Thursday, 29th January 2026

29th January in the Stars – Star Sign Aquarius

Today, the zodiac sign Aquarius celebrates its birthday.

Personality Profile

Personality Those born on January 29th blend classic Capricorn ambition with sharp intellect. Mercury's influence adds wit and curiosity that softens their otherwise serious demeanor. They appear reserved yet think analytically about everything.

Strengths & Weaknesses Their strengths: logical thinking, persistence, and articulate communication. Weaknesses include overthinking and emotional distance. They tend to intellectualize feelings rather than fully experience them.

Love In relationships, they're loyal and dependable but need time to trust. Intellectual connection matters as much as emotional intimacy. Partners appreciate their honesty, though sometimes find them emotionally cool.

Caree & Finance Professionally they thrive in analytical fields: science, finance, law. Discipline paired with communication skills makes them natural leaders. Financial stability is both important and achievable for them.

Health Their wellbeing suffers under stress and mental overload. Regular movement helps release tension. They must learn to switch off and prioritize rest genuinely.

That night, the moon was in its waning crescent phase.

Chinese year of the Snake (Wood).

Fun Facts About 29th January

Name Days in Your Language: Gilda, Goldie, Ophrah, Oprah, Sheldon, Shelley, Shelly, Shelton

Someone born on this day would be just 137 days old today — roughly 3,301 hours, 198,107 minutes, or 11,886,454 seconds spent on Earth so far.

It's the 29. day of the year. In 2026, 29th January falls on a Thursday.

There are 336 days still to come.

We’re currently in Week 5 — the year marches on.

Famous Birthdays on 29th January

On this day, 166 notable people were born on 29th January — spanning from 1455 to 2003. From world leaders to artists and scientists, discover who shares this birthday.

29/01/2003

Jarell Quansah, English footballer

Jarell Amorin Quansah is an English professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen and the England national team.

29/01/2001

Lee Dae-hwi, South Korean singer

Lee Dae-hwi, known mononymously as Daehwi, is a South Korean singer-songwriter, producer and television personality. He is a member of South Korean boy group AB6IX, and is known for his participation in the reality competition show Produce 101 Season 2, where he finished in third place overall and became a member of the boy group Wanna One. In addition to singing and writing songs for various artists, he guest hosted and then became the permanent host for the long-time running variety show M Countdown.

29/01/1997

Joel Eriksson Ek, Swedish ice hockey player

Joel Eriksson Ek is a Swedish professional ice hockey player who is a centre for the Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League (NHL).

Jack Roslovic, American ice hockey player

John Roslovic is an American professional ice hockey player who is a center for the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was selected in the first round, 25th overall by the Winnipeg Jets in the 2015 NHL entry draft.

29/01/1993

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, Japanese singer

Kiriko , known professionally as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, is a Japanese singer, model and tarento. Her public image is associated with Japan's kawaii and decora culture, centered in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. Kyary's music is produced by musician Yasutaka Nakata of electronic music duo Capsule.

29/01/1992

Markel Brown, American basketball player

DeMarious Markel Brown is an American professional basketball player for Pallacanestro Trieste of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A (LBA). He played college basketball for the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Maxi Kleber, German basketball player

Maximilian Kleber is a German professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He spent the first seven years of his career playing in Germany and Spain. In 2017, he joined the Dallas Mavericks, with whom he would play until being traded to the Lakers in 2025.

29/01/1989

Mohamed Abou Gabal, Egyptian footballer

Mohamed Qotb Abou Gabal Ali, also known as Gabaski, is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Egyptian Premier League club Modern Sport and the Egypt national team.

Kevin Shattenkirk, American ice hockey player

Kevin Michael Shattenkirk is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman. He played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Colorado Avalanche, St. Louis Blues, Washington Capitals, New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Anaheim Ducks and Boston Bruins. He was drafted in the first round, 14th overall, at the 2007 NHL entry draft by the Avalanche and made his NHL debut with them in 2010. Shattenkirk won the Stanley Cup as a member of the Lightning in 2020.

29/01/1988

Ayobami Adebayo, Nigerian author

Ayobami Adebayo is a Nigerian writer, whose debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature in 2017. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in the same year.

Jake Auchincloss, American politician, businessman, and Marine veteran

Jacob Daniel Auchincloss is an American politician, businessman, and Marine Corps officer serving as the U.S. representative for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a member of the Newton City Council from 2015 to 2021.

Hank Conger, American baseball player

Hyun Choi "Hank" Conger is an American former professional baseball catcher who currently serves as the bullpen coach for the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball (MLB). Conger was selected in the first round of the 2006 MLB draft by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He played in MLB for the Angels, Houston Astros, and Tampa Bay Rays from 2010 to 2016. Conger coached for the Lotte Giants of the KBO League from 2020 to 2021, and the Minnesota Twins from 2022 to 2025.

Shay Logan, English footballer

Shaleum Narval Logan is an English former professional footballer who played as a right-back.

29/01/1987

José Abreu, Cuban baseball player

José Dariel Abreu Correa is a Cuban-born professional baseball first baseman who is a free agent. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros.

Alex Avila, American baseball player

Alexander Thomas Avila is an American former professional baseball catcher. Between 2009 and 2021 he played for the Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, Arizona Diamondbacks and Minnesota Twins and Washington Nationals. Avila is the son of former Tigers general manager Al Avila.

Jessica Burkhart, American author

Jessica Ashley, better known by her pen name Jessica Burkhart, is an American author. Burkhart works primarily in the tween fiction genre, and is the writer of the Canterwood Crest series of novels.

Vladimír Mihálik, Slovak ice hockey player

Vladimír Mihálik is a Slovak professional ice hockey defenceman who currently playing for HC Prešov of the Slovak 1. Liga.

29/01/1986

Chris Bourque, American ice hockey player

Christopher Ray Bourque is an American former professional ice hockey forward. Originally drafted by the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League (NHL), he has played 51 NHL games for the Capitals, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Boston Bruins. Bourque currently serves as a free agent scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Thomas Greiss, German ice hockey player

Thomas Greiss is a German professional ice hockey goaltender who currently plays for Löwen Frankfurt of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga. Selected 94th overall in the third round of the 2004 NHL entry draft by the San Jose Sharks, he played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Sharks, Phoenix Coyotes, Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Islanders, Detroit Red Wings and St. Louis Blues.

Jair Jurrjens, Curaçaoan baseball player

Jair Francoise Jurrjens is a Dutch-Curaçaoan professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Detroit Tigers, Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, and Colorado Rockies. He then pitched in the Chinese Professional Baseball League, American minor league and independent leagues, and the Mexican League. He pitched for the Netherlands in international competition, including three World Baseball Classic tournaments.

29/01/1985

Marc Gasol, Spanish basketball player

Marc Gasol Sáez is a Spanish former professional basketball player who is the president of Bàsquet Girona of the Liga ACB. The center is a two-time All-NBA Team member and a three-time NBA All-Star. He was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year with the Memphis Grizzlies in 2013, and won an NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019.

Isabel Lucas, Australian actress and model

Isabel Lucas is an Australian actress, environmentalist and model. She is best known for her roles in Home and Away (2003–06), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Daybreakers (2009), The Waiting City (2009), The Pacific (2010), Immortals (2011), A Heartbeat Away (2011), Red Dawn (2012), The Loft (2014), The Water Diviner (2014), Knight of Cups (2015), and That's Not Me (2017). In 2015, she acted beside Nick Jonas in the thriller film Careful What You Wish For. In 2017, Lucas joined the American television series MacGyver. In 2018, she appeared in In Like Flynn which was a success in Australia, New Zealand, and Britain, and the same year played Brooke in Chasing Comets.

Rag'n'Bone Man, English singer-songwriter

Rory Charles Graham, known professionally as Rag'n'Bone Man, is an English singer. He is known for his baritone voice. His first hit single, "Human", was released in 2016, and his first album Human was released in 2017. The album became the fastest selling debut album by a male in the UK for the decade and has since achieved 4× Platinum certification. At the 2017 Brit Awards, he was named British Breakthrough Act and received the Critics' Choice Award. He also received a further Brit Award for Best British Single with the title track, in 2018.

29/01/1983

Tim Gleason, American ice hockey player

Timothy Patrick Gleason is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman and current assistant coach to the Carolina Hurricanes. Drafted by the Ottawa Senators in the first round, 23rd overall, at the 2001 NHL entry draft, Gleason played in the NHL for the Los Angeles Kings, Carolina Hurricanes, Toronto Maple Leafs and the Washington Capitals.

29/01/1982

Adam Lambert, American singer, songwriter and actor

Adam Mitchel Lambert is an American singer, songwriter and actor. He is known for his dynamic vocal performances that combine his theatrical training with modern and classic genres. Lambert rose to fame in 2009 after finishing as runner-up on the eighth season of American Idol. Later that year, he released his debut album For Your Entertainment, which debuted at number three on the U.S. Billboard 200. The album spawned several singles, including "Whataya Want from Me", for which he received a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. He is also known for replacing Paul Rodgers for a reunion project known as Queen + Adam Lambert, which features the remaining members of rock band Queen.

29/01/1981

Tenoch Huerta, Mexican actor

José Tenoch Huerta Mejía is a Mexican actor and activist. He has appeared in a number of movies in Latin America and Spain, and has had a starring role in the crime drama Narcos: Mexico (2018–2020). He has since portrayed Namor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and will reprise his role in the upcoming film Avengers: Doomsday (2026).

Jonny Lang, American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Jon Gordon Langseth Jr., known as Jonny Lang, is an American blues, gospel, rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He has recorded five albums that have charted on the top 50 of the Billboard 200 chart and won a Grammy Award for his 2006 album Turn Around.

29/01/1980

Jason James Richter, American actor and musician

Jason James Richter is an American actor, musician, producer, and director.

29/01/1979

Andrew Keegan, American actor

Andrew Keegan is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor, making his film debut with a supporting role in Camp Nowhere (1994). Keegan later received recognition for his main role as Jack Kelly on season 2 of the ABC sitcom Thunder Alley (1994–1995).

Christina Koch, American engineer and astronaut

Christina Hammock Koch is an American engineer and NASA astronaut. On her mission to the International Space Station in 2019–20 she was part of the first all‑female spacewalk and set the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman. On the Artemis II lunar flyby mission in April 2026, which set the record for human distance from Earth, Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit and to travel around the Moon.

29/01/1977

Justin Hartley, American actor

Justin Scott Hartley is an American actor, television producer, and director. He has played Fox Crane on the NBC daytime soap opera Passions (2002–2006), Oliver Queen on the WB/CW television series Smallville (2006–2011), and Adam Newman on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless (2014–2016) which earned him a Daytime Emmy nomination. He also had recurring roles in the third season of the television drama series Revenge (2013–2014) and in the final three seasons of the drama series Mistresses (2014–2016).

Sam Jaeger, American actor and screenwriter

Samuel Heath Jaeger is an American actor and screenwriter.

29/01/1975

Sharif Atkins, American actor

Sharif Atkins is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Dr. Michael Gallant on ER (2001–2006), FBI Agent Clinton Jones on White Collar (2009–2014), and Captain Norman 'Boom Boom' Gates on NCIS: Hawaiʻi (2021–2024).

Sara Gilbert, American actress, producer, and talk show host

Sara Gilbert is an American actress best known for portraying Darlene Conner on Roseanne and its sequel, The Conners (2018–25), a role for which she received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. She created and was a co-host of the CBS daytime talk show The Talk, and had the recurring role of Leslie Winkle on CBS's The Big Bang Theory.

Kelly Packard, American actress

Kelly Chemane Packard is an American actress and television personality. She is best known for her roles as Tiffani Smith on California Dreams and April Giminski on Baywatch, as well as co-hosting Ripley's Believe It or Not!. She also co-hosted the late segment of GSN Live from September 15, 2008 until November 28, 2008.

29/01/1973

Megan McArdle, American journalist

Megan Jennifer McArdle is an American columnist and blogger based in Washington, D.C. She writes for The Washington Post, mostly about economics, finance, and government policy.

Jason Schmidt, American baseball player

Jason David Schmidt is an American former Major League Baseball pitcher. In his career, he has played for the Los Angeles Dodgers (2007–2009), San Francisco Giants (2001–06), Pittsburgh Pirates (1996–2001) and Atlanta Braves (1995–96), by whom he had been drafted in the eighth round, 206th overall, of the 1991 draft.

29/01/1972

Brian Wood, American writer, illustrator and graphic designer

Brian Wood is an American writer, illustrator, and graphic designer, known for his work in comic books, television and video games. His noted comic book work includes the series DMZ, Demo, Northlanders, The Massive, Marvel Comics' The X-Men, and Star Wars. His web series work includes adaptations of his own short stories from the comics series The Massive and Conan the Barbarian for Geek & Sundry and YouTube, and his video game work includes three years on staff at Rockstar Games, co-writing 1979 Revolution: Black Friday and story contributions to Aliens: Fireteam Elite. His television work includes pilot scripts for AMC, Amazon Studios, and Sonar Entertainment. He is a contributing writer on HBO Max's DMZ adaptation of his own work.

29/01/1971

Clare Balding, English broadcaster, journalist and author

Clare Victoria Balding is an English broadcast journalist and author. She currently presents programmes for BBC Sport and Channel 4, and previously for BT Sport. She also formerly presented Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2. Balding was appointed as the 30th president of the Rugby Football League, serving a two-year term until December 2022.

29/01/1970

Heather Graham, American actress

Heather Joan Graham is an American actress. The accolades she has received include nominations for two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and an Independent Spirit Award.

Jörg Hoffmann, German swimmer

Jörg Hoffmann is a retired freestyle swimmer from Germany and former World record holder. He was also multiple World and European champion, in both Long and Short Course Championships.

Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Indian colonel and politician

Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore is an Indian politician, Olympic medallist in shooting and retired colonel in the Indian Army. He is serving as a cabinet minister at the Industry & Commerce, Youth Affairs & Sports Department in the Government of Rajasthan since December 2023. Rathore was a Member of Parliament in the Lok Sabha from Jaipur Rural seat since 2014 till 2023.

Paul Ryan, American politician, 62nd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Paul Davis Ryan is an American politician who served as the 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. He prevously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2019, representing Wisconsin's 1st congressional district. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's vice presidential nominee in the 2012 presidential election, running alongside presidential nominee Mitt Romney; they lost to incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

29/01/1969

Sam Trammell, American actor

Sam Trammell is an American actor, best known for his role as Sam Merlotte on the HBO fantasy drama series True Blood. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Miller in Ah, Wilderness!

29/01/1968

Edward Burns, American actor, director, writer, and producer

Edward Fitzgerald Burns is an American actor and filmmaker. He rose to fame with The Brothers McMullen (1995), his low-budget independent film that became successful worldwide. His other film appearances include Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Holiday (2006), 27 Dresses (2008), Man on a Ledge (2012), Friends with Kids (2012), and Alex Cross (2012). Burns directed films such as She's the One (1996), Sidewalks of New York (2001), and The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (2012). On television, he appeared as Bugsy Siegel in the TNT crime drama series Mob City and as Terry Muldoon in TNT's Public Morals.

Monte Cook, American game designer and writer

Monte Cook is an American professional tabletop role-playing game designer and writer, best known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons.

Aeneas Williams, American football player

Aeneas Demetrius Williams is an American former professional football player who was a cornerback and safety in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons. He played college football for the Southern Jaguars and was selected in the third round of the 1991 NFL draft by the Phoenix Cardinals, where he spent 10 seasons. During his final four seasons, he was a member of the St. Louis Rams. Williams received eight Pro Bowl selections and three first-team All-Pro honors, as well as being on the second NFL 1990s All-Decade Team. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014.

29/01/1967

Sean Burke, Canadian ice hockey player and coach

Sean Burke is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender and the current director of goaltending for the Vegas Golden Knights, with whom he won the Stanley Cup with in 2023. He played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the New Jersey Devils, Hartford Whalers, Carolina Hurricanes, Vancouver Canucks, Philadelphia Flyers, Florida Panthers, Phoenix Coyotes, Tampa Bay Lightning and Los Angeles Kings between 1988 and 2007. He was born in Windsor, Ontario, but grew up in Toronto, Ontario.

Stacey King, American basketball player, coach, and sportscaster

Ronald Stacey King is an American sports announcer and former National Basketball Association (NBA) center who won three consecutive championships with the Chicago Bulls from 1991 to 1993 while playing next to Michael Jordan. King is the color commentator for Chicago Bulls television broadcasts.

29/01/1965

David Agus, American physician and author

David B. Agus is an American physician and author specializing in advanced cancer. He serves as professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering, as well as the founding director and CEO of the Ellison Medical Institute. He is also the cofounder of several personalized medicine companies and a contributor to CBS News on health topics.

Dominik Hašek, Czech ice hockey player

Dominik Hašek is a Czech former ice hockey player who was a goaltender for 16 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL), mostly for the Buffalo Sabres. Widely considered to be the greatest goaltender in history, Hašek also played for the Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and Ottawa Senators in his NHL career before finishing his career in Europe. While in Buffalo, he became one of the league's finest goaltenders, earning him the nickname "The Dominator". His strong play has been credited with establishing European goaltenders in a league previously dominated by North Americans. He is a two-time Stanley Cup champion, both with the Red Wings, winning his first as the starting goaltender in his first season with the team in 2002, and his second in 2008 as the team's backup in his last NHL season.

29/01/1964

Roddy Frame, Scottish singer-songwriter and musician

Roddy Frame is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. He was the founder of the 1980s new wave band Aztec Camera and has undertaken a solo career since the group's dissolution. In November 2013, journalist Brian Donaldson described Frame as: "Aztec Camera wunderkind-turned-elder statesman of intelligent, melodic, wistful Scotpop."

Andre Reed, American football player

Andre Darnell Reed is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver for 16 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), primarily with the Buffalo Bills. He played college football for the Kutztown Golden Bears and was selected by the Bills in the fourth round of the 1985 NFL draft with the 86th overall selection. Following 15 seasons with the Bills, with whom he earned seven Pro Bowl selections, Reed spent his final season as a member of the Washington Redskins in 2000.

29/01/1962

Gauri Lankesh, Indian journalist and activist (died 2017)

Gauri Lankesh was an Indian activist and journalist from Bangalore, Karnataka. She worked as an editor in Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly started by her father P. Lankesh, and ran her own weekly called Gauri Lankesh Patrike. She was murdered outside her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on 5 September 2017. At the time of her death, Gauri was known for being a critic of right-wing Hindu extremism. She was honoured with the Anna Politkovskaya Award for speaking against right-wing Hindu extremism, campaigning for women's rights and opposing caste-based discrimination.

Lee Terry, American politician and lawyer

Lee Raymond Terry is an American former politician and senior law firm adviser. From 1999 to 2015, he served eight terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Nebraska's 2nd congressional district as a member of the Republican Party. Since 2015, Terry reactivated his law license and is a senior adviser to the government relations and public group for the international law firm Kelley Drye & Warren.

Nicholas Turturro, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter

Nicholas Turturro Jr. is an American actor. He is known as one of the frequent collaborators of Spike Lee, and his roles as Detective James Martinez on NYPD Blue and Sergeant Anthony Renzulli on Blue Bloods. He was nominated twice for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his work on NYPD Blue. He is also a Screen Actors Guild Award winner and an Independent Spirit Award nominee.

29/01/1961

Strive Masiyiwa, Zimbabwean businessman and philanthropist

Strive Masiyiwa is a London-based Zimbabwean billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and executive chairman of international technology groups Econet Global and Cassava Technologies. As of 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth at US$2.2 billion.

29/01/1960

Cho-liang Lin, Taiwanese-American musician

Cho-Liang Lin is a Taiwanese-American violinist who is renowned for his appearances as a soloist with major orchestras. Musical America named him its "Instrumentalist of the Year" in 2000. He founded the Taipei International Music Festival in 1997, the largest classical music festival in the history of Taiwan, performing to an indoor audience of over 53,000 and the Taipei Music Academy & Festival in 2019, a summer music festival.

Greg Louganis, American diver and author

Gregory Efthimios Louganis is an American Olympic diver who won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics on the springboard and platform. He is the only man and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games. He has been called both "the greatest American diver" and "probably the greatest diver in history" as of 2015.

Steve Sax, American baseball player

Stephen Louis Sax is an American former Major League Baseball player and coach. He played as a second baseman in Major League Baseball from 1981 to 1994, celebrated as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers with whom he won world championships in 1981 and 1988. A five-time All-Star, Sax was named the National League Rookie of the Year in 1982 and won the Silver Slugger Award in 1986. He also played for the New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, and the Oakland Athletics. Sax hosts for SiriusXM's MLB Network Radio.

Gia Carangi, American supermodel (died 1986)

Gia Marie Carangi was an American supermodel, considered by some to be the first supermodel. In 2023, Harper's Bazaar ranked her 15th among the greatest supermodels in the 1980s. She was featured on the cover of numerous magazines, including multiple editions of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, and appeared in advertising campaigns for fashion houses including Armani, Dior, Versace and Yves Saint Laurent.

29/01/1958

Judy Norton, American actress and theater director

Judy Norton is an American actress and theater director who is best known for her role as Mary Ellen Walton on The Waltons television series and subsequent Waltons TV movies.

29/01/1957

Diane Delano, American actress (died 2024)

Diane Delano was an American character actress. She was known for her numerous roles in films and television, such as Sergeant Barbara Semanski on the CBS television series Northern Exposure and Roberta "Bobbi" Glass on The WB television series Popular.

Ron Franscell, American author and journalist

Ron Franscell is an American journalist, novelist and true crime writer best known for the true account The Darkest Night about the 1973 crimes against two childhood friends in the small community where Franscell grew up.

29/01/1956

Irlene Mandrell, American musician, actress, and model

Ellen Irlene Mandrell is an American musician. She is the younger sister of country singers Barbara and Louise Mandrell.

Amii Stewart, American singer and dancer

Amy Paulette "Amii" Stewart is an American disco and soul singer who came to prominence with her 1979 U.S. Billboard number 1 hit cover of Eddie Floyd's song "Knock on Wood", often considered a classic of the disco genre. Other singles include "Light My Fire" (1979) and "Friends" (1985). Stewart is the stepsister of actress-singer Miquel Brown and aunt to Brown's daughter, singer Sinitta.

29/01/1955

Greg Ballard, American basketball player and coach (died 2016)

Gregory Ballard was an American professional basketball player and NBA assistant coach. A collegiate All-American at Oregon, Ballard averaged 12.4 points and 6.1 rebounds over an eleven-season NBA career with the Washington Bullets, Golden State Warriors and briefly, the Seattle SuperSonics.

John Tate, American boxer (died 1998)

John Tate was an American professional boxer and held the WBA heavyweight championship from 1979 to 1980. As an amateur he won a bronze medal in the heavyweight division at the 1976 Summer Olympics. He scored notable victories over future Heavyweight Champion Gerrie Coetzee as well as beating number three ranked heavyweight Kallie Knoetze in 1979 and knocking out contender Bernardo Mercado and fringe contender Duane Bobick.

29/01/1954

Terry Kinney, American actor and director

Terry Kinney is an American actor, theater director, and founding member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, with Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry. Kinney is best known for his role as Tim McManus on HBO's prison drama Oz.

Oprah Winfrey, American talk show host, actress, and producer, founded Harpo Productions

Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Globally, she is the richest Black woman and the wealthiest female celebrity. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only Black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

29/01/1953

Teresa Teng, Taiwanese singer (died 1995)

Teng Li-Chun, also known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, television personality, musician, and philanthropist. Widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures in the Chinese-speaking world of the 20th century, she is considered to be one of the most successful and influential Asian musicians of all time. Her contributions to Chinese pop has given birth to the phrase, "Wherever there are Chinese-speaking people, there is music of Teresa Teng." A polyglot, Teng's music has transcended geographical, linguistic, and political boundaries across Asia for several decades.

Charlie Wilson, American singer-songwriter and producer

Charles Kent Wilson, also known as Uncle Charlie, is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer who served as lead vocalist for the Gap Band from its 1967 formation until its 2010 disbandment. As a solo act, Wilson has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards and 11 NAACP Image Awards, received a 2009 Soul Train Icon Award, and was a recipient of a BMI Icon Award in 2005. In 2009 and 2020, he was named Billboard magazine's No. 1 Adult R&B Artist, and his song "There Goes My Baby" was named the No. 1 Urban Adult Song for 2009 in Billboard.

29/01/1952

Pete Geren, American attorney and politician

Preston Murdoch "Pete" Geren III is an American attorney and politician who served as the 20th United States Secretary of the Army from July 16, 2007, to September 16, 2009. He is a Democratic former member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas's 12th congressional district. He is the president of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas and is a member of the board of trustees of the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia.

Tim Healy, British actor

Timothy Malcolm Healy is an English actor. He played Dennis Patterson in the comedy-drama series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1983–2004), Lesley Conroy in the sitcom Benidorm (2009–2018), and Gastric in the comedy series Still Open All Hours (2014–2019).

29/01/1950

Ann Jillian, American actress and singer

Ann Jillian is an American former actress and singer whose career began as a child actress in 1960. She is best known for her role as the sultry waitress Cassie Cranston on the 1980s sitcom It's a Living.

Miklós Vámos, Hungarian writer, novelist, screenwriter and translator

Miklós Vámos originally Tibor Vámos, is a Hungarian writer, novelist, screenwriter, translator and talkshow host, who has published 33 books.

29/01/1949

Doris Davenport, American poet and teacher

Doris Davenport, sometimes styled as doris davenport, was an American writer, educator, and literary and performance poet. She wrote an essay featured in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color entitled "The Pathology of Racism: A Conversation with Third World Wimmin." She also focuses her efforts on poetry and education.

Tommy Ramone, Hungarian-American drummer and producer (died 2014)

Thomas Erdelyi, known professionally as Tommy Ramone, was a Hungarian-American musician. He was the drummer for the influential punk rock band the Ramones from its debut in 1974 to 1978, later serving as its producer, and was the longest-surviving original member of the Ramones.

29/01/1948

Raymond Keene, English chess player and author

Raymond Dennis Keene is an English chess grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author. He won the British Chess Championship in 1971, and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974, at the Nice Olympiad. In 1976, he became the second Englishman to be awarded the Grandmaster title, and he was the second British chess player to beat an incumbent World Chess Champion. He represented England in eight Chess Olympiads.

Cristina Saralegui, Cuban-American journalist, actress and talk show host

Cristina María Saralegui de Ávila is a Cuban-born American journalist, television personality, actress and talk show host of the Spanish-language eponymous show, El show de Cristina. Before her television career, she worked for ten years as editor-in-chief of the Spanish-language version of Cosmopolitan magazine distributed throughout Latin America.

Marc Singer, Canadian-American actor

Marc Singer is a Canadian-American actor best known for his roles in the Beastmaster film series, as Mike Donovan in the original 1980s TV series V, and as Matt Cantrell in 1983 Dallas.

29/01/1947

Linda B. Buck, American biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

Linda Brown Buck is an American biologist best known for her work on the olfactory system. She was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors. She is currently on the faculty of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

David Byron, English singer-songwriter (died 1985)

David Garrick, better known by his stage name David Byron, was a British singer who was best known in the early 1970s as the original lead vocalist of the rock band Uriah Heep and their hit singles "Easy Livin'" (1972) and "Stealin'" (1973). Byron possessed a powerful operatic voice and exuded a flamboyant stage presence.

Marián Varga, Slovak organist and composer (died 2017)

Marián Varga was a Slovak musician, composer and organist. In the context of Czech-Slovak musical culture of the second half of the 20th century, Varga was a significant figure in the field of autonomous, modern classical music, rock music, as well as improvised or experimental music. In 1967, he became a member of the band Prúdy, with whom he recorded and co-wrote the legendary album Zvoňte, Zvonky. Influenced by Brian Auger and Keith Emerson, Marián Varga founded the progressive rock band Collegium Musicum in 1969, whose albums Konvergencie, Zelená pošta, Live and Divergencie represent the main pillars of Czech-Slovak rock music. He died on 9 August 2017 after several health problems, including cancer and lung disease.

29/01/1946

Geater Davis, American singer-songwriter (died 1984)

Vernon "Geater" Davis was an American soul singer and songwriter. He has been described as "one of the South's great lost soul singers, an impassioned stylist whose voice was a combination of sweetness and sandpaper grit."

Bettye LaVette, American singer-songwriter

Bettye LaVette is an American soul singer who made her first record at sixteen, but achieved only intermittent fame until 2005, when her album I've Got My Own Hell to Raise was released to widespread critical acclaim, and was named on many critics' "Best of 2005" lists. Her next album, The Scene of the Crime, debuted at number one on Billboard's Top Blues Albums chart and was nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the 2008 Grammy Awards. She received the Legacy of Americana Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 Americana Music Honors & Awards.

29/01/1945

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Malian academic and politician, Prime Minister of Mali (died 2022)

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, often known by his initials IBK, was a Malian politician who served as the president of Mali from September 2013 to August 2020, when he was forced to resign in the 2020 Malian coup d'état. He served as Mali's prime minister from February 1994 to February 2000 and as president of the National Assembly of Mali from September 2002 to September 2007.

Tom Selleck, American actor and businessman

Thomas William Selleck is an American actor. His breakout role was playing private investigator Thomas Magnum in the television series Magnum, P.I. (1980–88), for which he received five Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning in 1984. From 2010–24, he was NYC Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in Blue Bloods. From 2005–15, he was troubled small-town police chief Jesse Stone in nine television films based on the Robert B. Parker novels.

29/01/1943

Tony Blackburn, English radio and television host

Antony Kenneth Blackburn is an English disc jockey, singer and television presenter, whose career spans over 60 years.

Pat Quinn, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (died 2014)

John Brian Patrick Quinn was a Canadian ice hockey player, head coach, and executive. Known by the nickname "The Big Irishman", he coached for the National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers, Los Angeles Kings, Vancouver Canucks, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Edmonton Oilers, reaching the Stanley Cup Final twice, with the Flyers in 1980 and the Canucks in 1994. Internationally, Quinn coached Team Canada to gold medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics, 2008 IIHF World U18 Championships and 2009 World Junior Championship, as well as World Cup championship in 2004.

Mark Wynter, English singer and actor

Terence Sidney Lewis, professionally known as Mark Wynter, is an English singer and actor, who had four Top 20 singles in the 1960s, including "Venus in Blue Jeans" and "Go Away Little Girl". He enjoyed a lengthy career from 1960 to 1968 as a pop singer and teen idol, and developed later into an actor in film, musicals and plays.

29/01/1942

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, Cuban military officer, legislator and cosmonaut

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez is a Cuban military officer, legislator, and former cosmonaut. In 1980, as a member of the crew of Soyuz 38, he became the first Cuban citizen, the first Latin American, the first person of African descent, and the first person from a country in the Western Hemisphere other than the United States to travel into Earth orbit.

29/01/1941

Robin Morgan, American actress, journalist, and author

Robin Morgan is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the international feminist movement. Her 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful was cited by the New York Public Library as "One of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century". She has written more than 20 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and was editor of Ms. magazine.

Gamini Jayawickrama Perera, Sri Lankan politician (died 2024)

Mallawa Arachchige Gamini Jayawickrama Perera was a Sri Lankan politician. He was a United National Party member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka for the Kurunegala District between 1994 and 2020, and had previously represented Katugampola in the National State Assembly from 1977 to 1989. Perera served many cabinet positions in various Sri Lankan governments, including being the Minister of Buddha Sasana, Minister of Wayamba Development, Minister of Sustainable Development and Wildlife, Minister of Food Security and the Minister of Irrigation and Water Management. Perera also briefly left national politics to become the Chief Minister of the North Western Province and serve in the North Western Provincial Council. Perera helped represent Sri Lanka's interests internationally as the chairman of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, a position he was elected to in April 2016. Furthermore, he held the position of chairman of the United National Party during a significant period of his career.

29/01/1940

Justino Díaz, Puerto Rican opera singer

Justino Díaz is a Puerto Rican operatic bass-baritone. In 1963, Díaz won an annual contest held at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, becoming the first Puerto Rican to obtain such an honor and as a consequence, made his Metropolitan debut in October 1963 in Verdi's Rigoletto as Monterone.

Katharine Ross, American actress and author

Katharine Juliet Ross is an American retired actress. Her accolades include an Academy Award nomination, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.

29/01/1939

Germaine Greer, Australian journalist and author

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century.

Jeanne Lee, American jazz singer, poet and composer (died 2000)

Jeanne Lee was an American jazz singer, poet and composer. Best known for a wide range of vocal styles she mastered, Lee collaborated with numerous distinguished composers and performers who included Gunter Hampel, Andrew Cyrille, Ran Blake, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp, Mal Waldron, Mark Whitecage and many others.

29/01/1937

Jeff Clyne, British musician (died 2009)

Jeffrey Ovid Clyne was a British jazz bassist.

29/01/1936

James Jamerson, American bass player (died 1983)

James Lee Jamerson was an American bassist. He was the uncredited bassist on most of the Motown Records hits in the 1960s and early 1970s, and is now regarded as one of the greatest and most influential bass players in modern music history. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. As a session musician he played on twenty-three Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits, as well as fifty-six R&B number-one hits.

Veturi, Indian poet and songwriter (died 2010)

Veturi Sundararama Murthy, known mononymously by his surname Veturi, was an Indian poet and lyricist who is known for his works in Telugu literature and cinema. Veturi is a recipient of the National Film Award, various Nandi Awards, Filmfare Awards, and other state honors. His career in Telugu cinema spanned more than four decades.

29/01/1934

Alan Cowley, British chemist (died 2020)

Alan Herbert Cowley FRS was a British chemist, and Robert A. Welch Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a 1976 Guggenheim Fellow.

29/01/1933

Sacha Distel, French singer and guitarist (died 2004)

Alexandre "Sacha" Distel was a French musician and singer who had hits with a cover version of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" in 1970, which reached No. 10 on the UK charts, "Scoubidou", and "The Good Life". He was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur in 1997. He had also scored a hit as a songwriter when Tony Bennett recorded "The Good Life" in 1963. It peaked at No. 18 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart and reached the top 10 of the Easy Listening chart.

29/01/1932

Raman Subba Row, English cricketer and referee (died 2024)

Raman Subba Row was a 20th-century Anglo-Indian cricket player and administrator, who played Test cricket for England and captained Northamptonshire CCC (1958–61), later serving as Chairman of the Test and County Cricket Board (1985–90).

29/01/1931

Leslie Bricusse, English playwright and composer (died 2021)

Leslie Charles Bricusse was a British composer, lyricist, and playwright who worked on theatre musicals and wrote theme music for films. He was best known for writing the music and lyrics for the films Doctor Dolittle; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Scrooge; Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory; Tom and Jerry: The Movie; the titular James Bond film songs "Goldfinger" and "You Only Live Twice"; "Can You Read My Mind? " from Superman; and "Le Jazz Hot!" from Victor/Victoria.

Ferenc Mádl, Hungarian academic and politician, 2nd President of Hungary (died 2011)

Ferenc Mádl was a Hungarian legal scholar, professor, and politician who served as President of Hungary from 2000 until 2005. Prior to that he had been minister without portfolio from 1990 to 1993 then Minister of Education from 1993 to 1994 in the conservative cabinets of József Antall and Péter Boross.

29/01/1929

Elio Petri, Italian director and screenwriter (died 1982)

Eraclio Petri, commonly known as Elio Petri, was an Italian film and theatre director, screenwriter and film critic. The Museum of Modern Art described him as "one of the preeminent political and social satirists of 1960s and early 1970s Italian cinema". His film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, and his subsequent film The Working Class Goes to Heaven received the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

29/01/1928

Joseph Kruskal, American mathematician and computer scientist (died 2010)

Joseph Bernard Kruskal, Jr. was an American mathematician.

Lee Shau-kee, Hong Kong real estate billionaire (died 2025)

Lee Shau-kee was a Hong Kong business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He was a real estate tycoon and majority owner of Henderson Land Development, a property conglomerate with interests in property, hotels, restaurants and internet services in Hong Kong and other countries. In 2019, aged 91, Lee stepped down as chairman and managing director of the company, in favour of two of his sons, Peter and Martin Lee. He retained a role as an executive director.

29/01/1927

Edward Abbey, American environmentalist and author (died 1989)

Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire.

29/01/1926

Abdus Salam, Pakistani-British physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1996)

Mohammad Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current". He was the first Pakistani, first Muslim scientist, and second person from any Muslim country to win a Nobel Prize.

29/01/1923

Paddy Chayefsky, American author and screenwriter (died 1981)

Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky was an American playwright and screenwriter. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for writing both Adapted and Original screenplays.

Eddie Taylor, American electric blues guitarist and singer (died 1985)

Eddie Taylor was an American electric blues guitarist and singer.

29/01/1920

Paul Gayten, American R&B pianist, songwriter, producer, and record company executive (died 1991)

Paul Leon Gayten was an American R&B pianist, songwriter, producer, and record company executive.

29/01/1918

John Forsythe, American actor (died 2010)

John Lincoln Forsythe was an American stage, film/television actor, producer, narrator, and drama teacher whose career spanned six decades. He also appeared as a guest on several talk and variety shows and as a panelist on numerous game shows.

29/01/1917

John Raitt, American actor and singer (died 2005)

John Emmet Raitt was an American actor and singer best known for his performances in musical theatre. His most notable role was Billy Bigelow in the original Broadway cast of Carousel.

29/01/1916

Roy Markham, British plant virologist (died 1979)

Roy Markham FRS was a British plant virologist who served as the fifth director of the John Innes Centre from 1967 until his death in 1979.

29/01/1915

Bill Peet, American author and illustrator (died 2002)

William Bartlett Peet was an American children's book illustrator and a story writer and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios.

John Serry Sr., Italian-American concert accordionist and composer (died 2003)

John Serry was an American concert accordionist, arranger, composer, organist, and educator. He performed on the CBS Radio and Television networks and contributed to Voice of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives during the Golden Age of Radio. He also concertized on the accordion as a member of several orchestras and jazz ensembles for nearly forty years between the 1930s and 1960s.

29/01/1913

Victor Mature, American actor (died 1999)

Victor John Mature was an American stage, film, and television actor who was a leading man in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. His best known film roles include One Million B.C. (1940), My Darling Clementine (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Robe (1953). He also appeared in many musicals opposite such stars as Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable.

29/01/1905

Barnett Newman, American painter and etcher (died 1970)

Barnett Newman was an American painter. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense of place that viewers experience with art and incorporate the simplest forms to emphasize this feeling.

29/01/1901

Allen B. DuMont, American engineer and broadcaster, founded the DuMont Television Network (died 1965)

Allen Balcom DuMont was an American electronics engineer, scientist, and inventor who improved the cathode-ray tube in 1931 for use in television receivers. Seven years later he manufactured and sold the first commercially practical television set to the public. In June 1938, his Model 180 television receiver was the first all-electronic television set sold to the public, a few months prior to RCA's first TV set in April 1939. In 1946, DuMont founded the first television network to be licensed, the DuMont Television Network, by linking station WABD in New York City to station W3XWT, which later became WTTG, in Washington, D.C. WTTG was named for Dr. Thomas T. Goldsmith, DuMont's Vice President of Research, and his best friend. DuMont's successes in television picture tubes, TV sets and components and his involvement in commercial TV broadcasting made him the first millionaire in the business.

E. P. Taylor, Canadian businessman and horse breeder (died 1989)

Edward Plunket Taylor, CMG, was a Canadian business tycoon, investor, and philanthropist. He was a famous breeder of Thoroughbred race horses, and a major force behind the evolution of the Canadian horse-racing industry. Known to his friends as "Eddie," he is all but universally recorded as "E. P. Taylor".

29/01/1895

Muna Lee, American poet and author (died 1965)

Muna Lee was an American poet, author, and activist, who first became known and widely published as a lyric poet in the early 20th century. She also was known for her writings that promoted Pan-Americanism and feminism. She translated and published in Poetry a 1925 landmark anthology of Latin American poets, and continued to translate from poetry in Spanish.

29/01/1892

Ernst Lubitsch, German American film director, producer, writer, and actor (died 1947)

Ernst Lubitsch was a German and American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch". Among his best known works are Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Heaven Can Wait (1943).

29/01/1888

Sydney Chapman, English mathematician and geophysicist (died 1970)

Sydney Chapman was a British mathematician and geophysicist. His work on the kinetic theory of gases, solar-terrestrial physics, and the Earth's ozone layer has inspired a broad range of research over many decades.

Wellington Koo, Chinese statesman (died 1985)

Koo Vi Kyuin, better known as V. K. Wellington Koo, was a Chinese diplomat.

29/01/1886

Karl Freudenberg, German chemist (died 1983)

Karl Johann Freudenberg was a German chemist who did early seminal work on the absolute configurations to carbohydrates, terpenes, and steroids, and on the structure of cellulose and other polysaccharides, and on the nature, structure, and biosynthesis of lignin. The Research Institute for the Chemistry of Wood and Polysaccharides at the University of Heidelberg was created for him in the mid to late 1930s, and he led this until 1969.

29/01/1884

Juhan Aavik, Estonian-Swedish composer and conductor (died 1982)

Juhan Aavik was an Estonian composer.

29/01/1881

Alice Catherine Evans, American microbiologist (died 1975)

Alice Catherine Evans was an American microbiologist. She became a researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture where she investigated bacteriology in milk and cheese. She proved that Bacillus abortus caused the disease brucellosis in both cattle and humans, which led to the pasteurization of milk in the US in 1930. Evans was the first woman president elected by the Society of American Bacteriologists.

29/01/1880

W. C. Fields, American actor, comedian, and screenwriter (died 1946)

William Claude Dukenfield, better known as W. C. Fields, was an American actor, comedian, juggler and writer. His career in show business began in vaudeville, where he attained international success as a silent juggler. He began to incorporate comedy into his act and was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies for several years. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy Poppy (1923), in which he played a colorful small-time con man. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters.

29/01/1876

Havergal Brian, English composer (died 1972)

William Havergal Brian was an English composer, librettist, and church organist.

29/01/1874

John D. Rockefeller Jr., American businessman and philanthropist (died 1960)

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was an American financier and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the fifth child and only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center, making him one of the largest real estate holders in the city at that time. Towards the end of his life, he was famous for his philanthropy, donating over $500 million to a wide variety of different causes, including educational establishments. Among his projects was the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He was widely blamed for having orchestrated the Ludlow Massacre and other offenses during the Colorado Coalfield War. Rockefeller was the father of six children: Abby, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David.

29/01/1867

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Spanish journalist and author (died 1928)

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was a journalist, politician, and a bestselling Spanish novelist in various genres whose most widespread and lasting fame in the English-speaking world is from Hollywood films that were adapted from his works.

29/01/1866

Romain Rolland, French historian, author, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1944)

Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings".

29/01/1864

Richard Arman Gregory, British astronomer (died 1952)

Sir Richard Arman Gregory, 1st Baronet FRS, FRAS was a British astronomer and promoter of science. Some of his work was published as by Richard A. or R. A. Gregory.

29/01/1862

Frederick Delius, English composer (died 1934)

Frederick Theodore Albert Delius was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe.

29/01/1861

Florida Ruffin Ridley, American civil rights activist, teacher, editor, and writer (died 1943)

Florida Ruffin Ridley was an African-American civil rights activist, suffragist, teacher, writer, and editor from Boston, Massachusetts. She was one of the first black public schoolteachers in Boston, and edited The Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African-American women.

29/01/1860

Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer (died 1904)

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer. Widely considered one of the greatest writers of all time, his career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

29/01/1858

Henry Ward Ranger, American painter and academic (died 1916)

Henry Ward Ranger was an American artist. Born in western New York State, he was a prominent landscape and marine painter, an important Tonalist, and the leader of the Old Lyme Art Colony. Ranger became a National Academician (1906), and a member of the American Water Color Society. Among his paintings are, Top of the Hill, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and East River Idyll, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

29/01/1852

Frederic Hymen Cowen, Jamaican-English pianist, composer, and conductor (died 1935)

Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen, was an English composer, conductor and pianist.

29/01/1846

Karol Olszewski, Polish chemist, mathematician and physicist (died 1915)

Karol Stanisław Olszewski was a Polish chemist, mathematician, and physicist. Together with Zygmunt Wróblewski, in 1883 he was the first scientist in the world to liquify oxygen and nitrogen.

29/01/1843

William McKinley, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 25th President of the United States (died 1901)

William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades. McKinley successfully led the U.S. in the Spanish–American War and oversaw a period of American expansionism, with the annexations of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and American Samoa.

29/01/1810

Ernst Kummer, Polish-German mathematician and academic (died 1893)

Ernst Eduard Kummer was a German mathematician. Skilled in applied mathematics, Kummer trained German army officers in ballistics; afterwards, he taught for 10 years in a gymnasium, the German equivalent of high school, where he inspired the mathematical career of Leopold Kronecker.

Mary Whitwell Hale, American teacher, school founder, and hymnwriter (died 1862)

Mary Whitwell Hale was an American teacher, school founder, and hymnwriter of the Romantic era. She was a contributor to The Christian Register. Her pen name was made up of the concluding letters of her first, middle, and surname.

29/01/1801

Johannes Bernardus van Bree, Dutch violinist, composer, and conductor (died 1857)

Johannes Bernardus van Bree was a Dutch composer, violinist and conductor.

29/01/1792

Lemuel H. Arnold, American politician (died 1852)

Lemuel Hastings Arnold was an American politician from the U.S. state of Rhode Island. A Whig, he served as the 12th governor of the State of Rhode Island and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

29/01/1782

Daniel Auber, French composer (died 1871)

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber was a French Romantic composer and director of the Paris Conservatoire.

29/01/1761

Albert Gallatin, Swiss-American ethnologist, linguist, and politician, 4th United States Secretary of the Treasury (died 1849)

Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin was a Genevan-American politician, diplomat, ethnologist, and linguist. Often described as "America's Swiss Founding Father", he was a leading figure in the early years of the United States, helping shape the new republic's financial system and foreign policy. Gallatin was a prominent member of the Democratic-Republican Party, represented Pennsylvania in both chambers of Congress, and held several influential roles across four presidencies, most notably as the longest serving U.S. secretary of the treasury. He is also known for his contributions to academia, namely as the founder of New York University and cofounder of the American Ethnological Society.

29/01/1756

Henry Lee III, American general and politician, 9th Governor of Virginia (died 1818)

Henry Lee III was an early American patriot and politician who served as the ninth governor of Virginia and as the Virginia representative to the United States Congress. Lee's service during the American Revolution as a cavalry officer in the Continental Army earned him the nickname by which he is best known, "Light-Horse Harry". He was a member of the Lee Family of Virginia and the father of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

29/01/1754

Moses Cleaveland, American general, lawyer, and politician, founded Cleveland, Ohio (died 1806)

Moses Cleaveland was an American lawyer, politician, soldier, and surveyor from Connecticut who founded the city of Cleveland, Ohio, while surveying the Connecticut Western Reserve in 1796. During the American Revolution, Cleaveland was the brigadier general of the Connecticut militia.

29/01/1749

Christian VII of Denmark (died 1808)

Christian VII was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1766 until his death in 1808. He was affected by mental illness and was only nominally king for most of his reign. His royal advisers changed depending on the outcome of power struggles. From 1770 to 1772, his court physician Johann Friedrich Struensee was the de facto ruler of the country and introduced progressive reforms signed into law by the king. Struensee was deposed by a coup in 1772, after which the country was ruled by Christian's stepmother, Queen Dowager Juliane Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, his half-brother Hereditary Prince Frederick, and the Danish politician Ove Høegh-Guldberg. From 1784 until Christian VII's death in 1808, Christian's son, later Frederick VI, acted as unofficial prince regent.

29/01/1737

Thomas Paine, English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary (died 1809)

Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.

29/01/1718

Paul Rabaut, French pastor (died 1794)

Paul Rabaut was a French pastor of the Huguenot "Church of the Desert". He was regarded by many as the leader and director of the proscribed church. He was a peacemaker and a scholar despite, due to persecution, living like a troglodyte for more than 30 years.

29/01/1717

Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, English field marshal and politician, 19th Governor General of Canada (died 1797)

Field Marshal Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst was a British Army officer and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces. He is credited as the architect of Britain's successful campaign to conquer the territory of New France during the Seven Years' War. He was also the first British governor general in the territories that eventually became Canada.

29/01/1715

Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Austrian organist and composer (died 1777)

Georg Christoph Wagenseil was an Austrian composer.

29/01/1711

Giuseppe Bonno, Austrian composer (died 1788)

Giuseppe Bonno was an Austrian composer of Italian origin.

29/01/1688

Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish astronomer, philosopher, and theologian (died 1772)

Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish polymath; a scientist, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, Christian theologian, philosopher, and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758).

29/01/1632

Johann Georg Graevius, German scholar and critic (died 1703)

Johann Georg Graevius was a German classical scholar and critic. He was born in Naumburg, in the Electorate of Saxony.

29/01/1602

Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg (died 1651)

Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg was Landgravine consort and Regent of Hesse-Kassel. She married the future William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1619 and became Landgravine upon his ascension to power in 1627. In 1637, military defeats forced her and William V into exile in East Frisia. Later that year, she became regent for their son William VI upon her husband's death. Through skillful diplomacy and military successes in the Thirty Years' War, she advanced the fortunes of Hesse-Kassel and influenced the Peace of Westphalia that brought the conflict to an end. She handed over an enlarged landgraviate to her son when she abdicated upon his majority in 1650. However, her health had deteriorated over the course of the war, and she died soon after her abdication in 1651.

29/01/1591

Franciscus Junius, German pioneer philologist (died 1677)

Franciscus Junius , also known as François du Jon, was a pioneer of Germanic philology. As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts. In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.

29/01/1584

Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange (died 1647)

Frederick Henry was the sovereign prince of Orange and stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from his older half-brother's death on 23 April 1625 until his death on 14 March 1647. In the last seven years of his life, he was also the stadtholder of Groningen (1640-1647).

29/01/1525

Lelio Sozzini, Italian humanist and reformer (died 1562)

Lelio Francesco Maria Sozzini, often known in English by his Latinized name Laelius Socinus, was an Italian Renaissance humanist and theologian, and, alongside his nephew Fausto Sozzini, founder of the Nontrinitarian Christian belief system known as Socinianism. His doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.

29/01/1499

Katharina von Bora, wife of Martin Luther; formerly a Roman Catholic nun (died 1552)

Katharina von Bora, after her wedding Katharina Luther, also referred to as "die Lutherin", was the wife of the German reformer Martin Luther and a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation. Although little is known about her, she is often considered to have been important to the Reformation, her marriage setting a precedent for Protestant family life and clerical marriage.

29/01/1475

Giuliano Bugiardini, Italian painter (died 1555)

Giuliano di Piero di Simone Bugiardini was an Italian Renaissance painter. He was born and was mainly active in Florence. He was a painter primarily of religious subjects but he also executed a number of portraits and a few works with mythological subjects.

29/01/1455

Johann Reuchlin, German-born humanist and scholar (died 1522)

Johann Reuchlin, sometimes called Johannes, was a German Catholic humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, whose work also took him to modern-day Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France. Most of Reuchlin's career centered on advancing German knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.

Lives Remembered on 29th January

On 29th January, 111 remarkable people passed away — from 757 to 2025. Remember the lives and legacies of those we lost on this day.

29/01/2025

Salwan Momika, Iraqi refugee and anti-Islam activist (born 1986)

Salwan Sabah Matthew Momika was an Iraqi refugee, and an ex-paramilitary member of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). While living in Sweden, he gained fame for being an anti-Islam demonstrator who organized public demonstrations where he burnt and desecrated the Qur'an. Momika was assassinated on 29 January 2025 during a live broadcast on TikTok.

Richard Williamson, British Catholic traditionalist bishop (born 1940)

Richard Nelson Williamson was an English traditionalist Catholic bishop, conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier who was twice excommunicated from the Catholic Church. He was formerly a member of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).

Victims in the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision:

Vadim Vladimirovich Naumov was a Russian pair skater. With his wife Evgenia Shishkova, he was the 1994 world champion and the 1995–96 Champions Series Final champion.

Victims in the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision:

Evgenia Vasilievna Shishkova was a Russian figure skating coach and competitor. With her husband Vadim Naumov, she was the 1994 world champion and the 1995–96 Champions Series Final champion.

Victims in the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision:

Inna Volyanskaya was a Russian pair skater who competed for the Soviet Union. With Valery Spiridonov, she won six international medals, including gold at the 1982 Nebelhorn Trophy.

Victims in the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision:

Alexandr "Sasha" Kirsanov was an ice dancer who competed for the United States, Azerbaijan, and Russia. With Christie Moxley for the U.S., he was the 2003 Nebelhorn Trophy bronze medalist. He also competed with Barbara Hanley for Azerbaijan and with Olga Pogosian for Russia. Following his retirement from competition in 2004, he worked as a coach and choreographer in Delaware.

29/01/2023

Hazel McCallion, Canadian businesswoman and politician, 5th Mayor of Mississauga (born 1921)

Hazel Mary Muriel McCallion was a Canadian politician who served as the fifth mayor of Mississauga. First elected in November 1978, McCallion was mayor for 36 years until her retirement in 2014, making her the longest-serving mayor in the city's history. She was a successful candidate in twelve municipal elections, having been acclaimed twice and re-elected ten times. She was nicknamed "Hurricane Hazel" for her outspoken political style with reference to the hurricane of 1954, which had a considerable impact. When the 1979 Mississauga train derailment occurred early in her tenure, she helped oversee evacuation of 200,000 residents from the resulting explosion, fire, and spill of hazardous chemicals.

Will Steffen, American-Australian chemist (born 1947)

William Lee Steffen was an American-born Australian chemist. He was the executive director of the Australian National University (ANU) Climate Change Institute and a member of the Australian Climate Commission until its dissolution in September 2013. From 1998 to 2004, he was the executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, a coordinating body of national environmental change organisations based in Stockholm. Steffen was one of the founding climate councillors of the Climate Council, with whom he frequently co-authored reports, and spoke in the media on issues relating to climate change and renewable energy.

Gero Storjohann, German politician (born 1958)

Gero Storjohann was a German politician who served in the Bundestag from 2002 until his death in 2023. A member of the Christian Democratic Union, Storjohann had served as the vice chairman of the Committee on Petitions from 2005. During his tenure, Storjohann was an advocate for improvements of transportation infrastructure, particularly for bicycles.

29/01/2022

Howard Hesseman, American actor (born 1940)

Howard Hesseman was an American actor known for his television roles as burned-out disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati and the lead role of history teacher Charlie Moore on Head of the Class. He appeared regularly on television and in film from the 1970s to 2010s, with his other noteworthy roles including Sam Royer in the last two seasons of One Day at a Time and a supporting role as Captain Pete Lassard in the film Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985).

29/01/2021

Walker Boone, Canadian actor (born 1944)

Walker Boone was a Canadian actor. He was best known as the voice of the Nintendo character Mario in the DIC-produced animated series The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World.

29/01/2019

George Fernandes, Indian politician (born 1930)

George Mathew Fernandes was an Indian politician, trade unionist, statesman, and journalist, who served as the Defence Minister of India from 1998 until 2004. A veteran socialist, he was a member of the Lok Sabha for over 30 years, starting from Bombay in 1967 till 2009 mostly representing constituencies from Bihar. He was the leader of the Samyukta Socialist Party and the Socialist Party, a key member of the Janata Party, the Janata Party (Secular) and the Janata Dal, and, finally, the founder of the Samata Party. Holding several prominent ministerial portfolios during his career, including communication, industry, railways, and defence, he was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, in 2020.

James Ingram, American musician (born 1952)

James Edward Ingram was an American singer, songwriter and record producer. He was a two-time Grammy Award-winner and a two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song. After beginning his career in 1973, Ingram charted eight top 40 hits on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart from the early 1980s until the early 1990s, as well as thirteen top 40 hits on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In addition, he charted 20 hits on the Adult Contemporary chart. He had two number-one singles on the Hot 100: the first, a duet with fellow R&B artist Patti Austin, 1982's "Baby, Come to Me" topped the U.S. pop chart in 1983; "I Don't Have the Heart", which became his second number-one in 1990, was his only number-one as a solo artist.

29/01/2016

Jean-Marie Doré, Guinean lawyer and politician, 11th Prime Minister of Guinea (born 1938)

Jean-Marie Doré was a Guinean politician who was the prime minister of Guinea from January 2010 until December 2010. Doré, who was the president of the Union for the Progress of Guinea (UPG), was an opposition leader for years before being chosen to head a transitional government that was in place during the preparation and conduct of the 2010 presidential election.

Jacques Rivette, French director, screenwriter, and critic (born 1928)

Jacques Rivette was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He made twenty-nine films, including L'Amour fou (1969), Out 1 (1971), Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974), and La Belle Noiseuse (1991). His work is noted for its improvisation, loose narratives, and lengthy running times.

29/01/2015

Colleen McCullough, Australian neuroscientist, author, and academic (born 1937)

Colleen McCullough was an Australian author. Raised in Sydney, she trained as a neurophysiologist and spent her early career working at hospitals and universities in Australia and overseas. In 1974, while working as a research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine, she published her first novel Tim. Her second novel, The Thorn Birds, was published in 1977 and became an international bestseller. It sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and was adapted into a successful television miniseries.

Rod McKuen, American singer-songwriter and poet (born 1933)

Rodney Marvin McKuen was an American poet, singer-songwriter and composer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music. He earned two Academy Award nominations for his music compositions. McKuen's translations and adaptations of the songs of Jacques Brel were instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world. His poetry deals with themes of love, the natural world and spirituality. McKuen's songs sold over 100 million recordings worldwide and 60 million books of his poetry were sold as well.

Alexander Vraciu, American commander and pilot (born 1918)

Alexander Vraciu was a United States Navy fighter ace, Navy Cross recipient, and Medal of Honor nominee during World War II. At the end of the war, Vraciu ranked fourth among the U.S. Navy's flying aces, with 19 enemy planes downed during flight and 21 destroyed on the ground. After the war, he served as a test pilot and was instrumental in forming the post-war Naval and Marine Air Reserve program. From 1956 to 1958 Vraciu led his own fighter squadron, VF-51, for twenty-two months. He retired from the U.S. Navy with the rank of commander on December 31, 1963. Vraciu later moved to Danville, California, and worked for Wells Fargo.

29/01/2012

Ranjit Singh Dyal, Indian general and politician, 10th Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry (born 1928)

Lieutenant General Ranjit Singh Dyal, PVSM MVC was an Indian Army general and an administrator. As a soldier, Ranjit Singh led the capture of the Haji Pir pass by the Indian army during the 1965 war with Pakistan. He also drew up the plans for Operation Blue Star, and served as the General-Officer-Commanding-in-Chief of the Southern Command. Later, he served as Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Italian lawyer and politician, 9th President of Italy (born 1918)

Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was an Italian politician who served as the president of Italy from 1992 to 1999. A member of Christian Democracy (DC), he became an independent politician after the DC's dissolution in 1992, and was close to the centre-left Democratic Party when it was founded in 2007. Before his election to the Presidency, he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies for Turin for 44 years from 1948 to 1992.

Camilla Williams, American soprano and educator (born 1919)

Camilla Ella Williams was an American operatic soprano who performed nationally and internationally. After studying with renowned teachers in New York City, she was the first African American to receive a regular contract with a major American opera company, the New York City Opera. She had earlier won honors in vocal competitions and the Marian Anderson Fellowship in 1943–44.

29/01/2011

Milton Babbitt, American composer, educator, and theorist (born 1916)

Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music. Babbitt's compositional approach was deeply inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. He built a compositional system based on permutations of the total chromatic.

29/01/2009

Hélio Gracie, Brazilian martial artist (born 1913)

Hélio Gracie was a Brazilian martial artist who together with his brothers Oswaldo, Gastao Jr, George and Carlos Gracie founded and developed the self-defense martial art system of Gracie jiu-jitsu, also known as Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ).

John Martyn, British singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1948)

Iain David McGeachy, known professionally as John Martyn, was a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. Over a 40-year career, he released 23 studio albums and received frequent critical acclaim. The Times described him as "an electrifying guitarist and singer whose music blurred the boundaries between folk, jazz, rock and blues".

29/01/2008

Margaret Truman, American singer and author (born 1924)

Mary Margaret Truman Daniel was an American classical soprano, actress, journalist, radio and television personality, writer, and New York socialite. She was the only child of President Harry S. Truman and First Lady Bess Truman. While her father was president during the years 1945 to 1953, Margaret regularly accompanied him on campaign trips, such as the 1948 countrywide whistle-stop campaign lasting several weeks. She also appeared at important White House and political events during those years and was a favorite with the media.

29/01/2006

Nam June Paik, South Korean-American artist (born 1932)

Nam June Paik was a South Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.

29/01/2005

Ephraim Kishon, Israeli author, screenwriter, and director (born 1924)

Ephraim Kishon was a Hungarian-born Israeli author, dramatist, screenwriter, and Oscar-nominated film director. He was one of the most widely read contemporary satirists in Israel and was also particularly popular in German-speaking countries.

29/01/2004

Janet Frame, New Zealand author and poet (born 1924)

Janet Paterson Frame was a New Zealand author. She is internationally renowned for her work, which includes novels, short stories, poetry, juvenile fiction, and an autobiography, and received numerous awards including being appointed to the Order of New Zealand, New Zealand's highest civil honour.

29/01/2003

Frank Moss, American lawyer and politician (born 1911)

Frank Edward "Ted" Moss was an American lawyer and politician. From 1959 to 1977 he served as a United States senator from Utah, and as of 2026 was the last Democrat to do so.

29/01/2002

Harold Russell, Canadian-American soldier and actor (born 1914)

Harold John Avery Russell was an American World War II veteran and actor. After losing his hands during his military service, Russell was cast in the epic drama film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was the first non-professional actor to win an Academy Award for acting and the first Oscar recipient to sell his award.

29/01/1999

Lili St. Cyr, American model and dancer (born 1918)

Marie Frances Van Schaack, known professionally as Lili St. Cyr, was a prominent American burlesque dancer and stripper.

29/01/1994

Ulrike Maier, Austrian skier (born 1967)

Ulrike Maier was a World Cup alpine ski racer from Austria, a two-time World Champion in super-G. She competed at the 1988 Winter Olympics and the 1992 Winter Olympics.

29/01/1993

Adetokunbo Ademola, Nigerian lawyer and jurist, 2nd Chief Justice of Nigeria (born 1906)

Omoba Sir Adetokunbo Adegboyega Ademola SAN was a Nigerian jurist who was the Chief Justice of Nigeria from 1958 to 1972. He was appointed as Chief Justice on 1 April 1958, succeeding Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton, who was retiring. Ademola was a son of Oba Sir Ladapo Ademola II, the Alake of the Egba clan of Nigeria. He was the first chancellor of the University of Benin.

29/01/1992

Willie Dixon, American singer-songwriter and producer (born 1915)

William James Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. He was proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar, and sang with a distinctive voice, but he is perhaps best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time. Next to Muddy Waters, Dixon is recognized as the most influential person in shaping the post–World War II sound of the Chicago blues.

29/01/1991

Yasushi Inoue, Japanese author and poet (born 1907)

Yasushi Inoue was a Japanese writer of novels, short stories, poetry and essays, noted for his historical and autobiographical fiction. His most acclaimed works include The Bullfight, The Roof Tile of Tempyō and Tun-huang.

29/01/1989

Morton DaCosta, American theatre and film director, film producer, writer and actor (born 1914)

Morton DaCosta was an American theatre and film director, film producer, writer, and actor.

29/01/1988

James Rhyne Killian, American educator, scientist and White House advisor (born 1904)

James Rhyne Killian Jr. was the 10th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1948 until 1959. He also held a number of government roles, such as Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board under John F. Kennedy.

29/01/1987

Vincent R. Impellitteri, American politician and judge, 101st Mayor of New York City (born 1900)

Vincent Richard Impellitteri was an Italian-American politician and judge who served as the 102nd Mayor of New York City from 1950 to 1953. He was elected as a Democrat and president of the City Council in 1945 and reelected in 1949. When Mayor William O'Dwyer resigned in 1950, he became acting mayor. In the special election that year, party bosses denied him the Democratic nomination for the rest of the term but was subsequently elected mayor on a new ticket, the "Experience Party". He lost the Democratic primary when he ran for a full term in 1953 and became a judge in 1954.

29/01/1984

Frances Goodrich, American actress, dramatist and screenwriter (born 1890)

Frances Goodrich was an American actress, dramatist, and screenwriter, best known for her collaborations with her partner and husband Albert Hackett. She received both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play with her husband for The Diary of Anne Frank which had premiered in 1955.

John Macnaghten Whittaker, British mathematician (born 1905)

John Macnaghten Whittaker FRS FRSE LLD was a British mathematician and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1953 to 1965.

29/01/1983

Stuart H. Ingersoll, American naval aviator, USN vice admiral (born 1898)

Stuart Howe Ingersoll was a vice admiral of the United States Navy. He was a naval aviator whose career included service as an aircraft carrier commander during World War II and tours as commander-in-chief of the United States Seventh Fleet, President of the Naval War College, and Commandant of Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy.

29/01/1982

Rudolph Peters, British biochemist (born 1889)

Sir Rudolph Albert Peters MC MID FRS HFRSE FRCP LLD was a British biochemist. He led the research team at Oxford who developed British Anti-Lewisite (BAL), an antidote for the chemical warfare agent lewisite. His efforts investigating the mechanism of arsenic war gases were deemed crucial in maintaining battlefield effectiveness.

Roger Stanier, Canadian microbiologist (born 1916)

Roger Yate Stanier was a Canadian microbiologist who was influential in the development of modern microbiology. As a member of the Delft School and former student of C. B. van Niel, he made important contributions to the taxonomy of bacteria, including the classification of blue-green algae as cyanobacteria. In 1957, he and co-authors wrote The Microbial World, an influential microbiology textbook which was published in five editions over three decades. In the course of 24 years at the University of California, Berkeley he reached the rank of professor and served as chair of the Department of Bacteriology before leaving for the Pasteur Institute in 1971. He received several awards over the course of his career, including the Leeuwenhoek Medal. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences and the Légion d’Honneur.

Charles Sykes, British physicist and metallurgist (born 1905)

Sir Charles Sykes CBE, FRS was a British physicist and metallurgist.

29/01/1981

Jack A. W. Bennett, New Zealander literary scholar (born 1911)

Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was a New Zealand–born literary scholar.

John Glassco, Canadian poet, memoirist and novelist (born 1909)

John Glassco was a Canadian poet, memoirist and novelist. According to Stephen Scobie, "Glassco will be remembered for his brilliant autobiography, his elegant, classical poems, and for his translations". He is also remembered by some for his erotica.

29/01/1980

Jimmy Durante, American entertainer (born 1893)

James Francis Durante was an American comedian, actor, singer, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of the United States' most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as the schnozzola, and the word became his nickname.

29/01/1979

Sonny Payne, American jazz drummer (born 1926)

Sonny Payne was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with Count Basie and Harry James.

29/01/1978

Tim McCoy, American actor and military officer (born 1891)

Colonel Tim McCoy was an American actor, military officer, and expert on American Indian life. McCoy is most noted for his roles in B-grade Western films. As a popular cowboy film star, he had his picture on the front of a Wheaties cereal box.

Frank Nicklin, Australian politician, 28th Premier of Queensland (born 1895)

Sir George Francis Reuben Nicklin, was an Australian politician. He was the Premier of Queensland from 1957 to 1968, the first non-Labor Party premier since 1932.

29/01/1977

Johnny Franz, English record producer and pianist (born 1922)

John Charles Franz was an English record producer and A&R man at the Philips label. He was one of Britain's most successful producers in the 1950s and 1960s. While his recordings encompassed several forms of mainstream popular music, his most enduring contributions were to British pop music of the mid-1960s on records by Dusty Springfield, the Walker Brothers, and the early solo recordings of Scott Walker. From 1973, he was responsible for the production of Peters & Lee recordings, which included their No. 1 chart hit "Welcome Home".

Freddie Prinze, American comedian and actor (born 1954)

Freddie Prinze was an American stand-up comedian and actor, and the star of the NBC-TV sitcom Chico and the Man from 1974 until his death in 1977. He was described in a Vulture magazine article as "having blown up like no other comedian in history." Prinze is the father of actor Freddie Prinze Jr.

29/01/1976

Jesse Fuller, American one-man band musician (born 1896)

Jesse Fuller was an American one-man band musician, best known for his song "San Francisco Bay Blues".

29/01/1974

H. E. Bates, English writer (born 1905)

Herbert Ernest Bates, better known as H. E. Bates, was an English writer of novels and short stories. His best-known works include Love for Lydia, The Darling Buds of May and My Uncle Silas.

29/01/1973

Johannes Paul Thilman, German composer (born 1903)

Johannes Paul Thilman was a German composer.

29/01/1970

Lawren Harris, Canadian painter (born 1885)

Lawren Stewart Harris LL. D. was a Canadian painter, best known as one of the founding members of the Group of Seven. He played a key role as a catalyst in Canadian art, as a visionary in Canadian landscape art and in the development of modern art in Canada.

B. H. Liddell Hart, French-English soldier, historian, and journalist (born 1895)

Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, commonly known throughout most of his career as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was a British soldier, military historian, and military theorist. He wrote a series of military histories that proved influential among strategists. Arguing that frontal assault was bound to fail at great cost in lives, as proven in World War I, he recommended the "indirect approach" and reliance on fast-moving armoured formations.

29/01/1969

Allen Dulles, American banker, lawyer, and diplomat, 5th Director of Central Intelligence (born 1893)

Allen Welsh Dulles was an American lawyer who was the first civilian director of central intelligence (DCI), and its longest serving director. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw numerous activities, such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the Project MKUltra mind control program, and the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. As a result of the failed invasion of Cuba, Dulles was forced to resign by President John F. Kennedy and was replaced with John McCone for the remainder of the Kennedy administration.

Max Weinreich, Russian-American-Jewish linguist and cofounder of YIVO (born 1894)

Max Weinreich was a Russian-American-Jewish linguist, specializing in sociolinguistics and Yiddish, and the father of the linguist Uriel Weinreich.

29/01/1967

Harold Munro Fox, English zoologist (born 1889)

Harold Munro Fox was an English zoologist.

29/01/1966

Pierre Mercure, Canadian composer, TV producer, bassoonist and administrator (born 1927)

Pierre Mercure was a Canadian composer, TV producer, bassoonist, and administrator.

29/01/1965

Jack Hylton, English pianist, composer, band leader and impresario (born 1892)

Jack Hylton was an English pianist, composer, band leader and impresario.

29/01/1964

Vera Hall, American folk singer (born 1902)

Adell Hall Ward, better known as Vera Hall, was an American folk singer, born in Livingston, Alabama. Best known for her 1937 song "Trouble So Hard", she was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2005.

Alan Ladd, American actor (born 1913)

Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film producer. Ladd found success in film in the 1940s and early 1950s, particularly in films noir and Westerns. He was often paired with Veronica Lake in films noir, such as This Gun for Hire (1942), The Glass Key (1942), and The Blue Dahlia (1946). Whispering Smith (1948) was his first Western and color film, and Shane (1953) was noted for its contributions to the genre. Ladd also appeared in 10 films with William Bendix.

29/01/1963

Robert Frost, American poet and playwright (born 1874)

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

29/01/1962

Fritz Kreisler, Austrian-American violinist and composer (born 1875)

Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian and American violinist and composer. One of the most distinguished violin virtuoso of his day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing with marked portamento and rubato. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately recognizable as his own. Although it derived in many respects from the Franco-Belgian school, his style is nonetheless reminiscent of the gemütlich (cozy) lifestyle of pre-war Vienna.

William Francis Gray Swann, Anglo-American physicist (born 1884)

W.F.G. Swann was an English physicist.

29/01/1961

Angela Thirkell, English novelist (born 1890)

Angela Margaret Thirkell was an English and Australian novelist. She also published one novel, Trooper to Southern Cross, under the pseudonym Leslie Parker.

29/01/1960

Mack Harrell, American operatic and concert baritone vocalist (born 1909)

Mack Kendree Harrell, Jr. was an American operatic and concert baritone vocalist who was regarded as one of the greatest American-born lieder singers of his generation.

George S. Messersmith, American diplomat (born 1883)

George Strausser Messersmith was a United States ambassador to Austria, Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. Messersmith also served as head of the consulate in Germany from 1930 to 1934, during the rise of the Nazi Party.

29/01/1959

Pauline Smith, South African novelist, short story writer, memoirist and playwright (born 1882)

Pauline Janet Smith was a South African novelist, short story writer, memoirist and playwright.

29/01/1956

H. L. Mencken, American journalist and critic (born 1880)

Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also earned him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose styles.

29/01/1955

Hans Hedtoft, Danish politician (born 1903)

Hans Hedtoft Hansen was a Danish politician of the Social Democrats who served as the prime minister of Denmark from 1947 to 1950 and again from 1953 until his death in 1955. He also served as the first president of the Nordic Council in 1953.

29/01/1954

Walter Conrad Arensberg, American art collector, critic and poet (born 1878)

Walter Conrad Arensberg was an American art collector, critic and poet. His father was part owner and president of a crucible steel company. He majored in English and philosophy at Harvard University. With his wife Louise, he collected art and supported artistic endeavors.

29/01/1951

James Bridie, Scottish playwright, screenwriter and physician (born 1888)

James Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and physician whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor. He took his pen-name from his paternal grandfather's first name and his grandmother's maiden name.

29/01/1948

Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta (born 1900)

Prince Aimone, 4th Duke of Aosta, was a prince of Italy's reigning House of Savoy and an officer of the Royal Italian Navy. The second son of Prince Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Aosta, he was granted the title Duke of Spoleto on 22 September 1904. He inherited the title Duke of Aosta on 3 March 1942 following the death of his brother Prince Amedeo in a British prisoner of war camp in Nairobi.

29/01/1946

Harry Hopkins, American businessman and politician, 8th United States Secretary of Commerce (born 1890)

Harold Lloyd Hopkins was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the eighth United States secretary of commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II.

Sidney Jones, English conductor and composer (born 1861)

James Sidney Jones, usually credited as Sidney Jones, was an English conductor and composer, who was most famous for composing the musical scores for a series of musical comedy hits in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Jones's most famous musical was The Geisha, but several of his pieces were among the most popular shows of the era, enjoying long runs, international tours and revivals.

29/01/1944

William Allen White, American journalist and author (born 1868)

William Allen White was an American newspaper editor, politician, author, and leader of the Progressive movement. Between 1896 and his death, White became a spokesman for middle America.

29/01/1941

Ioannis Metaxas, Greek general and politician, 130th Prime Minister of Greece (born 1871)

Ioannis Metaxas was a Greek military officer and politician who was the dictator of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941. He governed constitutionally for the first four months of his tenure, and thereafter as the strongman leader of the 4th of August Regime following his appointment by King George II.

29/01/1940

Edward Harkness, American philanthropist (born 1874)

Edward Stephen Harkness was an American philanthropist. Given privately and through his family's Commonwealth Fund, Harkness' gifts to private hospitals, art museums, and educational institutions in the Northeastern United States were among the largest of the early twentieth century. He was a major benefactor to Columbia University, Yale University, Harvard University, Phillips Exeter Academy, St. Paul's School, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1934.

29/01/1935

Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh, American explorer (born 1853)

Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh was an American explorer.

29/01/1934

Fritz Haber, Polish-German chemist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1868)

Fritz Jakob Haber was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is important for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. It is estimated that a third of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this food supports nearly half the world's population. For this work, Haber has been called one of the most important scientists and industrial chemists in human history. Haber also, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid.

Dukinfield Henry Scott, British botanist (born 1854)

Dukinfield Henry Scott FRS HFRSE LLD was a British botanist and paleobotanist. The standard author abbreviation D.H.Scott is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. He conducted research on plant fossils and examined the evolution of plants. His textbook Studies in Fossil Biology and his lectures on paleobotany at University College, London, influenced and helped grow paleobotany.

29/01/1933

Sara Teasdale, American poet (born 1884)

Sara Trevor Teasdale was an American lyric poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and used the name Filsinger after her 1914 marriage. In 1918, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1917 poetry collection Love Songs.

29/01/1929

Jacques Bouhy, Belgian baritone (born 1848)

Jacques-Joseph-André Bouhy was a Belgian baritone, most famous for being the first to sing the "Toreador Song" in the role of Escamillo in the opera Carmen.

Charles Fox Parham, American preacher and evangelist (born 1873)

Charles Fox Parham was an American preacher and evangelist. Together with William J. Seymour, Parham was one of the two central figures in the development and initial spread of early Pentecostalism, known as Holiness Pentecostalism. It was Parham who associated glossolalia with the baptism in the Holy Spirit, a theological connection crucial to the emergence of Pentecostalism as a distinct movement. Parham was the first preacher to articulate Pentecostalism's distinctive doctrine of evidential tongues, and to expand the movement.

29/01/1928

Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, Scottish field marshal (born 1861)

Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig was a senior officer of the British Army. During the First World War he commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war.

29/01/1923

Elihu Vedder, American symbolist painter, book illustrator and poet (born 1836)

Elihu Vedder was an American symbolist painter, book illustrator and poet from New York City. He is best known for his fifty-five illustrations for Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

29/01/1917

Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, British statesman, diplomat and colonial administrator (born 1841)

Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, was a British statesman, diplomat and colonial administrator. He served as the British controller-general in Egypt during 1879, part of the international control which oversaw Egyptian finances after the Egyptian bankruptcy of 1876. He later became the agent and consul-general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907 during the British occupation, prompted by the Urabi revolt. This position gave Baring de facto control over Egyptian finances and governance.

29/01/1916

Sibylle von Olfers, German art teacher, author and nun (born 1881)

Sibylle von Olfers was a German art teacher and a nun who worked as an author and illustrator of children's books. In 1906 she published her best-known work, The Root Children.

29/01/1912

Herman Bang, Danish journalist and author (born 1857)

Herman Joachim Bang was a Danish journalist and author, one of the men of the Modern Breakthrough.

29/01/1910

Édouard Rod, French-Swiss novelist (born 1857)

Édouard Rod was a French-Swiss novelist.

29/01/1906

Christian IX, King of Denmark (born 1818)

Christian IX was King of Denmark from 15 November 1863 until his death in 1906. From 1863 to 1864, he was concurrently Duke of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. He became one of the most influential monarchs of 19th-century Europe through the dynastic marriages of his children, earning the nickname "Father-in-law of Europe". Because many later European monarchs descended from him, he is also sometimes informally described as the Grandfather of Europe.

29/01/1901

Eugène Louis-Marie Jancourt, French bassoonist, composer and pedagogue (born 1815)

Eugène Louis-Marie Jancourt was a French bassoonist, composer, and pedagogue. A virtuoso bassoonist and teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, Jancourt is mostly known for his method books and the system innovations he made to the “Buffet” style bassoon. He, along with his contemporary and fellow bassoonist Julius Weissenborn, is considered by many scholars to be one of the most important bassoonists of the 19th century.

29/01/1899

Alfred Sisley, French-English painter (born 1839)

Alfred Sisley was a French-Born British Impressionist landscape painter who was born to British parents, but spent most of his life in France. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air. He deviated into figure painting only rarely and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, he found that Impressionism fulfilled his artistic needs.

29/01/1888

Edward Lear, English poet and illustrator (born 1812)

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised but which term he never used.

29/01/1870

Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany (born 1797)

Leopold II was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1824 to 1859. He married twice; firstly Maria Anna of Saxony, and after her death in 1832 Maria Antonia of the Two-Sicilies. By the latter, he had a son, Ferdinand, who later succeeded him. Leopold was recognised contemporarily as a liberal monarch, authorising the Tuscan Constitution of 1848, and allowing a degree of press freedom.

29/01/1829

Paul Barras, French captain and politician (born 1755)

Paul François Jean Nicolas, Vicomte de Barras, commonly known as Paul Barras, was a French politician of the French Revolution, and the main executive leader of the Directory regime of 1795–1799.

29/01/1820

George III of the United Kingdom (born 1738)

George III was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with George as its king. He was concurrently duke and prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the first monarch of the House of Hanover who was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.

29/01/1763

Juan José Eguiara y Eguren, Mexican bishop and Catholic scholar (born 1696)

Juan José Eguiara y Eguren was a Mexican Catholic scholar and bishop. He is the author of Bibliotheca mexicana, "a pioneering bibliographical work for Mexico."

Louis Racine, French poet (born 1692)

Louis Racine was a French poet of the Age of the Enlightenment.

29/01/1743

André-Hercule de Fleury, French cardinal (born 1653)

André-Hercule de Fleury was a French Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Fréjus and as the chief minister of Louis XV. He was created a cardinal in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII.

29/01/1737

George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, Scottish-English field marshal and politician, Colonial Governor of Virginia (born 1666)

Field Marshal George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney,, styled Lord George Hamilton from 1666 to 1696, was a British army officer and the first officer of the British Army to be promoted to the rank of field marshal. After commanding a Scots Army regiment for the cause of William of Orange during the Williamite War in Ireland, he commanded another Scottish regiment in the Low Countries during the Nine Years' War.

29/01/1706

Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, English poet and courtier (born 1643)

Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset was an English politician, courtier and poet.

29/01/1678

Jerónimo Lobo, Portuguese missionary and author (born 1593)

Jerónimo Lobo was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. He took part in the unsuccessful efforts to convert Ethiopia from the native Ethiopian church to Roman Catholicism until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1643. Afterwards he wrote an account of his time in Ethiopia, Itinerário, which is an important source for the history and culture of that country.

29/01/1647

Francis Meres, English priest and author (born 1565)

Francis Meres was an English churchman and author. His 1598 commonplace book includes the first critical account of poems and plays by Shakespeare.

29/01/1597

Elias Ammerbach, German organist and composer (born 1530)

Elias Nikolaus Ammerbach was a German organist and arranger of organ music of the Renaissance. He published the earliest printed book of organ music in Germany and is grouped among the composers known as the Colorists.

29/01/1119

Pope Gelasius II (born 1060)

Pope Gelasius II, born Giovanni Caetani or Giovanni da Gaeta, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 24 January 1118 to his death in 1119. A monk of Monte Cassino and chancellor of Pope Paschal II, Caetani was unanimously elected to succeed him. In doing so, he also inherited the conflict with Emperor Henry V over investiture. Gelasius spent a good part of his brief papacy in exile.

29/01/0803

Ja'far ibn Yahya al-Barmaki, Persian vizier

Jaʽfar ibn Yahya Barmaki or Jafar al-Barmaki (767–803), also called Aba-Fadl, was a Bactrian vizier of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, succeeding his father in that position. He was a member of the influential Barmakid family, formerly Buddhist leaders of the Nava Vihara monastery. He was executed in 803 at the orders of Harun al-Rashid.

29/01/0757

An Lushan, Chinese general (born 703)

Year 757 (DCCLVII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 757 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Celebrations & Special Days Worldwide on 29th January

Christian feast day: Aphrahat

Aphrahat, venerated as Saint Aphrahat the Persian, was a third-century Syriac Christian author of Iranian descent from the Sasanian Empire, who composed a series of twenty-three expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice. All his known works, the Demonstrations, come from later on in his life. He was an ascetic and celibate, and was almost definitely a son of the covenant. He may have been a bishop, and later Syriac tradition places him at the head of Mar Mattai Monastery near Mosul in what is now northern Iraq. He was a near contemporary to the slightly younger Ephrem the Syrian, but the latter lived within the sphere of the Roman Empire. Called the Persian Sage, Aphrahat witnessed to the concerns of the early church beyond the eastern boundaries of the Roman Empire.

Christian feast day: Gildas

Gildas – also known as Gildas Badonicus, Gildas fab Caw and Gildas Sapiens – was a 6th-century British monk best known for his religious polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, which recounts the history of the Britons before and during the coming of the Saxons. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during the sub-Roman period, and was renowned for his Biblical knowledge and literary style. In his later life, he emigrated to Brittany, where he founded a monastery known as Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys.

Christian feast day: Sabinian of Troyes

Saint Sabinian of Troyes was a pagan who converted to Christianity, and became a martyr under Aurelian. He was beheaded at Rilly-Sainte-Syre near Troyes.

Christian feast day: Sulpitius I of Bourges

Sulpitius I was Bishop of Bourges. Often called Sulpitius Severus, the Severe, he is wrongly identified with Sulpicius Severus, the historian of Saint Martin of Tours.

Christian feast day: Blessed Villana de' Botti

Villana de' Botti, TOSD was an Italian Catholic member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. She turned to the Dominicans after a sudden conversion from a dissolute adult life and was noted for her simplistic life born out of her conversion. She had been a pious and devoted child, but after marrying fell into secular values.

Christian feast day: January 29 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

January 28 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - January 30

Earliest day on which Fat Thursday can fall, while March 4 is the latest; celebrated on Thursday before Ash Wednesday. (Christianity)

Fat Thursday is a Christian tradition in some countries marking the last Thursday before Lent and is associated with the celebration of Carnival. Because Lent is a time of fasting, the days leading up to Ash Wednesday provide the last opportunity for feasting until Easter. Traditionally it is a day dedicated to eating, when people meet in their homes or cafés with their friends and relatives and eat large quantities of sweets, cakes and other meals usually not eaten during Lent. Among the most popular all-national dishes served on that day are pączki in Poland, fist-sized donuts filled with rose hip jam, and angel wings (faworki), puff pastry fingers served with powdered sugar.

Kansas Day (Kansas, United States)

Kansas Day is a holiday in the state of Kansas in the United States. It is celebrated annually on January 29 to commemorate the anniversary of the state's 1861 admission to the Union. It was first celebrated in 1877 by schoolchildren in Paola.

What Happened on 29th January?

38 significant events took place on Saturday, 29th January — stretching from 904 to 2025. Explore the moments that shaped history on this day.

29/01/2025

American Eagle Flight 5342 collided mid-air with a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk operated by the United States Army and crashed into the Potomac River, killing all 67 people on board both aircraft.

American Eagle is the brand for regional airline flights operated for American Airlines, encompassing flights by wholly owned affiliates Envoy Air, PSA Airlines, and Piedmont Airlines, as well as third-party carriers Republic Airways and SkyWest Airlines. These regional carriers serve smaller markets, facilitating connections to American Airlines hubs, and supporting operations in mainline markets. All American Eagle carriers share similar logos, uniforms, and aircraft paint schemes as American Airlines’ mainline operations. In 2023, 46 million passengers flew on American Eagle regional flights, with about 45% connecting to or from mainline flights. These flights operate under capacity purchase agreements with both third-party and wholly owned regional carriers, controlling all aspects of marketing, scheduling, ticketing, pricing, and seat inventories. American Airlines pays fixed fees for operating specified aircraft and covering certain variable costs, such as fuel, landing fees, and insurance.

A chartered Beechcraft 1900 crashes near the Unity oilfield in South Sudan, killing 20 people.

The Beechcraft 1900 is an American twin-engine turboprop regional airliner manufactured by Beechcraft. It is also used as a freight aircraft and corporate transport, and by several governmental and military organizations. With customers favoring larger regional jets, then-owner Raytheon ended production in October 2002.

29/01/2022

Canadian truck drivers and pedestrians gathered to rally and protest on Parliament Hill against Canadian COVID-19 restrictions, which caused traffic and closures around the city.

A truck driver is a person who earns a living as the driver of a truck, which is commonly defined as a large goods vehicle (LGV) or heavy goods vehicle (HGV).

29/01/2017

A gunman opens fire at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, killing six people and wounding 19 others in a spree shooting.

The Quebec City mosque shooting was an attack by a single gunman on the evening of January 29, 2017, at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood of Quebec City, Canada. Six worshippers were killed and five others seriously injured after evening prayers when the gunman entered the prayer hall shortly before 8:00 pm and opened fire for about two minutes with a semi-automatic pistol. Approximately 40 people were reported present at the time of the shooting.

29/01/2014

Rojava conflict: The Afrin Canton declares its autonomy from the Syrian Arab Republic.

The Rojava Revolution, also known as the Rojava conflict is a political upheaval and military conflict taking place in northern Syria, known among Kurds as Western Kurdistan or Rojava.

29/01/2013

SCAT Airlines Flight 760 crashes near the Kazakh city of Almaty, killing 21 people.

SCAT Airlines Flight 760 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Kokshetau to Almaty, Kazakhstan, operated by a Bombardier CRJ200 twinjet that on 29 January 2013 crashed in thick fog near the village of Kyzyltu, while on approach to Almaty. All 16 passengers and 5 crew on board were killed.

29/01/2009

Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is removed from office following his conviction of several corruption charges, including solicitation of personal benefit in exchange for an appointment to the United States Senate as a replacement for then-U.S. president-elect Barack Obama.

The governor of Illinois is the head of government of Illinois, and the various agencies and departments over which the officer has jurisdiction, as prescribed in the state constitution. It is a directly elected position, votes being cast by popular suffrage of residents of the state. The governor is responsible for endorsing or vetoing laws passed by the Illinois General Assembly. The office also carries the power of pardon and commutation under state law. The governor is commander-in-chief of the state's land, air and sea forces when they are in state service. Illinois is one of 13 states that does not place a term limit for governor.

29/01/2008

An Egyptian court rules that people who do not adhere to one of the three government-recognised religions, while not allowed to list any belief outside of those three, are still eligible to receive government identity documents.

Religion in Egypt plays a significant role in the country's social structure and is institutionally supported by law. Islam is designated as the state religion of Egypt, although precise figures on religious affiliation are unavailable due to the exclusion of religious data from the 1996 census onwards. As a result, existing statistics are based on estimates provided by religious organizations and independent agencies. The majority of the population is believed to be Sunni Muslim, comprising approximately 90%, while the second largest religious group is the Coptic Christian community, whose share is estimated to range between 5 and 15%. These figures remain controversial, with Copts asserting that census data have historically underrepresented their actual numbers.

29/01/2005

The first direct commercial flights from mainland China (from Guangzhou) to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei. Shortly afterwards, a China Airlines flight lands in Beijing.

"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addition to the geographical mainland, the geopolitical sense of the term includes islands such as Hainan, Chongming, and Zhoushan.

29/01/2002

In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

The 2002 State of the Union Address was given by the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, on January 29, 2002, at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 107th United States Congress. It was Bush's first State of the Union Address and his second speech to a joint session of the United States Congress. Presiding over this joint session was the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, accompanied by Dick Cheney, the vice president, in his capacity as the president of the Senate.

29/01/2001

Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia storm parliament and demand that President Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.

Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Comprising over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea, Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at 1,904,569 square kilometres. Indonesia has significant areas of wilderness that support one of the world's highest levels of biodiversity. It shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Malaysia, as well as maritime borders with seven other countries, including Australia, Singapore, and the Philippines.

29/01/1996

President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear weapons testing.

Jacques René Chirac was President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.

29/01/1991

Gulf War: The Battle of Khafji, the first major ground engagement of the war, as well as its deadliest, begins between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts were in two phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, from the bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January until the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February.

29/01/1989

Cold War: Hungary establishes diplomatic relations with South Korea, making it the first Eastern Bloc nation to do so.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

29/01/1983

Singapore cable car crash: Panamanian-registered oil rig, Eniwetok, strikes the cables of the Singapore Cable Car system linking the mainland and Sentosa Island, causing two cabins to fall into the water and killing seven people and leaving thirteen others trapped for hours.

At about 6 p.m. on 29 January 1983, the derrick of the Eniwetok, a Panamanian-registered oil rig, passed under the aerial ropeway of the Singapore Cable Car system and struck the cable that stretched over the waterway between the Jardine Steps Station and the Sentosa Station. As a result, two cabins plunged 55 metres (180 ft) into the sea, killing seven people. The oil rig was being towed away from Keppel Wharf when it became entangled in the cable and caused it to snap. It also left thirteen people trapped in four other cabins between Mount Faber and Sentosa. The disaster was the first involving death or injury since the cable car system opened in February 1975.

29/01/1973

EgyptAir Flight 741 crashes into the Kyrenia Mountains in Cyprus, killing 37 people.

EgyptAir Flight 741 was a flight between Cairo International Airport and the now-defunct Nicosia International Airport that crashed on 29 January 1973. All 37 people on board died.

29/01/1971

The last of its many UFO sightings is made at Pudasjärvi, Finland.

The UFOs of Pudasjärvi were light phenomena and flying objects that many people reported seeing in and around the Pudasjärvi's area in North Ostrobothnia, Finland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The highest number of sightings was reported in January 1971, and the largest regional concentration of sightings was in Särkivaara, located about 145 kilometres (90 mi) northeast of Oulu and about 165 kilometres (103 mi) southeast of Rovaniemi in the vicinity of Iso-Syöte near the Taivalkoski's municipal border. In terms of timing, it was also related to the Saapunki's "light ball" seen in Kuusamo in January 1971.

29/01/1959

The first Melodifestivalen is held at Cirkus in Stockholm, Sweden.

Melodifestivalen is an annual song competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television (SVT) and Sveriges Radio (SR). It determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, and has been staged almost every year since 1959. The selection of the country's Eurovision entry is its primary focus, in contrast to some others such as Italy's Sanremo Music Festival. In the early 2000s, the competition was the most popular television program in Sweden; it is also broadcast on radio and the Internet. In 2012, the heats averaged 3.3 million viewers, and over an estimated four million people in Sweden watched the final, almost half of the Swedish population.

29/01/1944

World War II: Approximately 38 people are killed and about a dozen injured when the Polish village of Koniuchy (present-day Kaniūkai, Lithuania) is attacked by Soviet partisan units.

Kaniūkai is a village in the Šalčininkai district municipality of Lithuania. According to the 2011 census, its population was 125.

World War II: In Bologna, Italy, the Anatomical theatre of the Archiginnasio is completely destroyed in an air-raid.

Bologna is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy, with 390,734 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its metropolitan province is home to more than 1 million people as of 2025. Bologna is most famous for being the home to the oldest university in continuous operation, the University of Bologna, established in AD 1088.

29/01/1943

World War II: The first day of the Battle of Rennell Island, USS Chicago (CA-29) is torpedoed and heavily damaged by Japanese bombers.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

29/01/1940

Three trains on the Nishinari Line; present Sakurajima Line, in Osaka, Japan, collide and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi Station. One hundred and eighty-one people are killed.

The Sakurajima Line is a railway line in Osaka, Japan, operated by West Japan Railway Company connecting Nishikujō Station to Sakurajima Station. It is also referred to as the JR Yumesaki Line (JRゆめ咲線). The entire line is within Konohana-ku, Osaka, and connects the Osaka Loop Line to Universal Studios Japan (USJ).

29/01/1936

The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, honors individuals who have excelled in playing, managing, and serving the sport, and is the central point for the study of the history of baseball in the United States and beyond, displaying baseball-related artifacts and exhibits. Elections of worthy individuals to be honored by induction into the Hall of Fame commenced in 1936, although the first induction ceremonies were not held until the hall opened in 1939. Through the elections for 2025, a total of 351 people will have been inducted, including 278 former professional players, 40 executives/pioneers, 23 managers, and 10 umpires. Each is listed showing his primary position; that is, the position or role in which the player made his greatest contribution to baseball according to the Hall of Fame.

29/01/1918

Ukrainian–Soviet War: The Bolshevik Red Army, on its way to besiege Kyiv, is met by a small group of military students at the Battle of Kruty.

The Ukrainian–Soviet War is the term commonly used in post-Soviet Ukraine for the events taking place between 1917 and 1921, nowadays regarded essentially as a war between the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Bolsheviks. The war ensued soon after the October Revolution when Lenin dispatched Antonov's expeditionary group to Ukraine and Southern Russia.

Ukrainian–Soviet War: An armed uprising organized by the Bolsheviks in anticipation of the encroaching Red Army begins at the Kiev Arsenal, which will be put down six days later.

The Kiev Arsenal January Uprising, sometimes simply called the January Uprising or the January Rebellion, was a Bolshevik-organized armed workers' revolt that started on 29 January [O.S. 16 January] 1918, at the Arsenal Factory in Kiev during the Ukrainian–Soviet War. The goal of the uprising was to sabotage the ongoing elections to the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly and to support the advancing Red Army. The forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) managed to quell the uprising by 4 February [O.S. 22 January] 1918.

29/01/1911

Mexican Revolution: Mexicali is captured by the Mexican Liberal Party, igniting the Magonista rebellion of 1911.

The Mexican Revolution was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It saw the destruction of the Federal Army, its replacement by a revolutionary army, and the transformation of Mexican culture and government. The northern Constitutionalist faction prevailed on the battlefield and drafted the present-day Constitution of Mexico, which aimed to create a strong central government. Revolutionary generals held power from 1920 to 1940. The revolutionary conflict was primarily a civil war, but foreign powers, having important economic and strategic interests in Mexico, figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles; the U.S. involvement was particularly high. The conflict led to the deaths of around one million people, mostly non-combatants.

29/01/1907

Charles Curtis of Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator.

Charles Curtis was the 31st vice president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 under President Herbert Hoover. He was the Senate Majority Leader from 1924 to 1929. An enrolled citizen of the Kaw Nation born in the Kansas Territory, Curtis was the first Native American to serve in the United States Congress, where he served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate before becoming Senate Majority Leader. Curtis also was the first and only Native American and first multiracial person to serve as vice president.

29/01/1891

Liliʻuokalani is proclaimed the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Liliʻuokalani was the only queen regnant and the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, ruling from January 29, 1891, until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893, in a coup that was led by the Committee of Safety, composed of seven foreign residents and six Hawaiian Kingdom subjects of American descent in Honolulu. The composer of "Aloha ʻOe" and numerous other works, she wrote her autobiography Hawaiʻi's Story by Hawaiʻi's Queen (1898) during her imprisonment following the overthrow.

29/01/1886

Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.

Carl Friedrich Benz was a German engine designer and automotive engineer. His Benz Patent-Motorwagen from 1885 is considered the first practical, modern automobile and the first car to be put into series production. He received a patent for the motorcar in 1886, the same year he first publicly drove the Benz Patent-Motorwagen.

29/01/1863

The Bear River Massacre: A detachment of California Volunteers led by Colonel Patrick Edward Connor engage the Shoshone at Bear River, Washington Territory, killing hundreds of men, women and children.

The Bear River Massacre was a United States military attack that killed an estimated 250 to 493 children, women, and men at a Shoshone winter encampment on January 29, 1863. Some sources describe it as the largest mass murder of Native Americans by the US military and the largest single episode of genocide in US history. It took place in present-day Franklin County, Idaho near the present-day city of Preston on January 29, 1863. After years of skirmishes and food raids on farms and ranches, and settlers displacing Shoshone from their ancestral lands, the United States Army attacked a large Shoshone community at the confluence of the Bear River and Battle Creek in what was then southeastern Washington Territory.

29/01/1861

Kansas is admitted as the 34th U.S. state.

Kansas is a landlocked state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north, Colorado to the west, Oklahoma to the south, and Missouri to the east. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, in turn named after the Kansa people. Its capital is Topeka, and its most populous city is Wichita; however, the largest urban area is the bi-state Kansas City metropolitan area surrounding Kansas City, Missouri, which straddles the border of Kansas and Missouri.

29/01/1856

Queen Victoria issues a Warrant under the Royal sign-manual that establishes the Victoria Cross to recognise acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War.

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was longer than those of any of her predecessors, constituted the Victorian era, a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.

29/01/1850

Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress.

Henry Clay was an American lawyer, statesman, and diplomat who represented Kentucky in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state. Clay unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 elections. He helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the "Great Compromiser" and was part of the "Great Triumvirate" of Congressmen, alongside fellow Whig Daniel Webster and Democrat John C. Calhoun.

29/01/1845

"The Raven" is published in The Evening Mirror in New York, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe.

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a distraught lover who is paid a visit by a mysterious raven that repeatedly speaks a single word: "nevermore". The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to antagonize the protagonist further with its repetition of the word. The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.

29/01/1819

Stamford Raffles lands on the island of Singapore.

Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles was a British colonial official who served as the governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816 and lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. Raffles was involved in the capture of the Indonesian island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars. It was returned under the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824. He also wrote The History of Java in 1817, describing the history of the island from ancient times. The Rafflesia flowers were named after him.

29/01/1814

War of the Sixth Coalition: France engages Russia and Prussia in the Battle of Brienne.

The War of the Sixth Coalition, sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation saw a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, and a number of German states defeat the First French Empire and force Napoleon into exile on Elba. Following the disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812 in which they had been forced to support France, Prussia and Austria joined Russia, Britain, Sweden, Portugal and Spain against France.

29/01/0946

Caliph al-Mustakfi is blinded and deposed by Mu'izz al-Dawla, ruler of the Buyid Empire. He is succeeded by al-Muti as caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate.

Abu al-Qasim Abd Allah ibn Ali, commonly known by his regnal name al-Mustakfi, was the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad from 944 to 946.

29/01/0904

Sergius III is elected pope, after coming out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed antipope Christopher.

Pope Sergius III was the bishop of Rome and nominal ruler of the Papal States from 29 January 904 to his death. He was pope during a period of violence and disorder in central Italy, when warring aristocratic factions sought to use the material and military resources of the papacy. At the behest of Theophylact I of Tusculum, Sergius seized the papal throne from Antipope Christopher, who in turn had deposed Pope Leo V.

On this day

International Puzzle Day

29th January in the Stars – Star Sign Aquarius

Personality Profile

Fun Facts About 29th January

Famous Birthdays on 29th January

Jarell Quansah, English footballer

Lee Dae-hwi, South Korean singer

Joel Eriksson Ek, Swedish ice hockey player

Jack Roslovic, American ice hockey player

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, Japanese singer

Markel Brown, American basketball player

Maxi Kleber, German basketball player

Mohamed Abou Gabal, Egyptian footballer

Kevin Shattenkirk, American ice hockey player

Ayobami Adebayo, Nigerian author

Jake Auchincloss, American politician, businessman, and Marine veteran

Hank Conger, American baseball player

Shay Logan, English footballer

José Abreu, Cuban baseball player

Alex Avila, American baseball player

Jessica Burkhart, American author

Vladimír Mihálik, Slovak ice hockey player

Chris Bourque, American ice hockey player

Thomas Greiss, German ice hockey player

Jair Jurrjens, Curaçaoan baseball player

Marc Gasol, Spanish basketball player

Isabel Lucas, Australian actress and model

Rag'n'Bone Man, English singer-songwriter

Tim Gleason, American ice hockey player

Adam Lambert, American singer, songwriter and actor

Tenoch Huerta, Mexican actor

Jonny Lang, American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Jason James Richter, American actor and musician

Andrew Keegan, American actor

Christina Koch, American engineer and astronaut

Justin Hartley, American actor

Sam Jaeger, American actor and screenwriter

Sharif Atkins, American actor

Sara Gilbert, American actress, producer, and talk show host

Kelly Packard, American actress

Megan McArdle, American journalist

Jason Schmidt, American baseball player

Brian Wood, American writer, illustrator and graphic designer

Clare Balding, English broadcaster, journalist and author

Heather Graham, American actress

Jörg Hoffmann, German swimmer

Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Indian colonel and politician

Paul Ryan, American politician, 62nd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Sam Trammell, American actor

Edward Burns, American actor, director, writer, and producer

Monte Cook, American game designer and writer

Aeneas Williams, American football player

Sean Burke, Canadian ice hockey player and coach

Stacey King, American basketball player, coach, and sportscaster

David Agus, American physician and author

Dominik Hašek, Czech ice hockey player

Roddy Frame, Scottish singer-songwriter and musician

Andre Reed, American football player

Gauri Lankesh, Indian journalist and activist (died 2017)

Lee Terry, American politician and lawyer

Nicholas Turturro, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter

Strive Masiyiwa, Zimbabwean businessman and philanthropist

Cho-liang Lin, Taiwanese-American musician

Greg Louganis, American diver and author

Steve Sax, American baseball player

Gia Carangi, American supermodel (died 1986)

Judy Norton, American actress and theater director

Diane Delano, American actress (died 2024)

Ron Franscell, American author and journalist

Irlene Mandrell, American musician, actress, and model

Amii Stewart, American singer and dancer

Greg Ballard, American basketball player and coach (died 2016)

John Tate, American boxer (died 1998)

Terry Kinney, American actor and director

Oprah Winfrey, American talk show host, actress, and producer, founded Harpo Productions

Teresa Teng, Taiwanese singer (died 1995)

Charlie Wilson, American singer-songwriter and producer

Pete Geren, American attorney and politician

Tim Healy, British actor