Friday, 9th January 2026 in Lisbon

Welcome to your daily snapshot of Lissabon! Explore 58 historical events, birthdays, deaths, and milestones that shaped this day in Lissabon. From remarkable moments in local and world history to the people who left their mark — find out what makes today special. Today's weather in Lissabon brings drizzly with temperatures between 10°C and 15°C. Tonight's moon is in its waxing crescent phase, and the zodiac sign of the day is Capricorn. If you're curious about the history of a day — this page brings together everything worth knowing about this Friday, 9th January in Lissabon, PT.

Lisbon
Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL – CC BY-SA 2.0Wikimedia Commons

Lisbon, Portugal's capital, sits on the Tagus River estuary on the Atlantic coast and serves as the country's primary economic and cultural centre. On Friday, 9 January 2026, the city experiences drizzly conditions typical of winter weather. Astrologically, this date falls under Capricorn, the zodiac sign associated with discipline and responsibility, whilst the moon is in its waxing crescent phase, gradually increasing in illumination as it moves towards the full moon.

On this day

On 9 January 1992, radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced a breakthrough in astronomy by confirming the discovery of two pulsar planets orbiting PSR B1257+12. This represented the first confirmed detection of exoplanets, marking a pivotal moment in humanity's understanding of planetary systems beyond our own. The discovery fundamentally changed the field of astronomy and opened new avenues for research into worlds orbiting distant stars.

Two decades later, on the same date in 2015, a hostage situation unfolded at a Jewish market in Vincennes, France, connected to the Charlie Hebdo shooting that had occurred days earlier. The incident demonstrated the rippling consequences of extremist violence across European cities and the ongoing security challenges faced by French authorities in the aftermath of the attacks.

DayAtlas provides comprehensive information for any date and location, displaying weather conditions, historical events, and notable births and deaths. Users can explore what happened on specific days throughout history whilst checking local weather patterns and astrological details relevant to their chosen date and place.

Find out what's happening today in Lissabon.

What the Weather Had in Store for Lissabon on 9th January 2026

Drizzle

Sunrise 08:54
Sunset 18:32
Sunshine duration 09:08 hours
Daylight duration 09:38 hours

Maximum temperature 15.1°C
Minimum temperature 10.7°C

Wind speed 16.7km/h from WNW
Precipitation 0.6mm

A single star moves; constellations only appear to shift.

Fortune of the Day

9th January in the Stars – Star Sign Capricorn

Today, the zodiac sign Capricorn celebrates its birthday.

Personality Profile

Personality Those born on January 9th embody classic Capricorn energy: purposeful, thoughtful, and grounded. They naturally command respect and often seem older than their years. Behind their reserve lies dry wit and genuine emotional depth.

Strengths & Weaknesses Their strengths lie in persistence, strategic thinking, and unwavering reliability. They build careers methodically and rarely abandon their goals. Rigidity, excessive pessimism, and difficulty embracing spontaneity are their main weaknesses.

Love These individuals love profoundly but express feelings subtly and carefully. They seek partners with stability and intellectual substance over surface romance. Trust develops slowly, yet their loyalty remains steadfast and enduring.

Caree & Finance Financial security is paramount; they plan decades ahead and avoid unnecessary risks. Ideal careers include management, finance, engineering, or public service. Their patience and organizational skill ensure steady advancement.

Health Those born this day tend toward overwork and neglect relaxation. Regular movement and conscious rest periods are vital for balance. Digestive health and bone strength require deliberate attention.


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


Chinese year of the Snake (Wood).

Fun Facts About 9th January

Name Days in Your Language: Belinda, Linda, Lindy, Malinda, Melina, Melinda, Minda, Mindee, Mindie, Mindy, Olinda


Someone born on this day would be just 164 days old today — roughly 3,939 hours, 236,346 minutes, or 14,180,802 seconds spent on Earth so far.


It's the 9. day of the year. In 2026, 9th January falls on a Friday.


There are 356 days still to come.


We’re currently in Week 2 — the year marches on.

Famous Birthdays on 9th January

On this day, 191 notable people were born on 9th January — spanning from 1304 to 2006. From world leaders to artists and scientists, discover who shares this birthday.

09/01/2006

Sarah Toscano, Italian singer-songwriter

Sarah Toscano is an Italian singer-songwriter. She rose to prominence in 2024, after winning the twenty-third edition of the talent show Amici di Maria De Filippi.


09/01/2004

Souhardya De, Indian author and columnist

Souhardya De is an Indian writer, columnist, and commentator from Midnapore, West Bengal. He is a recipient of the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, a civilian award for Indian citizens under the age of 18, in 2021. He is a Think Big scholar at the University of Bristol and a Don Lavoie Fellow in political economy at the Mercatus Center. De was one of the young authors commissioned by the Government of India to commemorate Lal Pratap Singh on the occasion of India’s 75th anniversary of Independence.


09/01/2003

Sangiovanni, Italian singer-songwriter

Giovanni Pietro Damian, known professionally as Sangiovanni, is an Italian singer-songwriter.


09/01/2001

Eric García, Spanish footballer

Eric García Martret is a Spanish professional footballer who plays for La Liga club Barcelona and the Spain national team. Primarily a centre-back, he is also capable of playing as a full-back or defensive midfielder.


Peter Mamouzelos, Australian rugby league player

Peter Mamouzelos is a Greek professional rugby league footballer who plays as a hooker for the South Sydney Rabbitohs in the National Rugby League and Greece at international level.


Zeke Nnaji, American basketball player

Ezekiel Tobechukwu "Zeke" Nnaji is an American professional basketball player for the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Arizona Wildcats and was drafted 22nd overall by the Nuggets in the 2020 NBA draft.


09/01/2000

Luka Šamanić, Croatian basketball player

Luka Šamanić is a Croatian professional basketball player for Zenit Saint Petersburg of the Russian VTB United League. A power forward, he was drafted 19th overall by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2019 NBA draft.


09/01/1998

Kerris Dorsey, American actress

Kerris Dorsey is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Paige Whedon in the television series Brothers & Sisters; Casey Beane, Billy Beane's daughter, in the 2011 film Moneyball; and as Emily Cooper in the 2014 film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Dorsey also portrayed Bridget Donovan, the daughter of the title character, in the television series Ray Donovan.


Brent Rivera, American social media personality and actor

Brent Austin Rivera is an American influencer and actor who first gained popularity on the now-defunct video hosting service Vine. He has followings on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.


09/01/1996

Vítek Vaněček, Czech ice hockey player

Vítek Vaněček is a Czech professional ice hockey player who is a goaltender for the Utah Mammoth of the National Hockey League (NHL). He won the Stanley Cup with the Florida Panthers in 2025.


09/01/1995

Braden Hamlin-Uele, New Zealand rugby league player

Braden Hamlin-Uele is a professional rugby league footballer who plays as a prop for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the NRL. He has played for both Samoa and New Zealand at international level.


Dominik Livaković, Croatian football goalkeeper

Dominik Livaković is a Croatian professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Croatian Football League club Dinamo Zagreb, on loan from Süper Lig club Fenerbahçe, and the Croatia national team.


Nicola Peltz, American actress

Nicola Anne Peltz Beckham is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Katara in the film The Last Airbender (2010), Bradley Martin in the A&E drama series Bates Motel (2013–2015) and Tessa Yeager in the film Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).


09/01/1994

Radek Faksa, Czech ice hockey player

Radek Faksa is a Czech professional ice hockey player who is a centre for the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League (NHL). In his rookie season in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), he was the league's leading rookie scorer when he was playing for the Kitchener Rangers. Faksa was drafted 13th overall by the Stars in the 2012 NHL entry draft.


09/01/1993

Katarina Johnson-Thompson, English long jumper and heptathlete

Katarina Mary Johnson-Thompson is an English athlete. A multi-eventer, she is primarily known as both a heptathlete and an indoor pentathlete. In the heptathlon she is a double world champion, double Commonwealth Games champion and an Olympic and European silver medallist. In the indoor pentathlon, she is a world and double European champion.


Marcus Peters, American football player

Marcus Peters is an American former professional football cornerback who played in the National Football League (NFL). He was selected by the Kansas City Chiefs in the first round of the 2015 NFL draft and was also a member of the Los Angeles Rams, Baltimore Ravens, and Las Vegas Raiders. He played college football for the Washington Huskies. Peters currently serves as the head football coach at McClymonds High School.


09/01/1992

Jack Campbell, American ice hockey player

Jack Campbell is an American professional ice hockey goaltender. Prior to his professional career, Campbell played for the Windsor Spitfires and Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League. He was selected in the first round by the Dallas Stars in the 2010 NHL entry draft and made his NHL debut in 2013. After spending several years in the minors, Campbell was traded to the Los Angeles Kings, serving as the team's backup before joining the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2020, where he emerged as an effective starting netminder and was named to the NHL All-Star Game in 2022. He left Toronto after the 2021–22 season to sign with the Edmonton Oilers. Performing poorly with the Oilers, he was waived by the team in November 2023, and assigned to their American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, the Bakersfield Condors, before being bought out at the end of the season.


Terrence Jones, American basketball player

Terrence Alexander Jones is an American professional basketball player who last played for Piratas de Quebradillas of the Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN). He played college basketball for the Kentucky Wildcats.


Joseph Parker, Samoan heavyweight boxer

Joseph Dennis Parker, OM is a New Zealand professional boxer. He held the World Boxing Organization (WBO) heavyweight title from 2016 to 2018. At regional level, he has held multiple heavyweight championships, including the WBO Oriental, Africa, and Oceania titles; as well as the PABA, OPBF, and New Zealand titles. As an amateur, he represented New Zealand at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in the super-heavyweight division, and narrowly missed qualification for the 2012 Summer Olympics.


09/01/1991

Ruby Soho, American wrestler

Dori Elizabeth Prange is an American professional wrestler. She is signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where she performs under the ring name Ruby Soho. She is also known for her time in WWE, where she performed under the ring name Ruby Riott.


Álvaro Soler, Spanish singer-songwriter

Álvaro Tauchert Soler is a Spanish-German singer. He rose to prominence across Europe and Latin America with his 2015 hit "El mismo sol", primarily achieving success in Italy, Switzerland and Mexico. A special bilingual Spanish-English version of "El mismo sol", featuring Jennifer Lopez, was also recorded for international release in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and worldwide. His follow up single "Sofia" in 2016 also achieved chart success in European countries, reaching number 1 in Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belgium and Switzerland; and it is the most-viewed video on his YouTube channel. Soler has released four studio albums, Eterno agosto in 2015, Mar de colores in 2018, Magia in 2021 and El camino in 2025. His single "La cintura" taken from his second album has become a pan-European hit for him.


09/01/1989

Michael Beasley, American basketball player

Michael Paul Beasley Jr. is an American former professional basketball player who played eleven seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for seven teams, most notably the Miami Heat. He played one year of college basketball for the Kansas State Wildcats before declaring for the 2008 NBA draft. Beasley was selected as the second overall pick in the draft by the Miami Heat. He is regarded as one of the best freshman college basketball players of the 2000s. Though he is ambidextrous, he shoots left-handed.


Nina Dobrev, Bulgarian-Canadian actress

Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva, known professionally as Nina Dobrev, is a Canadian actress. She is known for portraying Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce in The CW's supernatural drama series The Vampire Diaries (2009–2015).


Yana Maksimava, Belarusian heptathlete

Yana Maksimava is a Lithuanian-Belarusian heptathlete. She was born in Vilnius, the capital of the then Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. She is married to fellow Belarusian athlete Andrei Krauchanka. Amid the forced repatriation and subsequent defection of Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, Maksimava announced that she and her husband would also not be returning to Belarus and would seek asylum in Germany, where the couple trains.


Samardo Samuels, Jamaican-American basketball player

Samardo Anthony Samuels is a Jamaican professional basketball player who last played for Trotamundos de Carabobo. He is an NBA Veteran, Italian League Champion and Greek League All-Star. With a global career spanning over 15 years as a professional basketball player, he has played in over 13 countries across the world and represented Jamaica in the FIBA Americas Championship.


Chris Sandow, Australian rugby league player

Chris Sandow is an Indigenous Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played as a goal-kicking halfback or five-eighth. He could also play as a fullback.


Haris Sohail, Pakistani cricketer

Haris Sohail is a Pakistani cricketer who plays as a left-handed batsman and who occasionally bowls left-arm orthodox.


09/01/1988

Lee Yeon-hee, South Korean actress

Lee Yeon-hee is a South Korean actress. She is most known for her work in the television series East of Eden (2008), Phantom (2012), Miss Korea (2013), The Package (2017); and in the films A Millionaire's First Love (2006), M (2007), and Detective K: Secret of the Lost Island (2015).


09/01/1987

Lucas Leiva, Brazilian footballer

Lucas Pezzini Leiva, known as Lucas or Lucas Leiva, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as a defensive midfielder for Grêmio, Liverpool, Lazio and the Brazil national team.


Paolo Nutini, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

Paolo Giovanni Nutini is a Scottish singer-songwriter from Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. Nutini's debut album, These Streets (2006), peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart. Its follow-up, Sunny Side Up (2009), debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. Both albums have been certified quintuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry. Five years later, Nutini released his third studio album, Caustic Love, in April 2014, which debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and was certified platinum by the BPI. In July 2022, he released his fourth album, Last Night in the Bittersweet.


Jami Puustinen, Finnish footballer

Jami Petteri Puustinen is a Finnish former football player. Born in Espoo, Puustinen began his career with FC Kasiysi at the age of eight in 1995, before signing for FC Espoo in 2000. After going on trial with Manchester United in July 2003, Puustinen attracted attention from several big European clubs, before signing a three-year contract with United on 29 September 2003. However, Puustinen never made a senior appearance for Manchester United and he was released in January 2006. He then returned to Finland to sign for newly promoted FC Honka.


09/01/1986

Raphael Diaz, Swiss ice hockey player

Raphael Salvador Diaz is a Swiss professional ice hockey defenceman who currently plays with EV Zug in the National League (NL). He began his professional career with EV Zug in 2003 and has also played with the Montreal Canadiens, Vancouver Canucks, New York Rangers and the Calgary Flames. After returning to Switzerland with EV Zug Diaz has won the 2019 Swiss Cup and the 2020-21 NL Championship


Jéferson Gomes, Brazilian footballer

Jéferson Gomes do Nascimento or simply Jéferson, is a Brazilian footballer who plays for Treze.


Amanda Mynhardt, South African netball player

Amanda Mynhardt is a South African netball player. She plays in the positions of GK and GD. She is currently captain of the South Africa national netball team and has competed in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi and the 2011 World Netball Championships in Singapore. She has also participated in the 2010 World Netball Series and the 2011 World Netball Series, both held in Liverpool, UK. In October 2012, she travelled with the Proteas to participate in the 2012 Netball Quad Series, and in November 2012 she was a member of the Proteas Fast5 team in the 2012 Fast5 Netball World Series where she won a bronze medal.


09/01/1985

Juan Francisco Torres, Spanish footballer

Juan Francisco Torres Belén, known as Juanfran, is a Spanish former professional footballer who played as a right-back.


09/01/1982

Catherine, Princess of Wales

Catherine, Princess of Wales is a member of the British royal family. She is married to William, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the British throne.


Sharrod Ford, American basketball player

Sharrod Victor Ford is an American former professional basketball player. He played briefly in the National Basketball Association (NBA), as well as in a variety of top leagues around the world.


09/01/1981

Ebi Smolarek, Polish footballer and manager

Euzebiusz "Ebi" Smolarek is a Polish former professional footballer. He is currently the head of the Polish Union of Footballers.


09/01/1980

Édgar Álvarez, Honduran footballer

Édgar or Edgard Anthony Álvarez Reyes is a Honduran former soccer player who last played for Platense in the Liga Nacional de Fútbol de Honduras.


Sergio García, Spanish golfer

Sergio García Fernández is a Spanish professional golfer. He turned professional in 1999 and played on the European Tour and PGA Tour prior to joining LIV Golf in 2022. García has won 36 international tournaments as a professional, most notably the 2008 Players Championship and the 2017 Masters Tournament. García was also the Chairman of Spanish football team CF Borriol.


Shaun Hill, American football player

Shaun Christopher Hill is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for 15 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Maryland Terrapins. Hill was signed by the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2002. He also played for the Amsterdam Admirals, San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, and St. Louis Rams.


Luke Patten, Australian rugby league player and referee

Luke "The General" Patten is a former professional rugby league footballer and NRL match official. A Junior Kangaroo and Country New South Wales representative fullback he played for the Illawarra Steelers, St George Illawarra Dragons and the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in Australia and the Salford City Reds in the Super League. Patten won the 2004 NRL Premiership with the Bulldogs.


Francisco Pavón, Spanish footballer

Francisco Pavón Barahona is a Spanish former footballer who played as a centre-back.


09/01/1978

Mathieu Garon, Canadian ice hockey player

Mathieu Carol Garon is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender. He played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers, Montreal Canadiens, Pittsburgh Penguins, Columbus Blue Jackets, and Tampa Bay Lightning between 2000 and 2013.


Gennaro Gattuso, Italian footballer and manager

Gennaro Ivan Gattuso is an Italian professional football manager and former player who was most recently the head coach of the Italy national team.


Chad Johnson, American football player

Chad Ochocinco Johnson, known from 2008 to 2012 as Chad Ochocinco, is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver for 11 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Santa Monica Corsairs and the Oregon State Beavers, and played for the Cincinnati Bengals and the New England Patriots during his tenure playing in the NFL. He was selected by the Bengals in the second round of the 2001 NFL draft, and played for them for 10 seasons. "Ochocinco", which means "eight five" in Spanish, derives from his number, eighty-five. In 2011, Johnson was traded to the Patriots, for whom he played in Super Bowl XLVI.


AJ McLean, American singer, dancer, and actor

Alexander James McLean is an American singer. He is a founding member of the pop vocal group Backstreet Boys.


09/01/1976

Radek Bonk, Czech ice hockey player

Radek Bonk is a Czech former professional ice hockey player. Bonk was a first-round pick of the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey League. He also played for Montreal Canadiens and Nashville Predators. He last played for Oceláři Třinec of the Czech Extraliga before retiring.


09/01/1975

James Beckford, Jamaican long jumper

James Beckford is a Jamaican track and field athlete competing in the long jump. He represented Jamaica at the Olympic level in 1996, 2000 and 2004. He was the silver medallist in the long jump at the 1996 Olympics and also has two silvers from the World Championships in Athletics. He was chosen as the Jamaica Sportsman of the Year for 1995, 1996 and 2003. He is the current holder of the Jamaican record for the triple jump with a mark of 17.92 m, and was also the holder of the long jump record at 8.62m until 28 September. 2019 when it was replaced with a mark of 8.69 m by Tajay Gayle at the World Championships in Athletics in Doha, Qatar.


09/01/1974

Omari Hardwick, American actor

Omari Latif Hardwick is an American actor. He is known for his starring role as James St. Patrick / Ghost, the protagonist of Starz's Power and his role as Vanderohe in Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead (2021). He is also known for his roles in Saved and Dark Blue, in Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna (2008), Kick-Ass (2010), Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls (2010), and as Andre in BET Network's Being Mary Jane.


09/01/1973

Angela Bettis, American actress, director, and producer

Angela Marie Bettis is an American actress, film producer, and director.


Sean Paul, Jamaican rapper, singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor

Sean Paul Ryan Francis Henriques is a Jamaican rapper, singer and songwriter. His first album, Stage One, was released in 2000. He gained international fame with his second album, Dutty Rock, in 2002. Its single "Get Busy" topped the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States, as did "Temperature", off his third album, The Trinity (2005).


09/01/1971

Angie Martinez, American rapper, actress, and radio host

Angela "Angie" Martinez is an American radio personality, podcaster, singer, former rapper and actress. Dubbed "The Voice of New York", Martinez is widely known for her 28-year run at New York City station Hot 97 (WQHT). She left the station in 2014 to join crosstown competitor Power 105.1 (WWPR).


09/01/1970

Lara Fabian, Belgian-Italian singer-songwriter and actress

Lara Sophie Katy Crokaert, known professionally as Lara Fabian, is a Belgian and Canadian singer and songwriter. Having sold over 12 million records worldwide, she is one of the best-selling Belgian artists of all time.


09/01/1968

Jimmy Adams, Jamaican cricketer and coach

James Clive Adams OD is a former Jamaican cricketer, who represented the West Indies as player and captain during his career. He was a left-handed batsman, left-arm orthodox spin bowler and fielder, especially in the gully position. He was also an occasional wicketkeeper when required. He was the head coach of Kent County Cricket Club for five seasons between 2012 and October 2016.


Joey Lauren Adams, American actress

Joey Lauren Adams is an American actress and director. Adams starred in Chasing Amy, for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and played smaller roles in other Kevin Smith View Askewniverse films.


Giorgos Theofanous, Greek-Cypriot composer and producer

George Theofanous is a Greek Cypriot composer and producer. He has sold more than two million records and written more than 500 songs in the 1990s and 2000s. Recording artists for whom he has written and produced for include Nana Mouskouri, George Dalaras. His work has received a total of nine Arion Awards, which was an award show by IFPI Greece. He served as a judge for six seasons of the Greek edition of The X Factor from 2008 to 2011 and in the 2016 and 2019 seasons.


09/01/1967

Matt Bevin, American politician, 62nd Governor of Kentucky

Matthew Griswold Bevin is an American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 62nd governor of Kentucky from 2015 to 2019, losing re-election in 2019 to Democrat Andy Beshear. He is currently the CEO of Neuronetrix Solutions, LLC.


Claudio Caniggia, Argentinian footballer

Claudio Paul Caniggia is an Argentine former professional footballer who played as forward or winger. Caniggia played 50 times for the Argentina national team. He appeared in three World Cups, and was a member of both rival clubs River Plate and Boca Juniors.


David Costabile, American actor

David Costabile is an American actor. He is best known for his television work, having appeared in supporting roles in several television series such as Billions, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Damages, Flight of the Conchords, Suits, and The Wire, as well as the film The Dirt. He has also acted on film and in Broadway theatre.


Steve Harwell, American rock singer (died 2023)

Steven Scott Harwell was an American musician and singer. He was the lead singer for the rock band Smash Mouth from their formation in 1994 until his retirement in October 2021.


Dave Matthews, South African-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor

David John Matthews is an American musician and the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band (DMB).


09/01/1965

Muggsy Bogues, American basketball player

Tyrone Curtis "Muggsy" Bogues is an American former basketball player. The shortest player ever to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m) Bogues played point guard for four teams during his 14-season career in the NBA. Although best known for his ten seasons with the Charlotte Hornets, he also played for the Washington Bullets, Golden State Warriors, and Toronto Raptors.


Haddaway, Trinidadian-German singer and musician

Nestor Alexander Haddaway is a Trinidadian-American singer and songwriter, long based in Germany. He is best known for his 1993 hit single "What Is Love", which reached number 1 in 13 countries.


Joely Richardson, English actress

Joely Kim Richardson is a British actress. She is notable for her roles as Julia McNamara in the FX drama series Nip/Tuck (2003–2010), Katherine Parr in the Showtime series The Tudors (2010), and Ethel Cripps in the Netflix series The Sandman (2022). Her film credits include Drowning by Numbers (1988), King Ralph (1991), 101 Dalmatians (1996), Event Horizon (1997), The Patriot (2000), Anonymous (2011), the Hollywood film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Endless Love (2014), Red Sparrow (2018), The Turning (2020), and Little Bone Lodge (2023).


09/01/1963

Eric Erlandson, American musician and songwriter

Eric Theodore Erlandson is an American musician, guitarist, and writer, primarily known as a founding member, songwriter and lead guitarist of alternative rock band Hole from 1989 to 2002. He has also had several musical side projects, including Rodney & the Tube Tops, which he formed with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and RRIICCEE with Vincent Gallo.


Irwin McLean, Northern Irish biologist and academic

William Henry Irwin McLean is an Irish geneticist who is emeritus professor of genetic medicine, at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee.


09/01/1962

Ray Houghton, Scottish-born footballer

Raymond James Houghton is a former professional footballer and current sports analyst and commentator with RTÉ Sport.


09/01/1961

Didier Camberabero, French rugby player

Didier Camberabero, is a former French international rugby union player. He played as fly half.


09/01/1960

Lisa Walters, Canadian golfer

Lisa Walters is a Canadian professional golfer who played on the LPGA Tour. She competed under her maiden name Lisa Young until 1988.


09/01/1959

Rigoberta Menchú, Guatemalan activist and politician, Nobel Prize laureate

Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.


09/01/1958

Rob McClanahan, American ice hockey player

Robert Bruce McClanahan is an American former professional ice hockey player who played 224 games in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Buffalo Sabres, Hartford Whalers and New York Rangers between 1980 and 1983. McClanahan was a member of the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team that beat the Soviet Union en route to a gold medal at Lake Placid in 1980.


Mehmet Ali Ağca, Turkish assassin

Mehmet Ali Ağca is a Turkish former hitman for the Grey Wolves. On 1 February 1979, he murdered journalist Abdi İpekçi, known for his leftist views, and was imprisoned, but escaped. He travelled illegally to Vatican City on 13 May 1981, and attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II on the same day. However, the assassination attempt failed, and he was captured and imprisoned by the Italian police.


09/01/1957

Phil Lewis, English musician, singer and songwriter

Philip Francis Lewis is an English musician who has lived and worked in the U.S. since the 1980s. He is best known as the lead vocalist and occasional rhythm guitarist for the American glam metal band L.A. Guns.


09/01/1956

Waltraud Meier, German soprano and actress

Waltraud Meier is a German retired dramatic soprano and mezzo-soprano singer. She is particularly known for her Wagnerian roles as Kundry, Isolde, Ortrud, Venus, Fricka, and Sieglinde, but has also had success in the French and Italian repertoire appearing as Eboli, Amneris, Carmen, and Santuzza. She resides in Munich.


Imelda Staunton, English actress and singer

Dame Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton is an English actress and singer. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Staunton began her career in repertory theatre in 1976 and appeared in various theatre productions in the West End and across the UK. Over her career, she has received several awards including a British Academy Film Award, and five Laurence Olivier Awards as well as nominations for an Academy Award, three British Academy Television Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and three Emmy Awards.


09/01/1955

Bruce Boudreau, Canadian ice hockey player and coach

Bruce Allan Boudreau is a Canadian professional ice hockey coach and former player. He previously served as head coach of the Washington Capitals, Anaheim Ducks, Minnesota Wild, and Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL). As a player, Boudreau played professionally for 20 seasons, and was a third round pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs at the 1975 NHL amateur draft. He played 141 games in the NHL with the Maple Leafs and Chicago Black Hawks, and 30 games in the World Hockey Association (WHA) with the Minnesota Fighting Saints. Boudreau played most of his career in the American Hockey League (AHL) for various teams where he was known for his goals and point-scoring abilities, recording 316 goals and 483 assists for 799 points in 634 games.


J. K. Simmons, American actor

Jonathan Kimble Simmons is an American actor. Considered among the most established and enduring character actors of his generation, he has amassed over 200 screen and stage credits since his 1986 debut. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Terence Fletcher, an abusive jazz instructor, in Damien Chazelle's Whiplash (2014), and received a second nomination for portraying William Frawley in Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos (2021). His other various accolades include a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.


09/01/1954

Philippa Gregory, Kenyan-English author and academic

Philippa Gregory is an English historical novelist who has been publishing since 1987. The best known of her works is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association and has been adapted into two films.


09/01/1952

Kaushik Basu, Indian economist and academic

Kaushik Basu is an Indian economist who was Chief Economist of the World Bank from 2012 to 2016 and Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India from 2009 to 2012. He is the C. Marks Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics at Cornell University, and academic advisory board member of upcoming Plaksha University. He began a three-year term as President of the International Economic Association in June 2017. From 2009 to 2012, during the United Progressive Alliance's second term, Basu served as the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. Basu is winner of the Humboldt Research Award 2021.


09/01/1951

M. L. Carr, American basketball player, coach, and executive

Michael Leon Carr is an American former professional basketball player, coach, and executive. He played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for nine seasons with the Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics. He won two NBA championships with the Celtics in 1981 and 1984. He also played in the Eastern Basketball Association, European Professional Basketball League, and American Basketball Association. After retiring from playing, Carr returned to the Celtics as general manager during the 1994–95 season and head coach from 1995 to 1997.


Crystal Gayle, American singer-songwriter and producer

Brenda Gail Webb, known professionally as Crystal Gayle, is an American country music singer widely known for her 1977 hit "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue". Initially, Gayle's management and record label were the same as that of her oldest sister, Loretta Lynn. Not finding success with the arrangement after several years, and with Lynn's encouragement, Gayle decided to try a different approach. She signed a new record contract and began recording with Nashville producer Allen Reynolds. Gayle's new sound was sometimes referred to as middle-of-the-road (MOR) or country pop, and was part of a bigger musical trend by many country artists of the 1970s to appeal to a wider audience. Subsequently, Gayle became one of the most successful crossover artists of the 1970s and 80s. She is also known for her floor-length hair.


09/01/1950

Alec Jeffreys, English geneticist and academic

Sir Alec John Jeffreys is a British geneticist known for developing techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling which are now used worldwide in forensic science to assist police detective work and to resolve paternity and immigration disputes.


David Johansen, American singer-songwriter and actor (died 2025)

David Roger Johansen was an American singer, songwriter, and actor best known as lead singer of the seminal proto-punk band the New York Dolls. He is also known for his work under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter and for playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged (1988).


09/01/1948

Bill Cowsill, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2006)

William Joseph Cowsill Jr. was an American singer, musician, songwriter, and record producer. He was the lead singer and guitarist of The Cowsills, who had three top-10 singles in the late 1960s. From the mid-1970s until his death, he was a successful alt-country artist and producer in Canada.


Jan Tomaszewski, Polish footballer, manager, and politician

Jan Tomaszewski is a Polish former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper in the 1970s. He kept goal for the Poland national teams that came third at the 1974 World Cup, where he was named Best Goalkeeper, that won the silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics, and that competed at the 1978 World Cup. He is regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the history of Polish football. He was later a football commentator and politician.


09/01/1946

Mohammad Ishaq Khan, Indian historian and academic (died 2013)

Mohammad Ishaq Khan was a Kashmiri academic and historian of Kashmir. He served as the dean of academics, dean of faculty of social sciences, professor, and head of the history department at Kashmir University.


Mogens Lykketoft, Danish politician, 45th Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs

Mogens Lykketoft is a Danish politician who served as Leader of the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterne) from 2002 to 2005.


09/01/1945

John Doman, American actor

John Doman is an American actor best known for playing Bill Rawls on HBO series The Wire (2002–2008), Colonel Edward Galson on Oz (2001), Dr. Deraad in ER (1999–2003), Rodrigo Borgia in the international television series Borgia (2011–2014), Don Carmine Falcone in Fox's show Gotham (2014–2017), and Bruce Buttler in The Affair (2014–2019).


Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Syrian-Armenian scholar and politician, 1st President of Armenia

Levon Hakobi Ter-Petrosyan, also known by his initials LTP, is an Armenian politician and historian who served as the first president of Armenia from 1991 until his resignation in 1998.


09/01/1944

Harun Farocki, German filmmaker (died 2014)

Harun Farocki was a German filmmaker, author, and lecturer in film.


Jimmy Page, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer

James Patrick Page is an English musician and producer who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin.


Mihalis Violaris, Cypriot singer-songwriter and actor

Michalis Kyriakou, known by his stage-name Michalis Violaris, is a singer and composer of modern Greek and Cypriot music.


09/01/1943

Robert Drewe, Australian author and playwright

Robert Duncan Drewe is an Australian novelist, non-fiction and short story writer.


Elmer MacFadyen, Canadian lawyer and politician (died 2007)

Elmer Eric MacFadyen was a Canadian politician. He represented Sherwood-Hillsborough in the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island from 1996 to 2007 as a Progressive Conservative member.


Scott Walker, American singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer (died 2019)

Noel Scott Engel, better known by his stage name Scott Walker, was an American-British singer-songwriter and record producer who resided in England. Walker was known for his emotive voice and his unorthodox stylistic path which took him from being a teen pop icon in the 1960s to an avant-garde musician from the 1990s to his death. Walker's success was largely in the United Kingdom, where he achieved fame as a member of pop trio the Walker Brothers, who scored several hit singles during the mid-1960s, including two number ones with "Make It Easy on Yourself" (1965) and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" (1966). He lived in the UK from 1965 onward and became a UK citizen in 1970.


09/01/1941

Joan Baez, American singer-songwriter, guitarist and activist

Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums.


09/01/1940

Barbara Buczek, Polish composer (died 1993)

Barbara Buczek was a Polish composer and music teacher who taught at the Academy of Music in Kraków.


Ruth Dreifuss, Swiss journalist and politician, 86th President of the Swiss Confederation

Ruth Dreifuss is a Swiss economist, unionist and politician who served as a member of the Federal Council from 1993 to 2002. She served as Vice President of Switzerland in 1998 and as President of Switzerland in 1999 for the Social Democratic Party.


09/01/1939

Susannah York, English actress and activist (died 2011)

Susannah Yolande Fletcher, known professionally as Susannah York, was an English actress. Her appearances in various films of the 1960s, including Tom Jones (1963) and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), formed the basis of her international reputation. An obituary in The Telegraph characterised her as "the blue-eyed English rose with the china-white skin and cupid lips who epitomised the sensuality of the swinging sixties", who later "proved that she was a real actor of extraordinary emotional range."


09/01/1938

Claudette Boyer, Canadian educator and politician (died 2013)

Claudette Boyer was a politician in Ontario, Canada. She was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1999 as a Liberal, but was later forced to leave the party as a result of legal difficulties. She retired from politics in 2003.


09/01/1936

K Callan, American actress and author

Katherine Elizabeth Callan is an American actress and writer, known for playing Clark Kent's mother Martha in the ABC television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. She has most recently appeared as Ruth, secretary to Mayor Tom Loftis, in the 2026 Apple TV comedy-horror series Widow's Bay, and as Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, in the Christian historical drama The Chosen.


Marko Veselica, Croatian academic and politician (died 2017)

Marko Veselica was a Croatian politician, economist and university professor.


09/01/1935

Bob Denver, American actor (died 2005)

Robert Osbourne Denver was an American comedic actor who portrayed beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on the 1959–1963 series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and Gilligan on the 1964–1967 television series Gilligan's Island.


Dick Enberg, American sportscaster (died 2017)

Richard Alan Enberg was an American sportscaster. Over the course of an approximately 60-year career, he provided play-by-play of various sports for several radio and television networks, including NBC (1975–1999), CBS (2000–2014), and ESPN (2004–2011), as well as for individual teams, such as UCLA Bruins basketball, Los Angeles Rams football, and California Angels and San Diego Padres baseball.


John Graham, New Zealand rugby player and educator (died 2017)

Sir David John Graham, generally known as John Graham, was a New Zealand educator and rugby union player. He served as president of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) and was an All Black loose forward; he played 22 Tests between 1958 and 1964, including three as captain. He was headmaster of Auckland Grammar School from 1973 to 1993, New Zealand cricket team manager from 1997 to 1999, the University of Auckland Chancellor from 1999 to 2004, and was elected president of the NZRFU in April 2005.


Brian Harradine, Australian politician (died 2014)

Richard William Brian Harradine was an Australian politician who served as an independent member of the Australian Senate, from 1975 to 2005, representing the state of Tasmania. He was the longest-serving independent federal politician in Australian history, and a Father of the Senate.


09/01/1934

Bart Starr, American football player and coach (died 2019)

Bryan Bartlett Starr was an American professional football quarterback and head coach for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Alabama Crimson Tide, and was selected in the 17th round of the 1956 NFL draft by the Packers, for whom he played for 16 seasons until 1971. Starr is the only quarterback in NFL history to lead a team to three consecutive league championships (1965–1967). He led his team to victories in the first two Super Bowls: I and II. As the Packers' head coach, he was less successful, compiling a 52–76–3 (.408) record from 1975 through 1983.


09/01/1933

Roy Dwight, English footballer (died 2002)

Royston Edward Dwight was an English footballer. He scored the opening goal in the 1959 FA Cup Final for Nottingham Forest.


Wilbur Smith, Zambian-English journalist and author (died 2021)

Wilbur Addison Smith was a Rhodesian-born British-South African novelist specializing in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries.


09/01/1931

Algis Budrys, Lithuanian-American author and critic (died 2008)

Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome in collaboration with Jerome Bixby, John A. Sentry, William Scarff and Paul Janvier. In the 1990s he was the publisher and editor of the science fiction magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction.


09/01/1929

Brian Friel, Irish author, playwright, and director (died 2015)

Brian Patrick Friel was an Irish dramatist, short story writer and founder of the Field Day Theatre Company. He had been considered one of the greatest living English-language dramatists. He has been likened to an "Irish Chekhov" and described as "the universally accented voice of Ireland". His plays have been compared favourably to those of contemporaries such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams.


Heiner Müller, German poet, playwright, and director (died 1995)

Heiner Müller was a German dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. His "enigmatic, fragmentary pieces" are a significant contribution to postmodern drama and postdramatic theatre.


09/01/1928

Judith Krantz, American novelist (died 2019)

Judith Krantz was an American magazine writer, fashion editor, and novelist. Her first novel Scruples (1978) was a New York Times best-seller and was translated into 50 languages. Scruples, which describes the glamorous and affluent world of high fashion in Beverly Hills, California, helped define a new sub-genre of the romance novel — the bonkbuster or "sex-and-shopping" novel. She also became a "celebrity author" through her extensive touring and promotion. Her later books included Princess Daisy (1980), Mistral's Daughter (1982) Till We Meet Again (1988), Dazzle (1990), and Spring Collection (1996). Her autobiography, Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl, was published in 2000.


Domenico Modugno, Italian singer-songwriter, actor, and politician (died 1994)

Domenico Modugno was an Italian singer, actor and, later in life, a member of the Italian Parliament. He is known for his 1958 international hit song "Nel blu dipinto di blu", for which he received the first Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. He is considered the first Italian cantautore.


09/01/1926

Jean-Pierre Côté, Canadian lawyer and politician, 23rd Lieutenant Governor of Quebec (died 2002)

Joseph Julien Jean-Pierre Côté was a Canadian parliamentarian and the 23rd Lieutenant Governor of Quebec.


09/01/1925

Len Quested, English footballer and manager (died 2012)

Wilfred Leonard Quested was an English footballer. Quested played one match for England B as well as being selected as a travelling reserve for a Full International for England. In 1957 he moved to Australia where he played for the Sydney clubs Auburn and Hakoah. He also played in an unofficial match for Australia.


Lee Van Cleef, American actor (died 1989)

Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Jr. was an American actor. He appeared in over 170 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly 40 years, but is best known as a star of spaghetti Westerns, holding starring roles in the Sergio Leone-directed Dollars Trilogy films, For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). In 1983, he received a Golden Boot Award for his contribution to the Western film and television genre.


09/01/1924

Sergei Parajanov, Georgian-Armenian director and screenwriter (died 1990)

Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov was a Soviet film director and screenwriter. His films are known for their poetic, non-linear, and symbolic nature. Widely considered by filmmakers, film critics, and film historians to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, he has been described as a "magician", a "master", and a "conjurer of cinematic worlds".


09/01/1922

Har Gobind Khorana, Indian-American biochemist and academic, Nobel laureate (died 2011)

Har Gobind Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that showed the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell and control the cell's synthesis of proteins. Khorana and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year.


Ahmed Sékou Touré, Guinean politician, 1st President of Guinea (died 1984)

Ahmed Sékou Touré was a Guinean political leader and African statesman who was the first president of Guinea from 1958 until his death in 1984. Touré was among the primary Guinean nationalists involved in gaining independence of the country from France. He would later die in the United States in 1984.


09/01/1921

Ágnes Keleti, Hungarian Olympic gymnast (died 2025)

Ágnes Keleti was a Hungarian and Israeli artistic gymnast and coach, who won multiple Olympic medals. She was the oldest living Olympic champion and medallist, reaching her 100th birthday on 9 January 2021. While representing Hungary at the Summer Olympics, she won 10 Olympic medals including five gold medals, three silver medals, and two bronze medals, and is considered to be one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes of all time. Keleti earned more Olympic medals than any other individual with Israeli citizenship, and more Olympic medals than any other Jew, except Mark Spitz. She was the most successful athlete at the 1956 Summer Olympics.


09/01/1920

Clive Dunn, English actor (died 2012)

Clive Robert Bertram Dunn was an English actor. Although he was only 48 and one of the youngest cast members, he was cast in a role many years his senior, as the elderly Lance Corporal Jones in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army, which ran for nine series and 80 episodes between 1968 and 1977. As a recording artist, he achieved a number 1 on the UK Singles Chart in 1971 with "Grandad".


Hakim Said, Pakistani scholar and politician, 20th Governor of Sindh (died 1998)

Hakeem Muhammad Saeed was a Pakistani medical researcher, author, scholar, and philanthropist. He served as governor of Sindh Province from 19 July 1993 until 23 January 1994. Saeed was one of Pakistan's most prominent medical researchers in the field of Eastern medicine.


09/01/1919

William Morris Meredith, Jr., American poet and academic (died 2007)

William Morris Meredith Jr. was an American poet and educator. He was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1978 to 1980, and the recipient of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.


09/01/1918

Alma Ziegler, American baseball player and golfer (died 2005)

Alma Ziegler was an infielder and pitcher who played from 1944 through 1954 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Listed at 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m), 125 lb., Ziegler batted and threw right-handed.


09/01/1915

Fernando Lamas, Argentinian-American actor, singer, and director (died 1982)

Fernando Álvaro Lamas y de Santos was an Argentine-American actor and director of the Golden Age of Argentine cinema. He is the father of actor Lorenzo Lamas.


Anita Louise, American actress (died 1970)

Anita Louise was an American film and television actress best known for her performances in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), Anthony Adverse (1936), Marie Antoinette (1938), and The Little Princess (1939). She was named as a WAMPAS Baby Star.


09/01/1914

Kenny Clarke, American jazz drummer and bandleader (died 1985)

Kenneth Clarke Spearman, known professionally as Kenny Clarke and nicknamed Klook, was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. A major innovator of the bebop style of drumming, he pioneered the use of the ride cymbal to keep time rather than the hi-hat, along with the use of the bass drum for irregular accents.


09/01/1913

Richard Nixon, American commander, lawyer, and politician, 37th President of the United States (died 1994)

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he represented California in both houses of the United States Congress before serving as the 36th vice president under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.


09/01/1912

Basil Langton, English actor, director, photographer, and teacher (died 2003)

Basil Cedric Langton was an English actor, director and photographer, who made a career on both sides of the Atlantic. He was an authority on the plays of George Bernard Shaw and compiled an archive of more than 400,000 words of interviews with people who had known and worked with Shaw. He was also a teacher, working at colleges in New York and California.


Ralph Tubbs, English architect, designed the Dome of Discovery (died 1996)

Ralph Sydney Tubbs OBE FRIBA was a British architect. Well known amongst the buildings he designed was the Dome of Discovery at the successful Festival of Britain on the South Bank in London in 1951.


09/01/1909

Anthony Mamo, Maltese lawyer and politician, 1st President of Malta (died 2008)

Anthony Joseph Mamo was the first president of Malta and before that was the last governor-general of the State of Malta before the British colony became a republic. He was also the first Maltese citizen to be appointed Governor-General, and before independence, was briefly acting governor.


Patrick Peyton, Irish-American priest, television personality, and activist (died 1992)

Patrick Peyton, CSC, also known as "the rosary priest", was an Irish-born religious priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and founder of the Family Rosary Crusade. He popularized the phrases "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace."


09/01/1908

Simone de Beauvoir, French philosopher and author (died 1986)

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.


09/01/1902

Rudolf Bing, American impresario and businessman (died 1997)

Sir Rudolf Bing, KBE was an Austrian-born British opera impresario who worked in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, including as General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1950 to 1972. He was naturalized as a British subject in 1946 and was knighted in 1971, although he spent decades living in the United States, where he died.


Josemaría Escrivá, Spanish priest and saint, founded Opus Dei (died 1975)

Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás was a Spanish Catholic priest who founded Opus Dei, an organization of laypeople and priests dedicated to the principle of everyday holiness. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.


09/01/1901

Vilma Bánky, Hungarian-American actress (died 1991)

Vilma Bánky was a Hungarian-American silent film actress. Although her acting career began in Budapest, and she later worked in France, Austria, and Germany, Bánky was best known for her roles in the American films The Eagle and The Son of the Sheik with Rudolph Valentino, and for several romantic teamings with Ronald Colman.


09/01/1900

Richard Halliburton, American journalist and author (died 1939)

Richard Halliburton was an American travel writer and adventurer who, among numerous journeys, swam the length of the Panama Canal and paid the lowest toll in its history, 36 cents, in 1928. He disappeared at sea while attempting to sail the Chinese junk Sea Dragon across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, California.


09/01/1899

Harald Tammer, Estonian journalist and weightlifter (died 1942)

Harald Tammer was an Estonian journalist, athlete and weightlifter. As a heavyweight weightlifter he won a world title in 1922 and a bronze medal at the 1924 Olympics. As an athlete he competed in the shot put at the 1920 and 1924 Olympics and came sixth and twelfth, respectively. He served as the Olympic flag bearer for Estonia in 1920, and as a representative of the Estonian Olympic team in 1928 and 1936.


09/01/1898

Gracie Fields, English actress and singer (died 1979)

Dame Gracie Fields was a British actress, singer and comedian. A star of cinema and music hall, she was one of the top ten film stars in Britain during the 1930s and was considered the highest paid film star in the world in 1937. Fields was known affectionately as Our Gracie and the Lancashire Lass and for never losing her strong, native Lancashire accent. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and an Officer of the Venerable Order of St John (OStJ) in 1938, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1979.


09/01/1897

Karl Löwith, German philosopher, author, and academic (died 1973)

Karl Löwith was a German philosopher best known for his critiques of historicism and his analysis of secularization in modern thought. A student of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl during the Weimar Republic, Löwith developed a distinctive philosophical position that questioned the progressivist assumptions underlying much of nineteenth and twentieth-century European philosophy, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.


Halyna Kuzmenko, Ukrainian teacher and anarchist revolutionary (died 1978)

Agafya "Halyna" Andriivna Kuzmenko was a Ukrainian teacher and anarchist revolutionary. After moving to southern Ukraine, she became a prominent figure within the ranks of the Makhnovshchina, a mass movement to establish a libertarian communist society. Kuzmenko spearheaded the movement's educational activities, promoted Ukrainization and acted as an outspoken advocate of women's rights. Along with her husband, the anarchist military leader Nestor Makhno, in 1921 she fled into exile from the political repression in Ukraine. While imprisoned for subversive activities in Poland, she gave birth to her daughter Elena Mikhnenko, whom she brought with her to Paris. Following the death of her husband, the outbreak of World War II saw her deportation for forced labour, first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets. After her release, she spent her final days with her daughter in Kazakh SSR.


09/01/1896

Warwick Braithwaite, New Zealand-English conductor and director (died 1971)

Henry Warwick Braithwaite was a New Zealand-born orchestral conductor. He worked mostly in Great Britain and was especially known for his work in opera.


09/01/1893

Edwin Baker, Canadian soldier and educator, co-founded the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (died 1968)

Edwin Albert Baker, was a Canadian co-founder of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).


09/01/1892

Eva Bowring, American lawyer and politician (died 1985)

Eva Bowring was a U.S. Senator from Nebraska. Bowring was born in Nevada, Missouri. In 1928, she married Arthur Bowring. They made their home at the Bowring Ranch near Merriman in Cherry County, Nebraska.


09/01/1890

Karel Čapek, Czech author and playwright (died 1938)

Karel Čapek was a Czech writer, playwright, critic and journalist. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel War with the Newts (1936) and play R.U.R., which introduced the word robot. He also wrote many politically charged works dealing with the social turmoil of his time. Influenced by American pragmatic liberalism, he campaigned in favor of free expression and strongly opposed the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe.


Kurt Tucholsky, German-Swedish journalist and author (died 1935)

Kurt Tucholsky was a German journalist, satirist, and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel.


09/01/1889

Vrindavan Lal Verma, Indian author and playwright (died 1969)

Vrindavan Lal verma was a Hindi novelist and playwright. He was honoured with Padma Bhushan for his literary works; Agra University presented him with honorary D. Lit. He received Soviet Land Nehru Award and the government India also awarded him for his novel, Jhansi Ki Rani.


09/01/1886

Lloyd Loar, American sound engineer and instrument designer (died 1943)

Lloyd Allayre Loar (1886–1943) was an American musician, instrument designer and sound engineer. He is best known for his design work with the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co. Ltd. in the early 20th century, including the F-5 model mandolin and L-5 guitar. In his later years he worked on electric amplification of stringed instruments, and demonstrated them around the country. One example, played in public in 1938 was an electric viola that used electric coils beneath the bridge, with no back, able to "drown out the loudest trumpet."


09/01/1885

Charles Bacon, American runner and hurdler (died 1968)

Charles James Bacon Jr. was an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club and the New York City Police Department. He won the 400 metres hurdles at the 1908 Summer Olympics.


09/01/1881

Lascelles Abercrombie, English poet and critic (died 1938)

Lascelles Abercrombie was a British poet and literary critic, one of the "Dymock poets". After the First World War he worked as a professor of English literature in a number of English universities, writing principally on the theory of literature.


Giovanni Papini, Italian journalist, author, and poet (died 1956)

Giovanni Papini was an Italian journalist, essayist, novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and philosopher. A controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century, he was the earliest and most enthusiastic representative and promoter of Italian pragmatism. Papini was admired for his writing style and engaged in heated polemics. Involved with avant-garde movements such as futurism and post-decadentism, he moved from one political and philosophical position to another, always dissatisfied and uneasy: he converted from anti-clericalism and atheism to Catholicism, and went from convinced interventionism – before 1915 – to an aversion to war. In the 1930s, after moving from individualism to conservatism, he finally became a fascist, while maintaining an aversion to Nazism.


09/01/1879

John B. Watson, American psychologist and academic (died 1958)

John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist who popularized the scientific theory of behaviorism, establishing it as a psychological school. Watson advanced this change in the psychological discipline through his 1913 address at Columbia University, titled Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It. Through his behaviorist approach, Watson conducted research on animal behavior, child rearing, and advertising, as well as conducting the controversial "Little Albert" experiment and the Kerplunk experiment. He was also the editor of Psychological Review from 1910 to 1915. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Watson as the 17th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.


09/01/1875

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, American sculptor and art collector, founded the Whitney Museum of American Art (died 1942)

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She was a prominent social figure and hostess, who was born into the wealthy Vanderbilt family and married into the Whitney family.


09/01/1873

Hayim Nahman Bialik, Ukrainian-Austrian journalist, author, and poet (died 1934)

Hayim Nahman Bialik was a Russian-Jewish poet who wrote primarily in Hebrew and Yiddish. Bialik is considered a pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry, part of the vanguard of Jewish thinkers who gave voice to a new spirit of his time, and recognized today as Israel's national poet. Being a noted essayist, poet and story-teller, Bialik also translated major works from European languages into Hebrew.


Thomas Curtis, American sprinter and hurdler (died 1944)

Thomas Pelham Curtis was an American athlete and the winner of the 110 metres hurdles at the 1896 Summer Olympics.


John Flanagan, Irish-American hammer thrower (died 1938)

John Joseph Flanagan was an Irish-American three-time Olympic gold medalist in the hammer throw, winning in 1900, 1904, and 1908.


09/01/1870

Joseph Strauss, American engineer, co-designed the Golden Gate Bridge (died 1938)

Joseph Baermann Strauss was an American structural engineer who revolutionized the design of bascule bridges. He was the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.


09/01/1868

S. P. L. Sørensen, Danish chemist and academic (died 1939)

Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen was a Danish chemist, known for the introduction of the concept of pH, a scale for measuring acidity and alkalinity.


09/01/1864

Vladimir Steklov, Russian mathematician and physicist (died 1926)

Vladimir Andreevich Steklov was a prominent Russian and Soviet mathematician, mechanician and physicist.


09/01/1859

Carrie Chapman Catt, American activist, founded the League of Women Voters and International Alliance of Women (died 1947)

Carrie Chapman Catt was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900 to 1904 and 1915 to 1920. She founded the League of Women Voters in 1920 and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904, which was later named International Alliance of Women. She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920". She "was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women."


09/01/1856

Anton Aškerc, Slovenian priest and poet (died 1912)

Anton Aškerc was a Slovenian poet and Roman Catholic priest who worked in Austria, best known for his epic poems.


09/01/1854

Jennie Jerome, American-born wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, mother of Sir Winston Churchill (died 1921)

Jennie Jerome Churchill, known as Lady Randolph Spencer-Churchill, was an American-born British socialite, the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, and the mother of British prime minister Winston Churchill.


09/01/1849

John Hartley, English tennis player (died 1935)

Rev. John Thorneycroft Hartley was a tennis player from England, and the only clergyman to win Wimbledon.


09/01/1848

Princess Frederica of Hanover (died 1926)

Princess Frederica of Hanover was a member of the House of Hanover. After her marriage, she lived mostly in England, where she was a prominent member of society.


09/01/1839

John Knowles Paine, American composer and academic (died 1906)

John Knowles Paine was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of composers collectively known as the Boston Six, Paine was one of those responsible for the first significant body of concert music by composers from the United States. The Boston Six's other five members were Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, George Chadwick, and Horatio Parker.


09/01/1832

Félix-Gabriel Marchand, Canadian journalist and politician, 11th Premier of Quebec (died 1900)

Félix-Gabriel Marchand was a journalist, author, notary and politician in Quebec, Canada. He was the 11th premier of Quebec from May 24, 1897, to September 25, 1900.


09/01/1829

Thomas William Robertson, English director and playwright (died 1871)

Thomas William Robertson was an English dramatist and stage director known for his development of naturalism in British theatre.


Adolf Schlagintweit, German botanist and explorer (died 1857)

Adolf von Schlagintweit was a German botanist and explorer of Central Asia. Brothers Hermann, Adolf and Robert Schlagintweit were commissioned by the British East India Company to study the Earth's magnetic field in South and Central Asia. They were the first Europeans to cross the Kunlun Mountains and the first to explore the region between Karakoram and Kunlun. After their joint exploration, Adolf Schlagintweit made a separate expedition of his own, crossing the present day disputed Aksai Chin region for the first time. Mistaken for a Chinese spy, he was executed in Kashgar.


09/01/1823

Friedrich von Esmarch, German surgeon and academic (died 1908)

Johannes Friedrich August von Esmarch was a German surgeon. He developed the Esmarch bandage and founded the Deutscher Samariter-Verein, the predecessor of the Deutscher Samariter-Bund.


09/01/1822

Carol Benesch, Czech-Romanian architect, designed the Peleș Castle (died 1896)

Carol Benesch was a Silesian architect of Historicism and Eclecticism orientation established in the Kingdom of Romania.


09/01/1819

James Francis, English-Australian businessman and politician, 9th Premier of Victoria (died 1884)

James Goodall Francis, Australian colonial politician, was the 9th Premier of Victoria. Francis was born in London, and emigrated to Van Diemen's Land in 1847, where he became a businessman. He moved to Victoria in 1853 and became a leading Melbourne merchant. He was a director of the Bank of New South Wales and president of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce. He married Mary Ogilvie and had eight sons and seven daughters.


09/01/1818

Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon, French sculptor and photographer (died 1881)

Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon was a French sculptor and photographer.


09/01/1811

Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, English journalist and author (died 1856)

Gilbert Abbott à Beckett was an English humorist.


09/01/1778

Hammamizade İsmail Dede Efendi, Turkish Ney player and composer (died 1846)

Hammamizade İsmail Dede Efendi was a composer of Ottoman classical music.


09/01/1773

Cassandra Austen, English painter and illustrator (died 1845)

Cassandra Elizabeth Austen was an amateur English watercolourist and the elder sister of Jane Austen. The letters between her and Jane form a substantial foundation for scholarly understanding of the life of the novelist.


09/01/1753

Luísa Todi, Portuguese soprano and actress (died 1833)

Luísa Rosa de Aguiar Todi was a popular and successful Portuguese mezzo-soprano opera singer.


09/01/1745

Caleb Strong, American lawyer and politician, 6th Governor of Massachusetts (died 1819)

Caleb Strong Jr. was an American lawyer, politician, and Founding Father who served as the sixth and tenth governor of Massachusetts between 1800 and 1807, and again from 1812 until 1816. He assisted in drafting the Massachusetts State Constitution in 1779 and served as a state senator and on the Massachusetts Governor's Council before being elected to the inaugural United States Senate. A leading member of the Massachusetts Federalist Party, his political success delayed the decline of the Federalists in Massachusetts.


09/01/1735

John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, English admiral and politician (died 1823)

Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent was a Royal Navy officer and politician. Jervis served throughout the latter half of the 18th century and into the 19th, and was an active commander during the Seven Years' War, American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He is best known for his victory at the 1797 Battle of Cape St. Vincent, from which he earned his titles, and as a patron of Horatio Nelson.


09/01/1728

Thomas Warton, English poet, historian, and critic (died 1790)

Thomas Warton was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1785, following the death of William Whitehead.


09/01/1685

Tiberius Hemsterhuis, Dutch philologist and critic (died 1766)

Tiberius Hemsterhuis was a Dutch philologist and critic.


09/01/1674

Reinhard Keiser, German composer (died 1739)

Reinhard Keiser was a German opera composer based in Hamburg. He wrote over a hundred operas. Johann Adolf Scheibe considered him an equal to Johann Kuhnau, George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann, but his work was largely forgotten for many decades.


09/01/1645

Sir William Villiers, 3rd Baronet, English noble and politician (date baptized; (died 1712)

Sir William Villiers, 3rd Baronet was an English politician from the Villiers family.


09/01/1624

Empress Meishō of Japan (died 1696)

Okiko , posthumously honored as Empress Meishō , was the 109th monarch of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Her reign lasted from 1629 to 1643. Her reign officially began when she was five years old and continued for fifteen years. It is believed that Meishō's father actually ruled in her name until she abdicated in favor of her younger half-brother.


09/01/1606

William Dugard, English printer (died 1662)

William Dugard, or Du Gard, was an English schoolmaster and printer. During the English Interregnum, he printed many important documents and propaganda, first in support of Charles I and later of Oliver Cromwell. He also proved a successful master at a number of schools, including the Merchant Taylor's School, Colchester Royal Grammar School and Stamford School, and wrote a number of non-fiction works.


09/01/1590

Simon Vouet, French painter (died 1649)

Simon Vouet was a French painter who studied and rose to prominence in Italy before being summoned by Louis XIII to serve as Premier peintre du Roi in France. He and his studio of artists created religious and mythological paintings, portraits, frescoes, tapestries, and massive decorative schemes for the king and for wealthy patrons, including Cardinal Richelieu. During this time, "Vouet was indisputably the leading artist in Paris," and was immensely influential in introducing the Italian Baroque style of painting to France. He was also, according to Pierre Rosenberg, "without doubt one of the outstanding seventeenth-century draughtsmen, equal to Annibale Carracci and Lanfranco."


09/01/1571

Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy, French commander (died 1621)

Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, 2nd Count of Bucquoy was a military commander who fought for the Spanish Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War and for the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War.


09/01/1554

Pope Gregory XV (died 1623)

Pope Gregory XV, born Alessandro Ludovisi, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 February 1621 until his death in 1623. He is notable for founding the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, an organization tasked with overseeing the spread of Catholicism and missionary work. Gregory XV was also responsible for the canonization of Saints Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Ávila, and Philip Neri, which solidified his commitment to the Counter-Reformation.


09/01/1418

Juan Ramón Folch III de Cardona, Aragonese admiral (died 1485)

John Ramon III Folch de Cardona i de Prades was a Catalan nobleman. John Ramon's titles included Count of Prades (5th), Count of Cardona, Viscount of Vilamur, Baron of Entença, Admiral of Aragon, Captain general of Catalonia as well as Viceroy of Sicily from 1477 to 1479.


09/01/1304

Hōjō Takatoki, Japanese shikken of the Kamakura bakufu (died 1333)[unreliable source?]

Hōjō Takatoki was the last Tokusō and ruling Shikken (regent) of Japan's Kamakura shogunate; the rulers that followed were his puppets. A member of the Hōjō clan, he was the son of Hōjō Sadatoki, and was preceded as shikken by Hōjō Mototoki.


Lives Remembered on 9th January

On 9th January, 123 remarkable people passed away — from 710 to 2025. Remember the lives and legacies of those we lost on this day.

09/01/2025

Black Bart, American professional wrestler (born 1948)

Richard Harris, better known by his ring name Black Bart, was an American professional wrestler.


09/01/2024

Rashid Khan, Indian classical musician (born 1968)

Ustad Rashid Khan was an Indian classical musician in the Hindustani tradition. He belonged to the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana and was the great-grandson of the gharana's founder Inayat Hussain Khan.


09/01/2023

Séamus Begley, Irish accordion player, fiddler and Irish traditional musician (born 1949)

Séamus Begley was an Irish accordion player, and Irish traditional musician. He was regarded as one of Ireland's greatest accordion players.


09/01/2022

Bob Saget, American comedian, actor, and television host (born 1956)

Robert Lane Saget was an American stand-up comedian, actor, director, and television host. He portrayed Danny Tanner on the sitcom Full House (1987–1995) and its sequel Fuller House (2016–2020). Saget was the original host of America's Funniest Home Videos (1989–1997), and the voice of narrator Ted Mosby on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014). He was simultaneously known for his family-friendly image and his profane comedian persona, with his 2014 album That's What I'm Talkin' About being nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.


Maria Ewing, American opera singer (born 1950)

Maria Louise Ewing, Lady Hall was an American opera singer. In the early part of her career she performed solely as a lyric mezzo-soprano; she later assumed full soprano parts as well. Her signature roles were Blanche, Carmen, Dorabella, Rosina and Salome. Some critics regarded her as one of the most compelling singing actresses of her generation.


09/01/2021

John Reilly, American actor (born 1934)

John Henry Matthew Reilly was an American film and television actor who appeared on soap operas, including General Hospital, Sunset Beach, and Passions.


09/01/2019

Verna Bloom, American actress (born 1938)

Verna Frances Bloom was an American actress.


Paul Koslo, German-Canadian actor (born 1944)

Paul Koslo was a German-born Canadian actor.


09/01/2018

Kato Ottio, Papua New Guinean rugby league player (born 1994)

Benkato "Kato" Ottio was a Papua New Guinean rugby league footballer. Primarily playing as a centre, Ottio represented Papua New Guinea, most notably at the 2017 World Cup.


09/01/2017

Zygmunt Bauman, Polish sociologist (born 1925)

Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish–British sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrated to Israel; three years later, he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971, where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later emeritus. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, consumerism in postmodernity, and liquid modernity.


09/01/2016

John Harvard, Canadian journalist and politician, 23rd Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba (born 1938)

John Harvard was a Canadian journalist and politician. He served as a federal Member of Parliament (MP) from 1988 to 2004, and was appointed the 23rd Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba just before Canada's 2004 federal election.


Angus Scrimm, American actor and author (born 1926)

Angus Scrimm was an American actor, author, and journalist, known for his portrayal of the Tall Man in the 1979 horror film Phantasm and its sequels.


09/01/2015

Michel Jeury, French author (born 1934)

Michel Jeury was a French science fiction writer, reputed in the 1970s. He also used the pseudonym of Albert Higon.


Józef Oleksy, Polish economist and politician, 7th Prime Minister of Poland (born 1946)

Józef Oleksy was a Polish left-wing politician who served as Prime Minister of Poland from 7 March 1995 to 7 February 1996, when he resigned due to espionage allegations. He was chairman of the Democratic Left Alliance.


Abdul Rahman Ya'kub, Malaysian politician, 3rd Chief Minister of Sarawak (born 1928)

Abdul Rahman bin Ya'kub was a Malaysian politician of Melanau descent from Mukah. He was the third Chief Minister of Sarawak and the fourth Yang di-Pertua Negeri Sarawak. He is also an uncle of Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, since his (Taib's) mother Hajah Hamidah Ya'akub (1916–2006) was his (Rahman's) eldest-born sibling.


Roy Tarpley, American basketball player (born 1964)

Roy James Tarpley Jr. was an American professional basketball player. He played the power forward and center positions in the National Basketball Association (NBA), earning an NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award in 1988. In 1995, Tarpley was permanently banned by the NBA due to his drug and alcohol abuse. He played in Europe for Olympiacos, Aris, and Iraklis.


09/01/2014

Amiri Baraka, American poet, playwright, and academic (born 1934)

Amiri Baraka, previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.


Josep Maria Castellet, Spanish poet and critic (born 1926)

Josep Maria Castellet Díaz de Cossío, also known as José María Castellet, was a Spanish Catalan writer, poet, literacy critic, publisher and editor.


Paul du Toit, South African painter and sculptor (born 1965)

Paul Johan du Toit was a South African artist, working in painting, sculpture, paper and mixed media. His exhibits have been displayed globally. Most notably, three of his sculptures were selected for the 2001 Florence Biennale.


Dale T. Mortensen, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1939)

Dale Thomas Mortensen was an American economist, a professor at Northwestern University, and a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.


09/01/2013

Brigitte Askonas, Austrian-English immunologist and academic (born 1923)

Brigitte Alice Askonas was a British immunologist and a visiting professor at Imperial College London from 1995.


James M. Buchanan, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1919)

James McGill Buchanan Jr. was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory originally outlined in his most famous work, The Calculus of Consent, co-authored with Gordon Tullock in 1962. He continued to develop the theory, eventually receiving the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986.


Robert L. Rock, American businessman and politician, 42nd Lieutenant Governor of Indiana (born 1927)

Robert Lee Rock was an American politician who served as the Lieutenant Governor of Indiana from 1965 to 1969 and as the Mayor of Anderson, Indiana, from 1972 to 1980. He was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Indiana in 1968, but lost to Republican Edgar Whitcomb.


John Wise, Canadian farmer and politician, 23rd Canadian Minister of Agriculture (born 1935)

John Wise was a Canadian politician from Ontario.


09/01/2012

Brian Curvis, Welsh boxer (born 1937)

Brian Nancurvis, who fought under the name Brian Curvis as a professional, was a boxer from Swansea, Wales who was active from 1959 to 1966. He fought as a Welterweight, becoming British welterweight champion in 1960. He retired as undefeated champion and is the only welterweight to have won two Lonsdale Belts outright. The four defeats in his professional career were all to foreign boxers; he was never beaten by a British boxer.


Augusto Gansser-Biaggi, Swiss geologist and academic (born 1910)

Augusto Gansser-Biaggi was a Swiss geologist who specialised in the geology of the Himalayas. He was born in Milan.


William G. Roll, German-American psychologist and parapsychologist (born 1926)

William G. Roll was an American psychologist and parapsychologist on the faculty of the Psychology Department of the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia. Roll is most notable for his belief in poltergeist activity. He coined the term "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" (RSPK) to explain poltergeist cases. However, RSPK was never accepted by mainstream science and skeptics have described Roll as a credulous investigator.


Malam Bacai Sanhá, Guinea-Bissau politician, President of Guinea-Bissau (born 1947)

Malam Bacai Sanhá was a Bissau-Guinean politician who was President of Guinea-Bissau from 8 September 2009 until his death on 9 January 2012. A member of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), Sanhá was President of the National People's Assembly from 1994 to 1999 and then served as acting President of Guinea-Bissau from 14 May 1999, to 17 February 2000, following the ouster of President João Bernardo Vieira. Standing as the PAIGC candidate, he placed second in the 1999–2000 presidential election as well as the 2005 presidential election before winning the June–July 2009 presidential election.


László Szekeres, Hungarian physician and academic (born 1921)

László Szekeres. Professor Emeritus, Institute of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Medical Faculty of the University of Szeged, Hungary. He has held a number of notable positions and received a number of awards. His research contributed to the development of cardiac drugs.


09/01/2011

Makinti Napanangka, Australian painter (born 1930)

Makinti Napanangka AM was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She was referred to posthumously as Kumentje. The term Kumentje was used instead of her personal name as it is customary among many indigenous communities not to refer to deceased people by their original given names for some time after their deaths. She lived in the communities of Haasts Bluff, Papunya, and later at Kintore, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) north-east of the Lake MacDonald region where she was born, on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Makinti died in 2011 in Alice Springs and she was posthumously awarded an AM later that year.


09/01/2009

Rob Gauntlett, English mountaineer and explorer (born 1987)

Robert Douglas "Rob" Gauntlett was an English adventurer, explorer and motivational speaker. In 2006 he became the youngest British climber to reach the summit of Everest.


T. Llew Jones, Welsh author and poet (born 1914)

Thomas Llewelyn Jones was a Welsh language author. Over a writing career of more than 50 years, he became one of the most prolific and popular authors of children's books in Welsh. He wrote, and was generally known, as T. Llew Jones.


Tan Chor Jin, Singaporean murderer and triad leader of Ang Soon Tong (born 1966)

Tan Chor Jin, also known by his alias Tony Kia, was a Singaporean gang leader known for fatally shooting 41-year-old Lim Hock Soon, his former friend and nightclub owner, using a semi-automatic Beretta .22 calibre pistol on 15 February 2006. Tan, who had underworld affiliations and was a member of Ang Soon Tong since his early years, had also robbed the Lim family of their valuables before he escaped Singapore to Malaysia, where he was arrested ten days later. The media gave him the name "One-eyed Dragon" given that he was blind in the right eye.


09/01/2008

Johnny Grant, American radio host and producer (born 1923)

Johnny Grant was an American radio personality and television producer who also served as the honorary mayor of Hollywood, in which capacity he was often present at Hollywood community functions, including the unveiling of new stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. An intersection just north of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue is designated "Johnny Grant Way".


John Harvey-Jones, English businessman and television host (born 1924)

Sir John Harvey-Jones MBE was an English businessman and Captain of Industry. He was the chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries from 1982 to 1987. He was best known by the public for his BBC television show, Troubleshooter, in which he advised struggling businesses.


09/01/2007

Elmer Symons, South African motorcycle racer (born 1977)

Elmer Symons was a motorcycle enduro racer.


Jean-Pierre Vernant, French anthropologist and historian (born 1914)

Jean-Pierre Vernant was a French resistant, historian and anthropologist, specialist in ancient Greece. Influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Vernant developed a structuralist approach to Greek myth, tragedy, and society which would itself be influential among classical scholars. He was an honorary professor at the Collège de France.


09/01/2006

Andy Caldecott, Australian motorcycle racer (born 1964)

Andrew David Caldecott was an off-road motorcycle racer born in Keith, South Australia. He won the motorcycle division of the Australian Safari Rally four times consecutively (2000–2003) and was a competitor in the Dakar Rally in 2004 (DNF), 2005 (6th), and 2006.


W. Cleon Skousen, American author and academic (born 1913)

Willard Cleon Skousen was an American law enforcement officer and conservative and nationalist author associated with the John Birch Society.


09/01/2004

Norberto Bobbio, Italian philosopher and academic (born 1909)

Norberto Bobbio was an Italian philosopher of law and political sciences and a historian of political thought. He also wrote regularly for the Turin-based daily La Stampa. Bobbio was a social liberal in the tradition of Piero Gobetti, Carlo Rosselli, Guido Calogero, and Aldo Capitini. He was also strongly influenced by Hans Kelsen and Vilfredo Pareto. He was considered one of the greatest Italian intellectuals of the 20th century.


09/01/2003

Will McDonough, American journalist (born 1935)

William McDonough was an American sportswriter for The Boston Globe who also worked as an on-air football reporter for CBS and NBC.


09/01/2001

Maurice Prather, American photographer and director (born 1926)

Maurice William Prather was an American motion picture and still photographer and film director. He was born in Miami, Florida, the son of Maurice J. Prather, a mechanic, cabinet maker, and woodworker, and Zora M. Prather, both of them born in Missouri. Young Maurice Jr. also had a younger sister, Laura Jo, some two years his junior.


09/01/2000

Arnold Alexander Hall, English engineer and academic (born 1915)

Sir Arnold Alexander Hall was an English aeronautical engineer, scientist and industrialist.


Nigel Tranter, Scottish historian and author (born 1909)

Nigel Tranter OBE was a Scottish writer of a wide range of books on history and architecture, both fiction and non-fiction. He was best-known for his popular and well-researched historical novels, covering centuries of Scottish history.


09/01/1998

Kenichi Fukui, Japanese chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1918)

Kenichi Fukui was a Japanese chemist. He became the first person of East Asian ancestry to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry when he won the 1981 prize with Roald Hoffmann, for their independent investigations into the mechanisms of chemical reactions. Fukui's prize-winning work focused on the role of frontier orbitals in chemical reactions: specifically that molecules share loosely bonded electrons which occupy the frontier orbitals, that is, the Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) and the Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO).


Imi Lichtenfeld, Hungarian-Israeli martial artist, founded Krav Maga (born 1910)

Imre "Imi" Lichtenfeld, also known as Imi Sde-Or, was a Hungarian-born Israeli martial artist. He is widely recognized for developing Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art.


09/01/1997

Edward Osóbka-Morawski, Polish politician, Prime Minister of Poland (born 1909)

Edward Bolesław Osóbka-Morawski was a Polish activist and politician in the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) before World War II, and after the Soviet takeover of Poland, Chairman of the Communist-dominated interim government, the Polish Committee of National Liberation formed in Lublin with Stalin's approval.


Jesse White, American actor (born 1917)

Jesse White was an American actor who was best known for his portrayal as "Ol' Lonely" the repairman in Maytag television commercials from 1967 to 1988.


09/01/1996

Walter M. Miller, Jr., American soldier and author (born 1923)

Walter Michael Miller Jr. was an American science fiction writer. He wrote short stories that became a celebrated fix-up novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959). His only novel published in his lifetime, it won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel.


Abdullah al-Qasemi, Saudi atheist, writer, and intellectual (born 1907)

Abdullah al-Qasemi was a Saudi Arabian 20th-century writer. Once a prominent Salafist intellectual, he became critical of religion and was branded an atheist — pariah to much of the Arab world. His books were banned in some Arab countries and a death fatwa was issued against him for apostasy. He was subsequently targeted for assassination in Egypt and Lebanon.


09/01/1995

Souphanouvong, Laotian politician, 1st President of Laos (born 1909)

Prince Souphanouvong, nicknamed the Red Prince, was along with his half-brother Prince Souvanna Phouma and Prince Boun Oum of Champasak, one of the "Three Princes" who represented respectively the communist (pro-Vietnam), neutralist and royalist political factions in Laos. He was the President of Laos from December 1975 to October 1986.


Peter Cook, English actor and screenwriter (born 1937)

Peter Edward Cook was an English comedian, actor, satirist, playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishment comedic movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.


09/01/1993

Paul Hasluck, Australian historian and politician, Governor-General of Australia (born 1905)

Sir Paul Meernaa Caedwalla Hasluck was an Australian statesman who served as the 17th governor-general of Australia, in office from 1969 to 1974. Prior to that, he was a Liberal Party politician, holding ministerial office continuously from 1951 to 1969.


09/01/1992

Steve Brodie, American actor (born 1919)

Steve Brodie was an American stage, film, and television actor from El Dorado in Butler County in south central Kansas. He reportedly adopted his screen name in memory of Steve Brodie, a daredevil who claimed to have jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 and survived.


Bill Naughton, English playwright and screenwriter (born 1910)

William John Francis Naughton was an Irish-born British playwright and author, best known for his play Alfie.


09/01/1990

Spud Chandler, American baseball player, coach, and manager (born 1907)

Spurgeon Ferdinand "Spud" Chandler was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a right-handed starting pitcher and played his entire career for the New York Yankees from 1937 through 1947.


Cemal Süreya, Turkish poet and journalist (born 1931)

Cemal Süreya, known by his given name as Cemalettin Seber, was a Zaza Kurd Alevi poet, writer, and translator. He was one of the pioneering poets of the İkinci Yeni movement, a modernist movement in Turkish poetry. Although he made his first attempts at poetry with sketches in middle school and aruz in high school, his true poetic work began during his university years. In addition to his poetry collections; Üvercinka (1958), Göçebe (1965), Beni Öp Sonra Doğur Beni (1973), Uçurumda Açan (1984), Sıcak Nal (1988), Güz Bitigi (1988), and Sevda Sözleri (1990); he also wrote essays, critiques, diaries, and anthologies.


09/01/1988

Peter L. Rypdal, Norwegian fiddler and composer (born 1909)

Peter Larsson Rypdal was a Norwegian fiddler and famous traditional folk music composer.


09/01/1987

Arthur Lake, American actor (born 1905)

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


09/01/1985

Robert Mayer, German-English businessman and philanthropist (born 1879)

Sir Robert Mayer was a German-born British philanthropist, businessman, and a major supporter of music and young musicians.


09/01/1984

Bob Dyer, American-Australian radio and television host (born 1909)

Robert Neal Dyer OBE was a Gold Logie-award-winning American-born Australian vaudeville entertainer and singer, radio and television personality, and radio and television quiz show host who made his name in Australia. Dyer is best known for the long-running radio and then television quiz show, Pick a Box.


09/01/1981

Kazimierz Serocki, Polish pianist and composer (born 1922)

Kazimierz Serocki was a Polish composer and one of the founders of the Warsaw Autumn contemporary music festival.


09/01/1979

Pier Luigi Nervi, Italian engineer and architect, designed the Tour de la Bourse and Pirelli Tower (born 1891)

Pier Luigi Nervi was an Italian engineer and architect. He studied at the University of Bologna graduating in 1913. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946 to 1961 and was known as a structural engineer and architect and for his innovative use of reinforced concrete, especially with numerous notable thin shell structures worldwide.


09/01/1975

Pierre Fresnay, French actor and screenwriter (born 1897)

Pierre Fresnay was a French stage and film actor.


Pyotr Novikov, Russian mathematician and theorist (born 1901)

Pyotr Sergeyevich Novikov was a Soviet mathematician known for his work in group theory. His son, Sergei Novikov, was also a mathematician.


09/01/1972

Ted Shawn, American dancer and choreographer (born 1891)

Ted Shawn was an American dancer and choreographer. Considered a pioneer of American modern dance, he created the Denishawn School together with his wife Ruth St. Denis. After their separation he created the all-male company Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. With his innovative ideas of masculine movement, he was one of the most influential choreographers and dancers of his day. He was also the founder and creator of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts.


09/01/1971

Elmer Flick, American baseball player and scout (born 1876)

Elmer Harrison Flick was an American professional baseball outfielder who played in Major League Baseball from 1898 to 1910 for the Philadelphia Phillies, Philadelphia Athletics, and Cleveland Bronchos/Naps. In 1,483 career games, Flick recorded a .313 batting average while accumulating 164 triples, 1,752 hits, 330 stolen bases, and 756 runs batted in (RBIs). He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1963.


09/01/1964

Halide Edib Adıvar, Turkish author and academic (born 1884)

Halide Edip Adıvar was a Turkish novelist, teacher, and a nationalist and feminist intellectual. She was best known for her novels criticizing the low social status of Turkish women and what she saw from her observation as the lack of interest of most women in changing their situation. She was a Pan-Turkist and several of her novels advocated for the Turanism movement.


09/01/1961

Emily Greene Balch, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1867)

Emily Greene Balch was an American economist, sociologist and pacifist. Balch combined an academic career at Wellesley College with a long-standing interest in social issues such as poverty, child labor, and immigration, as well as settlement work to uplift poor immigrants and reduce juvenile delinquency.


09/01/1960

Elsie J. Oxenham, English author and educator (born 1880)

Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley, was an English girls' story writer, who took the name Oxenham as her pseudonym when her first book, Goblin Island, was published in 1907. Her Abbey Series of 38 titles are her best-known and best-loved books. In her lifetime she had 87 titles published and another two have since been published by her niece, who discovered the manuscripts in the early 1990s. She is considered a major figure among girls' story writers of the first half of the twentieth century, being one of the 'Big Three' with Elinor Brent-Dyer and Dorita Fairlie Bruce. Angela Brazil is as well-known - perhaps more so - but did not write her books in series about the same group of characters or set in the same place or school, as did the Big Three.


09/01/1947

Karl Mannheim, Hungarian-English sociologist and academic (born 1893)

Karl Mannheim was a Hungarian sociologist and a key figure in classical sociology as well as one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim is best known for his book Ideology and Utopia (1929/1936), in which he distinguishes between partial and total ideologies, the latter representing comprehensive worldviews distinctive to particular social groups, and also between ideologies that provide support for existing social arrangements, and utopias, which look to the future and propose a transformation of society.


09/01/1946

Countee Cullen, American poet and playwright (born 1903)

Countee Cullen was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.


09/01/1945

Shigekazu Shimazaki, Japanese admiral and pilot (born 1908)

Shigekazu Shimazaki was a Japanese career officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service during World War II.


Jüri Uluots, Estonian journalist and politician, 7th Prime Minister of Estonia (born 1890)

Jüri Uluots was an Estonian prime minister, journalist, prominent attorney and distinguished Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu.


Osman Cemal Kaygılı, Turkish journalist, author, and playwright (born 1890)

Osman Cemal Kaygılı was a Turkish writer and journalist.


09/01/1941

Dimitrios Golemis, Greek runner (born 1874)

Dimitrios P. Golemis was a Greek athlete. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.


09/01/1939

Johann Strauss III, Austrian violinist, composer, and conductor (born 1866)

Johann Maria Eduard Strauss III was an Austrian composer whose father was Eduard Strauss, whose uncles were Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss, and whose grandfather was Johann Strauss I. Born in Vienna, he was unofficially entrusted with the task of upholding his family's tradition after the dissolution of the Strauss Orchestra by his father in 1901. His talents were not fully realized during his lifetime as musical tastes had changed in the Silver Age with more popular composers such as Franz Lehár and Oscar Straus dominating the Viennese musical scene with their operettas, although his uncle, Johann Strauss II, supervised his development as a musician, a fact disputed by Eduard Strauss.


09/01/1936

John Gilbert, American actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1899)

John Gilbert was an American actor, screenwriter and director. He rose to fame during the silent era and became a popular leading man known as "The Great Lover". His breakthrough came in 1925 with his starring roles in The Merry Widow and The Big Parade. At the height of his career, Gilbert rivaled Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw.


09/01/1931

Wayne Munn, American football player and wrestler (born 1896)

Wayne Munn was an American professional wrestler and collegiate football player from the University of Nebraska. As a wrestler, Munn was a World Heavyweight Champion. His world title win is historic as it was the first time that a pure performer had won a world championship in professional wrestling.


09/01/1930

Edward Bok, Dutch-American journalist and author (born 1863)

Edward William Bok was a Dutch-born American editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He was editor of the Ladies' Home Journal for 30 years (1889–1919). He also distributed popular homebuilding plans and created Bok Tower Gardens in central Florida.


09/01/1927

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, English-German philosopher and author (born 1855)

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-German-French philosopher. His writings on political philosophy and natural science influenced Adolf Hitler, among many others, attributing all world accomplishments to the Germanic race. Chamberlain promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, scientific racism, and Nordicism; he has been described as a "racialist writer". His best-known book, the two-volume Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, published in 1899, became highly influential in the pan-Germanic Völkisch movements of the early 20th century, and later influenced the antisemitism of Nazi racial policy. In the early 1920s, Chamberlain met and encouraged Hitler.


09/01/1924

Ponnambalam Arunachalam, Sri Lankan civil servant and politician (born 1853)

Ponnambalam Arunachalam was a Ceylonese civil servant and a member of the Executive Council of Ceylon and Legislative Council of Ceylon.


09/01/1923

Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand novelist, short story writer, and essayist (born 1888)

Kathleen Mansfield Murry was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world and have been published in 25 languages.


09/01/1918

Charles-Émile Reynaud, French scientist and educator, invented the Praxinoscope (born 1844)

Charles-Émile Reynaud was a French inventor, responsible for the praxinoscope and was responsible for the first projected animated films. His Pantomimes Lumineuses premiered on 28 October 1892 in Paris. His Théâtre Optique film system, patented in 1888, is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used. The performances predated Auguste and Louis Lumière's first paid public screening of the cinematographe on 26 December 1895, often seen as the birth of cinema.


09/01/1917

Luther D. Bradley, American cartoonist (born 1853)

Luther Daniels Bradley was an American illustrator and political cartoonist associated with the Chicago Daily News. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale University in 1875. After some years at his father's business, he traveled abroad, and spent over a decade in Melbourne, Australia, drawing for such publications as Melbourne Punch. He returned to Chicago in 1893, working for the Daily Journal and Inter Ocean, before joining the Daily News in 1899, where he spent the remainder of his life and career. He was known for strong anti-war sentiments, opposing U.S. involvement in World War I.


09/01/1911

Edwin Arthur Jones, American violinist and composer (born 1853)

Edwin Arthur Jones was an American composer. His works include a cantata and a large oratorio in three parts, modeled after Handel's Messiah.


Edvard Rusjan, Italian-Slovene pilot and engineer (born 1886)

Edvard Rusjan was a Slovenian–Friulian flight pioneer and airplane constructor from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He died in an airplane crash in Belgrade.


09/01/1908

Wilhelm Busch, German poet, illustrator, and painter (born 1832)

Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch was a German humorist, poet, illustrator, and painter. He published wildly innovative illustrated tales that remain influential to this day.


Abraham Goldfaden, Russian actor, playwright, and author (born 1840)

Abraham Goldfaden, also known as Avram Goldfaden, was a Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in Yiddish and Hebrew languages and author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of modern Jewish theatre.


09/01/1901

Richard Copley Christie, English lawyer and academic (born 1830)

Richard Copley Christie was an English lawyer, university teacher, philanthropist and bibliophile.


09/01/1895

Aaron Lufkin Dennison, American-English businessman (born 1812)

Aaron Lufkin Dennison was an American watchmaker and businessman. He is mainly known for his eponymous line of timepieces Dennison and for the invention of the mainspring gauge. Dennison was also the founder of Waltham Watch Company and responsible for the creation of many watch parts for Rolex and Omega in their early stages of mass production.


09/01/1878

Victor Emmanuel II of Italy (born 1820)

Victor Emmanuel II was King of Sardinia from 23 March 1849 until 17 March 1861, when he assumed the title of King of Italy and became the first king of an independent, united Italy since the 6th century, a title he held until his death in 1878. Borrowing from the old Latin title Pater Patriae of the Roman emperors, the Italians gave him the epithet of "Father of the Fatherland".


09/01/1876

Samuel Gridley Howe, American physician and activist (born 1801)

Samuel Gridley Howe was an American physician, abolitionist, and advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824, he went to Greece to serve as a surgeon in the Greek War of Independence. He arranged for support for refugees and brought many Greek children back to Boston with him for their education.


09/01/1873

Napoleon III, French politician, 1st President of France (born 1808)

Napoleon III was President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the second president, second emperor, and last monarch of France. He created the Second French Empire in 1852, and this period saw rapid industrialization in France, rapid expansion of infrastructure and rise of French influence in world politics after several decades of instability. He was the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland and the nephew of Napoleon, Emperor of the French. As head of state of France for 22 years, he was the longest-reigning French head of state since the end of the ancien régime.


09/01/1858

Anson Jones, American physician and politician; 4th President of the Republic of Texas (born 1798)

Anson Jones was an American medical doctor, businessman, and politician, who was the fourth and last president of the Republic of Texas.


09/01/1856

Neophytos Vamvas, Greek cleric and educator (born 1770)

Neophytos Vamvas was a priest, philosopher, philologist, author, professor, and dean. He was the first dean of the philosophical school at the University of Athens. He is known for being part of the Neophytos incident. The incident was similar to the Methodios Affair an incident that occurred one hundred years prior. He was one of the most influential figures of modern Greek education. He was considered the teacher of the nation.


09/01/1848

Caroline Herschel, German-English astronomer (born 1750)

Caroline Lucretia Herschel was a German astronomer, whose most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet, which bears her name. She was the younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, with whom she worked for most of her career.


09/01/1843

William Hedley, English engineer (born 1773)

William Hedley was an English industrial engineer and inventor, born in Newburn, near Newcastle upon Tyne. He was one of the leading industrial engineers of the early 19th century, and was instrumental in several major innovations in early railway development. While working as a 'viewer' or manager at Wylam Colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne, he built the first practical steam locomotive which relied simply on the adhesion of iron wheels on iron rails.


09/01/1833

Adrien-Marie Legendre, French mathematician and theorist (born 1752)

Adrien-Marie Legendre was a French mathematician who made numerous contributions to mathematics. Well-known and important concepts such as the Legendre polynomials and Legendre transformation are named after him. He is also known for his contributions to the method of least squares, and was the first to officially publish on it, though Carl Friedrich Gauss had discovered it before him.


09/01/1805

Noble Wimberly Jones, American physician and politician (born 1723)

Noble Wimberly Jones was an American physician and statesman from Savannah, Georgia. A leading Georgia patriot in the American Revolution, he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1781 and 1782.


09/01/1800

Jean Étienne Championnet, French general (born 1762)

Jean-Étienne Vachier Championnet was a French Army officer who led a Republican French division in several important battles of the French Revolutionary Wars. He became commander-in-chief of the Army of Rome in 1798 and of the Army of Italy in 1799. He died in early 1800 of typhus. His name is one of the names inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe, on Column 3.


09/01/1799

Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician and philosopher (born 1718)

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was a Milanese mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian. She was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook, the first woman appointed as a mathematics professor at a university and the second woman appointed as a professor overall.


09/01/1766

Thomas Birch, English historian and author (born 1705)

Thomas Birch was an English antiquarian, historian, and writer.


09/01/1762

Antonio de Benavides, colonial governor of Florida (born 1678)

Antonio Benavides Bazán y Molina was a Lieutenant General in the Spanish Army who held administrative positions in the Americas as Royal Governor of Spanish Florida (1718–1734), Governor of Veracruz (1734–1745), Governor and Captain General of Yucatán province, as well as Governor of Manila in the Philippines. Before his successive appointments to these various positions, he served with distinction in several campaigns of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1710, and perhaps saved the life of Philip V, the first Bourbon King of Spain, at Guadalajara.


09/01/1757

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, French author, poet, and playwright (born 1657)

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a French writer and a member of three of the academies of the Institut de France, noted especially for his accessible treatment of scientific topics during the unfolding of the Age of Enlightenment.


09/01/1622

Alix Le Clerc, French Canoness Regular and foundress (born 1576)

Alix Le Clerc, known as Mother Alix, was a French religious leader and founder of the Canonesses of Saint-Augustin of the Notre-Dame Congregation, a religious order created to provide education to girls, especially those living in poverty. They opened Schools of Our Lady throughout Europe. Offshoots of this order brought its mission and spirit around the globe. Le Clerc was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1947.


09/01/1612

Leonard Holliday, Lord Mayor of London (born 1550)

Sir Leonard Holliday was a founder of the East India Company, and a Lord Mayor of London.


09/01/1598

Jasper Heywood, English poet and scholar (born 1553)

Jasper Heywood was an English Jesuit priest. He is known as the English translator of three Latin plays of Seneca, the Troas (1559), the Thyestes (1560) and Hercules Furens (1561).


09/01/1571

Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, French admiral (born 1510)

Nicolas Durand, sieur de Villegagnon, also Villegaignon was a commander of the Knights of Malta, and later a French naval officer who attempted to help the Huguenots in France escape persecution, before turning against them due to Eucharistic disputes.


09/01/1561

Amago Haruhisa, Japanese warlord (born 1514)

Amago Haruhisa was a daimyō warlord in the Izumo Province, Chūgoku region of western Japan. He was the second son of Amago Masahisa. Initially named Akihisa (詮久), he changed his name to Haruhisa in 1541 after Ashikaga Yoshiharu offered to let him use a kanji character from his name.


09/01/1543

Guillaume du Bellay, French general and diplomat (born 1491)

Guillaume du Bellay, seigneur de Langey, was a French diplomat and general from a notable Angevin family under King Francis I.


09/01/1534

Johannes Aventinus, Bavarian historian and philologist (born 1477)

Johann Georg Turmair, known by the pen name Johannes Aventinus or Aventin, was a Bavarian Renaissance humanist historian and philologist. He authored the 1523 Annals of Bavaria, a valuable record of the early history of Germany.


09/01/1529

Wang Yangming, Chinese Neo-Confucian scholar (born 1472)

Wang Shouren, courtesy name Bo'an, art name Yangmingzi, usually referred to as Wang Yangming, was a Chinese statesman, general, and Neo-Confucian philosopher during the Ming dynasty. After Zhu Xi, he is commonly regarded as the most important Neo-Confucian thinker, for his interpretations of Confucianism that denied the rationalist dualism of the orthodox philosophy of Zhu Xi. Wang and Lu Xiangshan are regarded as the founders as the Lu–Wang school, or the School of the Mind.


09/01/1514

Anne of Brittany, queen of Charles VIII of France and Louis XII of France (born 1477)

Anne of Brittany was suo jure Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death, and Queen of France from 1491 to 1498 and again from 1499 to her death. She was the only woman to have been queen consort of France twice.


09/01/1511

Demetrios Chalkokondyles, Greek scholar and academic (born 1423)

Demetrios Chalkokondyles, Latinized as Demetrius Chalcocondyles and found variously as Demetricocondyles, Chalcocondylas or Chalcondyles, was one of the most eminent Greek scholars in the West. He taught in Italy for over forty years; his colleagues included Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano, and Theodorus Gaza in the revival of letters in the Western world, and Chalkokondyles was the last of the Greek humanists who taught Greek literature at the great universities of the Italian Renaissance. One of his pupils at Florence was the famous Johann Reuchlin. Chalkokondyles published the first printed publications of Homer, of Isocrates, and of the Suda lexicon.


09/01/1499

John Cicero, Elector of Brandenburg (born 1455)

John II was Elector of Brandenburg from 1486 until his death, the fourth of the House of Hohenzollern. After his death he received the cognomen Cicero, after the Roman orator of the same name, but the elector's eloquence and interest in the arts is debatable.


09/01/1463

William Neville, 1st Earl of Kent, English soldier (born 1405)

William Neville, Earl of Kent, KG, jure uxoris 6th Baron Fauconberg, was an English nobleman and soldier.


09/01/1450

Adam Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester

Adam Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, was an English bishop, lawyer, royal administrator and diplomat. During the minority of Henry VI of England, he was clerk of the ruling council of the Regent.


09/01/1367

Giulia della Rena, Italian saint (born 1319)

Giulia della Rena was an Italian Roman Catholic professed member of the Order of Saint Augustine in its third order branch. Della Rena was orphaned sometime in her late childhood and sought work as a maid in Florence where she soon became a member of the Augustinian tertiaries. The religious then returned to Certaldo due to the negative Florentine economic and political climate where she became best known for rescuing a child from a burning building.


09/01/1283

Wen Tianxiang, Chinese general and scholar (born 1236)

Wen Tianxiang, noble title Duke of Xin (信國公), was a Chinese statesman, poet and politician in the last years of the Southern Song dynasty. For his resistance to Kublai Khan's invasion of the Southern Song dynasty, and for his refusal to yield to the Yuan dynasty despite being captured and tortured, he is a popular culture hero symbol of patriotism, righteousness, and resistance against tyranny in China. He is known as one of the 'Three Loyal Princes of the Song' (大宋三忠王), alongside Lu Xiufu and Zhang Shijie. Wen Tianxiang is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu by Jin Guliang.


09/01/1282

Abû 'Uthmân Sa'îd ibn Hakam al Qurashi, Minorcan ruler (born 1204)

Abû ‘Uthman Sa’îd ibn Hakam al-Qurashi was the first Ra’îs of Manûrqa from 1234 to 1282.


09/01/1150

Emperor Xizong of Jin (born 1119)

Emperor Xizong of Jin, personal name Hela, sinicised name Wanyan Dan, was the third emperor of the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty of China. He reigned for about 15 years from 1135 to 1150. During his reign, the Jin dynasty launched several military campaigns against the Han-led Southern Song dynasty in southern China.


09/01/0710

Adrian of Canterbury, abbot and scholar

Adrian, also spelled Hadrian, was a Berber scholar in Anglo-Saxon England and the abbot of Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's in Canterbury. He was a noted teacher and commentator of the Bible. Adrian was born between 630 and 637. According to Bede, he was "by nation an African", and thus a Berber from North Africa, and was abbot of a monastery near Naples, called Monasterium Niridanum.


Celebrations & Special Days Worldwide on 9th January

Christian feast day: Adrian of Canterbury

Adrian, also spelled Hadrian, was a Berber scholar in Anglo-Saxon England and the abbot of Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's in Canterbury. He was a noted teacher and commentator of the Bible. Adrian was born between 630 and 637. According to Bede, he was "by nation an African", and thus a Berber from North Africa, and was abbot of a monastery near Naples, called Monasterium Niridanum.


Christian feast day: Blessed Alix Le Clerc

Alix Le Clerc, known as Mother Alix, was a French religious leader and founder of the Canonesses of Saint-Augustin of the Notre-Dame Congregation, a religious order created to provide education to girls, especially those living in poverty. They opened Schools of Our Lady throughout Europe. Offshoots of this order brought its mission and spirit around the globe. Le Clerc was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1947.


Christian feast day: Berhtwald

Berhtwald was the ninth Archbishop of Canterbury in England. His predecessor had been Theodore of Tarsus. Berhtwald begins the first continuous series of native-born Archbishops of Canterbury, although there had been previous Anglo-Saxon archbishops, they did not succeed each other until Berhtwald's successor Tatwine.


Christian feast day: Blessed Giulia della Rena

Giulia della Rena was an Italian Roman Catholic professed member of the Order of Saint Augustine in its third order branch. Della Rena was orphaned sometime in her late childhood and sought work as a maid in Florence where she soon became a member of the Augustinian tertiaries. The religious then returned to Certaldo due to the negative Florentine economic and political climate where she became best known for rescuing a child from a burning building.


Christian feast day: Feast of the Black Nazarene (Manila, Philippines)

The Feast of the Black Nazarene is a devotional Catholic event originating in Manila, Philippines. The commemoration centers on the traslación of the Black Nazarene, in which a 16th-century image of a black Jesus carrying the cross is carried in a mass procession. The event is observed on January 9 each year since its inception. The alternative name is the Feast of Jesús Nazareno.


Christian feast day: Julia Chester Emery (Episcopal Church (USA))

Julia Chester Emery was the National Secretary of the Women's Auxiliary of the Board of Missions for forty years, from 1876 to 1916. The Episcopal Church calendar honors her with a feast on January 9.


Christian feast day: Stephen (old calendar Eastern Orthodox)

Saint Stephen's Day, also called the Feast of Saint Stephen, is a Christian saint's day to commemorate Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr or protomartyr, celebrated on 26 December in Western Christianity and 27 December in Eastern Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox churches that adhere to the Julian calendar mark Saint Stephen's Day on 27 December according to that calendar, which places it on 9 January of the Gregorian calendar used in civil contexts. In Western Christian denominations, Saint Stephen's Day marks the second day of Christmastide.


Christian feast day: January 9 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

January 8 – Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar – January 10


Start of Hōonkō (Nishi Honganji) January 9–16 (Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism)

Hōonkō (報恩講) is a holiday in the Jodo Shinshu tradition of Buddhism which commemorates the death of its founder, Shinran Shonin. Depending on whether the old Japanese lunar calendar is used, or the western Gregorian calendar, typically this holiday is observed either in around 28 November or early January from the 9th to the 16th respectively. This holiday is among the most important observed in the Jodo Shinshu tradition. The observance began after Shinran's youngest daughter, Kakushinni (覚信尼; 1224-1283), assumed administration of Shinran's mausoleum, a duty later inherited by her descendants, who ultimately became the Monshu of Jodo Shinshu. In the word hōonkō; 'hōon' means "return of gratitude" and 'ko' means "to clarify the meaning of" or "gathering"'.


Martyrs' Day (Panama)

Martyrs' Day is a Panamanian day of national mourning which commemorates the January 9, 1964 protests over the sovereignty of the Panama Canal Zone. The protest started after a Panamanian flag was torn and students were killed during a conflict with Canal Zone Police officers and Canal Zone residents. It is also known as the Flag Incident or Flag Protests.


Non-Resident Indian Day (India)

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is a celebratory day observed on 9 January by the Republic of India to mark the contribution of the Overseas Indian community towards the development of India. The day commemorates the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa to Bombay on 9 January 1915.


Day of Republika Srpska (Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, result of 2016 Republika Srpska National Day referendum) (note: not celebrated and disputed in wider Bosnia and Herzegovina, having been declared unconstitutional in 2015)

Day of Republika Srpska is a formerly official national holiday of the Republika Srpska, which has been proclaimed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The holiday is celebrated on 9 January, and its unofficial patron saint is Saint Archdeacon Stephen—historically being patron saint of medieval Kotromanić dynasty kings bearing their first name after him—which falls on the same day.


What Happened on 9th January?

58 significant events took place on Sunday, 9th January — stretching from 400 to 2021. Explore the moments that shaped history on this day.

09/01/2021

Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 crashes north of Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 62 people on board.

Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, Indonesia. Five minutes after departing from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport on 9 January 2021, the Boeing 737-500 became upset and crashed into the Java Sea off the Thousand Islands just 4 minutes after takeoff, killing all 62 people on board. A search of the area recovered wreckage, human remains, and items of clothing. The flight data recorder was recovered on 12 January, and the data storage module of the cockpit voice recorder was recovered on 30 March. Flight 182 was the deadliest plane crash in 2021.


09/01/2017

Mont-Libre Agile Learning Centre, the province of Quebec's first alternative schooling democratic learning centre to support homeschooled youth, opens in the city of Montreal.

Mont-Libre Agile Learning Centre (Mont-Libre) is an independent inclusive multi-age and bilingual democratic learning centre servicing children who are registered for homeschooling in Quebec, Canada.


09/01/2015

The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation; a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market in Vincennes.

On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 a.m. in Paris, France, the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo were targeted in a terrorist shooting attack by two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi. Armed with rifles and other weapons, the duo murdered 12 people and injured 11 others; they identified themselves as members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the attack. They fled after the shooting, triggering a manhunt, and were killed by the GIGN on 9 January. The Kouachi brothers' attack was followed by several related Islamist terrorist attacks across the Île-de-France between 7 and 9 January 2015, including the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege, in which a French-born Malian Muslim took hostages and murdered four people before being killed by French commandos.


A mass poisoning at a funeral in Mozambique involving beer that was contaminated with Burkholderia gladioli leaves 75 dead and over 230 people ill.

On 9 January 2015, 75 people died and 230 were made ill after drinking contaminated beer at a funeral in Mozambique. All of the people affected had consumed the local beer, pombe, on 9 January, which had been inadvertently contaminated by the bacterium Burkholderia gladioli which produced the toxic compound bongkrekic acid.


09/01/2014

An explosion at a Mitsubishi Materials chemical plant in Yokkaichi, Japan, kills at least five people and injures 17 others.

On 9 January 2014, an explosion occurred at a Mitsubishi Materials chemical plant in Yokkaichi, Mie, Japan, killing at least five people and injuring 17 others.


09/01/2011

Iran Air Flight 277 crashes near Urmia in the northwest of the country, in icy conditions, killing 78 people.

Iran Air Flight 277 was a scheduled Iran Air flight from Mehrabad International Airport, Tehran to Urmia Airport, Iran. On 9 January 2011, the Boeing 727 serving the flight crashed after an aborted approach to Urmia Airport in poor weather. Of the 105 people on board, 78 were killed. The official investigation concluded that icing conditions and incorrect engine management by the crew led to a double engine flame-out, loss of altitude and impact with the ground.


09/01/2007

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley, and known for consumer electronics, software and online services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the company was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. the following year. Its current name was adopted in 2007 as the company expanded its focus from computers to consumer electronics. Apple is one of the Big Tech companies.


09/01/2005

Mahmoud Abbas wins the election to succeed Yasser Arafat as President of the Palestinian National Authority, replacing interim president Rawhi Fattouh.

Mahmoud Abbas, also known by the kunya Abu Mazen, is a Palestinian politician who has been serving as the second president of Palestine and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) since 2005. He has also been the fourth chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since 2004. Abbas is also a member of the Fatah party and was elected the party's chairman in 2009.


The Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the Government of Sudan sign the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the Second Sudanese Civil War.

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement is a political party in South Sudan. It was initially founded as the political wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Army in 1983. On January 9, 2005 the SPLA, the SPLM and the Government of Sudan signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, ending the civil war. SPLM then obtained representation in the Government of Sudan, and was the main constituent of the Government of the then semi-autonomous Southern Sudan.


09/01/2004

An inflatable boat carrying illegal Albanian emigrants stalls near the Karaburun Peninsula en route to Brindisi, Italy; exposure to the elements kills 28. This is the second deadliest marine disaster in Albanian history.

An inflatable boat is a lightweight boat constructed with its sides and bow made of flexible tubes containing pressurized gas. For smaller boats, the floor and hull are often flexible, while for boats longer than 3 metres (9.8 ft), the floor typically consists of three to five rigid plywood or aluminium sheets fixed between the tubes, but not joined rigidly together. Often the transom is rigid, providing a location and structure for mounting an outboard motor.


09/01/2003

TANS Perú Flight 222 crashes on approach to Chachapoyas Airport in Chachapoyas, Peru, killing 46 people.

TANS Peru Flight 222 was a domestic passenger flight from Lima, Peru to Chachapoyas with a stopover at Chiclayo, which crashed on 9 January 2003. The flight was operated by a Fokker F28-1000 Fellowship short range airliner. The aircraft crashed into the side of a hill while on approach to Chachapoyas Airport. All 46 passengers and crew aboard were killed in the deadliest crash in the airline's history.


09/01/1997

Comair Flight 3272 crashes in Raisinville Township in Monroe County, Michigan, killing 29 people.

Comair Flight 3272 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight operated by Comair from Cincinnati International Airport in Kentucky to Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Michigan. On January 9, 1997, at 15:54 EST, while on approach for landing, the Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia aircraft crashed nose-down 18 miles (29 km) southwest of Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, killing all 29 people on board.


09/01/1996

First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launch a raid against the helicopter airfield and later a civilian hospital in the city of Kizlyar in the neighboring Dagestan, which turns into a massive hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.

The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a conflict between the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. The conflict ended in a peace treaty that saw Russian forces withdraw from the territory only for them to invade again three years later sparking the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009.


09/01/1992

The Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaims the creation of Republika Srpska, a new state within Yugoslavia.

The National Assembly of Republika Srpska is the legislative body of Republika Srpska, one of two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The current assembly is the ninth since the entity's founding.


The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail. They discovered two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12.

An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first detected in 1988, was confirmed in 2003. In 2016, it was recognized that the first possible evidence of an exoplanet had been noted in 1917, a precovery. As of 4 June 2026, there are 6,298 confirmed exoplanets in 4,709 planetary systems, with 1,054 systems having more than one planet.


09/01/1991

Representatives from the United States and Iraq meet at the Geneva Peace Conference to try to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. Located within the Middle East, it is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the southeast, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west. The country covers an area of 438,317 square kilometres (169,235 sq mi) and has a population of over 46 million, making it the 58th largest country by area and the 31st most populous in the world. Baghdad, home to over 8 million people, is the capital city and the largest in the country.


09/01/1964

Martyrs' Day: Several Panamanian youths try to raise the Panamanian flag in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone, leading to fighting between U.S. military and Panamanian civilians.

Martyrs' Day is a Panamanian day of national mourning which commemorates the January 9, 1964 protests over the sovereignty of the Panama Canal Zone. The protest started after a Panamanian flag was torn and students were killed during a conflict with Canal Zone Police officers and Canal Zone residents. It is also known as the Flag Incident or Flag Protests.


09/01/1962

Apollo program: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle, then known as the "Advanced Saturn", to carry human beings to the Moon.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.


09/01/1961

British authorities announce they have uncovered the Soviet Portland spy ring in London.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.


09/01/1960

President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of the Nile.

The president of the Arab Republic of Egypt is the head of state of Egypt. Under the various iterations of the Constitution of Egypt following the Egyptian revolution of 1952, the president is also the Supreme commander of the Armed Forces, and head of the executive branch of the Egyptian government.


09/01/1959

The Vega de Tera dam fails, triggering a disastrous flood that nearly destroys the town of Ribadelago and kills 144 residents.

The Vega de Tera disaster, was a flood that occurred on the early morning of 9 January 1959 in the Province of Zamora, Spain. The flood was caused by the failure of a dam, releasing water from the Vega de Tera reservoir. A total of 144 of the 664 residents in Ribadelago were killed. It was the first of two fatal dam failures in Europe that year; in December, the collapse of the Malpasset Dam resulted in over 400 fatalities.


09/01/1957

British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden resigns from office following his failure to retake the Suez Canal from Egyptian sovereignty.

The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet, and selects its ministers. Modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, so they are invariably members of Parliament.


09/01/1945

World War II: The Sixth United States Army begins the invasion of Lingayen Gulf.

Sixth Army is a theater army of the United States Army. The Army service component command of United States Southern Command, its area of responsibility includes 31 countries and 15 areas of special sovereignty in Central and South America and the Caribbean. It is headquartered at Fort Sam Houston.


09/01/1941

World War II: First flight of the Avro Lancaster.

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.


09/01/1927

A fire at the Laurier Palace movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, kills 78 children.

The Laurier Palace Theatre fire, sometimes known as the Saddest fire or the Laurier Palace Theatre crush, occurred in a movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, on January 9, 1927, killing 78 people. The theatre was located at 3215 Saint Catherine Street East, just east of Dézéry St.


09/01/1923

Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro flight.

Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu, 1st Count of la Cierva, was a Spanish civil engineer, pilot and a self-taught aeronautical engineer. His most famous accomplishment was the invention in 1920 of a rotorcraft called Autogiro, a single-rotor type of aircraft that came to be called autogyro in the English language. In 1923, after four years of experimentation, De la Cierva developed the articulated rotor, which resulted in the world's first successful flight of a stable rotary-wing aircraft, with his C.4 prototype.


Lithuanian residents of the Memel Territory rebel against the League of Nations' decision to leave the area as a mandated region under French control.

Lithuanians are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another two million make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil and Canada. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of only two surviving members of the Baltic language family along with Latvian. According to the census conducted in 2021, 84.6% of the population of Lithuania identified themselves as Lithuanians. Most Lithuanians belong to the Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Lutherans.


09/01/1921

Greco-Turkish War: The First Battle of İnönü, the first battle of the war, begins near Eskişehir in Anatolia.

The Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 was fought between Greece and the Turkish National Movement during the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, between 15 May 1919 and 14 October 1922. This conflict was a part of the Turkish War of Independence.


09/01/1920

Ukrainian War of Independence: The All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee outlaws the Makhnovshchina by decree, igniting the Bolshevik–Makhnovist conflict.

The Ukrainian War of Independence, also referred to as the Ukrainian–Soviet War in Ukraine, lasted from March 1917 to November 1921 and was part of the wider Russian Civil War. It saw the establishment and development of an independent Ukrainian republic, most of which was absorbed into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic between 1919 and 1920. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1991.


09/01/1918

Battle of Bear Valley: The last battle of the American Indian Wars.

The Battle of Bear Valley was a small engagement fought in 1918 between a band of Yaquis and a detachment of United States Army soldiers. On January 9, 1918, elements of the American 10th Cavalry Regiment of Buffalo Soldiers detected about thirty armed Yaquis in Bear Valley, west of Nogales, Arizona, a large area that was commonly used as a passage across the international border with Mexico. A short firefight ensued, which resulted in the death of the Yaqui commander and the capture of nine others. Though the conflict was merely a skirmish, it was the last time the United States Army and Native Americans engaged in combat and thus has been seen as the final official battle of the American Indian Wars.


09/01/1917

World War I: The Battle of Rafa is fought near the Egyptian border with Palestine.

The Battle of Rafa, also known as the Action of Rafah, fought on 9 January 1917, was the third and final battle to complete the recapture of the Sinai Peninsula by British forces during the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the First World War. The Desert Column of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) attacked an entrenched Ottoman Army garrison at El Magruntein to the south of Rafah, close to the frontier between the Sultanate of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, to the north and east of Sheikh Zowaiid. The attack marked the beginning of fighting in the Ottoman territory of Palestine.


09/01/1916

World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli concludes with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces are evacuated from the peninsula.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Major areas of conflict included Europe and the Middle East, as well as parts of Africa and the Asia-Pacific. The war saw important developments in weaponry including tanks, aircraft, artillery, machine guns, and chemical weapons. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, it resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million military and civilian casualties and genocide. The movement of large numbers of people was a major factor in the deadly Spanish flu pandemic.


09/01/1914

The Phi Beta Sigma fraternity is founded by African-American students at Howard University in Washington D.C., United States.

Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. (ΦΒΣ) is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1914. The fraternity's founders, A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse, and Charles I. Brown, wanted to organize a Greek letter fraternity that would exemplify the ideals of Brotherhood, Scholarship and Service while taking an inclusive perspective to serve the community as opposed to having an exclusive purpose. The Fraternity was built on the principles of brotherhood, Scholarship, and Service, with the goal of creating an organization that would serve both college campuses and surrounding communities. The fraternity exceeded the prevailing models of Black Greek-Letter fraternal organizations by being the first to establish alumni chapters, youth mentoring clubs, a federal credit union, chapters in Africa, and a collegiate chapter outside of the United States. It is the only fraternity to hold a constitutional bond with a historically African-American sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, which was founded on January 16, 1920, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., through the efforts of members of Phi Beta Sigma.


09/01/1909

Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km; 112 mi) from the South Pole, the farthest anyone had ever reached at that time.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.


09/01/1903

Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, becomes the second Governor-General of Australia.

Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson was a British aristocrat who served as the second governor-general of Australia, in office from 1903 to 1904. He was previously Governor of South Australia from 1899 to 1902.


09/01/1878

Umberto I becomes King of Italy.

Umberto I was King of Italy from 9 January 1878 until his assassination in 1900. His reign saw the creation of the Italian Empire, as well as the creation of the Triple Alliance among Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.


09/01/1861

American Civil War: "Star of the West" incident occurs near Charleston, South Carolina.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.


Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

Mississippi is a state in the Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the southwest, and Arkansas to the northwest. Mississippi's western boundary is largely defined by the Mississippi River, or its historical course. Mississippi is the 32nd largest by area and 35th-most populous of the 50 U.S. states and has the lowest per-capita income. Jackson is both the state's capital and largest city. Greater Jackson is the state's most populous metropolitan area, with a population of 591,978 in 2020. Other major cities include Gulfport, Southaven, Hattiesburg, Biloxi, Olive Branch, Tupelo, Meridian, and Greenville.


09/01/1858

British forces finally defeat Rajab Ali Khan of Chittagong.

Rajab Ali Khan, also known as Havildar Rajab Ali, was a soldier of the Bengal Regiment who defected during the Sepoy Revolt of 1857. He commanded the rebels at Chittagong and was chased by British forces as far as Sylhet and Manipur.


09/01/1857

The 7.9 Mw Fort Tejon earthquake shakes Central and Southern California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent).

The 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake occurred at about 8:20 a.m. on January 9 in central and Southern California. One of the largest recorded earthquakes in the United States, with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9, it ruptured the southern part of the San Andreas Fault for a length of about 225 miles, between Parkfield and Wrightwood.


09/01/1839

The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.

The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is one of the earliest Academies of Sciences.


09/01/1822

The Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese King João VI, beginning the Brazilian independence process.

Dom Pedro I, known in Brazil and in Portugal as "the Liberator" or "the Soldier King" in Portugal, was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil from 1822 to 1831 and King of Portugal in 1826.


09/01/1816

Humphry Davy tests his safety lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery.

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and an early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. He is credited with discovering clathrate hydrates. In 1799, he experimented with nitrous oxide and was astonished at how it made him laugh. He nicknamed it "laughing gas" and wrote about its potential as an anaesthetic to relieve pain during surgery. Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), a founder member and Fellow of the Geological Society of London, a member of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture "On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity" "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."


09/01/1806

Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul's Cathedral.

Vice-Admiral of the White Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte was a Royal Navy officer whose leadership, grasp of strategy, and unconventional tactics led to multiple decisive British naval victories during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Trafalgar Square is dedicated to him. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest admirals in history.


09/01/1799

British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain's war effort in the Napoleonic Wars.

The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet, and selects its ministers. Modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, so they are invariably members of Parliament.


09/01/1793

Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.

Jean-Pierre François Blanchard was a French inventor, best known as a pioneer of gas balloon flight, who distinguished himself in the conquest of the air in a balloon. Notable for his successful hydrogen balloon flight in Paris on 2 March 1784, Blanchard later moved to London and undertook flights with varying propulsion mechanisms. His historic achievement came on 7 January 1785, crossing the English Channel from Dover Castle to Guînes in about 2½ hours, receiving acclaim from Louis XVI and earning a substantial pension.


09/01/1792

Treaty of Jassy between Russian and Ottoman Empire is signed, ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92.

The Treaty of Jassy, signed at Iași (Jassy) in Moldavia, was a pact between the Russian and Ottoman Empires ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92 and confirming Russia's increasing dominance in the Black Sea.


09/01/1788

Connecticut becomes the fifth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital is Hartford, and its most populous city is Bridgeport. Connecticut lies between the major hubs of New York City and Boston along the Northeast Corridor, where the New York metropolitan area, which includes four of Connecticut's seven largest cities, extends into the southwestern part of the state. Connecticut is the third-smallest state by area after Rhode Island and Delaware, and the 29th-most populous with more than 3.6 million residents as of 2024, ranking it fourth among the most densely populated U.S. states.


09/01/1787

The nationally known image of the Black Nazarene in the Philippines is transferred from what is now Rizal Park to its present shrine in the minor basilica of Quiapo Church. This is annually commemorated through its Traslación (solemn transfer) in the streets of Manila and is attended by millions of devotees.

The Black Nazarene, officially and liturgically known as Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno and often shortened to Jesús Nazareno, is a Roman Catholic title referring to a life-sized dark statue of Jesus Christ carrying the True Cross. The venerated image is enshrined in the Minor Basilica and National Shrine of Jesus Nazareno in Quiapo, Manila, Philippines.


09/01/1760

Ahmad Shah Durrani defeats the Marathas in the Battle of Barari Ghat.

Ahmad Shah Durrani was the first ruler and founder of the Durrani Empire. He is often regarded as the founder of modern Afghanistan. As Shah, he relentlessly led military campaigns for over 25 years across West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia, creating one of the largest Islamic empires in the world, encompassing Afghanistan, much of Pakistan, Iranian Khorasan, and parts of Northern India.


09/01/1693

Sicily earthquake: The first of two earthquakes destroys parts of Sicily and Malta. After the second quake on 11 January, the death toll is estimated at between 60,000 and 100,000 people.

The 1693 Sicily earthquake was a natural disaster that struck parts of southern Italy near Sicily, then a territory part of the Crown of Aragon by the Kings of Spain Calabria and Malta, on 11 January at around 21:00 local time. This earthquake was preceded by a damaging foreshock on 9 January. The main quake had an estimated magnitude of 7.4 on the moment magnitude scale, the most powerful in recorded Italian history, and a maximum intensity of XI (Extreme) on the Mercalli intensity scale, destroying at least 70 towns and cities, seriously affecting an area of 5,600 square kilometres (2,200 sq mi) and causing the death of about 60,000 people.


09/01/1431

The trial of Joan of Arc begins in Rouen.

The trial of Joan of Arc, a French military leader under Charles VII during the Hundred Years' War, began on 9 January 1431 and ended with her execution on 30 May. The trial is one of the most famous in history, becoming the subject of many books and films.


09/01/1349

The Jewish population of Basel, believed by the residents to be the cause of the ongoing Black Death, is rounded up and incinerated.

‘’‘Basel’’’, also known as ‘’‘Basle’’’ ,French: Bâle ; Italian: Basilea ; Romansh: Basilea, Sutsilvan: Basileia. is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine ."Tri-national metropolitan region (TMO)". Canton of Basel-Stadt. Retrieved 20 June 2026. Basel is Switzerland’s third most populous city, with 177,595 inhabitants within the city municipality limits."Population of Cities in Switzerland 2023". World Population Review. Retrieved 16 June 2023. It is the centre of a trinational metropolitan region spanning Switzerland, France and Germany, with approximately 900,000 inhabitants in its wider urban area."Tri-national metropolitan region (TMO)". Canton of Basel-Stadt. Retrieved 20 June 2026.


09/01/1127

Jin–Song Wars: Invading Jurchen soldiers from the Jin dynasty besiege and sack Bianjing (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song dynasty of China, and abduct Emperor Qinzong of Song and others, ending the Northern Song period.

The Jin–Song Wars were a series of conflicts between the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and the Han-led Song dynasty (960–1279). In 1115, Jurchen tribes rebelled against their overlords, the Khitan-led Liao dynasty (916–1125), and declared the formation of the Jin. Allying with the Song against their common enemy the Liao dynasty, the Jin promised to cede to the Song the Sixteen Prefectures that had fallen under Liao control since 938. The Song agreed but the Jin's quick defeat of the Liao combined with Song military failures made the Jin reluctant to cede territory. After a series of negotiations that embittered both sides, the Jurchens attacked the Song in 1125, dispatching one army to Taiyuan and the other to Bianjing, the Song capital.


09/01/1038

An earthquake in Dingxiang, China kills an estimated 32,300.

The 1038 Dingxiang earthquake devastated present-day Shanxi Province, northern China on 9 January. At least 32,300 people died across the province when the Ms 7.25 earthquake struck Dingxiang and Xinxian counties. In Xinzhou, about 19,742 people died and 5,655 were injured. More than 50,000 livestock also perished. About 759 were killed in Guoxian County and in present-day Taiyuan, 1,890 people died.


09/01/0681

Twelfth Council of Toledo: King Erwig of the Visigoths initiates a council in which he implements diverse measures against the Jews in Spain.

The Twelfth Council of Toledo, held in Toledo, Spain, was initiated on 9 January 681 by the Visigothic King Erwig, who was elected king in 680. One of its first actions was to release the population from the laws of Wamba and recognise Erwig, anathematising all who opposed him.


09/01/0475

Verina, the Eastern Roman dowager Empress, instigates a riot in Constantinople and persuades emperor Zeno, her son-in-law, to flee. The Byzantine senate, however, acclaims Basiliscus as emperor and not her lover Patricius.

Aelia Verina was the Eastern Roman empress as the wife of Leo I. She was a sister of Emperor Basiliscus. Her daughter Ariadne also became empress. Verina was the maternal grandmother of Leo II.


09/01/0400

Aelia Eudoxia is officially crowned empress of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Aelia Eudoxia was an Eastern Roman empress by marriage to the Roman emperor Arcadius. The marriage was arranged by Eutropius, one of the eunuch court officials, who was attempting to expand his influence. As Empress, she came into conflict with John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who denounced imperial and clerical excess. She had five children, four of whom survived to adulthood, including her only son, the future emperor Theodosius II, but she had two additional pregnancies that ended in either miscarriages or stillbirths and she died as a result of the latter one.