04/1947

Nigel Emslie, Lord Emslie, Scottish lawyer and judge

George Nigel Hannington Emslie, Lord Emslie is a retired judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland. He is the son of former Lord President George Emslie, Baron Emslie, and older brother of fellow judge Derek Emslie, Lord Kingarth and rhino conservationist Dr Richard Emslie.

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Richard Field, English lawyer and judge

Sir Richard Alan Field is a British judge of the High Court of England and Wales.

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Sherrie Levine, American photographer

Sherrie Levine is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston.

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Tsutomu Wakamatsu, Japanese baseball player, coach, and manager

Tsutomu Wakamatsu is a Japanese former baseball player, coach, and manager for the Yakult Swallows in Nippon Professional Baseball. He batted left-handed, and threw right-handed. His number 1 is honoured by the Swallows.

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17/04/1946

Clare Francis, English sailor and author

Clare Mary Francis MBE is a British novelist who in her first career as a yachtswoman has twice sailed across the Atlantic on her own. She was the first woman to skipper a successful boat on the Whitbread Around the World race.

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17/04/1943

Richard Allen Epstein, American lawyer, author, and academic

Richard Allen Epstein is an American legal scholar known for his writings on torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University and the director of the Classical Liberal Institute. He also serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, as the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and as a senior lecturer and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Chicago.

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17/04/1942

Buster Williams, American jazz bassist

Charles Anthony "Buster" Williams is an American jazz bassist. Williams is known for his membership in pianist Herbie Hancock's early 1970s group, as well as working with guitarist Larry Coryell, the Thelonious Monk repertory band Sphere and as the accompanist of choice for many singers, including Nancy Wilson.

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Dnyaneshwar Agashe, Indian businessman and cricketer (died 2009)

Dnyaneshwar Chandrashekhar Agashe was an Indian businessman, cricketer, cricket administrator, and philanthropist. He founded the Suvarna Sahakari Bank in 1969, and served as its managing director from its inception until his death. From 1970 to 1978, he served as the joint managing director of the Brihan Maharashtra Sugar Syndicate Ltd. with his brother, and then as the company's sole managing director from 1978 until his death.

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17/04/1941

Lagle Parek, Estonian architect and politician, Estonian Minister of the Interior

Lagle Parek is an Estonian politician. She served as the Minister of the Interior in the first post-soviet government, led by the Prime Minister Mart Laar.

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17/04/1940

Eric Dancer, English businessman and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Devon

Sir Eric Dancer is a British businessman and formerly Lord-Lieutenant of Devon.

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Billy Fury, English singer-songwriter (died 1983)

Ronald Wycherley, known professionally as Billy Fury, was an English musician. An early star of rock and roll, he spent 332 weeks on the UK singles chart. His hit singles include "Wondrous Place", "Halfway to Paradise" and "Jealousy". Fury also maintained a film career, notably playing rock performers in Play It Cool in 1962 and That'll Be the Day in 1973.

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John McCririck, English journalist (died 2019)

John Michael McCririck was an English horse racing pundit, television personality and journalist.

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Chuck Menville, American animator and screenwriter (died 1992)

Charles David Menville was an American animator and writer for television. His credits included Batman: The Animated Series, Land of the Lost, The Real Ghostbusters, The Smurfs, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and Tiny Toon Adventures.

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Anja Silja, German soprano and actress

Anja Silja Regina Langwagen is a German soprano singer.

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Agostino Vallini, Italian cardinal and vicar general of Rome

Agostino Vallini is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He has been a cardinal since 2006. From 2008 to 2017, he served as Vicar General of Rome. He is also the Archpriest emeritus of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.

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17/04/1939

Robert Miller, American art dealer (died 2011)

Robert Miller was an American art dealer.

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17/04/1938

Ben Barnes, American businessman and politician, 36th Lieutenant Governor of Texas

Benny Frank Barnes is an American real estate magnate, politician, and crisis manager who served as the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives from 1965 to 1969 and as the 36th lieutenant governor of Texas from 1969 to 1973. He was a vice-chair and top fundraiser of John Kerry's presidential campaign. Barnes was also one of only eight persons who raised over $500,000 for Kerry.

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Doug Lewis, Canadian lawyer and politician, 41st Canadian Minister of Justice

Douglas Grinslade Lewis, is a Canadian accountant, lawyer and former politician.

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Ronald H. Miller, American theologian, author, and academic (died 2011)

Ronald H. Miller was professor of the Religion Department at Lake Forest College in Illinois. Miller earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Religions from Northwestern University, and a B.S and M.A from St. Louis University. He was a co-founder and co-director of Common Ground, an active adult education group for interfaith study and dialogue founded in 1975. Miller was vice-president of the Interreligious Engagement Project 21 and board member at Hands-of-Peace, an organization that brings American, and Palestinian and Israeli teenagers from the Middle East together for a two-week program in the United States. Miller lectured at countless churches, temples, mosques and centers across the country and wrote books aimed at a popular audience that convey contemporary issues in New Testament studies as well as in spirituality and philosophy.

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Kerry Wendell Thornley, American theorist and author (died 1988)

Kerry Wendell Thornley was an American author. He is known as the co-founder of Discordianism, in which context he is usually known as Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst or simply Lord Omar. He and Hill authored the religion's text Principia Discordia, Or, How I Found Goddess, and What I Did to Her When I Found Her. Thornley also was known for his 1962 manuscript The Idle Warriors, which was inspired by the activities of his acquaintance Lee Harvey Oswald before the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.

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17/04/1937

Ronald Hamowy, Canadian historian and academic (died 2012)

Ronald Hamowy was a Canadian academic, known primarily for his contributions to political and social academic fields. At the time of his death, he was professor emeritus of intellectual history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Hamowy was closely associated with the political ideology of libertarianism and his writings and scholarship place particular emphasis on individual liberty and the limits of state action in a free society. He is associated with a number of prominent American libertarian organizations.

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Ferdinand Piëch, Austrian-German engineer and businessman (died 2019)

Ferdinand Karl Piëch was an Austrian business magnate, engineer, and executive who held the positions of chairman of the executive board (Vorstandsvorsitzender) of the Volkswagen Group from 1993 to 2002, and chairman of the supervisory board (Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender) from 2002 to 2015.

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17/04/1936

Urs Wild, Swiss chemist (died 2022)

Urs Paul Rolf Wild was a Swiss chemist. He became known for his pioneering works in single molecule detection.

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17/04/1935

Bud Paxson, American broadcaster, founded Home Shopping Network and Pax TV (died 2015)

Lowell White "Bud" Paxson was an American media executive. In 1982, Paxson and his business partner, Roy Speer, co-founded the Home Shopping Club. He established Pax TV in 1998, a television network focusing on family-friendly content.

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17/04/1934

Don Kirshner, American songwriter and producer (died 2011)

Donald Kirshner was an American music publisher, music consultant, rock music producer, talent manager, and songwriter. Dubbed "the Man with the Golden Ear" by Time, he was best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups including the Monkees, Kansas, and the Archies.

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David J. Farber, American computer scientist (died 2026)

David Jack Farber was an American professor of computer science, noted for his major contributions to programming languages and computer networking and was a distinguished professor and co-director of Cyber Civilization Research Center at Keio University in Japan. Farber was widely known as a mentor who maintained a global list of contacts in the high technology field, often connecting people with problems that needed solving.

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Peter Morris, Australian-English surgeon and academic (died 2022)

Sir Peter John Morris was an Australian surgeon and Nuffield professor of surgery at the University of Oxford. Morris was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, founder of the Oxford Transplant Centre and director of the Centre for Evidence in Transplantation at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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17/04/1931

John Barrett, English tennis player and sportscaster

John Edward Barrett, is a British retired tennis player, television commentator and author.

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Malcolm Browne, American journalist and photographer (died 2012)

Malcolm Wilde Browne was an American journalist and photographer, best known for his award-winning photograph of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in 1963.

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Bill Ramsey, American jazz and pop singer, journalist and actor (died 2021)

William McCreery Ramsey was an American-German jazz and pop singer, journalist and actor famous for his German-language hits. He returned to Germany a year after he had served compulsory military service with the U.S. Air Force there. Active as a singer of jazz and pop already as a soldier, he made a career in different fields of musical entertainment. He sang and recorded German schlager, also German-language cover versions of English hits, jazz and swing. He appeared in films and television series, and ran popular series on radio and television as presenter.

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17/04/1930

Chris Barber, English trombonist and bandleader (died 2021)

Donald Christopher Barber was an English jazz musician, best known as a bandleader and trombonist. He helped many musicians with their careers and had a UK top twenty trad jazz hit with "Petite Fleur" in 1959. These musicians included the blues singer Ottilie Patterson, who was at one time his wife, and Lonnie Donegan, whose appearances with Barber triggered the skiffle craze of the mid-1950s and who had his first transatlantic hit, "Rock Island Line", while with Barber's band. He provided an audience for Donegan and, later, Alexis Korner, and sponsored African-American blues musicians to visit Britain, making Barber a significant figure in launching the British rhythm and blues and "beat boom" of the 1960s.

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17/04/1929

James Last, German-American bassist, composer, and bandleader (died 2015)

James Last was a German composer and big band leader of the James Last Orchestra. Initially a jazz bassist, his trademark "happy music" made his numerous albums best-sellers in Germany and the United Kingdom, with 65 of his albums reaching the charts in the UK alone. His composition "Happy Heart" became an international success in interpretations by Andy Williams and Petula Clark.

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17/04/1928

Victor Lownes, American businessman (died 2017)

Victor Aubrey Lownes III was an executive for HMH Publishing Company Inc., later known as Playboy Enterprises, from 1955 through the early 1980s. Soon after he met Hugh Hefner in 1954, Hefner founded Playboy magazine, and Lownes eventually joined his publishing company, serving as vice president. Lownes was a close confidant of Hefner and gained a reputation for dating Playboy Playmates.

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Cynthia Ozick, American short story writer, novelist, and essayist

Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.

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Heinz Putzl, Austrian fencer

Heinz Putzl is an Austrian former fencer. He competed at the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics.

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Fabien Roy, Canadian accountant and politician (died 2023)

Fabien Roy was a Canadian politician who was active in Quebec in the 1970s. Roy was elected to the National Assembly of Quebec and the House of Commons of Canada, and advocated social credit theories of monetary reform.

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17/04/1927

Margot Honecker, East German politician and First Lady (died 2016)

Margot Honecker was an East German politician and influential member of the country's Communist government until 1989. From 1963 until 1989, she was Minister of National Education of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). She was married to Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party from 1971 to 1989 and concurrently from 1976 to 1989 the country's head of state.

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17/04/1926

Joan Lorring, British actress (died 2014)

Joan Lorring was an American actress and singer known for her work in film and theatre. For her role as Bessy Watty in The Corn Is Green (1945), Lorring was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Lorring also originated the role of Marie Buckholder in Come Back, Little Sheba on Broadway in 1950, for which she won a Donaldson Award.

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Gerry McNeil, Canadian ice hockey player and manager (died 2004)

Joseph Gerald George McNeil was a professional ice hockey goaltender who won three Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens between 1947 and 1956.

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17/04/1925

René Moawad, Lebanese lawyer and politician, 13th President of Lebanon (died 1989)

René Anis Moawad was a Lebanese politician who served as the 9th president of Lebanon for seventeen days, from 5 to 22 November 1989, before his assassination by unknown assailants.

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17/04/1924

Kenneth Norman Jones, Australian public servant (died 2022)

Kenneth Norman Jones was an Australian senior public servant.

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Donald Richie, American-Japanese author and critic (died 2013)

Donald Richie was an American author, journalist, and film critic. He was known for writing about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also directed a number of experimental films, the first when he was 17. He was awarded the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun in 2005.

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17/04/1923

Lindsay Anderson, English actor, director, and screenwriter (died 1994)

Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an English filmmaker, theatre director, critic, and actor. He was considered a leading light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave, and a principal exponent of kitchen sink realism on both the stage and screen.

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Solly Hemus, American baseball player, coach, and manager (died 2017)

Solomon Joseph Hemus was an American professional baseball infielder, manager, and coach, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies. Hemus is one of a select group of big league players to have held a dual role as a player-manager.

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Neville McNamara, Australian air marshal (died 2014)

Air Chief Marshal Sir Neville Patrick McNamara, was a senior commander of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He served as Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), the RAAF's highest-ranking position, from 1979 until 1982, and as Chief of the Defence Force Staff (CDFS), Australia's top military role at the time, from 1982 until 1984. He was the second RAAF officer to hold the rank of air chief marshal.

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Gianni Raimondi, Italian lyric tenor (died 2008)

Gianni Raimondi was an Italian lyric tenor, particularly associated with the Italian repertory.

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Harry Reasoner, American soldier and journalist (died 1991)

Harry Reasoner was an American journalist for CBS and ABC News. He is known for his adroit use of language as a television commentator and as one of the original hosts of the news magazine 60 Minutes.

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17/04/1921

Melvin Storer, American shipfitter and navy diver (died 2003)

Melvin Tyler Storer was an American shipfitter, navy diver and welder who served in the United States Navy Reserve on the USS West Virginia and USS Yarnall. He was aboard the USS California during the Attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II and was reported lost in action before being found as a survivor.

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17/04/1920

Edmonde Charles-Roux, French journalist and author (died 2016)

Edmonde Charles-Roux was a French writer.

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17/04/1919

Gilles Lamontagne, Canadian lieutenant and politician, 24th Lieutenant Governor of Quebec (died 2016)

Joseph Georges Gilles Claude Lamontagne was a Canadian politician who held a number of offices both in Quebec and federally. A Liberal, he was Mayor of Quebec City (1965–1977), Postmaster General of Canada (1978–1979), Minister of National Defence (1980–1983) and the 24th Lieutenant Governor of Quebec (1984–1990).

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Chavela Vargas, Costa Rican-Mexican singer-songwriter and actress (died 2012)

Chavela Vargas was a Mexican singer. She gained widespread recognition for her distinctive interpretations of Mexican rancheras. However, her impact extends beyond this genre, encompassing various styles within popular Latin American music.

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17/04/1918

William Holden, American actor (died 1981)

William Franklin Holden was an American actor and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for The Blue Knight (1973).

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17/04/1916

Win Maung, 3rd President of Union of Myanmar (died 1989)

Mahn Win Maung was a Anglo-Burmese politician who served as the third president of Burma.

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A. Thiagarajah, Sri Lankan educator and politician (died 1981)

Arumugam Thiagarajah was a Sri Lankan Tamil teacher, politician and Member of Parliament. He died in May 1981, a day after being shot and injured an attack by a militant Tamil group.

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Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, world's first female prime minister (died 2000)

Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan politician who served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1960 to 1965, from 1970 to 1977, and from 1994 to 2000. A chairperson of Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), she was the first woman in the world to be elected prime minister in 1960.

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17/04/1915

Martin Clemens, Scottish soldier (died 2009)

Major Warren Frederick Martin Clemens was a British-Australian colonial administrator and military officer. In late 1941 and early 1942, while serving as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands, he helped prepare the area for eventual resistance to Japanese occupation. His additional duties as a coastwatcher alerted the Allies to Japanese plans to build an airstrip on Guadalcanal. This resulted in Allied carrier raids and eventually a landing by United States forces and the beginning of the epic struggle in the Solomons. Clemens then directly served the U.S. Marines in coordinating intelligence on Japanese activities.

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Joe Foss, American general and politician, 20th Governor of South Dakota (died 2003)

Joseph Jacob Foss was a United States Marine Corps Major and a leading Marine fighter ace in World War II. He received the Medal of Honor in recognition of his role in air combat during the Guadalcanal campaign. In postwar years, he was an Air National Guard Brigadier General, served as the 20th governor of South Dakota (1955–1959), president of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the first commissioner of the American Football League. He also was a television broadcaster.

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Regina Ghazaryan, Armenian painter (died 1999)

Regina Tadevosi Ghazaryan was an Armenian painter and public figure. Known as a friend and benefactor of Yeghishe Charents, she is credited with saving many of the poet's manuscripts during the regime of Joseph Stalin.

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17/04/1914

George Davis, American art director (died 1984)

George Davis was an American art director and was the supervising art director at MGM from 1959 to 1970. He won two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction for his work on The Robe in 1954 and for The Diary of Anne Frank in 1960.

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Mac Raboy, American illustrator (died 1967)

Emmanuel "Mac" Raboy was an American comics artist best known for his comic-book work on Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel Jr. and as the Sunday comic-strip artist of Flash Gordon for more than 20 years. Cartoonist Drew Friedman has stated, "Raboy was an expert technician with pen and brush, and his lush covers are some of the most unusually beautiful ever to grace comic books".

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17/04/1912

Marta Eggerth, Hungarian-American actress and singer (died 2013)

Marta Eggerth was a Hungary-born American actress and singer from "The Silver Age of Operetta". Many of the 20th century's most famous operetta composers, including Franz Lehár, Fritz Kreisler, Robert Stolz, Oscar Straus, and Paul Abraham, composed works especially for her.

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17/04/1911

Hervé Bazin, French author and poet (died 1996)

Hervé Bazin was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.

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Lester Rodney, American soldier and journalist (died 2009)

Lester Rodney was an American journalist who helped break down the color barrier in baseball as sports writer for the Daily Worker.

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17/04/1910

Evangelos Averoff, Greek historian and politician, Greek Minister of Defence (died 1990)

Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza was a Greek politician, leader of the New Democracy party (1981–1984), member of parliament, and author.

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Ivan Goff, Australian screenwriter and producer (died 1999)

Ivan Goff was an Australian screenwriter, best known for his collaborations with Ben Roberts including White Heat (1949), Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), and the pilot for Charlie's Angels (1976).

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Helenio Herrera, French footballer and manager (died 1997)

Helenio Herrera Gavilán was an Argentine and naturalised French football player and manager. He is best remembered for his success with the Inter Milan team known as Grande Inter in the 1960s.

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17/04/1909

Alain Poher, French politician, President of France (died 1996)

Alain Émile Louis Marie Poher was a French politician who served as President of the Senate from 1968 to 1992. In this capacity, he was twice briefly acting President of France, in 1969 and 1974 following the resignation of Charles de Gaulle and the death of Georges Pompidou, respectively. Poher was affiliated with the Popular Republican Movement (MRP) until 1966 and later with the Democratic Centre (CD) and Centre of Social Democrats (CSD), which he joined in 1976.

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17/04/1906

Sidney Garfield, American physician, co-founded Kaiser Permanente (died 1984)

Sidney R. Garfield was an American physician and a pioneer of health maintenance organizations. He co-founded the Kaiser Permanente healthcare system with businessman Henry J. Kaiser. He graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine in 1928, which is now called the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

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17/04/1905

Louis Jean Heydt, American journalist and actor (died 1960)

Louis Jean Heydt was an American character actor in film, television, and theatre, most frequently seen in hapless, ineffectual, or fall-guy roles.

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Arthur Lake, American actor (died 1987)

Arthur William Lake was an American actor known best for bringing Dagwood Bumstead, the bumbling husband of Blondie, to life in film, radio, and television.

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17/04/1903

Nicolas Nabokov, Russian-American composer and educator (died 1978)

Nicolas Nabokov was a Russian-born composer, writer, and cultural figure. He became a U.S. citizen in 1939.

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Gregor Piatigorsky, Ukrainian-American cellist and educator (died 1976)

Gregor Piatigorsky was a Russian-born American cellist.

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Morgan Taylor, American hurdler and coach (died 1975)

Frederick Morgan Taylor was an American hurdler and the first athlete to win three Olympic medals in the 400 m hurdles. He was the flag bearer for the United States at his last Olympics in 1932.

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17/04/1899

Aleksander Klumberg, Estonian decathlete and coach (died 1958)

Aleksander Klumberg was an Estonian decathlete. He represented Estonia in several events at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, and won the bronze medal in the decathlon at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. In 1922, he became the first official world record holder in the decathlon. Arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities during World War II, Klumberg was deported from Estonia, imprisoned in a Russian Gulag camp from 1945 to 1954, and deported to Siberia in 1954–1955.

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17/04/1897

Nisargadatta Maharaj, Indian philosopher and educator (died 1981)

Nisargadatta Maharaj was an Indian guru of nonduality, belonging to the Inchagiri Sampradaya, a lineage of teachers from the Navnath Sampradaya.

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Thornton Wilder, American novelist and playwright (died 1975)

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.

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Edouard Wyss-Dunant, Swiss physician and mountaineer (died 1983)

Edouard Wyss-Dunant was a Swiss physician and alpinist. He had a distinguished career in medicine, both in his own country and abroad. He published a number of treatises in his professional capacity and was the author of several mountaineering books. He is best known for his leadership of the Swiss Expedition to Everest of 1952.

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17/04/1896

Señor Wences, Spanish-American ventriloquist (died 1999)

Wenceslao Moreno Centeno, known professionally as Señor Wences, was a Spanish ventriloquist and comedian. His popularity grew with his frequent television appearances on CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1950s and 1960s. Later, he became popular with another generation of fans on The Muppet Show.

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17/04/1895

Robert Dean Frisbie, American soldier and author (died 1948)

Robert Dean Frisbie was an American writer of travel literature about Polynesia.

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17/04/1891

George Adamski, Polish-American ufologist and author (died 1965)

George Adamski was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of alien spacecraft, claimed to have met with friendly Nordic alien or "Space Brothers", and claimed to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets.

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17/04/1888

Herms Niel, German soldier, trombonist, and composer (died 1954)

Ferdinand Friedrich Hermann Nielebock, known as Herms Niel, was a German composer of military songs and marches.

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17/04/1885

Karen Blixen, Danish writer (died 1962)

Baroness Karen Christentze von Blixen-Finecke was a Danish author who wrote in Danish and English. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries; Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.

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17/04/1882

Artur Schnabel, Polish pianist and composer (died 1951)

Artur Schnabel was an Austrian-born classical pianist, composer and pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th century's most respected and important pianists, his playing displayed marked vitality, profundity and spirituality in the Austro-German classics, particularly the works of Beethoven and Schubert.

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17/04/1879

Henri Tauzin, French hurdler (died 1918)

Henri Alexis Tauzin was a French athlete who competed in the early twentieth century. He specialized in the 400 metres hurdles and won a silver medal in Athletics at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, his birthplace.

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17/04/1878

Emil Fuchs, German-American lawyer and businessman (died 1961)

Emil Edwin "Judge" Fuchs was a German-born American baseball owner and executive.

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Demetrios Petrokokkinos, Greek tennis player (died 1942)

Demetrios Stephen Petrokokkinos was a Greek tennis player. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.

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17/04/1877

Matsudaira Tsuneo, Japanese diplomat (died 1949)

Tsuneo Matsudaira was a Japanese diplomat and politician who served as the first President of the House of Councillors from 1947 to 1949. He previously served as Ambassador to the United States from 1924 to 1928, to Britain from 1929 to 1936, and Minister of the Imperial Household from 1936 to 1945.

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17/04/1875

Aleksander Tõnisson, Estonian general and politician, 5th Estonian Minister of War (died 1941)

Aleksander Tõnisson VR I/1 was an Estonian military commander during the Estonian War of Independence.

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17/04/1868

Zdeňka Wiedermannová-Motyčková, Moravian educator (died 1915)

Zdeňka Wiedermannová-Motyčková was a Moravian teacher, journal editor, and women's rights activist. Born into a family of progressive educators, she studied to become a teacher, graduating in 1886. Her Catholic education led her to more conservative values than her family's, but after teaching for several years, she began to recognize the disparities between women and men teachers, as well as those of their students. By 1898, she was publicly calling for equal pay for equal work and campaigning for equal education for boys and girls. In 1902, Wiedermannová founded and became chair of the Moravian Teachers Union, whose focus was to professionalize teaching standards. The following year, she opened a Girls' Academy in Brno, hoping later to include secondary education there. As the Austro-Hungarian Empire provided little funding for girls' education, she held lectures to provide for the operating costs of the academy. Finally in 1908, she successfully established the first girls' secondary school in Moravia.

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17/04/1866

Ernest Starling, English physiologist and academic (died 1927)

Ernest Henry Starling was a British physiologist who contributed many fundamental ideas to this subject. These ideas were important parts of the British contribution to physiology, which at that time led the world.

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17/04/1865

Ursula Ledóchowska, Polish-Austrian nun and saint, founded the Congregation of the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus (died 1939)

Julia Ledóchowska, USAHJ, in religion Maria Ursula of Jesus, was a Polish Catholic religious sister who founded the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus.

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17/04/1863

Augustus Edward Hough Love, English mathematician and theorist (died 1940)

Augustus Edward Hough Love FRS, often known as A. E. H. Love, was an English mathematical physicist famous for research on elasticity. He also studied wave propagation. He won the Adams Prize in 1911 for his work on the structure of the Earth in Some Problems of Geodynamics, in which he developed a mathematical model of surface waves known as Love waves. Love also contributed to the theory of tidal locking and introduced the parameters known as Love numbers, used in problems related to Earth tides, the tidal deformation of the solid Earth due to the gravitational attraction of the Moon and Sun.

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17/04/1852

Cap Anson, American baseball player and manager (died 1922)

Adrian Constantine Anson, nicknamed "Cap", "Pop", and "Baby" was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) first baseman. Including his time in the National Association (NA), he played a record 27 consecutive seasons. Anson was regarded as one of the greatest players of his era and one of the first superstars of the game. He spent most of his career with the Chicago White Stockings/Colts franchise, serving as the club's manager, first baseman and, later in his tenure, minority owner. He led the team to six National League pennants from 1876 to 1886. Anson was one of baseball's first great hitters, and probably the first to tally over 3,000 career hits. In addition to being a star player, he innovated managerial tactics such as signals between players and the rotation of pitchers.

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17/04/1849

William R. Day, American jurist and politician, 36th United States Secretary of State (died 1923)

William Rufus Day was an American diplomat and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1903 to 1922. Prior to his service on the Supreme Court, Day served as United States Secretary of State during the administration of President William McKinley. He also served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the United States Circuit Courts for the Sixth Circuit.

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17/04/1842

Maurice Rouvier, French businessman and politician, 53rd Prime Minister of France (died 1911)

Maurice Rouvier was a French statesman of the "Opportunist" faction, who twice served as the Prime Minister of France. He is best known for his financial policies and his unpopular policies designed to avoid a rupture with Germany.

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17/04/1837

J. P. Morgan, American banker and financier, founded J.P. Morgan & Co. (died 1913)

John Pierpont Morgan Sr. was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known as JPMorgan Chase & Co., he was the driving force behind a wave of industrial consolidations in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

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17/04/1833

Jean-Baptiste Accolay, Belgian violinist, composer, and conductor (died 1900)

Jean-Baptiste Accolay was a Belgian violin teacher, violinist, conductor, and composer of the romantic period. His best-known composition is his one-movement student concerto in A minor. It was written in 1868, originally for violin and orchestra.

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17/04/1820

Alexander Cartwright, American firefighter and (disputed) inventor of baseball (died 1892)

Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. was a founding member of the New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club in the 1840s. Although he was an inductee of the Baseball Hall of Fame and he was sometimes referred to as a "father of baseball", the importance of his role in the development of the game may have been exaggerated.

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17/04/1816

Thomas Hazlehurst, English architect and philanthropist (died 1876)

Thomas Hazlehurst was known nationally as "the Chapel Builder" and more locally as "the Prince of Methodism" or "the Prince of the Wesleyans". He was given these titles because of his generosity in paying wholly or largely for the building of some 12 chapels and three schools in the area of Runcorn, Widnes and the villages in north Cheshire. His father, also called Thomas, had founded a profitable soap and alkali manufacturing business, Hazlehurst & Sons, in Runcorn in 1816.

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17/04/1814

Josif Pančić, Serbian botanist and academic (died 1888)

Josif Pančić was a Serbian botanist, physician, professor and academic. Born in the First French Empire, in present-day Croatia, he earned his medical degree in Hungary before moving to Serbia. He extensively documented the flora of Serbia, and is credited with having classified many species of plants which were unknown to the botanical community at that time. Pančić is credited with discovering the Serbian spruce. He is regarded as the father of Serbian botany.

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17/04/1799

Eliza Acton, English food writer and poet (died 1859)

Eliza Acton was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. It also contains the first recipe for what Acton called "Christmas pudding"; the dish was normally called plum pudding, recipes for which had appeared previously, although Acton was the first to put the name and recipe together.

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17/04/1798

Étienne Bobillier, French mathematician and academic (died 1840)

Étienne Bobillier was a French mathematician.

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17/04/1794

Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, German botanist and explorer (died 1868)

Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius was a German botanist and explorer. Between 1817 and 1820, he travelled 10,000 km through Brazil while collecting botanical specimens. His most important work was a comprehensive flora of Brazil, Flora Brasiliensis, which he initiated in 1840 and was completed posthumously in 1906.

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17/04/1766

Collin McKinney, American surveyor, merchant, and politician (died 1861)

Collin McKinney was an American surveyor, merchant, politician, and lay preacher. He is best known as a figure in the Texas Revolution, as one of the five individuals who drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence and the oldest person to sign it.

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17/04/1756

Dheeran Chinnamalai, Indian commander (died 1805)

Dheeran Chinnamalai was a chieftain who ruled the odanilai region of the present day western Tamil Nadu. He fought against the British East India Company, was later captured and hanged by the British. He is also the protagonist of the "Kongu Mandala Udukkai Kadhaigal" novel written by Kaarmega Konar.

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17/04/1750

François de Neufchâteau, French academic and politician, French Minister of the Interior (died 1828)

Nicolas François de Neufchâteau was a French statesman, poet, and agricultural scientist.

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17/04/1741

Samuel Chase, American lawyer and jurist (died 1811)

Samuel Chase was a Founding Father of the United States, signer of the Continental Association and United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Maryland, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In 1804, Chase was impeached by the House of Representatives on grounds of letting his partisan leanings affect his court decisions, but was acquitted the following year by the Senate and remained in office. He is the only United States Supreme Court Justice to have ever been impeached.

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17/04/1734

Taksin, King of Thailand (died 1782)

Taksin the Great or the King of Thonburi was a Thai Chinese general who became the only King of Thonburi that ruled Siam from 1767 to 1782.

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17/04/1710

Henry Erskine, 10th Earl of Buchan, Scottish politician (died 1767)

Henry David Erskine, 10th Earl of Buchan,, styled Lord Auchterhouse until 1745, was a Scottish peer.

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17/04/1683

Johann David Heinichen, German composer and theorist (died 1729)

Johann David Heinichen was a German Baroque composer and music theorist who brought the musical genius of Venice to the court of Augustus II the Strong in Dresden. After he died, Heinichen's music attracted little attention for many years. As a music theorist, he is credited as one of the inventors of the circle of fifths.

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17/04/1635

Edward Stillingfleet, British theologian and scholar (died 1699)

Edward Stillingfleet was an English Christian theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as "the beauty of holiness" for his good looks in the pulpit, and was called by John Hough "the ablest man of his time".

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17/04/1620

Marguerite Bourgeoys, French-Canadian nun and saint, founded the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal (died 1700)

Marguerite Bourgeoys, CND, was a French religious sister and founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal in the colony of New France, now part of Québec, Canada.

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17/04/1598

Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Italian priest and astronomer (died 1671)

Giovanni Battista Riccioli was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star. He argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself because on a rotating Earth, the ground moves at different speeds at different times.

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17/04/1586

John Ford, English poet and playwright (died 1639)

John Ford was an English playwright and poet of the Jacobean and Caroline eras born in Ilsington in Devon, England. His plays deal mainly with the conflict between passion and conscience. Although remembered primarily as a playwright, he also wrote a number of poems on themes of love and morality.

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17/04/1573

Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria (died 1651)

Maximilian I, occasionally called the Great, a member of the House of Wittelsbach, ruled as Duke of Bavaria from 1597. His reign was marked by the Thirty Years' War during which he obtained the title of a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire at the 1623 Diet of Regensburg.

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17/04/1497

Pedro de Valdivia, Spanish conquistador, conquered northern Chile (died 1553)

Pedro Gutiérrez de Valdivia or Valdiva was a Spanish conquistador and the first Governor of Colonial Chile. After having served with the Spanish army in Italy and Flanders, he was sent to South America in 1535, where he served as a soldier under the Pizarro brothers in Peru, gradually rising in power.

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17/04/1455

Andrea Gritti, Doge of Venice (died 1538)

Andrea Gritti was the Doge of the Venetian Republic from 1523 to 1538, following a distinguished diplomatic and military career. He started out as a successful merchant in Constantinople and transitioned into the position of Bailo, a diplomatic role. He was arrested for espionage but was spared execution thanks to his good relationship with the Ottoman vizier. After being freed from imprisonment, he returned to Venice and began his political career. When the War of the League of Cambrai broke out, despite his lack of experience, he was given a leadership role in the Venetian military, where he excelled. After the war, he was elected doge, and he held that post until his death.

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17/04/1277

Michael IX Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor (died 1320)

Michael IX Palaiologos or Palaeologus was Byzantine emperor together with his father, Andronikos II Palaiologos, from 1294 until his death. Andronikos II and Michael IX ruled as equal co-rulers, both using the title autokrator.

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