5th November — World Tsunami Awareness Day

Welcome to 5th November! It's World Tsunami Awareness Day. Explore 53 historical events, birthdays, deaths, and milestones that shaped this day. From remarkable moments in local and world history to the people who left their mark — find out what makes today special. Tonight's moon is in its waning crescent phase, and the zodiac sign of the day is Scorpio. If you're curious about the history of a day — this page brings together everything worth knowing about this 5th November.

Wednesday, 5 November falls under the zodiac sign of Scorpio, the eighth sign of the astrological calendar. The moon is currently in its waning crescent phase, a period traditionally associated with reflection and release in lunar cycles.

On this day

On 5 November 1605, Guy Fawkes was arrested during a search of the Palace of Westminster, an event that thwarted the Gunpowder Plot and its attempt to blow up the House of Lords. This dramatic capture became a defining moment in English history and is commemorated annually through Guy Fawkes Night celebrations across the United Kingdom and former Commonwealth nations.

Nearly four centuries later, on 5 November 1995, Aline Chrétien, the wife of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, demonstrated remarkable courage when she locked the bedroom door at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa to prevent André Dallaire from assassinating her husband. Her quick thinking and decisive action thwarted what could have been a major political assassination.

More recently, the Indian Space Research Organisation achieved a significant milestone on 5 November 2013 by launching the Mars Orbiter Mission, India's first interplanetary probe. This achievement marked India's successful entry into deep space exploration and demonstrated the nation's growing capabilities in space technology.

World Tsunami Awareness Day

World Tsunami Awareness Day is observed on 5 November each year to raise awareness about the dangers of tsunamis and the importance of early warning systems and disaster preparedness. The date commemorates the 1952 earthquake that struck the Kamchatka Peninsula and triggered a major tsunami affecting the Pacific region. The observance was established by the United Nations in 2015 to encourage governments and communities to invest in tsunami risk reduction and early warning infrastructure. It has become an important platform for sharing knowledge about tsunami science and promoting public education on coastal safety.

DayAtlas provides comprehensive information for any date and location, including weather conditions, historical events, and notable births and deaths that occurred on that day.

Explore everything about today 6th July.

The smallest motion sometimes triggers the greatest shift.

Fortune of the Day

5th November in the Stars – Star Sign Scorpio

Today, the zodiac sign Scorpio celebrates its birthday.

Personality Profile

Personality Those born on November 5th embody Scorpio's intense energy in its purest form. They possess magnetic presence and penetrating intellect that cuts through surface appearances. Their nature is mysterious and profound, driven by an urge to uncover hidden truths and deeper meaning.

Strengths & Weaknesses Their greatest strength lies in unwavering loyalty and transformative power. These natives spot hidden truths and act with conviction and determination. However, controlling tendencies and emotional intensity can create conflict when boundaries are breached or challenged.

Love In relationships, November 5th Scorpios are passionate and utterly committed partners. They seek deep emotional connection and authenticity over superficial romance. Their loyalty is absolute, yet they demand equal dedication, honesty and trust from those they love.

Caree & Finance These individuals thrive in roles requiring investigation, psychology or transformation. Their intuitive intelligence and strategic thinking lead to success in finance or consulting. They build lasting wealth through persistence and calculated risk-taking.

Health These natives benefit from activities channeling emotional intensity, such as intense workouts or deep meditation. Stress management is essential, as their emotional depth can create inner tension. Regular reflection and therapeutic support promote psychological balance.


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


Chinese year of the Snake (Wood).

Fun Facts About 5th November

Name Days in Your Language: Perdita, Swain, Swana, Tiara, Tiera, Tierra


Someone born on this day would be just 243 days old today — roughly 5,853 hours, 351,226 minutes, or 21,073,594 seconds spent on Earth so far.


It's the 309. day of the year. In 2025, 5th November falls on a Wednesday.


There are 56 days still to come.


We’re currently in Week 45 — the year marches on.

Famous Birthdays on 5th November

On this day, 225 notable people were born on 5th November — spanning from 1271 to 2002. From world leaders to artists and scientists, discover who shares this birthday.

05/11/2002

Matty Beniers, American ice hockey player

Matthew Beniers is an American professional ice hockey player who is a center and alternate captain for the Seattle Kraken of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Kraken drafted Beniers second overall in the 2021 NHL entry draft with their first-ever selection in an entry draft. He played college ice hockey at Michigan. He won the Calder Memorial Trophy as rookie of the year in 2023.


05/11/1998

Takehiro Tomiyasu, Japanese footballer

Takehiro Tomiyasu is a Japanese professional footballer who plays as a defender. He last played for Eredivisie club Ajax and the Japan national team. Mainly a full back, he can also be deployed as a centre-back.


05/11/1995

Trey Lyles, Canadian basketball player

Trey Anthony Lyles is a Canadian-American professional basketball player who last played for Real Madrid of the Liga ACB and the EuroLeague. He was drafted by the Utah Jazz following his freshman season at the University of Kentucky. He has also played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons, and Sacramento Kings.


05/11/1994

Astou Ndour-Fall, Senegalese-Spanish basketball player

Astou Ndour-Fall is a Spanish professional basketball player for Emlak Konut of the Turkish Women's Basketball League. Born in Senegal, she represents Spain internationally. She previously played for the Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun, Dallas Wings, and San Antonio Stars of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA).


05/11/1992

Odell Beckham Jr., American football player

Odell Cornelious Beckham Jr., commonly known by his initials OBJ, is an American professional football wide receiver for the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the LSU Tigers and was selected by the Giants in the first round of the 2014 NFL draft. He has played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Rams, Baltimore Ravens, and Miami Dolphins.


Marco Verratti, Italian footballer

Marco Verratti is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for Qatar Stars League club Al Duhail.


05/11/1991

Flume, Australian DJ and producer

Harley Edward Streten, known professionally as Flume, is an Australian musician, DJ, and record producer. He is regarded as a pioneer of future bass who helped popularise the genre. His self-titled debut studio album, Flume, was released in 2012 to positive reviews, topping the ARIA Albums Chart and reaching double-platinum accreditation in Australia.


Jon Gray, American baseball player

Jonathan Charles Gray is an American professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Colorado Rockies and Texas Rangers.


Shōdai Naoya, Japanese sumo wrestler

Shōdai Naoya is a Japanese professional sumo wrestler from Uto, Kumamoto. He is in the Tokitsukaze stable. He is a right hand inside-type wrestler. His highest rank is ōzeki. He has two gold stars for defeating a yokozuna and seven special prizes, six for Fighting Spirit and one for Outstanding Performance. He was runner-up in two tournaments before winning his first top-division championship in September 2020.


05/11/1989

D. J. Kennedy, American basketball player

David John Kennedy is an American professional basketball player for the Trotamundos de Carabobo of the Superliga Profesional de Baloncesto (SPB). He played college basketball for St. John's University.


05/11/1988

Yannick Borel, French fencer

Yannick Borel is a French right-handed épée fencer.


Virat Kohli, Indian cricketer

Virat Kohli is an Indian international cricketer and the former all-format captain of the Indian national cricket team. He is a right-handed batter and occasional right-arm medium-pace bowler. Considered one of the greatest batsmen in limited overs cricket, he has been acclaimed for his batting skills and records. Kohli has the most centuries in ODIs and the second-most centuries in international cricket with 85 tons across all formats. He is also the leading run-scorer in the Indian Premier League.


05/11/1987

Kevin Jonas, American singer-songwriter, guitarist and actor

Paul Kevin Jonas II is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor. He rose to fame as the lead guitarist of the pop rock band Jonas Brothers alongside his younger brothers, singer-songwriters Joe and Nick Jonas. The three brothers became prominent figures on the Disney Channel in the late 2000s, gaining a large following through the network: they appeared in the widely successful musical television film, Camp Rock (2008) and its sequel, Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (2010) as well as two other series, Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream (2008–2010) and Jonas (2009–2010).


Jason Kelce, American football player

Jason Daniel Kelce is an American former professional football player who spent his entire 13-year career as a center with the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL). Kelce played college football for the Cincinnati Bearcats and was selected by the Eagles in the sixth round of the 2011 NFL draft. He won Super Bowl LII, was a seven-time Pro Bowl selection, and six-time first-team All-Pro selection. Kelce is often regarded as one of the greatest centers in NFL history.


O. J. Mayo, American basketball player

Ovinton J'Anthony "O.J." Mayo is an American former professional basketball player who played for eight seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA), most notably with the Memphis Grizzlies and Milwaukee Bucks. He currently works as an assistant coach for Liaoning Flying Leopards of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). Mayo played a single season of college basketball for the USC Trojans while earning first-team All-Pac-10 honors.


05/11/1986

BoA, South Korean singer-songwriter, producer and actress

Kwon Bo-ah, known professionally as BoA, is a South Korean singer, songwriter, and actress often referred to as the "Queen of K-pop".


Ian Mahinmi, American basketball player

Ian Mahinmi is a French former professional basketball player. He played the center position and was selected with the 28th overall pick in the 2005 NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs.


Kasper Schmeichel, Danish footballer

Kasper Peter Schmeichel is a Danish former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper.


Nodiko Tatishvili, Georgian singer

Nodiko "Nodar" Tatishvili is a Georgian singer.


05/11/1985

Kate DeAraugo, Australian singer-songwriter

Katherine Jenna DeAraugo is an Australian singer-songwriter who in 2005 was the third winner of Australian Idol. After Idol, DeAraugo signed to Sony BMG and released her debut single, "Maybe Tonight", in November 2005. The single debuted at Number 1 on the ARIA Charts and was certified platinum. Her debut album, A Place I've Never Been, was released in December 2005 and was also certified platinum. DeAraugo later became a member of the multi-platinum-selling girl group Young Divas, which disbanded in 2008.


Annet Mahendru, American actress

Anita Devi "Annet" Mahendru is an American actress. She is known for playing Nina Sergeevna Krilova on the FX period drama series The Americans (2013–2016), which earned her a Critics' Choice Award nomination in 2014; and as Jennifer "Huck" Mallick in the AMC series The Walking Dead: World Beyond in 2020.


05/11/1984

Jon Cornish, Canadian football player

Jonathan Michael Cornish is a Canadian former professional football running back who played nine seasons with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL). He was selected 13th overall in the 2006 CFL draft after playing college football at the University of Kansas. Cornish was inducted as a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2019 on his first ballot.


Tobias Enström, Swedish ice hockey player

Ulf Tobias Enström is a Swedish former professional ice hockey defenceman who played in the National Hockey League with the Atlanta Thrashers and Winnipeg Jets. He left the NHL after 11 seasons to return and captain original Swedish club, Modo Hockey of HockeyAllsvenskan.


Baruto Kaito, Estonian sumo wrestler

Kaido Höövelson, known professionally as Baruto Kaito , is an Estonian politician and former professional sumo wrestler. He made his wrestling debut in May 2004 and in two years, reached the top division in May 2006. After suffering a number of injury problems in 2007 which delayed his progress, he reached the third-highest rank of sekiwake in November 2008, and was promoted to ōzeki rank after finishing the March 2010 tournament with a score of 14–1. He was a tournament runner-up four times before recording a top division championship in the 2012 January tournament. During his career Baruto also earned five special prizes for Fighting Spirit, one for Outstanding Performance and one for Technique. He lost his ōzeki rank after more injury problems at the end of 2012, and having fallen greatly in rank after withdrawing from the May 2013 tournament, he announced his retirement in September of that year at the age of 28.


Eliud Kipchoge, Kenyan long-distance runner

Eliud Kipchoge is a Kenyan long-distance runner who competes in the marathon and formerly specialized in the 5000 metres. Kipchoge is the 2016 and 2020 Olympic marathon champion, and was the world record holder in the marathon from 2018 to 2023, until that record was broken by Kelvin Kiptum at the 2023 Chicago Marathon. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest marathon runners of all time.


John Sutton, Australian rugby league player

John Sutton is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played as a five-eighth and second-rower for the South Sydney Rabbitohs in the NRL.


Nick Tandy, English racing driver

Nicholas Tandy is a British racing driver who competes in the IMSA SportsCar Championship as a factory driver for Porsche. Tandy is the only person to have completed the Grand Slam of overall victories in major 24-hour races: winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2015; the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2018; the Spa 24 Hours in 2020; and the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2025.


Nikolay Zherdev, Ukrainian-Russian ice hockey player

Mykola Olehovych "Nikolai" Zherdev is a Ukrainian-Russian professional ice hockey right winger.


05/11/1983

Alexa Chung, English model and television host

Alexa Chung is an English model and television personality. Chung pursued a modelling career as a teenager after being scouted by a modeling agency at the Reading Festival. She has walked for brands such as Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney and Miu Miu, as well as being the face of Pepe Jeans, Lacoste, DKNY Jeans, Tommy Hilfiger and Longchamp.


05/11/1982

Rob Swire, Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer

Robert Swire-Thompson is an Australian record producer, singer, songwriter, and DJ. He is the founder and lead vocalist of the drum and bass band Pendulum, as well as DJ and co-founder of electro house duo Knife Party formed of Swire and Gareth McGrillen.


05/11/1981

Paul Chapman, Australian footballer

Paul Chapman is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Geelong Football Club and Essendon Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL).


05/11/1980

Luke Hemsworth, Australian actor

Luke Hemsworth is an Australian actor. He is known for his roles as Nathan Tyson in the TV series Neighbours and as Ashley Stubbs in the HBO sci-fi series Westworld. His latest role is as Jason Wade in series 2 of the comedy crime series Deadloch. He is the older brother of actors Chris Hemsworth and Liam Hemsworth.


Andrei Korobeinik, Estonian computer programmer, businessman and politician

Andrei Korobeinik is an Estonian computer programmer and entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Rate Solutions and Serenda Invest. He is better known as creator of Estonian social networking site, Rate.ee. Between 2011 and 2013 he was a member of the Estonian parliament.


05/11/1979

Romi Dames, Japanese-American actress

Romi Dames is a Japanese-born American actress.


Michalis Hatzigiannis, Cypriot singer-songwriter and producer

Michalis Hatzigiannis is a Greek Cypriot singer. He served as the Deputy Minister of Culture for Cyprus under President Christodoulides, from March 1, 2023 until July 11, 2023.


Keith McLeod, American basketball player

Keith McLeod is an American former professional basketball player and current varsity boys basketball head coach at East Canton High School in Canton, Ohio. He is 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall. He has also played in the NBA for the Minnesota Timberwolves, Utah Jazz, Golden State Warriors and Indiana Pacers, in the CBA for the Yakima Sun Kings, in the USBL for the Saint Joseph Express, in the NBA D-League with the Albuquerque Thunderbirds, Canton Charge, and Erie BayHawks, and in the Italian top league for Mabo Prefabbricati Livorno, Lottomatica Virtus Roma and Montepaschi Siena.


David Suazo, Honduran footballer and coach

Óscar David Suazo Velázquez, nicknamed “La Pantera” or “El Rey David”, is a Honduran retired professional footballer turned coach who played as a striker. Suazo played more than 300 league games and scored over 90 league goals in Italy during a span of 12 seasons.


05/11/1978

Xavier Tondo, Spanish cyclist (died 2011)

Xavier Tondo Volpini was a Spanish professional road racing cyclist who specialized in mountain stages of bicycle races.


Bubba Watson, American golfer

Gerry Lester "Bubba" Watson Jr. is an American professional golfer. He has two major championships, with victories at the Masters Tournament in 2012 and 2014, and a total of 12 PGA Tour wins. In February 2015, Watson reached a career-high second place in the Official World Golf Ranking. Watson joined the LIV Golf League in 2022.


05/11/1977

Maarten Tjallingii, Dutch cyclist

Maarten Pieter Tjallingii is a Dutch former professional racing cyclist, who rode professionally between 2003 and 2016.


Richard Wright, English footballer and coach

Richard Ian Wright is an English football coach and former professional player who is a goalkeeping coach for Premier League club Manchester City.


05/11/1976

Sebastian Arcelus, American actor

Sebastian Arcelus is an American actor, best known for his roles as Lucas Goodwin on the Netflix thriller series House of Cards (2013–2016) and Jay Whitman on the CBS political drama series Madam Secretary (2014–2019). Arcelus began his acting career in the early 2000s and spent the first decade of his career on Broadway, having played Roger in Rent, Fiyero in Wicked, Bob Gaudio in Jersey Boys, and Buddy in Elf, among other roles. He returned to Broadway with the 2022 revival of Into the Woods and its subsequent national tour.


05/11/1975

Lisa Scott-Lee, Welsh singer-songwriter

Lisa Scott-Lee is a Welsh singer from St Asaph, Wales. She is a member of the pop group Steps, formed in 1997. Scott-Lee signed a record deal with Mercury Records and launched a solo career in 2003, achieving only minor success after the release of debut single "Lately". She was dropped after her second solo single. She released her debut solo album Never or Now in 2007 through Concept Records.


05/11/1974

Ryan Adams, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

David Ryan Adams is an American rock and country singer-songwriter. He has released 30 studio albums and 3 as a member of Whiskeytown.


Angela Gossow, German singer-songwriter

Angela Nathalie Gossow is a German vocalist, best known as the former lead singer for the Swedish melodic death metal band Arch Enemy. Her other previous bands include Asmodina and Mistress.


Dado Pršo, Croatian footballer and coach

Miladin "Dado" Pršo is a Croatian former professional footballer who played as a forward.


Taine Randell, New Zealand rugby player

Taine Randell is a retired New Zealand rugby union player. He played as a versatile loose forward and captained the All Blacks between 1996 and 1999.


Jerry Stackhouse, American basketball player and sportscaster

Jerry Darnell Stackhouse is an American basketball coach and former player. Stackhouse played college basketball for the North Carolina Tar Heels and played 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and was a two-time NBA All-Star. He was the head coach of Raptors 905 and Vanderbilt as well as an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors, Memphis Grizzlies, and Golden State Warriors. Additionally, he has worked as an NBA TV analyst.


05/11/1973

Johnny Damon, American baseball player

Johnny David Damon is an American former professional baseball outfielder who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1995 to 2012. During his MLB career, Damon played for the Kansas City Royals (1995–2000), Oakland Athletics (2001), Boston Red Sox (2002–2005), New York Yankees (2006–2009), Detroit Tigers (2010), Tampa Bay Rays (2011) and Cleveland Indians (2012). He also played for the Thailand national baseball team and was a member of the squad for the 2013 World Baseball Classic qualifiers.


Alexei Yashin, Russian ice hockey player and manager

Alexei Valeryevich Yashin is a Russian former professional ice hockey centre who played 12 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Ottawa Senators and New York Islanders, serving as captain of both teams. He also played nine seasons in the Russian Superleague (RSL) and Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) for Dynamo Moscow, CSKA Moscow, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, and SKA Saint Petersburg. He was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2020. He was named the most valuable player of the RSL in 2008 and has won two gold medals, one silver, and two bronze medals in international play.


05/11/1971

Sergei Berezin, Russian ice hockey player

Sergei Yevgenyevich Berezin was a Russian professional ice hockey player who played in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1996–97 through 2002–03. Berezin, who played left wing in the NHL, was selected by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the tenth round of the 1994 NHL entry draft. He played with the Leafs until being traded to the Phoenix Coyotes in 2001. At the end of the season he was flipped to the Montreal Canadiens where he scored their 10,000th goal on home ice. In the offseason he was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks before being sent to the Washington Capitals in a trade deadline day deal. He retired from the NHL and returned to Russia to play a final season before ending his career completely.


Jonny Greenwood, English guitarist and songwriter

Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood is an English musician who is the lead guitarist of the rock band Radiohead. He has also composed numerous film scores. He has been named one of the greatest guitarists by multiple publications.


Rob Jones, Welsh-English footballer and coach

Robert Marc Jones is a professional football coach and former player Born in Wales, he represented England at international level.


Corin Nemec, American actor, producer and screenwriter

Joseph Charles Nemec IV, known professionally as Corin Nemec, is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and graffiti artist. He was billed as Corin "Corky" Nemec or Corky Nemec until 1990. His most prominent roles were the television movie playing Steven Stayner in I Know My First Name is Steven (1989), as the title character in the sitcom Parker Lewis Can't Lose (1990–1993), Jonas Quinn in the science fiction series Stargate SG-1, and Harold Lauder in Stephen King’s miniseries The Stand. He is known in India for his role as Allan in 2007 film Parzania.


Mårten Olander, Swedish golfer

Mårten Olander is a Swedish professional golfer.


05/11/1970

Javy López, Puerto Rican-American baseball player

Javier "Javy" López Torres is a Puerto Rican former catcher in Major League Baseball who played for the Atlanta Braves (1992–2003), Baltimore Orioles (2004–2006) and Boston Red Sox (2006). He batted and threw right-handed. He was named Ponce, Puerto Rico's Athlete of the Year from 1984 to 1987.


05/11/1969

Pat Kilbane, American actor, comedian, director and screenwriter

Patrick F. Kilbane is an American actor, comedian, and screenwriter best known for his three seasons as a cast member on MADtv (1997–2000), as well his memorable appearance in the 1996 "The Bizarro Jerry" episode of Seinfeld. Kilbane's first book, The Brain Eater's Bible: Sound Advice for the Newly Reanimated Zombie, was released on March 18, 2011.


05/11/1968

Ricardo Fort, Argentinian actor, director and businessman (died 2013)

Ricardo Aníbal Fort Campa was an Argentine socialite, entrepreneur and television director. Although his career lasted four years, Fort was one of the most popular personalities in his country.


Seth Gilliam, American actor

Seth Gilliam is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayals of Ellis Carver on The Wire, Clayton Hughes on Oz, Dr. Alan Deaton on Teen Wolf, and Father Gabriel Stokes on The Walking Dead.


Sam Rockwell, American actor

Samuel Rockwell is an American actor. In a career spanning over three decades of stage and screen, he is known for his offbeat and charismatic character roles in independent films, and has received various accolades including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award and a Silver Bear, in addition to nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Tony Award.


05/11/1967

Judy Reyes, American actress and producer

Judy Reyes is an American actress, model, and producer, best known for her roles as Carla Espinosa on the NBC/ABC medical comedy series Scrubs, as Zoila Diaz in the Lifetime comedy-drama Devious Maids (2013–2016), as Annalise "Quiet Ann" Zayas in the TNT crime comedy-drama Claws (2017–2022), and as Selena Soto in ABC crime drama series High Potential (2024–). Reyes also appeared in the films All Together Now (2020), Smile (2022), and Birth/Rebirth (2023), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Performance nomination.


05/11/1966

James Allen, English journalist and sportscaster

James Allen is a British former TV commentator and journalist who is the president, Autosport Business, and F1 of Motorsport Network. He worked as Formula One commentator for ITV from 2000 to 2008, and subsequently as BBC Radio 5 Live's Formula One commentator, Formula One correspondent for the BBC and the Financial Times, and presenter for Ten Sport in Australia. He presents the podcast James Allen on F1 on the Autosport podcast network. Allen has been a trustee of the Grand Prix Trust, F1's benevolent fund, for over 25 years.


Nayim, Spanish footballer and manager

Mohamed Alí Amar, known as Nayim, is a Spanish former professional footballer who played as a central midfielder.


Urmas Kirs, Estonian footballer and manager

Urmas Kirs is an Estonian football manager and a retired footballer. He lastly coached the Estonian Meistriliiga club Tarvas. He played in the position of defender. Kirs spent the most of his career in Flora.


05/11/1965

Atul Gawande, American surgeon and journalist

Atul Atmaram Gawande is an American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.


Angelo Moore, American singer and musician

Angelo Christopher Moore is an American musician, best known for his work as lead singer and saxophonist for the Los Angeles ska and funk metal band Fishbone. Moore also performs and records under the stage name Dr. MadVibe. He has recorded with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, Murphy's Law, Gwen Stefani, Everlast, Goldfinger, and Bad Brains and has played over 3300 shows in his career. He currently resides in Woodland Hills, CA.


05/11/1963

Hans Gillhaus, Dutch footballer and scout

Johannes "Hans" Paulus Gillhaus is a Dutch retired professional footballer who played primarily as a left-sided forward.


Andrea McArdle, American actress and singer

Andrea McArdle is an American singer and actress best known for originating the role of Annie in the Broadway musical Annie.


Tatum O'Neal, American actress and author

Tatum Beatrice O'Neal is an American actress. At age ten, she became the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award, for her performance as Addie Loggins in Paper Moon co-starring her father, Ryan O'Neal. She later starred in the films The Bad News Bears, Nickelodeon, and Little Darlings, and appeared in guest roles in the television series Sex and the City, 8 Simple Rules, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.


Jean-Pierre Papin, French footballer and manager

Jean-Pierre Roger Guillaume Papin is a French football manager and former professional player who played as a forward. He was most recently the head coach of the reserve team of Olympique de Marseille. He won the Ballon d'Or in 1991.


Brian Wheat, American bass player and songwriter

Tesla is an American hard rock band from Sacramento, California. In late 1981, bassist Brian Wheat and guitarist Frank Hannon formed a band named City Kidd, which evolved into Tesla. By 1984, vocalist Jeff Keith, guitarist Tommy Skeoch, and drummer Troy Luccketta had joined the band, forming their classic lineup that appeared on all of the albums and live shows during their initial run. The band adopted the Tesla moniker shortly before recording their first album, as another band with a name similar to City Kidd already existed.


05/11/1962

Turid Birkeland, Norwegian businesswoman and politician, Norwegian Minister of Culture (died 2015)

Turid Birkeland was a Norwegian cultural executive and politician for the Labour Party. She was Minister of Culture in 1996–97. She was an author and also worked in television, including being chief of cultural programming at NRK and a member of the board at Telenor. She also headed the Risør Chamber Music Festival, and was the director of Concerts Norway.


Michael Gaston, American actor

Michael Gaston is an American film and television actor. He played agent Quinn on the show Prison Break, Gray Anderson on the CBS drama series Jericho, and appeared in the first episode of The Sopranos as Alex Mahaffey, a compulsive gambler in trouble with Tony. He had a recurring role in The Mentalist as CBI Director Gale Bertram.


Abedi Pele, Ghanaian footballer and manager

Abedi Ayew, known professionally as Abedi Pele, is a Ghanaian former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder and served as captain of the Ghana national team. He is regarded as one of the greatest African footballers of all time. He played for several European clubs and found his fame in the French Ligue 1 with Lille and Marseille. At the latter, he won the UEFA Champions League in 1993, among other titles. He was also the first to win the CAF award in 1992.


Marcus J. Ranum, American computer scientist and author

Marcus J. Ranum is an American computer and network security researcher. He is credited with a number of innovations in firewalls, including building the first Internet email server for the whitehouse.gov domain, and intrusion detection systems. He has held technical and leadership positions with a number of computer security companies, and is a faculty member of the Institute for Applied Network Security.


05/11/1961

Alan G. Poindexter, American captain, pilot and astronaut (died 2012)

Alan Goodwin Poindexter was an American naval officer and a NASA astronaut. Poindexter was selected in the 1998 NASA Group (G17) and went into orbit aboard Space Shuttle missions STS-122 and STS-131.


05/11/1960

René Froger, Dutch singer-songwriter

René Froger, is a Dutch singer.


Tilda Swinton, English actress

Katherine Matilda "Tilda" Swinton is a Scottish actress. Known for her physically transformative performances of eccentric and enigmatic characters on stage and screen, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and a Volpi Cup, in addition to nominations for five Actor Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century.


Mark West, American basketball player

Mark Andre West is an American former professional basketball player. A center from Old Dominion University, West was selected by the Dallas Mavericks in the second round of the 1983 NBA draft.


05/11/1959

Bryan Adams, Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer and actor

Bryan Guy Adams is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer. He is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million records and singles worldwide, placing him among the best-selling music artists. Adams was the most played artist on Canadian radio in the 2010s and has had 25 top 15 singles in Canada and over a dozen in the U.S., UK, and Australia.


Tomo Česen, Slovenian mountaineer

Tomislav "Tomo" Česen is a Slovenian mountaineer who specializes in solo climbing ascents in the Alps and the Himalayas.


05/11/1958

Don Falcone, American keyboard player, songwriter and producer

Don Falcone is an American producer and multi-instrumentalist, and the guiding light behind the Spirits Burning space-rock collective. In Spirits Burning and other offshoot bands and projects, his primary collaborations have been with Albert Bouchard, Bridget Wishart, Cyrille Verdeaux, Daevid Allen, and English writer and musician Michael Moorcock.


Mo Gaffney, American actress and screenwriter

Maureen E. Gaffney is an American actress and activist.


Robert Patrick, American actor

Robert Hammond Patrick is an American actor. Known for portraying villains and authority figures, Patrick is a Saturn Award winner with four other nominations.


05/11/1957

Mike Score, English singer-songwriter and keyboard player

Michael Gordon Score is an English singer, songwriter and musician who achieved fame as the founder, lead vocalist, and keyboardist of the new wave band A Flock of Seagulls. He released a solo album on 1 March 2014 titled Zeebratta.


05/11/1956

Rob Fisher, English keyboard player and songwriter (died 1999)

Rob Fisher was an English keyboardist and songwriter from Cheltenham, England, who achieved chart success as a member of the new wave band Naked Eyes and, later, Climie Fisher. He attended Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire, where he was a member of a band called Cirrus with Nick Ryall and Ray Coop (bass).


John Harwood, American journalist

John Harwood is an American journalist. He was the White House Correspondent for CNN from February 2021 until September 2022, after working as an editor-at-large for CNBC. He was the chief Washington Correspondent for CNBC and a contributor for The New York Times. He wrote a weekly column entitled "The Caucus" that appeared on Monday about Washington politics and policy. Before joining the Times, he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.


Lavrentis Machairitsas, Greek singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2019)

Lavrentis Machairitsas was a Greek rock musician from Volos, Thessaly, Greece.


Michael Sorridimi, Australian rugby league player

Michel Sorridimi is an Australian former rugby league footballer who played in the 1970s and 1980s.


Jeff Watson, American guitarist and songwriter

Jeffrey Victor Watson is an American guitarist originally known as one of the founding members and lead guitarist of the hard rock band Night Ranger, in which he has played as co-guitarist with guitarist Brad Gillis. Watson developed his signature eight-fingered tapping technique during his time in the band.


05/11/1955

Bernard Chazelle, French computer scientist and academic

Bernard Chazelle is a French computer scientist. He is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. Much of his work is in computational geometry, where he is known for his study of algorithms, such as linear-time triangulation of a simple polygon, as well as major complexity results, such as lower bound techniques based on discrepancy theory. He is also known for his invention of the soft heap data structure and the most asymptotically efficient known deterministic algorithm for finding minimum spanning trees.


Kris Jenner, American talent manager and businesswoman

Kristen Mary Jenner is an American media personality, socialite, and businesswoman. She rose to fame starring in the reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007–2021) with her family. The success of their show led her and her family to star in multiple spin-off series, including Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami (2009), Kourtney and Kim Take New York (2011), Khloe & Lamar (2011), Rob & Chyna (2016) and Life of Kylie (2017). She acted as executive producer for most of her family's reality programs. In 2013, she hosted a six week long pop culture-driven daytime talk show, called Kris. Following her family's decision to sign off from E! in 2021, they then went on to star in The Kardashians on Hulu from 2022.


Nestor Serrano, American actor

Nestor Serrano is an American film and television actor. He is known for playing Detective Sanchez in Bad Boys and Navi Araz in the fourth season of 24. He also appeared as Emilio Loera in the fourth season of the Cinemax series Banshee.


Karan Thapar, Indian journalist and author

Karan Thapar is an Indian journalist, news presenter and interviewer working with The Wire. Thapar was associated with CNN-IBN and hosted The Devil's Advocate and The Last Word. Some of the celebrities he has interviewed included Jyoti Basu, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalithaa, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Narendra Modi and Shah Rukh Khan. He was also associated with India Today, hosted the shows To the Point and Nothing But The Truth and is doing an exclusive series of Interviews with The Wire on his show the Interview with Karan Thapar.


05/11/1954

Vincenzo D'Amico, Italian footballer (died 2023)

Vincenzo D'Amico was an Italian footballer who played as a midfielder or forward. In all, he played seventeen seasons in Italian professional football, mostly for S.S. Lazio.


Alejandro Sabella, Argentine footballer and manager (died 2020)

Alejandro Javier Sabella was an Argentine football player and manager. Born in Buenos Aires, he began his playing career with River Plate in his home country before moving to England in 1978 to play for Sheffield United. He then had a spell with another English side, Leeds United, before returning to South America and representing Estudiantes, Grêmio, Ferro Carril Oeste and Irapuato.


Jeffrey Sachs, American economist and academic

Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and public policy analyst. He is a professor at Columbia University, at which he was formerly director of The Earth Institute and currently director of the Center for Sustainable Development.


05/11/1953

Joyce Maynard, American journalist, author and academic

Joyce Maynard is an American novelist and journalist. She began her career in journalism in the 1970s, writing for several publications, most notably Seventeen magazine and The New York Times. Maynard contributed to Mademoiselle and Harrowsmith magazines in the 1980s, while also beginning a career as a novelist with the publication of her first novel, Baby Love (1981). Her second novel, To Die For (1992), drew on the Pamela Smart murder case and was adapted by Gus Van Sant into the film To Die For in 1995. Maynard received significant media attention in 1998 with the publication of her memoir At Home in the World, in which she describes her relationship with J. D. Salinger.


05/11/1952

Oleh Blokhin, Ukrainian footballer and manager

Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin or Oleg Vladimirovich Blokhin, is a Ukrainian former football player and manager. Regarded as one of the greatest footballers of his generation, Blokhin was a standout striker for Dynamo Kyiv and the Soviet Union.


Vandana Shiva, Indian philosopher and author

Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalization author. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as "Gandhi of grain" for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement.


Bill Walton, American basketball player and sportscaster (died 2024)

William Theodore Walton III was an American basketball player and television sportscaster. He played collegiately for the UCLA Bruins and professionally in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Portland Trail Blazers, San Diego / Los Angeles Clippers, and Boston Celtics. He is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.


05/11/1950

Thorbjørn Jagland, Norwegian politician, 25th Prime Minister of Norway

Thorbjørn Jagland is a Norwegian politician from the Labour Party. He served as the prime minister of Norway from 1996 to 1997, as the minister of Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2001, as the president of the Storting from 2005 to 2009, as chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 2009 to 2015 and as secretary general of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2019. He maintained a close association with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In 2026, he was charged with gross corruption over his links to Epstein.


James Kennedy, American psychologist and author

James Kennedy is an American social psychologist, best known as an originator and researcher of particle swarm optimization.


05/11/1949

Armin Shimerman, American actor

Armin Shimerman is an American actor who played Quark the Ferengi in the Star Trek franchise, appearing as the character in all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999). He also had a recurring role as Principal Snyder in the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–1999), and voiced General Skarr and other characters in the animated series The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (2001–2007), Doctor Nefarious in the Ratchet & Clank video-game series, and Andrew Ryan in the BioShock video-game series.


Jimmie Spheeris, American singer-songwriter (died 1984)

Jimmie Andrew Spheeris was an American singer-songwriter who released four albums in the 1970s on the Columbia Records and Epic Records labels. Spheeris died in 1984, at the age of 34, after a motorcycle accident.


05/11/1948

Bob Barr, American lawyer and politician

Robert Laurence Barr Jr. is an American attorney and politician. He served as a U.S. Representative from 1995 to 2003, representing Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Republican. He later became the Libertarian Party's nominee in the 2008 United States presidential election and served as president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) from 2024 to 2025.


Peter Hammill, English singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer

Peter Joseph Andrew Hammill is an English musician and recording artist. He was a founder member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Best known as a singer-songwriter, he also plays guitar and piano and produces his own recordings and occasionally those of other artists. In 2012, he was recognised with the Visionary award at the first Progressive Music Awards.


Bernard-Henri Lévy, French philosopher and author

Bernard-Henri Georges Lévy is a French public intellectual. Often referred to in France simply as BHL, he was one of the leaders of the "Nouveaux Philosophes" movement in 1976. His opinions, political activism, and publications have also been the subject of several controversies over the years.


William Daniel Phillips, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

William Daniel Phillips is an American physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji.


05/11/1947

Quint Davis, American director and producer

Quint Davis is an American festival producer and director based in New Orleans. He is best known as the producer of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival founded by George Wein. Davis has been involved in the production of the event since its start in 1970. He is the CEO of Festival Productions, Inc. - New Orleans, the company that produces the Jazz Fest.


Peter Noone, English singer-songwriter and guitarist

Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone is an English singer-songwriter, musician, actor, and teen idol. He was the lead singer "Herman" in the 1960s pop group Herman's Hermits and continues to tour as the lead singer for Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone.


Tonin Çobani, Albanian folklorist and writer.

Tonin Çobani is an Albanian writer, folklorist and scholar from the city of Shkodër in Northern Albania. He is known for his works revolving Albanian mythology and Illyrian mythology, as well as works on Albanian historical figures such as Lekë Dukagjini, Frang Bardhi and Naim Frashëri. Çobani also worked as an academic in multiple universities around Albania, most notably the University of Shkodra.


05/11/1946

Gram Parsons, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 1973)

Ingram Cecil Connor III, known professionally as Gram Parsons, was an American musician. He recorded with the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, popularizing what he called "Cosmic American Music", a hybrid of country, rhythm and blues, soul, folk, and rock. He has been credited with helping to found the country rock and alt-country genres and received a ranking of No. 87 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Parsons was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2026 in the musical influence category.


05/11/1945

Peter Pace, American general

Peter Pace is a retired United States Marine Corps general who served as the 16th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pace was the first Marine officer appointed as chairman and the first Marine officer to be appointed to three different four-star assignments; the others were as the sixth vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2001, to August 12, 2005, and as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Southern Command from September 8, 2000, to September 30, 2001. Appointed chairman by President George W. Bush, Pace succeeded U.S. Air Force General Richard Myers on September 30, 2005.


Aleka Papariga, Greek accountant and politician

Alexandra "Aleka" Papariga is a Greek retired politician who served the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) as its General Secretary from 1991 to 2013. She is the first woman to be General Secretary of KKE, and thus the first woman to head a major political party in Greece.


Svetlana Tširkova-Lozovaja, Russian fencer and coach

Svetlana Tširkova is a former Soviet fencer, two-time Olympic champion in foil team competitions and fencing coach in Estonia.


05/11/1943

Friedman Paul Erhardt, German-American chef and author (died 2007)

Friedman Paul Erhardt was a German American pioneering early television chef. He was known as "Chef Tell" to his 40 million fans. He is widely regarded as one of the first chefs to enjoy widespread popularity on American television. Former Philadelphia Inquirer food writer, Elaine Tait, wrote, "Chef Tell is America's pioneer TV showman chef whose food always tastes good." Erhardt's thick German accent reportedly made him the inspiration for the Swedish Chef, a well known Muppet character on The Muppet Show, although Brian Henson denies this.


Percy Hobson, Australian high jumper (died 2022)

Percy Francis Hobson was an Australian high jumper. He won the men's event at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, making him the first Indigenous Australian to earn a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.


Sam Shepard, American playwright and actor (died 2017)

Samuel Shepard Rogers III was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, author and musician whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays and several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. His accolades include the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Drama Desk Award, the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award, and a record 10 Obie Awards. He was nominated for two Tony Awards, an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1994. The New York magazine described Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation."


05/11/1942

Pierangelo Bertoli, Italian singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2002)

Pierangelo Bertoli was an Italian singer-songwriter and poet. Close to libertarian communist issues, his works were mainly about environment, laïcité, antimilitarism and social issues regarding marginalised and rebellious people.


05/11/1941

Art Garfunkel, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

Arthur Ira Garfunkel is an American singer, actor and poet who is best known for his partnership with Paul Simon in the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel.


Yoshiyuki Tomino, Japanese animator, director and screenwriter

Yoshiyuki Tomino is a Japanese anime director, screenwriter, songwriter and novelist best known for creating the Gundam anime franchise.


Bill Schlesinger, American baseball player (died 2023)

William Cordes "Rudy" Schlesinger was an American professional baseball player who had only one at bat in Major League Baseball as a pinch hitter for the 1965 Boston Red Sox.


05/11/1940

Ted Kulongoski, American soldier, lawyer and politician, 36th Governor of Oregon

Theodore Ralph Kulongoski is an American politician, judge, and lawyer who served as the 36th governor of Oregon from 2003 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in both houses of the Oregon Legislative Assembly and also served as the state Insurance Commissioner. He was the Attorney General of Oregon from 1993 to 1997 and a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court from 1997 to 2001. Kulongoski has served in all three branches of the Oregon state government.


Elke Sommer, German actress

Elke Sommer is a German actress. She appeared in numerous films throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including roles in The Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark (1964), the Bob Hope comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966), Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1974), and the British Carry On series in Carry On Behind (1975).


05/11/1939

Lobsang Tenzin, Tibetan religious leader

Lobsang Tenzin, better known by the titles Professor Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche and to Tibetans as the 5th Samdhong Rinpoche, is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and politician who served as the Prime Minister of the cabinet of the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamshala, India.


05/11/1938

Joe Dassin, American-French singer-songwriter (died 1980)

Joseph Ira Dassin was an American singer-songwriter. He sang in multiple languages but found his greatest successes in France and the French-speaking world. In total, he sold nearly 25 million records worldwide.


Jim Steranko, American author and illustrator

James F. Steranko is an American graphic artist, comic book writer/artist, comics historian, magician, publisher and film production illustrator.


05/11/1937

Chan Sek Keong, Singaporean lawyer, judge and politician, 3rd Chief Justice of Singapore

Chan Sek Keong is a Malayan-born Singaporean jurist who served as chief justice of Singapore between 2006 and 2012 when he was appointed by President S. R. Nathan. He is the first Chief Justice to have previously served as the former & third attorney-general of Singapore between 1992 and 2006.


Harris Yulin, American actor (died 2025)

Harris Bart Goldberg, known professionally as Harris Yulin, was an American actor who appeared in over a hundred film and television series roles including Night Moves (1975), St. Ives (1976), Scarface (1983), Ghostbusters II (1989), Clear and Present Danger (1994), Looking for Richard (1996), Bean (1997), The Hurricane (1999), Training Day (2001), Ozark (2017–2018) and Frasier, which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 1996.


05/11/1936

Michael Dertouzos, Greek-American computer scientist and academic (died 2001)

Michael Leonidas Dertouzos was a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) from 1974 to 2001.


Uwe Seeler, German footballer (died 2022)

Uwe Seeler was a German footballer and football official. As a striker, he was a prolific scorer for Hamburger SV and also made 72 appearances for the West Germany national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in German football history, Seeler was named one of FIFA's 100 greatest living players by Pelé in 2004. He was the first football player to be awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.


Billy Sherrill, American record producer, songwriter and arranger (died 2015)

Billy Norris Sherrill was an American record producer, songwriter, and arranger associated with country artists, notably Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Sherrill and business partner Glenn Sutton are regarded as the defining influences of the countrypolitan sound, a smooth amalgamation of pop and country music that was popular during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Sherrill also co-wrote many hit songs, including "Stand by Your Man" and "The Most Beautiful Girl".


05/11/1935

Lester Piggott, English flat racing jockey and trainer (died 2022)

Lester Keith Piggott was an English professional jockey and horse trainer. With 4,493 career flat racing wins in Britain, including a record nine Epsom Derby victories, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest flat racing jockeys of all time and the originator of a much-imitated style. Popularly called "The Long Fellow", he was known for his competitive personality, restricting his weight and, on occasion, not sparing the whip, such as in the 1972 Derby. Piggott was convicted of tax fraud in 1987 and sentenced to three years in prison, but served just over a year.


Christopher Wood, English author and screenwriter (died 2015)

Christopher Hovelle Wood was an English screenwriter and novelist, best known for the Confessions series of novels and films which he wrote as Timothy Lea. Under his own name, he adapted two James Bond novels for the screen: The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker (1979).


05/11/1934

Jeb Stuart Magruder, American minister and civil servant (died 2014)

Jeb Stuart Magruder was an American businessman and high-level political operative in the Republican Party who served time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal.


05/11/1933

Herb Edelman, American actor (died 1996)

Herbert Edelman was an American comedian, and actor of stage, film and television. He was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for his television work. His best-known role was as Stanley Zbornak, the ex-husband of Dorothy Zbornak on The Golden Girls. He also had a recurring role on the 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere.


05/11/1932

Algirdas Lauritėnas, Lithuanian basketball player (died 2001)

Algirdas Teodoras Lauritėnas was a Lithuanian basketball player. He was a member of the Soviet team during the 1950s, and won a silver medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics. He was also part of the team that became European champion in 1953 and 1957 and won a bronze medal in 1955.


05/11/1931

Leonard Herzenberg, American immunologist, geneticist and academic (died 2013)

Leonard Arthur "Len" Herzenberg was an immunologist, geneticist and professor at Stanford University. His contributions to the development of cell biology made it possible to sort viable cells by their specific properties.


Gil Hill, American actor, police officer and politician (died 2016)

Gilbert Roland Hill was an American politician, police officer, and actor, who was the President of the Detroit City Council. He gained recognition for his role as Inspector Todd in the Beverly Hills Cop film series. He was the runner-up in the 2001 Detroit mayoral election, losing to Kwame Kilpatrick.


Harold McNair, Jamaican-English saxophonist and flute player (died 1971)

Harold McNair was a Jamaican-born saxophonist and flautist.


Diane Pearson, British book editor and novelist (died 2017)

Diane Pearson was a British book editor and romance novelist, who has been translated into several languages.


Ike Turner, American singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer (died 2007)

Izear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, record producer, and talent scout. An early pioneer of 1950s rock and roll, he is best known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his wife Tina Turner as the leader of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.


05/11/1930

Wim Bleijenberg, Dutch footballer and manager (died 2016)

Wim Bleijenberg was a Dutch international football player, who played for FC Wageningen, Rigtersbleek, AFC Ajax, Blauw-Wit Amsterdam, Go Ahead Eagles and AGOVV Apeldoorn during his career.


Hans Mommsen, German historian and academic (died 2015)

Hans Mommsen was a German historian, known for his studies in German social history, for his functionalist interpretation of the Third Reich, and especially for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a weak dictator. Descended from Nobel Prize-winning historian Theodor Mommsen, he was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.


05/11/1927

Hirotugu Akaike, Japanese statistician (died 2009)

Hirotugu Akaike was a Japanese statistician. In the early 1970s, he formulated the Akaike information criterion (AIC). AIC is now widely used for model selection, which is commonly the most difficult aspect of statistical inference; additionally, AIC is the basis of a paradigm for the foundations of statistics. Akaike also made major contributions to the study of time series. In addition, he had a large role in the general development of statistics in Japan.


05/11/1926

John Berger, English author, poet, painter and critic (died 2017)

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize. His essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to the BBC series of the same name, is hugely culturally influential and continues to be widely read today. He lived in France for over fifty years.


05/11/1923

Rudolf Augstein, German soldier and journalist, co-founder of Der Spiegel (died 2002)

Rudolf Karl Augstein was a German journalist, editor, publicist, and politician. He was one of the most influential German journalists, founder and part-owner of Der Spiegel magazine. As a politician, he was a member of the Bundestag for the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) between November 1972 and January 1973.


05/11/1922

Violet Barclay, American illustrator (died 2010)

Violet A. Barclay, who also worked under the name Valerie Barclay and the married name Valerie Smith, was an American illustrator best known as one of the pioneering female comic-book artists, having started in the field during the 1930s and 1940s period historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books.


Yitzchok Scheiner, American-Israeli rabbi (died 2021)

Rabbi Yitzchok Scheiner was an Israeli–American rabbi who was the rosh yeshiva of the Kamenitz yeshiva of Jerusalem.


Cecil H. Underwood, American educator and politician, 25th and 32nd Governor of West Virginia (died 2008)

Cecil Harland Underwood was an American politician who served as the 25th and 32nd governor of West Virginia from 1957 to 1961, and again from 1997 to 2001. A member of the Republican Party, he was the youngest governor in the state's history when first elected in 1956 at age 34 and later became the oldest when re-elected in 1996 at age 74. His career spanned more than five decades, including multiple gubernatorial bids, legislative service, and roles in academia and business. Underwood was known for his work in civil rights, economic development, and tax reform.


05/11/1921

Georges Cziffra, Hungarian pianist and composer (died 1994)

Christian Georges Cziffra was a Hungarian-French virtuoso pianist and composer. He is considered to be one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of the twentieth century. Among his teachers was Ernő Dohnányi, a pupil of István Thoman, who was a favourite pupil of Franz Liszt.


Fawzia Fuad of Egypt (died 2013)

Fawzia of Egypt, also known as Fawzia Pahlavi or Fawzia Chirine, was an Egyptian princess who became Shahbanu of Iran as the first wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran. Fawzia was the daughter of Fuad I, seventh son of Ismail the Magnificent.


05/11/1920

Tommy Godwin, American-English cyclist and coach (died 2012)

Thomas Charles Godwin was a British track cyclist, active during the 1940s and 1950s. He held national records and raced abroad. He later became a coach, manager, and administrator.


Douglass North, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2015)

Douglass Cecil North was an American economist known for his work in economic history. Along with Robert Fogel, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1993. In the words of the Nobel Committee, North and Fogel "renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change."


05/11/1919

Hasan Askari, Pakistani linguist, scholar and critic (died 1978)

Muhammad Hasan Askari (1919 – 18 January 1978) was a Pakistani scholar, literary critic, writer and linguist of modern Urdu language. Initially "Westernized", he translated western literary, philosophical and metaphysical work into Urdu, notably classics of American, English, French and Russian literature. But in his later years, through personal experiences, geopolitical changes and the influence of authors like René Guénon, and traditional scholars of India towards more latter part of his life, like Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi, he became a notable critic of the West and proponent of Islamic culture and ideology.


Myron Floren, American accordionist and pianist (died 2005)

Myron Floren was an American musician best known as the accordionist on The Lawrence Welk Show between 1950 and 1982. Floren came to prominence primarily from his regular appearances on the weekly television series in which Lawrence Welk dubbed him as "the happy Norwegian," which was also attributed to Peter Friello.


05/11/1917

Jacqueline Auriol, French pilot (died 2000)

Jacqueline Marie-Thérèse Suzanne Auriol was a French aviator who set several world speed records.


Banarsi Das Gupta, Indian activist and politician, 4th Chief Minister of Haryana (died 2007)

Banarsi Das Gupta was an Indian politician who served as the 4th Chief Minister of Haryana state in India.


James Lawton Collins Jr., American brigadier general (died 2002)

James Lawton Collins Jr. was a brigadier general in the U.S. Army who served in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, a military historian, and a viticulturist. He was the son of Major General James Lawton Collins, nephew of General J. Lawton Collins, who served as Chief of Staff of the Army during the Korean War, and older brother of Apollo 11 astronaut Major General Michael Collins. He led a North Dakota National Guard artillery battalion in Normandy in 1944, and served as the U.S. Army Chief of Military History from 1970 to 1982.


Giuseppe Salvioli, Italian football player

Giuseppe Salvioli was an Italian professional football player.


05/11/1914

Alton Tobey, American painter and illustrator (died 2005)

Alton Stanley Tobey was an American painter, historical artist, muralist, portraitist, illustrator, and teacher of art.


05/11/1913

Guy Green, English-American director, screenwriter and cinematographer (died 2005)

Guy Mervin Charles Green OBE BSC was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. In 1948, he won an Oscar as cinematographer for the film Great Expectations. In 2002, Green was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the BAFTA, and, in 2004, he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his lifetime contributions to British cinema.


Vivien Leigh, Indian-British actress (died 1967)

Vivian Mary Olivier, known professionally as Vivien Leigh and styled as Lady Olivier after 1947, was a British actress. After completing her drama school education, Leigh appeared in small roles in four films in 1935 and progressed to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). She then won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. For the latter role, she also won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963).


John McGiver, American actor (died 1975)

John Irwin McGiver was an American character actor who made more than a hundred appearances in television and motion pictures over a two-decade span from 1955 to 1975.


05/11/1912

W. Allen Wallis, American economist and statistician (died 1998)

Wilson Allen Wallis was an American economist and statistician who served as president of the University of Rochester. He is best known for the Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance, which is named after him and William Kruskal.


05/11/1911

Marie Osborne Yeats, American actress and costume designer (died 2010)

Marie Osborne Yeats, credited as Baby Marie between 1914 and 1919, was an American actress who was the first major child star of American silent films. She was one of the three major American child stars of the Hollywood silent film era along with Jackie Coogan and Diana Serra Cary. As an adult, from 1934 until 1950, and now billed as Marie Osborne, she continued in film productions, although she appeared only in uncredited roles. In the 1950s, after retiring from the acting profession, she carved out a second career as a costume designer for Hollywood film.


Roy Rogers, American singer, guitarist and actor (died 1998)

Roy Rogers, nicknamed the King of the Cowboys, was an American actor, singer, television host, and rodeo performer.


05/11/1910

John Hackett, Australian-English general and academic (died 1997)

General Sir John Winthrop Hackett, was an Australian-born British soldier, painter, university administrator, author and in later life, a commentator.


05/11/1906

Endre Kabos, Hungarian fencer (died 1944)

Endre Kabos was a Hungarian sabre fencer. He competed individually and with the team at the 1932 and 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics and won three gold and one bronze medals. In the fall of 1935, the Nazi regime in Germany had passed the antisemitic Nuremberg laws which stripped German Jews of citizenship, opportunities to receive a public education, and access to many professions and public facilities including municipal hospitals. Jewish businesses had been boycotted and Jews could not serve in the legal profession, the civil service, teach in secondary schools or universities or vote or hold public office.


Fred Lawrence Whipple, American astronomer and academic (died 2004)

Fred Lawrence Whipple was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for more than 70 years. Among his achievements were asteroid and comet discoveries, the "dirty snowball" hypothesis of comets, and the invention of the Whipple shield.


05/11/1905

Joel McCrea, American actor (died 1990)

Joel Albert McCrea was an American actor whose career as a leading man spanned a wide variety of genres over almost five decades, including comedy, drama, romance, thrillers, adventures, and Westerns, for which he became best known.


Louis Rosier, French racing driver (died 1956)

Louis Claude Rosier was a French racing driver and motorsport executive, who competed in Formula One from 1950 to 1956. In endurance racing, Rosier won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1950 in a privateer Talbot-Lago T26C-GS.


Sajjad Zaheer, Indian author and poet (died 1973)

Syed Sajjad Zaheer was an Indian Urdu writer, Marxist ideologue, radical revolutionary and a member of the Communist Party of India. He established the All India Progressive Writers' Association after the short story collection Angarey was banned by the British Indian government. He then went on to study law at Lincoln's Inn in London and published the memoir London Ki Ek Raat (1935) based on his experience. He later served as the editor of several Communist Party of India newspapers. After the partition of India, he moved to the newly created Pakistan and became one of founding members of the Communist Party of Pakistan but was arrested in the alleged Rawalpindi conspiracy case and returned to India to continue working in cultural activities organized by the Communist Party of India.


05/11/1904

Cooney Weiland, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (died 1985)

Ralph "Cooney" Weiland was a Canadian ice hockey forward who played for the Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators, and Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League (NHL). Weiland was part of the Bruins' 1928 "Dynamite Line" with Dutch Gainor and Dit Clapper, one of the earliest nicknamed forward lines in NHL history. He was born in Egmondville, Ontario, but grew up in Seaforth, Ontario.


05/11/1901

Etta Moten Barnett, American actress and singer (died 2004)

Etta Moten Barnett was an American actress and contralto vocalist, who was identified with her signature role of "Bess" in Porgy and Bess. She created new roles for African-American women on stage and screen. After her performing career, Barnett was active in Chicago as a major philanthropist and civic activist, raising funds for and supporting cultural, social, and church institutions. She also hosted a radio program in Chicago and represented the United States in several official delegations to nations in Africa.


Martin Dies, Jr., American lawyer, judge and politician (died 1972)

Martin Dies Jr., also known as Martin Dies Sr., was a Texas politician and a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives. He was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-second and after that to the six succeeding Congresses. In 1944, Dies did not seek renomination to the Seventy-ninth Congress, but was elected to the Eighty-third and to the two succeeding Congresses. Again, he did not seek renomination in 1958 to the Eighty-sixth Congress. In 1941 and 1957, he was twice defeated for the nomination to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. A Southern Conservative Democrat, Dies served as the first chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities from 1937 through 1944.


Eddie Paynter, English cricketer (died 1979)

Edward Paynter was an English cricketer: an attacking batsman and excellent fielder. Among batsmen with at least ten Test dismissals, his batting average of 59.23 is the eighth highest ever; among batsmen with at least 25 Test dismissals, his average is the fifth highest ever, second only to Herbert Sutcliffe amongst Englishmen. Against Australia alone Paynter averaged an extraordinary 84.42.


05/11/1900

Natalie Schafer, American actress (died 1991)

Natalie Schafer was an American actress, best known today for her role as Lovey Howell on the sitcom Gilligan's Island (1964–1967).


Ethelwynn Trewavas, British ichthyologist, over a dozen fish species named in her honor (died 1993)

Ethelwynn Trewavas was an ichthyologist at the British Museum. She was known for her work on the families Cichlidae and Sciaenidae. She worked with Charles Tate Regan, another ichthyologist and taxonomist.


05/11/1899

Margaret Atwood Judson, American historian and author (died 1991)

Margaret Atwood Judson was an American historian and writer.


05/11/1895

Walter Gieseking, French-German pianist and composer (died 1956)

Walter Wilhelm Gieseking was a French-born German pianist and composer. Gieseking was renowned for his subtle touch, pedaling, and dynamic control—particularly in the music of Debussy and Ravel; he made complete recordings of all their published works which were extant during his life. He also recorded most of Mozart's solo piano works.


Charles MacArthur, American playwright and screenwriter (died 1956)

Charles Gordon MacArthur was an American playwright, screenwriter, and 1935 winner of the Academy Award for Best Story for The Scoundrel (1935).


05/11/1894

Beardsley Ruml, American economist and statistician (died 1960)

Beardsley Ruml was an American statistician, economist, philanthropist, planner, businessman and man of affairs in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.


05/11/1893

Raymond Loewy, French-American engineer and designer (died 1986)

Raymond Loewy was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He was recognized for this by Time magazine and featured on its cover on October 31, 1949.


05/11/1892

J. B. S. Haldane, English-Indian geneticist and biologist (died 1964)

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-born scientist who later moved to India and acquired Indian citizenship. He worked in the fields of physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biology, he was one of the founders of neo-Darwinism. Despite his lack of an academic degree in the field, he taught biology at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Institution, and University College London. Renouncing his British citizenship, he became an Indian citizen in 1961 and worked at the Indian Statistical Institute until his death in 1964.


John Alcock, captain in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, copilot of the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight (died 1919)

Captain Sir John William Alcock was a British Royal Navy and later Royal Air Force officer who, with navigator Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, piloted the first non-stop transatlantic flight from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in June 1919. He died in a flying accident in France in December later that same year.


05/11/1890

Jan Zrzavý, Czech painter and illustrator (died 1977)

Jan Zrzavý was a Czech painter, graphic artist and illustrator.


05/11/1887

Paul Wittgenstein, Austrian-American pianist and educator (died 1961)

Paul Wittgenstein was an Austrian-American concert pianist notable for commissioning new piano concerti for the left hand alone, after his right arm was amputated during World War I. He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously thought impossible for a five-fingered pianist.


05/11/1886

Sadae Inoue, Japanese general (died 1961)

Sadae Inoue was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II. He commanded the Japanese forces at the Battle of Peleliu and the Battle of Angaur.


05/11/1885

Will Durant, American historian and philosopher (died 1981)

William James Durant was an American historian and philosopher, best known for his eleven-volume work, The Story of Civilization, which contains and details the history of Eastern and Western civilizations. It was written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy (1926), described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy".


05/11/1884

James Elroy Flecker, English author, poet, and playwright (died 1915)

James Elroy Flecker was a British novelist, playwright, and poet, whose poetry was most influenced by the Parnassian poets.


05/11/1883

P Moe Nin, Burmese author and translator (died 1940)

P Moe Nin was one of Burma's most prolific and treasured writers. His writing style differed from that prevalent in Burma at the time, writing concisely and clearly. Because of this, he is often regarded as the father of Burmese short story writing and the modern Burmese novel. He translated countless valuable works of general knowledge from Western languages.


05/11/1881

George A. Malcolm, American lawyer and jurist (died 1961)

George Arthur Malcolm was an American lawyer who emerged as an influential figure in the development of the practice of law in the Philippines in the 20th century. Constitutional scholar and academic Joaquin Bernas described Malcolm as "the man who more than any single American contributed most to early constitutional development in the Philippines." At age 35, he was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, where he would serve for 19 years. His most enduring legacy perhaps lies in his role in the establishment of the College of Law at the University of the Philippines.


05/11/1879

Otto Wahle, Austrian-American swimmer and coach (died 1963)

Otto Wahle was an Austrian-American swimmer who took part in two Summer Olympic Games and won a total of three medals. Wahle coached the men's US swim team at the 1912 Olympics, and the men's US water polo team at the 1920 and 1924 Olympics.


05/11/1873

Edwin Flack, Australian tennis player and runner (died 1935)

Edwin Harold Flack was an Australian athlete and tennis player. Also known as "Teddy", he was Australia's first Olympian, being its only representative in 1896, and the first Olympic champion in the 800 metres and the 1500 metres running events.


05/11/1870

Chittaranjan Das, Indian lawyer and politician (died 1925)

Chittaranjan Das, popularly called Deshbandhu, was a Bengali freedom fighter, political activist and lawyer during the Indian Independence Movement and mentor of Subhas Chandra Bose. He was the founder-leader of the Swaraj Party in undivided Bengal during the period of British Colonial rule in India. His name is abbreviated as C. R. Das. He was closely associated with a number of literary societies and wrote poems, apart from numerous articles and essays.


05/11/1857

Ida Tarbell, American journalist, author, reformer, and educator (died 1944)

Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer, and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was a pioneer of investigative journalism.


05/11/1855

Eugene V. Debs, American union leader and politician (died 1926)

Eugene Victor Debs was an American socialist activist and trade unionist. He was one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States; through his presidential candidacies as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.


Léon Teisserenc de Bort, French meteorologist and climatologist (died 1913)

Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort was a French meteorologist and a pioneer in the field of aerology. Together with Richard Assmann (1845-1918), he is credited as co-discoverer of the stratosphere, as both men announced their discovery during the same time period in 1902. Teisserenc de Bort pioneered the use of unmanned instrumented balloons and was the first to identify the region in the atmosphere around 8-17 kilometers of height where the lapse rate reaches zero, known today as the tropopause.


05/11/1854

Alphonse Desjardins, Canadian journalist and businessman, co-founded Desjardins Group (died 1920)

Gabriel-Alphonse Desjardins, born in Levis, Canada East was the co-founder of the Caisses Populaires Desjardins, a forerunner of North American credit unions and community banks. For his contribution to the advancement of agriculture in the province of Quebec, he was posthumously inducted to the Agricultural Hall of Fame of Quebec in 1994.


Paul Sabatier, French chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1941)

Paul Sabatier was a French chemist, born in Carcassonne. In 1912, Sabatier was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Victor Grignard. Sabatier was honoured for his work improving the hydrogenation of organic species in the presence of metals.


05/11/1851

Charles Dupuy, French academic and politician, 60th Prime Minister of France (died 1923)

Charles Alexandre Dupuy was a French statesman, three times prime minister.


05/11/1850

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American author and poet (died 1919)

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet. Her works include the collection Poems of Passion and the poem "Solitude", which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone." Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.


05/11/1846

Duncan Gordon Boyes, English soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross (died 1869)

Duncan Gordon Boyes VC was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. The award was bestowed upon him for his actions during the Shimonoseki Expedition, Japan in 1864. He was later discharged from naval service as a result of ill-discipline and moved to New Zealand to work on his family's sheep station. Suffering from depression and alcoholism, he committed suicide at the age of 22 in Dunedin.


05/11/1835

Moritz Szeps, Ukrainian-Austrian journalist and publisher (died 1902)

Moritz Szeps was an Austrian newspaper tycoon who founded and published the daily papers Neues Wiener Tagblatt (1867-1886), Wiener Tagblatt (1886-1894), and the first popular-science magazine Das Wissen für Alle (1900).


05/11/1818

Benjamin Butler, American general, lawyer, and politician, 33rd Governor of Massachusetts (died 1893)

Benjamin Franklin Butler was an American major general of the Union Army, politician, lawyer, and businessman from Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Butler was a political major general of the Union Army during the American Civil War and had a leadership role in the impeachment of U.S. president Andrew Johnson. He was a colorful and often controversial figure on the national stage and on the Massachusetts political scene, serving five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and running several campaigns for governor before his election to that office in 1882.


05/11/1789

William Bland, Australian surgeon and politician (died 1868)

William Bland was a prominent public figure in the colony of New South Wales. A surgeon by profession, he arrived in Australia as a convict but played an important role in the early years of Australian healthcare, education and science.


05/11/1742

Richard Cosway, English painter (died 1821)

Richard Cosway was a leading English portrait painter of the Georgian and Regency era, noted for his miniatures. He was a contemporary of John Smart, George Engleheart, William Wood, and Richard Crosse. He befriended fellow Freemasons and Swedenborgians William Blake and Chevalier d'Éon. His wife was the Italian-born painter Maria Cosway, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson.


05/11/1739

Hugh Montgomerie, 12th Earl of Eglinton, Scottish composer and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ayrshire (died 1819)

Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, 12th Earl of Eglinton, KT, styled Lord Montgomerie from 1769 to 1796, was a British politician, military officer and composer.


05/11/1722

William Byron, 5th Baron Byron, English lieutenant and politician (died 1798)

William Byron, 5th Baron Byron, was a British nobleman, peer, politician, and great-uncle of the poet George Gordon Byron who succeeded him in the title. As a result of a number of stories that arose after a duel, and then because of his financial difficulties, he became known after his death as "the Wicked Lord" and "the Devil Byron".


05/11/1715

John Brown, English author and playwright (died 1766)

John Brown was an English Anglican priest, playwright and essayist.


05/11/1705

Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, French violinist and composer (died 1770)

Louis-Gabriel Guillemain was a French composer and violinist.


05/11/1701

Pietro Longhi, Venetian painter and educator (died 1785)

Pietro Longhi was a Venetian painter of contemporary genre scenes of life.


05/11/1688

Louis Bertrand Castel, French mathematician and philosopher (died 1757)

Louis Bertrand Castel was a French mathematician born in Montpellier, who entered the order of the Jesuits in 1703. Having studied literature, he afterwards devoted himself entirely to mathematics and natural philosophy. After moving from Toulouse to Paris in 1720, at the behest of Bernard de Fontenelle, Castel acted as the science editor of the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux.


05/11/1667

Christoph Ludwig Agricola, German painter (died 1719)

Christoph Ludwig Agricola was a German landscape painter and etcher. He was born and died in Regensburg (Ratisbon).


05/11/1666

Attilio Ariosti, Italian viola player and composer (died 1729)

Attilio Malachia Ariosti was a Servite Friar and Italian composer in the Baroque style. He produced more than 30 operas and oratorios, numerous cantatas and instrumental works.


05/11/1615

Ibrahim of the Ottoman Empire (died 1648)

Ibrahim was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1640 until 1648.


05/11/1613

Isaac de Benserade, French poet and educator (died 1691)

Isaac de Benserade was a French poet and playwright.


05/11/1607

Anna Maria van Schurman, Dutch painter (died 1678)

Anna Maria van Schurman was a Dutch painter, engraver, poet, classical scholar, philosopher, and feminist writer who is best known for her exceptional learning and her defence of female education. She was a highly educated woman, who excelled in art, music, and literature, and became a polyglot proficient in fourteen languages, including Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic, and Ethiopic, as well as various contemporary European languages. She was the first woman to study, unofficially, at a Dutch university.


05/11/1592

Charles Chauncy, English-American pastor, theologian, and academic (died 1672)

Charles Chauncy was an Anglo-American Congregational clergyman, educator, and secondarily, a physician who served as the second president of Harvard College from 1654 to 1672.


05/11/1549

Philippe de Mornay, French theologian and author (died 1623)

Philippe de Mornay, seigneur du Plessis Marly, usually known as Du-Plessis-Mornay or Mornay Du Plessis, was a French Protestant writer and member of the anti-monarchist Monarchomaques.


05/11/1494

Hans Sachs, German poet and playwright (died 1576)

Hans Sachs was a German Meistersinger ("mastersinger"), poet, playwright, and shoemaker.


05/11/1436

Richard Grey, 3rd Earl of Tankerville, Earl of Tankerville, 1450–1460 (died 1466)

Richard Grey, 3rd Earl of Tankerville, 8th Lord of Powys, fought on the side of the House of York in the War of the Roses.


05/11/1271

Ghazan, Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate (died 1304)

Mahmud Ghazan was the seventh ruler of the Mongol Empire's Ilkhanate division in modern-day Iran from 1295 to 1304. He was the son of Arghun, grandson of Abaqa Khan and great-grandson of Hulegu Khan, continuing a long line of rulers who were direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Considered the most prominent of the Ilkhans, he is perhaps best known for converting to Islam and meeting Imam Ibn Taymiyya in 1295 when he took the throne, marking a turning point for the dominant religion of the Mongols in West Asia.


Lives Remembered on 5th November

On 5th November, 116 remarkable people passed away — from 425 to 2024. Remember the lives and legacies of those we lost on this day.

05/11/2024

Ben Baldanza, American economist and business executive (born 1961)

Basil Ben Baldanza Jr. was an American business executive who was the chief executive officer and president of Spirit Airlines from 2005 to 2016, a period in which he led the transformation of the company into an ultra-low-cost carrier.


Elwood Edwards, American voice actor (born 1949)

Elwood Hughes Edwards Jr. was an American voice actor. He was best known as the voice of various soundmarks for the Internet service provider America Online which he first recorded in 1989. This included AOL's trademark "You've got mail" greeting.


05/11/2023

Pat E. Johnson, American martial artist and actor (born 1939)

Patrick E. Johnson was an American martial artist and actor. He was a 9th degree black belt in American Tang Soo Do and was the president of the National Tang Soo Do Congress that was created by Chuck Norris in 1973.


05/11/2022

Aaron Carter, American singer-songwriter, rapper, dancer and actor (born 1987)

Aaron Charles Carter was an American singer and rapper. He rose to fame as a teen pop singer in the late 1990s and established himself as a star among preteen and teenage audiences during the early 2000s.


05/11/2021

Marília Mendonça, Brazilian singer (born 1995)

Marília Dias Mendonça was a Brazilian singer, songwriter and instrumentalist, posthumously recognized in Brazil as the Queen of Sofrência, a subgenre of sertanejo music, and has been recognized for her contribution to female empowerment by revolutionizing the universe of sertanejo music.


05/11/2020

Geoffrey Palmer, English actor (born 1927)

Geoffrey Dyson Palmer was an English actor. His roles in British television sitcoms include Jimmy Anderson in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976–79), Ben Parkinson in Butterflies (1978–1983) and Lionel Hardcastle in As Time Goes By (1992–2005).


05/11/2015

George Barris, American engineer and car designer (born 1925)

George Barris was an American designer and builder of Hollywood custom cars. Barris designed and built the Hirohata Merc. Barris's company, Barris Kustom Industries, designed and built the Munster Koach and DRAG-U-LA for The Munsters, and the 1966 Batmobile for the Batman TV series and film.


Nora Brockstedt, Norwegian singer (born 1923)

Nora Brockstedt was a Norwegian singer. She was the first person ever to represent Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest, appearing as the Norwegian entrant in 1960 and 1961.


Soma Edirisinghe, Sri Lankan businesswoman and philanthropist (born 1939)

Soma Edirisinghe was a Sri Lankan corporate executive, film producer, philanthropist and social worker. She was born in Meegoda, Sri Lanka on 5 July 1939 to a family of nine daughters, and died on 5 November 2015 at a private hospital in Colombo. She was married to EAP Edirisinghe and they had four children: three sons, Jeewaka, Nalaka and Asanka, and a daughter, Deepa.


Czesław Kiszczak, Polish general and politician, 11th Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Poland (born 1925)

Czesław Jan Kiszczak was a Polish general, communist-era interior minister (1981–1990) and prime minister (1989).


Hans Mommsen, German historian and academic (born 1930)

Hans Mommsen was a German historian, known for his studies in German social history, for his functionalist interpretation of the Third Reich, and especially for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a weak dictator. Descended from Nobel Prize-winning historian Theodor Mommsen, he was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.


05/11/2014

Manitas de Plata, French guitarist (born 1921)

Ricardo Baliardo, better known as Manitas de Plata, was a French flamenco guitarist of Catalan Gitano descent, born in southern France.


Lane Evans, American lawyer and politician (born 1951)

Lane Allen Evans was an American attorney and politician who served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 until 2007, representing the 17th district of Illinois. Evans announced that he would not seek reelection in November 2006 and retired at the end of the 109th Congress, due to the increasingly debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease.


Wally Grant, American ice hockey player (born 1927)

Wallace Daniel Grant was an American ice hockey player. Grant helped the University of Michigan win the first NCAA National Championship in 1948. He was inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor in 1987 and the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1994.


Abdelwahab Meddeb, Tunisian-French author, poet, and scholar (born 1946)

Abdelwahab Meddeb was a French-language writer and cultural critic, and a professor of comparative literature at the University of Paris X-Nanterre.


05/11/2013

Habibollah Asgaroladi, Iranian politician (born 1932)

Habibollah Asgaroladi Mosalman was a leading senior Iranian conservative and principlist politician who was the leader of Islamic Coalition Party, a highly influential conservative political party in Iran. He was also a Vice President and two-time presidential candidate, first in July 1981 and next in 1985. During his 1981 bid, he was the target of a failed assassination attempt that killed his bodyguard but left him mostly unharmed.


Juan Carlos Calabró, Argentinian actor and screenwriter (born 1934)

Juan Carlos Calabró was an Argentine actor and comedian.


Tony Iveson, English soldier and pilot (born 1919)

Thomas Clifford "Tony" Iveson DFC AE was a Royal Air Force pilot and veteran of the Second World War, and one of the Few.


Charles Mosley, English genealogist and author (born 1948)

Charles Gordon Mosley was a British genealogist who specialised in British nobility. He was an author, broadcaster, editor, and publisher, best known for having been Editor-in-Chief of Burke's Peerage & Baronetage —its first update since 1970—and of the re-titled 107th edition, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage (2003).


Charlie Trotter, American chef and author (born 1959)

Charlie Trotter was an American chef and restaurateur. His best-known restaurant, Charlie Trotter's, was open in Chicago from 1987 to 2012.


Stuart Williams, Welsh footballer and manager (born 1930)

Stuart Grenville Williams was a Welsh international footballer who played as a defender. He played his club football for Wrexham, West Bromwich Albion and Southampton.


05/11/2012

Olympe Bradna, French-American actress and dancer (born 1920)

Antoinette Olympe Bradna was a French dancer and actress, who emigrated to the United States where she lived for the rest of her life.


Elliott Carter, American composer and academic (born 1908)

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was an American modernist composer who was one of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century. He combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra-modernism" into a distinctive style with a personal harmonic and rhythmic language, after an early neoclassical phase. His compositions are performed throughout the world, and include orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal works. Carter was the recipient of many awards – he was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his string quartets. He also wrote the large-scale orchestral triptych Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei.


Leonardo Favio, Argentinian actor, singer, director and screenwriter (born 1938)

Fuad Jorge Jury, better known by his stage name Leonardo Favio, was an Argentine singer, actor and filmmaker. He is considered one of Argentina's best film directors and one of the country's most enduring cultural figures, as well as a popular singer-songwriter throughout Latin America.


Bob Kaplan, Canadian lawyer and politician, 30th Solicitor General of Canada (born 1936)

Robert Philip "Bob" Kaplan, was a Canadian politician and lawyer.


Louis Pienaar, South African lawyer and diplomat, Minister of Internal Affairs (born 1926)

Louis Alexander Pienaar was a South African lawyer and diplomat. He was the last white Administrator of South-West Africa, from 1985 through Namibian independence in 1990. Pienaar later served as a minister in F W de Klerk's government until 1993. He married Isabel Maud van Niekerk on 11 December 1954.


05/11/2011

Bhupen Hazarika, Indian singer-songwriter, director, and poet (born 1926)

Bhupen Hazarika BR, widely known as Sudha Kantha, was an Indian singer, songwriter, writer, filmmaker and politician from Assam. He wrote songs mainly in the Assamese language, which are marked by humanity and universal brotherhood. His songs have been translated into many languages, most notably in Bengali and Hindi.


05/11/2010

Jill Clayburgh, American actress and singer (born 1944)

Jill Clayburgh was an American actress known for her work in theater, television, and cinema. She received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her breakthrough role in Paul Mazursky's comedy drama An Unmarried Woman (1978). She received a second consecutive Academy Award nomination for Starting Over (1979) as well as four Golden Globe nominations for her film performances, and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her television work.


Adrian Păunescu, Romanian poet, journalist, and politician (born 1943)

Adrian Păunescu was a Romanian writer, publisher, cultural promoter, translator, and politician. A profoundly charismatic personality, a controversial and complex figure, the artist and the man are almost impossible to separate. On the one hand he stands accused of collaboration with the Communist regime, but on the other hand he was persecuted and ostracised by the regime when he started to confront its failures, and when his influence started to be considered dangerous.


Shirley Verrett, American soprano and actress (born 1931)

Shirley Verrett was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles making her a Soprano sfogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s; she was particularly known for performing works by Giuseppe Verdi and Gaetano Donizetti.


05/11/2009

Félix Luna, Argentinian lawyer, historian, and academic (born 1925)

Félix César Luna was an Argentine writer, lyricist and historian.


05/11/2007

Nils Liedholm, Swedish footballer and manager (born 1922)

Nils Erik Liedholm was a Swedish football midfielder and coach. Il Barone, as he is affectionately known in Italy, was renowned for being part of the Swedish "Gre-No-Li" trio of strikers along with Gunnar Gren and Gunnar Nordahl at AC Milan and the Sweden national team, with which he achieved notable success throughout his career.


05/11/2006

Bülent Ecevit, Turkish journalist and politician, 16th Prime Minister of Turkey (born 1925)

Mustafa Bülent Ecevit was a Turkish statesman, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002, specifically in 1974, 1977, 1978–79, and 1999–2002. Ecevit was Chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP) from 1972 to 1980, and became Chairman of the Democratic Left Party (DSP) in 1987.


05/11/2005

John Fowles, English novelist (born 1926)

John Robert Fowles was an English novelist, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.


Virginia MacWatters, American soprano and actress (born 1912)

Virginia MacWatters was an American coloratura soprano and university professor.


Link Wray, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1929)

Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr. was an American guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist who became popular in the late 1950s. His 1958 instrumental single "Rumble" reached the top 20 in the United States, and was one of the earliest songs in rock music to use distortion and tremolo.


05/11/2004

Donald Jones, American-Dutch actor, singer, and dancer (born 1932)

Donald Towe Jones was an American-Dutch actor, singer and dancer; born in Harlem, he went to the Netherlands in his early twenties and became one of the first Dutch black stars.


05/11/2003

Bobby Hatfield, American singer-songwriter (born 1940)

Robert Lee Hatfield was an American singer. He and Bill Medley performed together as the Righteous Brothers. He sang the tenor part for the duo and sang solo on the group's 1965 recording of "Unchained Melody".


05/11/2001

Roy Boulting, English director and producer (born 1913)

John Edward Boulting and Roy Alfred Clarence Boulting, known collectively as the Boulting brothers, were English filmmakers and identical twins who became known for their series of satirical comedies in the 1950s and 1960s. They produced many of their films through their own production company, Charter Film Productions, which they founded in 1937.


Milton William Cooper, American radio host, author, and activist (born 1943)

Milton William "Bill" Cooper was an American conspiracy theorist, radio broadcaster, and author known for his 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse, in which he warned of multiple global conspiracies, some involving extraterrestrial life. Cooper also described HIV/AIDS as a man-made disease used to target blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals, and that a cure was made before it was implemented. He has been described as a "militia theoretician". Cooper was killed in 2001 by sheriff's deputies after he shot at them during an attempted arrest.


05/11/2000

Jimmie Davis, American singer-songwriter and politician, 47th Governor of Louisiana (born 1899)

James Houston Davis was an American singer, songwriter, and Democratic Party politician. After achieving fame for releasing both sacred and country songs, Davis served as the 47th governor of Louisiana from 1944 to 1948 and again from 1960 to 1964.


Bibi Titi Mohammed, Tanzanian politician (born 1926)

Bibi Titi Mohammed was a Tanzanian politician and activist. She was born in June 1926 in Dar es Salaam, at the time the capital of former Tanganyika. She first was considered a freedom fighter and supported the first president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. Bibi Titi Mohammed was a member of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), the party that fought for the independence of Tanzania, and held various ministerial positions. In October 1969, she was sentenced for treason, and, after two years in prison, received a presidential pardon.


05/11/1999

James Goldstone, American director and screenwriter (born 1931)

James Goldstone was an American film and television director whose career spanned over thirty years.


Colin Rowe, English-American architect, theorist and academic (born 1920)

Colin Rowe was a British-born, American-naturalised architectural historian, critic, theoretician and teacher. He is acknowledged to have been a major theoretical and critical influence in the second half of the twentieth century on world architecture and urbanism. During his life he taught briefly at the University of Texas at Austin and, for one year, at the University of Cambridge in England. For most of his life he was a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Many of Rowe’s students became important architects and extended his influence throughout the architecture and planning professions. In 1995 he was awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects, its highest honor. He was also awarded the Athena Medal from the Congress for the New Urbanism posthumously in 2011.


05/11/1997

James Robert Baker, American author and screenwriter (born 1946)

James Robert Baker was an American author of sharply satirical, predominantly gay-themed transgressional fiction. A native Californian, his work is set almost entirely in Southern California. After graduating from UCLA, he began his career as a screenwriter, but became disillusioned and started writing novels instead. Though he garnered fame for his books Fuel-Injected Dreams and Boy Wonder, after the controversy surrounding publication of his novel, Tim and Pete, he faced increasing difficulty having his work published. According to his life partner, this was a contributing factor in his suicide.


Isaiah Berlin, Latvian-English historian, author, and academic (born 1909)

Sir Isaiah Berlin was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks were sometimes recorded and transcribed, and many of his spoken words were converted into published essays and books, both by himself and by others, especially by his principal editor from 1974, Henry Hardy.


Peter Jackson, Australian rugby league player and sportscaster (born 1964)

Peter Jackson was an Australian professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1980s and 1990s. Nicknamed 'Jacko', he was an Australia national and Queensland State of Origin representative centre or five-eighth. Jackson played club football in the Brisbane Rugby League for the Souths Magpies, before moving to the New South Wales Rugby League and playing for the Canberra Raiders, Brisbane Broncos and North Sydney Bears. He also played in the Rugby Football League for English club Leeds. Jackson worked in the media following his retirement in 1993, and died as the result of a drug overdose in 1997.


05/11/1996

Eddie Harris, American saxophonist (born 1934)

Eddie Harris was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are "Freedom Jazz Dance", popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and "Listen Here".


05/11/1992

Adile Ayda, Russian-Turkish engineer and diplomat (born 1912)

Adile Ayda was the first woman career diplomat of Turkey, but is today better remembered as an Etruscologist. She became interested in Etruscan studies while stationed in Rome as the Minister-Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy, did research on the subject during her stay in Italy and wrote down her findings in a number of books, in Turkish and in French. She proposed that the Etruscans were a Turkic-speaking people, a proposal which never enjoyed wide support and has since been discredited.


Arpad Elo, American physicist and chess player (born 1903)

Arpad Emmerich Elo was a Hungarian-American physics professor who created the Elo rating system for two-player games such as chess.


Jan Oort, Dutch astronomer and academic (born 1900)

Jan Hendrik Oort was a Dutch astronomer who made significant contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and who was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy. The New York Times called him "one of the century's foremost explorers of the universe"; the European Space Agency website describes him as "one of the greatest astronomers of the 20th century" and states that he "revolutionised astronomy through his ground-breaking discoveries." In 1955, Oort's name appeared in Life magazine's list of the 100 most famous living people. He has been described as "putting the Netherlands in the forefront of postwar astronomy".


05/11/1991

Robert Maxwell, Czech-English captain, publisher, and politician (born 1923)

Ian Robert Maxwell was a Czechoslovak-born British-French media proprietor and politician.


Fred MacMurray, American actor and businessman (born 1908)

Frederick Martin MacMurray was an American actor. He appeared in more than one hundred films and a successful television series in a career that spanned nearly a half-century. His career as a major film leading man began in 1935, but his most renowned role was in Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir Double Indemnity. From 1959 to 1973, MacMurray appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Follow Me, Boys!, and The Happiest Millionaire. He starred as Steve Douglas in the television series My Three Sons.


05/11/1989

Vladimir Horowitz, Ukrainian-American pianist and composer (born 1903)

Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz was a Russian and American pianist. Considered one of the greatest pianists of all time, he was known for his virtuoso technique, timbre, and the public excitement engendered by his playing.


05/11/1987

Eamonn Andrews, Irish radio and television host (born 1922)

Eamonn Andrews was an Irish radio and television presenter, employed primarily in the United Kingdom from the 1950s to the 1980s. From 1960 to 1964 he chaired the Radio Éireann Authority, which oversaw the introduction of a state television service in Ireland. He is perhaps best remembered as the UK host of This Is Your Life from its inception in 1955 until his death in 1987.


05/11/1986

Adolf Brudes, German race car driver (born 1899)

Adolf Brudes von Breslau was a Formula One driver from Germany and a member of German nobility. He started racing motorcycles in 1919. As an owner of a BMW and Auto Union dealership in Breslau, he had the opportunities to go racing, which he did from 1928 onwards, initially in hillclimbs. After World War II wiped out his business, he moved to Berlin and for a while became a mechanic, wherever he could find jobs. However he soon was back racing, and he continued until 1968, in hillclimbs. He participated in one World Championship Grand Prix, the 1952 Großer Preis von Deutschland, but scored no championship points. He also participated in several non-Championship Formula One races.


Claude Jutra, Canadian actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1930)

Claude Jutra was a Canadian actor, film director, and screenwriter.


Bobby Nunn, American singer (born 1925)

Ulysses B. "Bobby" Nunn Sr. was an American R&B singer with the musical groups The Robins and original bass vocalist of The Coasters. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, and died of heart failure in Los Angeles, California, U.S.


05/11/1985

Arnold Chikobava, Georgian linguist and philologist (born 1898)

Arnold Stephanes dze Chikobava was a Georgian linguist and philologist best known for his contributions to Caucasian studies and for being one of the most active critics of Nicholas Marr's controversial monogenetic "Japhetic" theory of language.


Spencer W. Kimball, American religious leader, 12th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (born 1895)

Spencer Woolley Kimball was an American religious leader who was the twelfth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


05/11/1981

Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, 16th Karmapa, Tibetan spiritual leader (born 1924)

The 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje was the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and the spiritual leader of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He is of the oldest line of reincarnate lamas in Vajrayana Buddhism, known as the Karmapas whose coming was predicted by the Buddha in the Samadhiraja Sutra. The 16th Karmapa was considered to be a "living Buddha" and was deeply involved in the transmission of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism to Europe and North America following the Chinese invasion of Tibet. He was known as the "King of the Yogis", and is the subject of numerous books and films.


05/11/1980

Louis Alter, American musician (born 1902)

Louis Alter was an American pianist, songwriter and composer. At 13, he began playing piano in theaters showing silent films. He studied at the New England Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Stuart Mason.


05/11/1979

Al Capp, American cartoonist (born 1909)

Alfred Gerald Caplin, better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner, which he created in 1934 and continued writing and drawing until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats and Long Sam (1954). He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award, posthumously for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning".


05/11/1977

René Goscinny, French author and illustrator (born 1926)

René Goscinny was a French comic editor and writer, who created the Asterix comic book series with illustrator Albert Uderzo. Born in France to a Jewish family from Poland, he spent his childhood in Argentina where he attended French schools and later lived in the United States for a short period of time. There he met Belgian cartoonist Morris. After his return to France, they collaborated for more than 20 years on the comic series Lucky Luke.


Guy Lombardo, Canadian-American violinist and conductor (born 1902)

Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo was a Canadian and American bandleader, violinist, and hydroplane racer whose unique sweet jazz style remained popular with audiences for nearly five decades.


Alexey Stakhanov, Russian-Soviet miner, the Stakhanovite movement has been named after him (born 1906)

Alexei Grigoryevich Stakhanov was a Soviet miner, Hero of Socialist Labour (1970), and a member of the CPSU (1936).


05/11/1975

Edward Tatum, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1909)

Edward Lawrie Tatum was an American geneticist. He shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 with George Beadle for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism. The other half of that year's award went to Joshua Lederberg. Tatum was an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


Lionel Trilling, American critic, essayist, short story writer, and educator (born 1905)

Lionel Mordecai Trilling was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. One of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century, he analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, and political implications of literature. He and his wife, Diana Trilling, were members of the New York Intellectuals and contributors to the Partisan Review.


05/11/1972

Alfred Schmidt, Estonian weightlifter (born 1898)

Alfred Schmidt was an Estonian featherweight weightlifter who won a silver medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics.


05/11/1971

Sam Jones, American baseball player (born 1925)

Samuel "Toothpick" Jones was an American Major League Baseball pitcher with the Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers and the Baltimore Orioles between 1951 and 1964. He batted and threw right-handed.


05/11/1964

Buddy Cole, American pianist and conductor (born 1916)

Edwin LeMar "Buddy" Cole was a jazz pianist, organist, orchestra leader, and composer. He played behind a number of pop singers, including Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby.


Lansdale Ghiselin Sasscer, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician (born 1893)

Lansdale Ghiselin Sasscer was an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for Maryland's 5th congressional district for seven terms from 1939 to 1953. He was a member of the Democratic Party.


05/11/1963

Luis Cernuda, Spanish poet and critic (born 1902)

Luis Cernuda Bidón was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. During the Spanish Civil War, in early 1938, he went to the UK to deliver some lectures and this became the start of an exile that lasted till the end of his life. He taught in the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge before moving in 1947 to the US. In the 1950s he moved to Mexico. While he continued to write poetry, he also published wide-ranging books of critical essays, covering French, English and German as well as Spanish literature. He was frank about his homosexuality at a time when this was problematic and became something of a role model for this in Spain. His collected poems were published under the title La realidad y el deseo.


05/11/1960

Ward Bond, American actor (born 1903)

Wardell Edwin Bond was an American character actor who appeared in more than 200 films and starred in the NBC television series Wagon Train from 1957 to 1960. Among his best-remembered film roles are Bert the cop in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and Captain Clayton in John Ford's The Searchers (1956).


Donald Grey Barnhouse, American pastor and theologian (born 1895)

Donald Grey Barnhouse, was an American Christian preacher, pastor, theologian, radio pioneer, and writer. He was pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1927 to his death in 1960. The Bible Study Hour, his pioneering radio program continues, now known as Dr. Barnhouse & the Bible.


August Gailit, Estonian author and poet (born 1891)

August Gailit was an Estonian writer.


Johnny Horton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1925)

John LaGale Horton was an American country, honky tonk, and rockabilly musician during the 1950s. He is best known for a series of history-inspired narrative country saga songs that became international hits. His 1959 single "The Battle of New Orleans" was awarded the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording. The song was awarded the Grammy Hall of Fame Award and in 2001 ranked number 333 of the Recording Industry Association of America's "Songs of the Century". His first number-one country song was in 1959, "When It's Springtime in Alaska ".


Mack Sennett, Canadian-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1880)

Mack Sennett was a Canadian-American producer, director, actor, and studio head who was known as the "King of Comedy" during his career.


05/11/1956

Art Tatum, American pianist and composer (born 1909)

Arthur Tatum Jr. was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever. From early in his career, fellow musicians acclaimed Tatum's technical ability as extraordinary. Tatum also extended jazz piano's vocabulary and boundaries far beyond his initial stride influences, and established new ground through innovative use of reharmonization, voicing, and bitonality.


05/11/1955

Maurice Utrillo, French painter (born 1883)

Maurice Utrillo was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. From the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre to have been born there.


05/11/1951

Reggie Walker, South African runner (born 1889)

Reginald Edgar Walker was a South African athlete and the 1908 Olympic champion in the 100 metres.


05/11/1950

Mary Harris Armor, American suffragist (born 1863)

Mary Elizabeth Harris Armor was an American temperance leader. She was the Georgia state president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and is often credited for the passing of prohibition legislature in Georgia.


05/11/1946

Joseph Stella, Italian-American painter (born 1877)

Joseph Stella was an Italian-born American Futurist painter best known for his depictions of industrial America, especially his images of the Brooklyn Bridge. He is also associated with the American Precisionist movement of the 1910s–1940s.


05/11/1944

Alexis Carrel, French surgeon and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1873)

Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and biologist who spent most of his scientific career in the United States. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. In later time however, it was acknowledged that Carrel and Lindbergh's version of the perfusion pump, which initially had media prominence, was impractical and difficult to use, and would lose influence by the 1940s. Carrel was also a pioneer in tissue culture, transplantology and thoracic surgery. He is known for his leading role in implementing eugenic policies in Vichy France.


05/11/1942

George M. Cohan, American actor, singer, composer, author and theatre manager/owner (born 1878)

George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.


05/11/1941

Arndt Pekurinen, Finnish activist (born 1905)

Arndt Juho Pekurinen was a Finnish pacifist and conscientious objector.


05/11/1939

Mary W. Bacheler, American physician and Baptist medical missionary (born 1860)

Mary Washington Bacheler was an American physician and Baptist medical missionary in India.


05/11/1938

Thomas Dewing, American painter and educator (born 1851)

Thomas Wilmer Dewing was an American painter working at the turn of the 20th century. Schooled in Paris, Dewing was noted for his figure paintings of aristocratic women. He was a founding member of the Ten American Painters and taught at the Art Students League of New York. The Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution has a collection of his works. He was the husband of fellow artist Maria Oakey Dewing.


05/11/1933

Texas Guinan, American actress and businesswoman (born 1884)

Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan was an American actress, producer, and entrepreneur. Born in Texas to Canadian immigrant parents, Guinan decided at an early age to become an entertainer. After becoming a star on the New York stage, the repercussions of her involvement in a weight loss scam motivated her to switch careers to the film business. Spending several years in California appearing in numerous productions, she eventually formed her own company.


Walther von Dyck, German mathematician and academic (born 1856)

Walther Franz Anton von Dyck, born Dyck and later ennobled, was a German mathematician. He is credited with being the first to define a mathematical group, in the modern sense in. He laid the foundations of combinatorial group theory, being the first to systematically study a group by generators and relations.


05/11/1931

Konrad Stäheli, Swiss target shooter (born 1866)

Konrad Stäheli was a Swiss sports shooter who competed in the late 19th century and early 20th century and participated in the 1900 Summer Olympics and the 1906 Intercalated Games.


05/11/1930

Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physician and pathologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1858)

Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch physician and professor of physiology whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of antineuritic vitamins (thiamine). Together with Sir Frederick Hopkins, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1929 for the discovery of vitamins.


Luigi Facta, Italian politician, journalist and Prime Minister of Italy (born 1861)

Luigi Facta was an Italian politician, lawyer and journalist and the last prime minister of Italy before the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.


05/11/1928

Vlasios Tsirogiannis, Greek general (born 1872)

Vlasios Tsirogiannis was a Hellenic Army officer who rose to the rank of Lieutenant General.


05/11/1923

Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, French author and poet (born 1880)

Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen was a French novelist and poet. His life forms the basis of a fictionalised 1959 novel by Roger Peyrefitte entitled The Exile of Capri.


05/11/1879

James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist and mathematician (born 1831)

James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism achieved the second great unification in physics, where the first one had been realised by Isaac Newton. Maxwell was also key in the creation of statistical mechanics.


05/11/1876

Theodor von Heuglin, German explorer and ornithologist (born 1824)

Martin Theodor von Heuglin, was a German explorer and ornithologist. It is principally by his zoological, and more especially his ornithological, labours that Heuglin has taken rank as an independent authority.


05/11/1872

Thomas Sully, English-American painter (born 1783)

Thomas Sully was an English-American portrait painter. He was born in England, became a naturalized American citizen in 1809, and lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including in the Thomas Sully Residence. He studied painting in England under Benjamin West. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence and has been referred to as the "Sir Thomas Lawrence of America".


05/11/1807

Angelica Kauffman, painter (born 1741)

Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann, usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffman was a skilled portraitist, landscape and decoration painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of two female painters among the founding members of the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1768.


05/11/1758

Hans Egede, Norwegian-Danish bishop and missionary (born 1686)

Hans Poulsen Egede was a Norwegian Lutheran priest and missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inuit and is credited with revitalizing Danish-Norwegian interest in the island after contact had been broken for about 300 years. He founded Greenland's capital Godthåb, now known as Nuuk.


05/11/1752

Carl Andreas Duker, German scholar and jurist (born 1670)

Carl Andreas Duker was a German classical scholar and jurist.


05/11/1714

Bernardino Ramazzini, Italian physician and academic (born 1633)

Bernardino Ramazzini was an Italian physician. He has been considered as a founder of occupational medicine with his book on occupational diseases, De Morbis Artificum Diatriba published in 1700. Ramazzini, along with Francesco Torti, was an early proponent of the use of cinchona bark in the treatment of malaria.


05/11/1701

Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, French-English colonel and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire (born 1659)

Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, was an English peer, soldier and MP.


05/11/1660

Alexandre de Rhodes, French missionary and lexicographer (born 1591)

Alexandre de Rhodes, SJ, also Đắc Lộ, was an Avignonese Jesuit missionary and lexicographer who had a lasting impact on Christianity in Vietnam. He wrote the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum, the first trilingual Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary, published in Rome, in 1651.


Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle (born 1599)

Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle was an English courtier known for her beauty and wit. She was involved in many political intrigues during the English Civil War.


05/11/1605

Nyaungyan Min, Birmese king (born 1555)

Nyaung-yan Min was king of the Toungoo dynasty of Burma (Myanmar) from 1599 to 1605. He is also referred to as the founder of the restored Toungoo dynasty or Nyaungyan dynasty for starting the reunification process following the collapse of the First Toungoo Empire.


05/11/1559

Kanō Motonobu, Japanese painter and educator (born 1476)

Kanō Motonobu was a Japanese painter and calligrapher. He was a member of the Kanō school of painting. Through his political connections, patronage, organization, and influence he was able to make the Kanō school into what it is today. The system was responsible for the training of a great majority of painters throughout the Edo period (1603–1868). After his death, he was referred to as Kohōgen (古法眼).


05/11/1515

Mariotto Albertinelli, Italian painter and educator (born 1474)

Mariotto di Bindo di Biagio Albertinelli was an Italian Renaissance painter active in Florence. He was a close friend and collaborator of Fra Bartolomeo.


05/11/1459

John Fastolf, English soldier (born 1380)

Sir John Fastolf was a late medieval English soldier, landowner, and knight who fought in the Hundred Years' War from 1415 to 1439, latterly as a senior commander against Joan of Arc, among others. He has enjoyed a more lasting reputation as the prototype, in some part, of Shakespeare's character Sir John Falstaff, although their careers are very different. Many historians argue, however, that he deserves to be famous in his own right, not only as a soldier, but as a patron of literature, a writer on strategy and perhaps as an early industrialist.


05/11/1450

John IV, Count of Armagnac (born 1396)

John IV was Count of Armagnac, Fézensac, and Rodez from 1418 to 1450. He was involved in the intrigues related to the Hundred Years' War and in conflicts against the King of France.


05/11/1370

Casimir III the Great, Polish king (born 1310)

Casimir III the Great reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370. He also later became King of Ruthenia in 1340, retaining the title throughout the Galicia–Volhynia Wars. He was the last Polish king from the Piast dynasty.


05/11/1235

Elisabeth of Swabia, queen consort of Castile and León (born 1205)

Elisabeth of Swabia, was a member of the House of Hohenstaufen who became Queen of Castile and Leon by marriage to Ferdinand III.


05/11/1176

Diego Martínez de Villamayor, Castilian nobleman

Diego Martínez de Villamayor was a noble of the Kingdom of Castile from the house of the counts of Bureba, who was very influential at court. He was the advisor of Alfonso VII and Sancho III, and treasurer of Alfonso VIII.


05/11/1011

Mathilde, Abbess of Essen (born 949)

Mathilde was Abbess of Essen Abbey from 973 to her death. She was one of the most important abbesses in the history of Essen. She was responsible for the abbey, for its buildings, its precious relics, liturgical vessels and manuscripts, its political contacts, and for commissioning translations and overseeing education. In the unreliable list of Essen Abbesses from 1672, she is listed as the second Abbess Mathilde and as a result, she is sometimes called "Mathilde II" to distinguish her from the earlier abbess of the same name, who is meant to have governed Essen Abbey from 907 to 910 but whose existence is disputed.


05/11/0964

Fan Zhi, chancellor of the Song Dynasty (born 911)

Fàn Zhi, formally the Duke of Lu (魯國公), was a Chinese essayist, historian, jurist, and politician who served under 12 emperors of 6 dynasties during imperial China's Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period and the subsequent Song dynasty. He was the Later Zhou chancellor from 951 until 960, and the Song dynasty chancellor from 960 until 964, not long before his death. A strict adherent to legal guidelines, he had influenced Later Zhou and Song rulers to rely more on civil administration in an age dominated by the military. Fàn was a member of the elite Fàn family.


05/11/0425

Atticus, archbishop of Constantinople

Atticus of Constantinople was an archbishop of Constantinople, succeeding to the episcopal throne in March 406. He is known for having been an opponent of John Chrysostom whom he helped depose, and having rebuilt the small church that was located on the site of the later Hagia Sophia. He was an opponent of the Pelagians, which helped increase his popularity among the citizens of Constantinople, and he contributed to the theological framework for the developing cult of the Virgin Mary.


Celebrations & Special Days Worldwide on 5th November

Christian feast day: All Jesuit Saints and Blesseds

The Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits, is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church. Headquartered in Rome, it was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and six companions, with the approval of Pope Paul III. The Society of Jesus is the largest Catholic religious male order and it has played a significant role in education, charity, humanitarian acts and global policies. Jesuits are engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 countries, including education, research, and cultural pursuits. They also conduct retreats, minister in hospitals and parishes, sponsor direct social and humanitarian works, and promote ecumenical dialogue.


Christian feast day: Saint Domninus of Grenoble

Saint Domninus of Grenoble was the first recorded bishop of Grenoble. He is venerated as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church and by the Orthodox Church; his feast day is celebrated on 2 November in the Roman Catholic Church and on 5 November in the Orthodox Church.


Christian feast day: Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg

Bernhard Lichtenberg was a German Catholic priest known for his outspoken opposition to the Nazi regime’s persecution of Jews and other marginalized groups during the Holocaust. He became a notable symbol of religious liberty for his public condemnation of the Nazi government’s policies, including from the pulpit of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin. Despite widespread fear and suppression, Lichtenberg openly called for justice and the humane treatment of Jewish citizens, underscoring the moral responsibilities of religious leaders under totalitarian regimes.


Christian feast day: Berthild of Chelles

Saint Berthild, also known as Bertille or Bertilla, was abbess of Chelles Abbey in France.


Christian feast day: Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist

Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist, the wife of Zechariah and a relative of Mary, mother of Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke. She was past normal child-bearing age when she conceived and gave birth to John. She is revered as a saint by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Lutheran churches, in addition to being a highly respected figure in Islam.


Christian feast day: Galation

Saint Galaction was a 3rd-century Syrian Christian, martyred with his wife, Episteme (Epistima), whom he had converted to the Christian faith.


Christian feast day: Blessed Gomidas Keumurdjian

Gomidas Keumurdjian, known as Cosma de Carbognano, was a married priest of the Armenian Apostolic Church and later a convert to the Armenian Catholic Church. At the insistence of the Armenian Apostolic Patriarch of Constantinople, Ter Gomidas was tried before an Islamic court and sentenced to death by the Qadi for treason against the Ottoman Sultan and for secretly baptizing Muslims. Gomidas, however, was offered a full pardon and his immediate release in return for his conversion to Islam, but he repeatedly refused and was publicly executed by beheading in the Samatya quarter of Istanbul. He is regarded by the Catholic Church as a martyr and has been venerated as a Blessed since 1929.


Christian feast day: Blessed Guido Maria Conforti

Guido Maria Conforti was an Italian Roman Catholic archbishop who founded the Xaverian Missionaries (S.X.) on 3 December 1895. He was known to make frequent visits to his parishes and worked to support the religious education and religious involvement among the youth.


Christian feast day: Blessed Hryhoriy Lakota

Hryhoriy Lakota, also known as Gregor Lakota, was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic auxiliary bishop who suffered religious persecution and was martyred by the Soviet Union. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 27 June 2001 in Ukraine.


Christian feast day: November 5 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

November 4 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - November 6


Bank Transfer Day (United States)

Bank Transfer Day was a consumer activism initiative calling for a voluntary switch from commercial banks to not-for-profit credit unions by November 5, 2011. As of October 15, 2011, a Facebook page devoted to the effort had drawn more than 54,900 likes. Debit card fees of $5 a month from the Bank of America are among steps leading to the Bank Transfer Day protest with a November 5 deadline. Occupy Wall Street participants support the effort even though the events are not related. Among the detractors were Occupy Los Angeles participants: Sigurd Olin Christian, creator of the Bank Transfer Day event, stated that "he was accosted by Occupy Los Angeles organizers and has even received threatening phone calls" because of his pro-credit union rather than anti-bank approach.


Colón Day (Panama)

Public holidays in Panama include:


Guy Fawkes Night (United Kingdom, New Zealand and Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada), and its related observances: West Country Carnival (English West Country)

The West Country Carnival Circuits are an annual celebration featuring a parade of illuminated carts in the English West Country. The celebration dates back to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The purpose is to raise money for local charities.


Cinco de noviembre (Negros, Philippines)

The Negros Revolution, commemorated and popularly known as the Fifth of November or Negros Day was a political movement in the Philippines that established a government on Negros Island in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, ending Spanish control of the island and paving the way for a republican government run by the Negrense natives. The newly established Negros Republic lasted for approximately three months. American forces landed unopposed on the island on February 2, 1899, ending the island's independence. Negros was then annexed to the Philippine Islands on 20 April 1901.


Kanakadasa Jayanthi (Karnataka, India)

Kanaka Dasa (1509–1606) also known as Daasashreshta Kanakadasa, was a Haridasa saint and philosopher of Dvaita Vedanta, from present-day Karnataka, India. He was a follower of Madhvacharya's Dvaita philosophy and a disciple of Vyasatirtha. He was a composer of Carnatic music, poet, reformer and musician. He is known for his keertanas and ugabhoga, and his compositions in the Kannada language for Carnatic music. Like other Haridasas, he used simple Kannada and native metrical forms for his compositions.


What Happened on 5th November?

53 significant events took place on Sunday, 5th November — stretching from 1009 to 2024. Explore the moments that shaped history on this day.

05/11/2024

Donald Trump becomes the first president of the United States to be elected to a non-consecutive second term in 132 years, since Grover Cleveland won the 1892 election.

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.


05/11/2021

The Astroworld Festival crowd crush results in 10 deaths and 25 people being hospitalized

On November 5, 2021, a fatal crowd crush occurred during the Astroworld Festival, a one time tour hosted by American rapper Travis Scott at NRG Park in Houston, Texas. Eight people were pronounced dead on the day of the incident, and two more died in the hospital in the following days. The Harris County medical examiner's office declared the cause of death to be compressive asphyxiation while the manner of death was ruled an accident.


05/11/2017

Devin Patrick Kelley kills 26 and injures 22 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

On November 5, 2017, Devin Kelley shot and killed 26 people and wounded 22 others at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, United States. Kelley was subsequently shot and wounded, then killed himself. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history and the deadliest at an American place of worship, surpassing the Charleston church shooting of 2015 and the Waddell Buddhist temple shooting of 1991.


05/11/2015

An iron ore tailings dam bursts in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, flooding a valley, causing mudslides in the nearby village of Bento Rodrigues and causing at least 17 deaths and two missing.

Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the form of magnetite (Fe3O4, 72.4% Fe), hematite (Fe2O3, 69.9% Fe), goethite (FeO(OH), 62.9% Fe), limonite (FeO(OH)·n(H2O), 55% Fe), or siderite (FeCO3, 48.2% Fe).


Rona Ambrose takes over after Stephen Harper as the Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Ronalee Ambrose Veitch is a former Canadian politician who served as leader of the Official Opposition and interim leader of the Conservative Party from 2015 to 2017. She was the member of Parliament (MP) for Sturgeon River—Parkland from 2015 to 2017, after previously representing Edmonton—Spruce Grove from 2004 to 2015.


05/11/2013

India launches the Mars Orbiter Mission, its first interplanetary probe.

Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), unofficially known as Mangalyaan, is a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. It was launched on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was India's first interplanetary mission and it made ISRO the fourth space agency to achieve Mars orbit, after Soviet space program, NASA, and the European Space Agency. It made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit. It also made ISRO the first national space agency in the world to do so with an indigenously developed propulsion system and the second national space agency to succeed on its maiden attempt, after the European Space Agency accomplished this in 2003 using a Roscosmos Soyuz/Fregat rocket.


05/11/2010

JS Air Flight 201 crashes after takeoff from Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan, killing all 21 aboard.

On 5 November 2010, JS Air Flight 201, a Beechcraft 1900 passenger aircraft on a charter service from Karachi to the Bhit Shah gas field in Sindh, Pakistan, crashed near Karachi's Jinnah International Airport, after suffering an engine malfunction at take-off. All 21 people on board were killed.


05/11/2009

U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan murders 13 and wounds 32 at Fort Hood, Texas in the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. military installation.

Nidal Malik Hasan is an American former United States Army major, physician, and mass murderer convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting on November 5, 2009. Hasan, an Army Medical Corps psychiatrist, admitted to the shootings at his court-martial in August 2013.


05/11/2007

China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1, goes into orbit around the Moon.

Chang'e 1 was an uncrewed Chinese lunar-orbiting spacecraft, part of the first phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. The spacecraft was named after the Chinese Moon goddess, Chang'e.


The Android mobile operating system is unveiled by Google.

Android is an open-source operating system developed by Google. Android is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other free and open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Android has historically been developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, but its most widely used version is primarily developed by Google. First released in 2008, Android is the world's most widely used operating system; and most used operating system for smartphones. The latest version, released on June 16, 2026, is Android 17.


05/11/2006

Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for their roles in the 1982 massacre of 148 Shia Muslims.

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003 during the United States-led invasion of Iraq. He previously served as the vice president from 1968 to 1979 and also as the prime minister from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. A leading member of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, he was a proponent of Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism. The policies and ideologies he championed are collectively known as Saddamism, a "right-wing" variant of Ba'athism.


05/11/1996

Pakistani President Farooq Leghari dismisses the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolves the National Assembly.

The President of Pakistan is the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The president is the nominal head of the executive and the federal parliament, the first citizen of the country, and the supreme commander of the Pakistan Armed Forces. Serving as the ceremonial head of the federation, the president is bound to act on advice of the prime minister and the federal cabinet. Asif Ali Zardari is the 14th and current president, having assumed the presidency on 10 March 2024.


Bill Clinton is reelected President of the United States.

William Jefferson Clinton is an American former politician and lawyer who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979 and as the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. His centrist "Third Way" political philosophy became known as Clintonism, which dominated his presidency and the succeeding decades of Democratic Party history.


05/11/1995

André Dallaire attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada. He is thwarted when the Prime Minister's wife locks the door.

André Dallaire is a Canadian man who attempted to assassinate Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien in 1995. Dallaire claimed that he heard voices that led him to break into the 24 Sussex Drive residence. At trial, Justice Paul Bélanger agreed with Dallaire's earlier diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and found Dallaire guilty of attempted murder, but not criminally responsible.


05/11/1991

Tropical Storm Thelma causes flash floods in the Philippine city of Ormoc, killing more than 4,900 people.

Tropical Storm Thelma, named Uring by PAGASA, was one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in Philippine history, killing at least 5,081 people. Forming out of a tropical disturbance on November 1, 1991, several hundred kilometers north-northeast of Palau, the depression that would become Thelma tracked generally westward. After turning southwestward in response to a cold front, the system intensified into a tropical storm on November 4 as it approached the Philippines. Hours before moving over the Visayas, Thelma attained its peak intensity with estimated ten-minute sustained winds of 75 km/h (45 mph) and a barometric pressure of 992 mbar. Despite moving over land, the system weakened only slightly, emerging over the South China Sea on November 6 while retaining gale-force winds. Thelma ultimately succumbed to wind shear and degraded to a tropical depression. On November 8, the depression made landfall in Southern Vietnam before dissipating hours later.


05/11/1990

Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel.

Meir David HaKohen Kahane was an Israeli Orthodox ordained rabbi, convicted terrorist, writer and ultra-nationalist politician. He was the founder of the Israeli political party Kach, whose ideology continues to influence militant and far-right political groups active today in Israel. Kahane was convicted of multiple acts of terrorism in the United States and in Israel.


05/11/1986

USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao, China; the first US naval visit to China since 1949.

USS Rentz (FFG-46) was a United States Navy Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate. She was named for George S. Rentz, a World War II Navy Chaplain, posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for actions following the loss of USS Houston in the Battle of Sunda Strait. He was the only Navy chaplain to be so honored during World War II.


05/11/1983

The Byford Dolphin diving bell accident kills five and leaves one severely injured.

Byford Dolphin was a semi-submersible, column-stabilised drilling rig operated by Dolphin Drilling, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Energy. Byford Dolphin was registered in Hamilton, Bermuda, and drilled seasonally for various companies in the British, Danish, and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea. In 2019, Dolphin scrapped the rig.


05/11/1970

The Military Assistance Command, Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years (24).

The U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was a joint-service command of the United States Department of Defense, composed of forces from the United States Army, United States Navy, and United States Air Force, as well as their respective special operations forces.


05/11/1968

Richard Nixon is elected as 37th President of the United States.

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.


05/11/1956

Suez Crisis: British and French paratroopers land in Egypt after a week-long bombing campaign.

The Suez Crisis, also known as the second Arab–Israeli war, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 31 October, seeking to depose Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal, which Nasser had nationalised earlier in the year.


05/11/1955

After being destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopens with a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio.

The Vienna State Opera is an opera house and opera company located in Vienna, Austria. The 1,709-seat Renaissance Revival venue was the first major building on the Vienna Ring Road. It was built from 1861 to 1869 following plans by August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, and designs by Josef Hlávka. The opera house was inaugurated as the "Vienna Court Opera" in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth of Austria. It became known by its current name after the establishment of the First Austrian Republic in 1921. The Vienna State Opera is the successor of the old Vienna Court Opera. The new site was chosen and the construction paid by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1861.


05/11/1950

Korean War: British and Australian forces from the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade successfully halted the advancing Chinese 117th Division during the Battle of Pakchon.

The Korean War was an armed conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea and South Korea and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea was supported by the United Nations led by the United States under the auspices of the United Nations Command (UNC).


05/11/1945

The three-day anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania commence.

The 1945 anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania were the most violent riots against Jews in North Africa in the 20th century. From November 5 to November 7, 1945, more than 140 Jews were killed and many more injured in a pogrom in Tripolitania, then under British military occupation. 38 Jews were killed in Tripoli from where the riots spread. 40 were killed in Amrus, 34 in Zanzur, 7 in Tajura, 13 in Zawia and 3 in Qusabat.


05/11/1943

World War II: Bombing of the Vatican.

Rome, along with Vatican City, was bombed several times during 1943 and 1944, primarily by Allied and to a smaller degree by Axis aircraft, before the city was liberated by the Allies on June 4, 1944. Pope Pius XII was initially unsuccessful in attempting to have Rome declared an open city, through negotiations with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt via Archbishop Francis Spellman. Rome was eventually declared an open city on August 14, 1943 by the defending Italian forces.


05/11/1940

World War II: The British armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay is sunk by the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer.

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. 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.


Franklin D. Roosevelt is the first and only President of the United States to be elected to a third term.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving US president and the only one to have served more than two terms. His first two terms were centered on combating the Great Depression, while his third and fourth focused on US involvement in World War II. A member of the Democratic Party, Roosevelt served in the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1913 and as the 44th governor of New York from 1929 to 1932.


05/11/1925

Secret agent Sidney Reilly, the first "super-spy" of the 20th century, is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.

Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret, confidential, or in some way valuable information. Such information is also referred to as intelligence. A professional trained in conducting intelligence operations by their government may be employed as an intelligence officer. Espionage may be conducted in a foreign country, domestically or remotely. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law.


05/11/1917

Tikhon is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Tikhon of Moscow, born Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin, was a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). On 5 November 1917 (OS) he was selected the 11th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, after a period of about 200 years of the Synodal rule in the ROC. He was canonised as a confessor by the ROC in 1989.


05/11/1916

The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by the Act of 5th November of the emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The Kingdom of Poland, also known informally as the Regency Kingdom of Poland, was a short-lived puppet state of the German Empire and polity that was proclaimed during World War I by it and Austria-Hungary on 5 November 1916 on the territories of formerly Russian-ruled Congress Poland held by the Central Powers as the Government General of Warsaw and which became active on 14 January 1917. It was subsequently transformed between 7 October 1918 and 22 November 1918 into the independent Second Polish Republic, the customary ceremonial founding date of the latter being set at 11 November 1918.


The Everett massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.

The Everett massacre, also known as Bloody Sunday, was an armed confrontation between local authorities and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, commonly called "Wobblies" in Everett, Washington, United States on November 5, 1916. The event happened amidst a time of rising tensions in Pacific Northwest labor history.


05/11/1914

World War I: France and the British Empire declare war on the Ottoman Empire.

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.


05/11/1913

King Otto of Bavaria is deposed by his cousin, Prince Regent Ludwig, who assumes the title Ludwig III.

Otto was King of Bavaria from 1886 until 1913. However, he never actively ruled because of alleged severe mental illness. His uncle, Luitpold, and his cousin, Ludwig, served as regents. Ludwig deposed him in 1913, a day after the legislature passed a law allowing him to do so, and became king in his own right as Ludwig III.


05/11/1912

Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th President of the United States, defeating incumbent William Howard Taft.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era, when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches. As president, Wilson made significant economic reforms and led the United States through World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.


05/11/1911

After declaring war on the Ottoman Empire on September 29, 1911, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica.

The Ottoman Empire, historically also known as the Turkish Empire or Turkey, was a state that spanned much of Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.


05/11/1898

Negrese nationalists revolt against Spanish rule and establish the short-lived Republic of Negros.

The Negrenses are the native cultural group of the Philippine provinces of Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental and Siquijor.


05/11/1895

George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.

George Baldwin Selden was an American patent lawyer and inventor from New York who was granted a U.S. patent for an automobile in 1895.


05/11/1881

In New Zealand, 1600 armed volunteers and constabulary field forces led by Minister of Native Affairs John Bryce march on the pacifist Māori settlement at Parihaka, evicting upwards of 2000 residents, and destroying the settlement in the context of the New Zealand land confiscations.

New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island and the South Island —and over 600 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.


05/11/1872

Women's suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.

Women's suffrage, or the right of women to vote, was established in the United States over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, first in various states and localities, then nationally in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.


05/11/1862

American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac.

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. The South saw slavery 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.


American Indian Wars: In Minnesota, 303 Dakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites and are sentenced to death. Thirty-eight are ultimately hanged and the others reprieved.

The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were initially fought by European colonial empires, the United States, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas against various American Indian tribes in North America. These conflicts occurred from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various conflicts resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for tribal lands. The European powers and their colonies enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; many involved retaliatory violence.


05/11/1834

Founding of the Free University of Brussels by Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen.

The Free University of Brussels was a private university in Brussels, Belgium. It existed between 1834 and 1969 when it split along linguistic lines.


05/11/1828

Greek War of Independence: The French Morea expedition to recapture Morea (now the Peloponnese) ends when the last Ottoman forces depart the peninsula.

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence fought by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire from 1821 to 1829. In 1826, the Greeks were assisted by the British Empire, the Kingdom of France, and the Russian Empire, while the Ottomans were aided by their vassals, especially by the Eyalet of Egypt. The war led to the formation of modern Greece, which in subsequent years would be expanded to its current size. The revolution is commemorated by Greeks in Greece and the Greek diaspora on 25 March, as Independence Day.


05/11/1811

Salvadoran priest José Matías Delgado rings the bells of La Merced church in San Salvador, calling for insurrection and launching the 1811 Independence Movement.

José Matías Delgado y de León was a Salvadoran politician, priest, and independence leader who was the second political chief of El Salvador. He also served as the president of the National Constituent Assembly of the United Provinces of Central America in 1823 and the president of the National Assembly of El Salvador in 1832.


05/11/1780

French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.

Augustin Mottin de La Balme was a French soldier who served in Europe during the Seven Years' War and in the North America during the American Revolutionary War. His attempt to capture Fort Detroit in 1780 ended in defeat when he was ambushed by forces under Chief Little Turtle.


05/11/1768

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix is signed, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty signed between representatives from the Iroquois and Great Britain in 1768 at Fort Stanwix. It was negotiated between Sir William Johnson, his deputy George Croghan, and representatives of the Iroquois.


05/11/1757

Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.

The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a global war fought by numerous great powers, primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and the Indian subcontinent. The primary warring states were Great Britain and Prussia fighting against France and Austria, with other countries joining these coalitions: Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Russia, plus Saxony and many other minor states of the Holy Roman Empire. Related conflicts include the Third Silesian War, French and Indian War, Third Carnatic War, Anglo-Spanish War (1762–1763), and Spanish–Portuguese War.


05/11/1688

Prince William III of Orange lands with a Dutch fleet at Brixham to challenge the rule of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland).

William III and II, also known as William of Orange, was the sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672, and King of England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1689 until his death in 1702. He ruled England, Scotland, and Ireland with his wife, Queen Mary II, until her death in 1694; their joint reign is known as that of William and Mary.


05/11/1605

Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is arrested in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, where he had planted gunpowder in an attempt to blow up the building and kill King James I of England.

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby.


05/11/1556

Second Battle of Panipat: Fighting begins between the forces of Hem Chandra Vikramaditya, the Hindu king at Delhi and the forces of the Muslim emperor Akbar.

The Second Battle of Panipat was fought on 5 November 1556, between the Mughals under Akbar and king Hemu, titularly known as Hemchandra Vikramaditya. Hemchandra had conquered Delhi and Agra a few weeks earlier by defeating Mughal forces under Tardi Beg Khan in the Battle of Delhi. He crowned himself Vikramaditya at Purana Quila in Delhi.


05/11/1499

The Catholicon, written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc in Tréguier, is published; this is the first Breton dictionary as well as the first French dictionary.

The Catholicon is a 15th-century dictionary written in Breton, French, and Latin. It is the first Breton dictionary and also the first French dictionary. It contains six thousand entries and was compiled in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc, a man from Plougonven who was probably a priest. It was first printed in 1499 in Tréguier; its early date classifies it as an incunable.


05/11/1138

Lý Anh Tông is enthroned as emperor of Vietnam at the age of two, beginning a 37-year reign.

Emperor Lý Anh Tông of Đại Việt was the sixth emperor of the later Lý dynasty in Vietnamese history, from 1138 until his death in 1175. Since Lý Anh Tông, given name Lý Thiên Tộ, was chosen as the successor of his father Lý Thần Tông at the age of only two, the early period of his reign witnessed the dominant position of Đỗ Anh Vũ in the royal court until he died in 1157; afterwards, the Emperor ruled the country with the assistance of a prominent official named Tô Hiến Thành. The reign of Lý Anh Tông was considered the last relatively stable period of the Lý dynasty before the turbulence during the reign of Lý Cao Tông.


05/11/1009

Berber forces led by Sulayman ibn al-Hakam defeat the Umayyad caliph Muhammad II of Córdoba in the Battle of Qantish.

Berbers, also known as Amazighs or Imazighen, are an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. They are primarily connected by their use of Berber languages, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family.