Who was born on December 18?
December 18 is packed with notable birthdays. Explore 120 famous birthdays, sorted by recent English Wikipedia pageviews. Top ranked names include Abe Burrows, Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi, Alfred Bester, Allen Klein, Andy Fantuz. Filter by actor, musician, athlete, and more — or open any other calendar day.
December 18
120 people
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Abe Burrows
Abe Burrows (born Abram Solman Borowitz; December 18, 1910 – May 17, 1985) was an American writer, composer, humorist, director for radio and the stage, and librettist for Broadway musicals. His versatile career in radio, Broadway, and television spanned many decades. He is best known for co-writing the book to the award-winning musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
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Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi
For the Egyptian encyclopedist see Shihab al-Din abu 'l-Abbas Ahmad ben Ali ben Ahmad Abd Allah al-Qalqashandi. Shihab al-Din abu l-‘Abbas Ahmad ibn Mohammed ibn Mohammed ibn Ahmed ibn Ali ibn 'Abd ar-Rahman ibn Abi'l-'Afiyya al-Miknasi az-Zanati (Arabic: ابن القاضي المكناسي), known simply as Ahmad ibn al-Qadi or Ibn al-Qadi (1552/1553–1616), was a Maghrebi polygraph. He was the leading writer from Ahmad al-Mansur's court next to Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali.
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Alfred Bester
Alfred Bester (December 18, 1913 – September 30, 1987) was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor, and scriptwriter for comics. He is best remembered for his science fiction, including the novel The Demolished Man, winner of the inaugural Hugo Award in 1953. Science fiction author Harry Harrison wrote that "Alfred Bester was one of the handful of writers who invented modern science fiction". Shortly before his death, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) named Bester its ninth Grand Master; the award was presented posthumously in 1988. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001.
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Allen Klein
Allen Klein (December 18, 1931 – July 4, 2009) was an American businessman whose aggressive negotiation tactics affected industry standards for compensating recording artists. He founded ABKCO Music & Records Incorporated. Klein increased profits for his musician clients by negotiating new record company contracts. He first achieved monetary and contractual gains for Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, one-hit rockabillies of the late 1950s. He then managed Sam Cooke before later becoming the manager of both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones simultaneously, along with many other artists. This made him one of the most powerful individuals in the music industry during his era. Rather than offering financial advice and maximizing his clients' income as a business manager normally would, Klein set up what he called "buy/sell agreements". Through these agreements, a company that Klein owned became an intermediary between his client and the record label, owning the rights to the music, financing the recording and production of the music, selling them to record labels to manufacture and distribute the music, and subsequently paying royalties and cash advances to the client. Although Klein greatly increased his clients' incomes, he also enriched himself, sometimes without his clients' knowledge. The Rolling Stones' $1.25 million advance from the Decca Records label in 1965, for example, was deposited into a company that Klein had established, and the fine print of the contract did not require Klein to release it for 20 years. Klein's involvement with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones would lead to years of litigation. The Rolling Stones in particular accused Klein of withholding royalty payments, stealing the publishing rights to their songs, and neglecting to pay their taxes for five years, thereby necessitating their French "exile" in 1971. After years of pursuit by the IRS, Klein was convicted of the misdemeanor charge of making a false statement on his 1972 tax return, for which, in 1980, he was jailed for two months.
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Andy Fantuz
Andrew Fantuz (born December 18, 1983) is a Canadian former professional football slotback. Fantuz spent the majority of his professional career with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League (CFL). He played for the Riders for six seasons after he was drafted by them in the first round of the 2006 CFL draft. He then played six seasons for the Tiger-Cats. Fantuz was also signed by the Chicago Bears in 2011. He played CIS football for the Western Ontario Mustangs.
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Anzhela Balakhonova
Anzhela Anatoliyivna Balakhonova (Ukrainian: Анжела Анатоліївна Балахонова; born 18 December 1972) is a retired female pole vaulter from Ukraine who won the silver medal at the 1999 World Championships in Athletics. She held the European record, and formerly held the world indoor record. She finished 6th at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
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Ashley Benson
Ashley Benson (born December 18, 1989) is an American actress and singer. Her accolades include four Teen Choice Awards, a Young Hollywood Award, as well as three People's Choice Award nominations. Benson began her career as a competitive dancer at age three, and transitioned to acting in her teens, first gaining recognition for her role as Abigail Deveraux in the soap opera Days of Our Lives (2004–2007). Following her film debut in the 2004 comedy 13 Going on 30, she gained international recognition for starring as Hanna Marin in the Freeform drama thriller series Pretty Little Liars (2010–2017). During this time, she also continued to appear in films such as the crime comedy Spring Breakers (2012), the psychological horror Ratter (2015), the comedy drama Chronically Metropolitan (2016), and the musical drama Her Smell (2018). She has since starred in the films Private Property (2022), Mob Land (2023), and McVeigh (2024), as well as in the Amazon Prime Video psychological thriller miniseries Wilderness (2023). Aside from acting, Benson has ventured into music, first in 2018 with the soundtrack of Her Smell, followed by her collaboration with G-Eazy in his cover of the Radiohead song "Creep" (2020).
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Augusta Holmès
Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (née Holmes; 16 December 1847 – 28 January 1903), also known by the pseudonym Hermann Zenta, was a French and Irish composer. Holmès wrote the texts to almost all of her vocal music herself, including songs, oratorios, the libretto of her opera La Montagne noire and the programmatic poems for her symphonic poems including Irlande and Andromède.
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Axwell
Axel Christofer Hedfors (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈǎksɛl krɪˈstɔ̌fːɛr ˈhêː(d)fɔʂ]; born 18 December 1977), better known by his stage name Axwell, is a Swedish DJ, record producer, remixer and owner of Axtone Records. He is a member of Swedish House Mafia along with Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello. He is a two-time DJ Awards winner, and in 2013 he was placed 19th on the DJ Magazine Top 100 DJ Poll.
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Barbora Krejčíková
Barbora Krejčíková (Czech pronunciation: [ˈbarbora ˈkrɛjtʃiːkovaː]; born 18 December 1995) is a Czech professional tennis player. She has been ranked as high as world No. 2 in singles and world No. 1 in doubles by the WTA. Krejčíková has won nine singles, 20 doubles, and three mixed doubles titles at the WTA Tour level. She is known for her aggressive playing style and her smooth, powerful groundstrokes. Krejčíková has won two singles majors (at the 2021 French Open and at the 2024 Wimbledon Championships) and seven women's doubles majors, including the career Golden Slam in women's doubles. Krejčíková won all seven of her women's doubles majors partnering with compatriot Kateřina Siniaková. She also won three mixed doubles majors, all at the Australian Open, for a combined total of 12 major titles. She is one of only four active players to have won a major in all three disciplines, alongside Venus Williams, Serena Williams and Jeļena Ostapenko. She won a major, in at least one of those three disciplines, for seven consecutive seasons from 2018 to 2024. Alongside her major titles, Krejčíková won the 2021 WTA Finals and a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in women's doubles, both partnering Siniaková, and was part of the Czech team that won the 2018 Fed Cup. The pairing also finished runners-up at two WTA Finals and the 2021 Australian Open.
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Barkha Dutt
Barkha Dutt is an Indian television journalist and author. She has been a reporter and news anchor at NDTV and Tiranga TV. She currently runs her own digital news channel called 'MoJo Story'. Dutt was part of NDTV's team for 21 years, until she left the channel in January 2017. She emerged as a prominent figure after her frontline war reporting on the Kargil Conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999. Dutt has won many national and international awards, including the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour. Dutt was one of the journalists taped in the Radia tapes controversy.
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Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.
Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. (December 18, 1912 – July 4, 2002) was a United States Air Force (USAF) general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen. He was the first African-American brigadier general in the USAF. After his retirement, on December 9, 1998, he was advanced to four-star general by President Bill Clinton. During World War II, Davis was commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group, which escorted bombers on air combat missions over Europe. Davis flew sixty missions in P-39 Airacobra, Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, P-47 Thunderbolt, and P-51 Mustang fighters and was one of the first African-American pilots to see combat. Davis followed in his father's footsteps in breaking racial barriers, as Benjamin O. Davis Sr. had been the first Black general in the United States Army.
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Bhikhari Thakur
Bhikari Thakur (18 December 1887 – 10 July 1971) was an Indian Bhojpuri language poet, playwright, lyricist, actor, folk dancer, folk singer and social activist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the Bhojpuri language and most popular folk writer of Purvanchal and Bihar. Thakur is often called the "Shakespeare of Bhojpuri" and "Rai Bahadur". His works consist of more than a dozen plays, Monologues, poems, and Bhajans, which were printed in nearly three dozen books. His noteworthy works include Bidesiya, Gabarghichor, Beti Bechwa and Bhai Birodh. Gabarghichor is often compared with Bertolt Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Thakur is known as the father of the naach folk theatre tradition. He is also credited as the first person to cast male actors in female roles. Thakur was born and raised in Kutubpur village of Saran. In his adolescence, he married Matuna from whom he had only one son: Shilanath Thakur. In the early 1900s, Thakur started his career as an actor, writer, singer and dancer. He remained active until his death in 1971. Thakur published most of his works between 1938 and 1962. His early works were dialogues and musical plays; his later works were philosophical, Bhajans, Harikirtans, and other poems.
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Bill Holland
Willard Saulsbury Holland (December 18, 1907 – May 20, 1984) was an American racing driver from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He won the Indianapolis 500 in 1949 and finished second in 1947, 1948, and 1950. He was runner-up in the 1947 American Automobile Association (AAA) National Championship.
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Bill Skowron
William Joseph Skowron (December 18, 1930 – April 27, 2012), nicknamed "Moose", was an American professional baseball first baseman. He played 14 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1954 to 1967 for the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Washington Senators, Chicago White Sox, and California Angels. He was an eight-time All-Star and a five-time World Series champion. Skowron had been a community relations representative for the Chicago White Sox for several years when he died in 2012.
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Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell ( EYE-lish; born December 18, 2001) is an American singer-songwriter. Known for her distinctive musical sound and vocal style, Eilish is a prominent figure in 2020s pop culture. She first gained public attention in 2015 with her debut single "Ocean Eyes" which was released on SoundCloud and written and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell. In 2017, she released her debut EP, Don't Smile at Me, which was commercially successful in various countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Eilish's debut studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019), debuted atop the US Billboard 200 and UK Albums Chart and was one of the year's best-selling albums. Its single "Bad Guy" became the first by an artist born in the 21st century to top the US Billboard Hot 100 and be certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The next year, Eilish performed the theme song "No Time to Die" for the James Bond film No Time to Die, which topped the UK Singles Chart and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2022. Eilish's second studio album, Happier Than Ever (2021), became her second album to debut atop the Billboard 200, and topped the charts in multiple countries. Its singles "My Future", "Therefore I Am", "Happier Than Ever", and "Your Power" each peaked within the top ten in the US and UK. She co-wrote and performed "What Was I Made For?" for the fantasy film Barbie (2023), which became her second number-one single in the UK and earned her a second Academy Award. Her third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft (2024), was met with critical acclaim and spawned the US top-five singles "Lunch" and "Birds of a Feather". The latter became her first number-one on the Billboard Global 200 and the most-streamed solo song by a female artist on Spotify. Eilish's accolades include two Academy Awards, ten Grammy Awards, nine American Music Awards, twenty Guinness World Records, eight MTV Video Music Awards, four Brit Awards, and two Golden Globes. She is the second artist and only woman in Grammy history to win all four general field categories—Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist—in a single ceremony, also becoming the youngest winner of both Album of the Year and Record of the Year. She is also the first person born in the 21st century to win both a Grammy Award and an Academy Award, and the youngest two-time winner of the latter. Eilish has a history of political activism, focusing on climate change awareness, women's reproductive rights, and gender equality.
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Bobby Jones
Robert Clyde Jones (born December 18, 1951) is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Denver Nuggets in the American Basketball Association (ABA) and the Philadelphia 76ers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "the Secretary of Defense", Jones won an NBA championship with the 76ers in 1983, was a four-time NBA All-Star, a nine-time member of the NBA All-Defensive Team, and was the NBA Sixth Man of the Year in 1983. In 2019, Jones was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
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Bobby Keys
Robert Henry Keys (December 18, 1943 – December 2, 2014) was an American saxophonist who performed as a member of several horn sections of the 1970s. He appears on albums by the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Harry Nilsson, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, Joe Ely, and other prominent musicians. Keys played on hundreds of recordings, and was a touring musician from 1956 until his death in 2014.
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Brian Boyle
Brian Paul Boyle (born December 18, 1984) is an American former professional ice hockey center who works as an analyst for NHL Network. Boyle has previously played for the Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, New Jersey Devils, Nashville Predators, Florida Panthers and Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League (NHL). He attended St. Sebastian's School in Needham, Massachusetts, before moving on to Boston College. Boyle grew up in Hingham, just south of Boston.
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Brian Orser
Brian Ernest Orser OLY (born 18 December 1961) is a Canadian former competitive and professional figure skater and coach to Olympic champions. He is the 1984 and 1988 Olympic silver medallist, 1987 World champion and eight-time (1981–88) Canadian national champion. At the 1988 Winter Olympics, the rivalry between Orser and American figure skater Brian Boitano, who were the two favorites to win the gold medal, captured media attention and was described as the "Battle of the Brians". Orser turned professional in 1988 and skated with Stars on Ice for almost 20 years. As a coach, he has led both Yuna Kim (2010) and Yuzuru Hanyu (2014, 2018) to Olympic titles. He also coached Javier Fernández to Olympic bronze (2018) and the 2015 and 2016 World titles. He is a Skating Consultant at the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club.
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Byron Buxton
Byron Keiron Buxton (born December 18, 1993) is an American professional baseball center fielder and designated hitter for the Minnesota Twins of Major League Baseball (MLB). Buxton was considered by some baseball analysts to be the most talented player available in the 2012 MLB draft, and was selected as the second overall pick. He won Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year Award in 2013. Buxton made his MLB debut in 2015. He won the Gold Glove Award in 2017, a Silver Slugger Award in 2025, and is a three-time MLB All-Star.
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Celia Johnson
Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson (18 December 1908 – 26 April 1982) was an English actress, whose career included stage, television and film. She is especially known for her roles in the films In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), Brief Encounter (1945) and The Captain's Paradise (1953). For Brief Encounter, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. A six-time BAFTA Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Johnson began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success in West End and Broadway productions. Popular with British audiences as an "ordinary woman," she continued performing in theatre for the rest of her life. Much of her later work was in television, including winning the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC Play for Today, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1973). She suffered a stroke in 1982 and died later the same day, aged 73.
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Charles Griffin
Charles Griffin (December 18, 1825 – September 15, 1867) was a career officer in the United States Army and a Union general in the American Civil War. He rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac and fought in many of the key campaigns in the Eastern Theater. After the war, he commanded the Department of Texas during Reconstruction. He was an ardent supporter of the Congressional policies of the Radical Republicans and of freedmen's rights, and controversially disqualified a number of state officeholders in Texas who had supported the Confederate States of America, replacing them with loyal Unionists.
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Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley (18 December 1707 – 29 March 1788) was an English Anglican cleric and a principal leader of the Methodist movement. Wesley was a prolific hymnwriter who wrote over 6,500 hymns during his lifetime. His works include "And Can It Be", "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing", "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today", "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling", the carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing", and "Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending". Wesley was born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, the son of Anglican cleric and poet Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna. He was a younger brother of Methodist founder John Wesley and Anglican cleric Samuel Wesley the Younger. He was the father of musician Samuel Wesley and the grandfather of musician Samuel Sebastian Wesley. He was educated at Oxford University, where his brothers had also studied, and he formed the "Holy Club" among his fellow students in 1729. John Wesley later joined this group, as did George Whitefield. Charles followed his father and brother into ministry in 1735, and he travelled with John to Georgia in America, returning a year later. Following their evangelical conversions in 1738, the Wesley brothers travelled throughout Britain, converting followers to the Methodist revival through preaching and hymn singing. In 1749, he married Sarah Gwynne, the daughter of a Welsh gentleman who had been converted to Methodism by Howell Harris. From 1756 his ministry became more static and he ministered in Bristol, and later London. Despite their closeness, Charles and John did not always agree on questions relating to their beliefs. In particular, Charles was strongly opposed to the idea of a breach with the Church of England in which they had been ordained.
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Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange
Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange (French: [ʃaʁl dy fʁɛn sjœʁ dy kɑ̃ʒ]; December 18, 1610 in Amiens – October 23, 1688 in Paris, aged 77), also known simply as Charles Dufresne, was a French philologist and historian of the Middle Ages and Byzantium.
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Chas Chandler
Bryan James "Chas" Chandler (18 December 1938 – 17 July 1996) was an English musician, record producer, manager and the original bassist in the Animals, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He also managed the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Slade.
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Chris Carter
Vernon Christopher Carter (born December 18, 1986) is an American professional baseball first baseman and designated hitter for the Saraperos de Saltillo of the Mexican League. He previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Oakland Athletics, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Yankees. In 2016, while playing for the Brewers, Carter led the National League in home runs, along with Colorado Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado, with 41. In July 2025, playing for the Piratas de Campeche, Carter hit his 500th home run of his professional career.
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Christina Aguilera
Christina María Aguilera ( AG-il-AIR-ə, Spanish: [kɾisˈtina maˈɾi.a aɣiˈleɾa]; born December 18, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and television personality. An influential figure in music, Aguilera is noted for her four-octave vocal range, melismatic singing style, use of the whistle register, and continual reinvention of her image and sound. Referred to as the "Voice of a Generation", she was ranked among the greatest singers of all time by Rolling Stone. Her works have incorporated socially conscious and sexual themes, generating both controversy and critical acclaim. After appearing on The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1993–1994), Aguilera recorded the theme song, "Reflection", for the animated film Mulan (1998) and signed a record deal with RCA Records. She rose to fame as a teen idol with her self-titled debut album (1999), which topped the US Billboard 200 and garnered three US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles: "Genie in a Bottle", "What a Girl Wants" and "Come on Over Baby (All I Want Is You)". Aguilera took on a more provocative image on Stripped (2002), one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century. After another retro-inspired reinvention, she scored her second US number-one album, Back to Basics (2006). Throughout these periods, she amassed worldwide hits, such as "Lady Marmalade", "Dirrty", "Beautiful" and "Ain't No Other Man". During the early 2010s, Aguilera featured on the worldwide top ten singles "Moves like Jagger", "Feel This Moment" and "Say Something"; the first of these topped the Hot 100, making her the fourth woman in history to top the chart over three consecutive decades. She also starred in the film Burlesque (2010) and contributed to its soundtrack, earning a Golden Globe Award nomination. Aguilera remained musically active, having released a total of nine studio albums. Her other ventures included a role in the television series Nashville (2015); roles in the films The Emoji Movie (2017) and Zoe (2018); becoming an ambassador for the World Food Programme (WFP); co-founding the company Playground; and serving as a coach on the reality competition show The Voice (2011–2016). Aguilera is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with over 100 million records sold worldwide. She has been regarded as one of the most influential Latin artists in the United States, having helped shape the "Latin explosion" in the early 2000s with Mi Reflejo (2000), the best-selling Latin pop album of that year. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013. Aguilera's accolades include five Grammy Awards, two Latin Grammy Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, a Juno Award, a Billboard Music Award, three Billboard Latin Music Awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was also named a Disney Legend, in recognition of her contributions to the Walt Disney Company.
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Christopher Polhem
Christopher Polhammar (18 December 1661 – 30 August 1751) better known as Christopher Polhem (), which he took after his ennoblement in 1716, was a Swedish scientist, inventor, and industrialist. He made significant contributions to the economic and industrial development of Sweden, particularly mining. He was ennobled by King Charles XII of Sweden for his contributions to Swedish technological development.
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Crispian Steele-Perkins
Crispian Guy Steele-Perkins (born 18 December 1944) is an internationally acclaimed English classical trumpeter who was educated at Copthorne Preparatory School, Marlborough College and the Guildhall School of Music.
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Daniel Cleary
Daniel Michael Cleary (born December 18, 1978) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Chicago Blackhawks, Edmonton Oilers, Phoenix Coyotes and Detroit Red Wings. He currently serves as the Director of Player Development for Detroit. He was a member of the 2008 Stanley Cup winning Red Wings team, and in doing so became the first player from Newfoundland and Labrador to win the Stanley Cup.
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David A. Johnston
David Alexander Johnston (December 18, 1949 – May 18, 1980) was an American United States Geological Survey (USGS) volcanologist who was killed by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in the U.S. state of Washington. A principal scientist on the USGS monitoring team, Johnston was killed in the eruption while manning an observation post six miles (10 km) away on the morning of May 18, 1980. He was the first to report the eruption, transmitting "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" before he was swept away by a lateral blast; despite a thorough search, Johnston's body was never found, but state highway workers discovered remnants of his USGS trailer in 1993. Johnston's career took him across the United States, where he studied the Augustine Volcano in Alaska, the San Juan volcanic field in Colorado, and long-extinct volcanoes in Michigan. Johnston was a meticulous and talented scientist, known for his analyses of volcanic gases and their relationship to eruptions. This, along with his enthusiasm and positive attitude, made him liked and respected by many co-workers. After his death, other scientists lauded his character, both verbally and in dedications and letters. Johnston felt scientists must do what is necessary, including taking risks, to help protect the public from natural disasters. His work, and that of fellow USGS scientists, convinced authorities to close Mount St. Helens to the public before the 1980 eruption. They maintained the closure despite heavy pressure to re-open the area. His story became intertwined with the popular image of volcanic eruptions and their threat to society, and a part of volcanology's history. To date, Johnston is one of two American volcanologists known to have died in a volcanic eruption; the other is his student Harry Glicken. Following his death, Johnston was commemorated in several ways, including a memorial fund established in his name at the University of Washington to fund graduate-level research. Two volcano observatories were established and named after him: one in Vancouver, Washington, and another on the ridge where he died. Johnston's life and death are featured in several documentaries, films, docudramas and books. A biography of his life, A Hero on Mount St. Helens: The Life and Legacy of David A. Johnston, was published in 2019.
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Dorka Juhász
Dorka Kata Juhász (born 18 December 1999) is a Hungarian professional basketball player for the Minnesota Lynx of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and for Galatasaray of the Women's Basketball Super League. She played college basketball at Ohio State and UConn. She was selected 16th overall by the Lynx in the 2023 WNBA draft.
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Douglas Fraser
Douglas Andrew Fraser (December 18, 1916 – February 23, 2008) was a Scottish–American union leader. He was president of the United Auto Workers from 1977 to 1983 and an adjunct professor of labor relations at Wayne State University for many years. He is best remembered for helping to save Chrysler from bankruptcy in 1979 by heavily lobbying the US Congress for a loan and convincing workers to make concessions. He received the Walter P. Reuther Humanitarian Award from Wayne State University in 2006.
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Edward MacDowell
Edward Alexander MacDowell (December 18, 1860 – January 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist of the late Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces and New England Idylls. Woodland Sketches includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose". In 1904 he was one of the first seven Americans honored by membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Edward Willis Redfield
Edward Willis Redfield (December 18, 1869 – October 19, 1965) was an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. He is best known today for his impressionist scenes of the New Hope area, often depicting the snow-covered countryside. He also spent his summers on Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where he interpreted the local coastline. He frequently painted Maine's Monhegan Island.
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Edwin Bramall, Baron Bramall
Field Marshal Edwin Noel Westby Bramall, Baron Bramall (18 December 1923 – 12 November 2019), also known as "Dwin", was a British Army officer. He served as Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, between 1979 and 1982, and as Chief of the Defence Staff, professional head of the British Armed Forces, from 1982 to 1985.
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Edwin Howard Armstrong
Edwin Howard Armstrong (December 18, 1890 – February 1, 1954) was an American radio-frequency engineer and inventor who developed FM (frequency modulation) radio and the superheterodyne receiver system. He held 42 patents and received numerous awards, including the first Medal of Honor awarded by the Institute of Radio Engineers (now IEEE), the French Legion of Honor, the 1941 Franklin Medal and the 1942 Edison Medal. He achieved the rank of major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I and was often referred to as "Major Armstrong" during his career. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and included in the International Telecommunication Union's roster of great inventors. He was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame posthumously in 2001. Armstrong attended Columbia University, and served as a professor there for most of his life. Armstrong is also noted for his legal battles with Lee de Forest and David Sarnoff, two other key figures in developing the early radio industry in the United States. The prolonged litigation took a toll on Armstrong's health and finances, which led to a breakdown in his marriage, followed by his suicide in 1954. Thereafter, his estate's legal cases were pursued by his widow, Marion, who won several successful suits and settlements.
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Emil Starkenstein
Emil Starkenstein (December 18, 1884 – November 6, 1942) was a Czech-Jewish pharmacologist and one of the founders of clinical pharmacology. He was killed in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp along with a few hundred refugees from Amsterdam after an incident in which a Dutch Jew resisted a Nazi patrol. Emil Starkenstein was born in the Bohemian (now Czech) town of Poběžovice (Ronsperg) to Jewish German parents. The family had many members who became local physicians. Prof. Starkenstein researched and published a family tree in 1927 which traced his family roots as far back as 1350 and included such figures as R. Benjamin Wolf (1777-1851), R.Eleasar Löw, R. Moses Isserles (1520–72), and several in the Katzenelbogen line, including R.Saul Wahl Katzenelbogen who, according to the glossary of the family tree, 'became king of Poland for one night after the death of Stephen Bathory. He was a professor at the German University in Prague (formerly German Charles Ferdinand University – see Charles University in Prague) until the 1938 German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He continued his work as a refugee in the Netherlands. After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1939, Starkenstein was confined to an area in Amsterdam with other Jews, where they were forced to wear yellow badges and banned from civil service employment. He was arrested and deported in 1941, via Prague and Terezin, to the Mauthausen concentration camp. His wife and daughter survived in hiding in the Netherlands, and after the war, his wife Marie (née Weil) donated his extensive collection of papers (more than 20,000 items) to the Czechoslovak state. In 2002, these papers were finally deposited in the archives of Charles University in Prague. In addition to the scientific papers, Starkenstein had one of the most impressive pharmacological libraries ever assembled. Before he was killed in the Nazi concentration camps, his family agreed to sell the collection to rare book dealer Ludwig Gottschalk, but when Gottschalk faced deportation to the camps himself, he secreted the library in several locations in the Black Forest and went into hiding. After the war, he reassembled the Starkenstein books and for nearly half a century sold items from the collection under the name Biblion, Inc., in Forest Hills, New York. A portion of the library was purchased by the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden. These 147 volumes, primarily focused on the medicinal uses of plants, are distinguished by Starkenstein's bookplate.
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Fatuma Roba
Fatuma Roba (Amharic: ፋጡማ ሮባ; born 18 December 1973) is an Ethiopian long-distance runner, best known for being the first African woman to win a gold medal in the women's Olympic marathon race, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and for winning three successive Boston Marathons.
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Fletcher Henderson
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson (December 18, 1897 – December 29, 1952) was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. He was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and, along with Duke Ellington, is considered one of the most influential arrangers and bandleaders in jazz history. Henderson's influence was vast. He helped bridge the gap between the Dixieland and the swing eras. He was often known as "Smack" Henderson (because of smacking sounds he made with his lips).
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Foxhall P. Keene
Foxhall Parker Keene (December 18, 1867 – September 25, 1941) was an American thoroughbred race horse owner and breeder, a world and Olympic gold medallist in polo, and an amateur tennis player. He was rated the best all-around polo player in the United States for eight consecutive years, a golfer who competed in the U.S. Open, and a pioneer racecar driver who vied for the Gordon Bennett Cup. In addition to his substantial involvement in flat racing, he was also a founding member of the National Steeplechase Association.
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Francis Burton Harrison
Francis Burton Harrison (December 18, 1873 – November 21, 1957) was an American-Filipino statesman who served four terms in the United States House of Representatives between 1903 and 1913 and was appointed governor-general of the Philippines by President of the United States Woodrow Wilson. Harrison was a prominent adviser to the president of the Philippine Commonwealth, as well as the next four presidents of the Republic of the Philippines. He is the only former governor-general of the Philippines to be awarded Philippine citizenship.
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Geordie Walker
Kevin Walker (18 December 1958 – 26 November 2023), known professionally as Geordie Walker, was an English rock musician, songwriter and producer. He was best known as the guitarist of post-punk band Killing Joke. He joined the band in March 1979; his first recording was released in December of that year. Their debut eponymous studio album came out in October 1980. Walker recorded 15 studio albums with Killing Joke and also took part in various side-projects. His unorthodox style of electric guitar playing was widely acclaimed.
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George Stevens
George Cooper Stevens (December 18, 1904 – March 8, 1975) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956). Born in Oakland, California, George Stevens worked in his parents' West Coast touring stock theater company as a child actor and stage manager. When cinema was replacing live theater, Stevens's parents relocated to Los Angeles. At the age of 17, Stevens was hired as an assistant cameraman, working on several Western films produced by Hal Roach. Within three years, Stevens became a cameraman on the Our Gang series. Impressed with Stevens's visual knowledge, Roach then appointed him to direct installments of The Boy Friends series. Stevens next moved to Universal Pictures and then to RKO Pictures. There, he directed several genre films, including Alice Adams starring Katharine Hepburn; Swing Time starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; and Gunga Din starring Cary Grant. Stevens was loaned to MGM to direct Woman of the Year (1942) based on Hepburn's suggestion, whereby she was paired with Spencer Tracy for the first time. He also directed The Talk of the Town (1942) and The More the Merrier (1943). In 1941, the United States entered World War II, in which Stevens joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and headed a film unit. Using his personal 16 mm film camera, Stevens shot color footage of the Liberation of Paris and the entry of American soldiers into the Dachau concentration camp. Stevens returned to Hollywood and directed more serious films, starting with I Remember Mama (1948). Between 1951 and 1956, Stevens directed his American Trilogy, which includes A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), and Giant (1956). He next directed widescreen biographical films, The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). His final film was The Only Game in Town (1970) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty. Stevens died on March 8, 1975, at the age of 70. Famed film critic Pauline Kael says of Stevens, that he made films with "good moments" and later became highly regarded for creating expansive films with "obese nuances."
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George T. Johnson
George Thomas Johnson (born December 18, 1948) is an American retired professional basketball player. A 6'11" power forward/center born in Tylertown, Mississippi and from Dillard University, he played in 13 National Basketball Association (NBA) seasons (1972–1983; 1984–1986) as a member of the Golden State Warriors, the Buffalo Braves, the New Jersey Nets, the San Antonio Spurs, the Atlanta Hawks, and the Seattle SuperSonics. Johnson was a key reserve on the Warriors team that won the NBA Championship in 1975, and he grabbed 5,887 rebounds in his career. Johnson led the NBA in blocked shots per game three times, led the NBA in disqualifications in 1977–78 with 20, and was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team in 1980–81. He blocked at least 10 shots in a game six times during his NBA career. Johnson recorded the first five-by-five in NBA history, and is one of only twelve players to accomplish one. On March 26, 1978, he had 15 points, 18 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 steals and 7 blocks in a 118–104 victory over the Washington Bullets. In 1981–82, Johnson started 62 games for the Spurs, helping them win the Midwest Division championship and reach the Western Conference finals. After San Antonio was swept by the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers in a series in which Johnson was badly outplayed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spurs coach Stan Albeck determined the team was seriously deficient in the low post. Albeck sought a premier center, and got it by trading for Chicago Bulls All-Star Artis Gilmore, signaling the end of Johnson's time in San Antonio. Inspired by his teammate Rick Barry, Johnson shot his free throws underhanded.
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Gerald Barry
Gerald Barry MC (18 December 1896 – 21 February 1977) was a career officer in the British Army who played in one first-class cricket match for the Combined Services against Essex.
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Gerard Gumbau
Gerard Gumbau Garriga (born 18 December 1994) is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a defensive or central midfielder for Granada.
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Gianluca Pagliuca
Gianluca Pagliuca (Italian pronunciation: [dʒanˈluːka paʎˈʎuːka]; born 18 December 1966) is an Italian football coach and former professional goalkeeper. He is regarded by pundits as one of the greatest goalkeepers of his generation, and one of Italy's best keepers ever. Throughout his career, he played for Sampdoria, Inter, Bologna, and Ascoli in Italy, winning several domestic and international trophies. At international level, he represented Italy at three FIFA World Cups (1990, 1994, and 1998), most notably reaching the 1994 World Cup final as Italy's starting goalkeeper. He is the player with the fifth most appearances (592), and the second best penalty-stopper (24 saves) in Serie A behind Samir Handanović, although other specialists such as Júlio César and Handanović have a higher success rate.
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Gillian Armstrong
Gillian May Armstrong (born 18 December 1950) is an Australian feature film and documentary director, best known for My Brilliant Career (1979), Mrs. Soffel (1984), High Tide (1987), The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), and Little Women (1994). She is a Member of the Order of Australia. She has won many film awards, including an AFI Best Director Award, has been nominated for numerous others, and is the holder of several honorary doctorates.
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Gino Cimoli
Gino Nicholas Cimoli (December 18, 1929 – February 12, 2011) was an American professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee Braves, Kansas City Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, and Los Angeles Angels from 1956 through 1965. He was an MLB All-Star in 1957, and a member of the 1960 World Series champions. He was the first major league baseball player to take an at bat in a West Coast game.
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Gladys Cooper
Dame Gladys Constance Cooper (18 December 1888 – 17 November 1971) was an English actress, theatrical manager and producer, whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television. Beginning as a teenager in Edwardian musical comedy and pantomime, she starred in dramatic roles and silent films before the First World War. She managed the Playhouse Theatre from 1917 to 1934, where she starred in many roles. From the early 1920s Cooper won praise in plays by W. Somerset Maugham and others. In the 1930s she starred steadily in productions both in London's West End and on Broadway. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, Cooper found success in a variety of character roles. She received three Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress, for performances in The Song of Bernadette (1943), My Fair Lady (1964) and, most famously, Now, Voyager (1942). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s she worked both on stage and on screen, continuing to star on stage until her last year.
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Greg D'Angelo
Greg D'Angelo, (born December 18, 1963) is an American drummer most famous for his work in the bands White Lion, Anthrax, and Pride & Glory.
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Heinrich Roth
Heinrich Roth (18 December 1620, Dillingen an der Donau – 20 June 1668, Agra, India), also known as Henricus Rodius or Henrique Roa, was a German missionary and pioneering Sanskrit scholar.
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Henrietta Edwards
Henrietta Muir Edwards (18 December 1849 – 10 November 1931) was a Canadian women's rights activist, author and reformer. She was the eldest of "The Famous Five", along with Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby, who fought to have women recognized as "persons" under the law, and for the woman's right to vote in elections. She was born Henrietta Louise Muir in Montreal. She grew up in an upper-middle-class family that valued culture and religion. Edwards became active in many religious organisations, where she grew disenchanted with old traditions where the exclusion of women was acceptable.
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Ilario Castagner
Ilario Castagner (18 December 1940 – 18 February 2023) was an Italian football manager and player, who played as a striker. Castagner died in Perugia on 18 February 2023, at the age of 82.
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J. J. Thomson
Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist. He received the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases." In 1897, he showed that cathode rays were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles (now called electrons), which he calculated must have bodies much smaller than atoms and a very large charge-to-mass ratio. The electron was the first subatomic particle to be discovered. Thomson is credited with finding the first evidence for isotopes of a stable (non-radioactive) element in 1912, as part of his exploration into the composition of canal rays (positive ions). His experiments to determine the nature of positively charged particles, with Francis William Aston, were the first use of mass spectrometry and led to the development of the mass spectrograph. Thomson was an influential teacher, and seven of his students went on to win Nobel Prizes: Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry 1908), Lawrence Bragg (Physics 1915), Charles Barkla (Physics 1917), Francis Aston (Chemistry 1922), Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (Physics 1927), Owen Richardson (Physics 1928) and Edward Appleton (Physics 1947). His son, George Paget Thomson, shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics with Clinton Davisson "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals".
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Jack Brooks
Jack Bascom Brooks (December 18, 1922 – December 4, 2012) was an American Democratic Party politician from the state of Texas who served 42 years in the United States House of Representatives, initially representing Texas's 2nd congressional district from 1953 through 1967, and then, after district boundaries were redrawn in 1966, the 9th district from 1967 to 1995. He had strong political ties to other prominent Texas Democrats, including Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and President Lyndon B. Johnson. For over fifteen years, he was the dean of the Texas congressional delegation.
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James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry
James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry and 1st Duke of Dover (18 December 1662 – 6 July 1711) was a Scottish statesman who was a leading politician in Scotland during the late 17th and the early 18th centuries. As Lord High Commissioner he was instrumental in negotiating and passing the Acts of Union 1707 with England, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
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James Watney
James Watney (18 December 1800 – 16 March 1884) was an English brewer and landowner who resided at Haling Park, Croydon, and Beddington, Surrey.
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Jayden Daniels
Jayden Daniels (born December 18, 2000) is an American professional football quarterback for the Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL). Daniels played three seasons of college football for the Arizona State Sun Devils and two with the LSU Tigers. With LSU in 2023, he won the Heisman Trophy among other awards after leading the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) in total yards and setting its single-season passer rating record. Daniels was selected by the Commanders second overall in the 2024 NFL draft. He set several rookie records while leading the Commanders to their most wins in a season and first NFC Championship Game appearance since 1991, earning Offensive Rookie of the Year and Pro Bowl honors. A walk-off touchdown pass thrown by Daniels during the final seconds of a game, known as the Hail Maryland, was also named the season's Moment of the Year. His second season was marred by injury and missed the majority of it.
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Jean Pronovost
Jean Joseph Denis Pronovost (born December 18, 1945) is a Canadian retired professional ice hockey right winger who played in the National Hockey League for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Atlanta Flames and Washington Capitals.
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Jean-Baptiste Rey
Jean-Baptiste Rey (18 December 1734 – 15 July 1810) was a French conductor and composer. Rey was born at Lauzerte. He remains the longest-serving conductor of the Paris Opera; his tenure spans from the last years of the monarchy to Napoleon's Empire (1776–1810). As such, he conducted most performances of masterpieces by Gluck, Piccini, Sacchini, Salieri, Gretry, Méhul, Haydn, Mozart, Spontini, etc., many of whom he cooperated with closely. He was the author of an opera, Apollon et Coronis (1781) and several other pieces and arrangements. Rey also wrote the third act of Sacchini's Arvire et Évélina (1788). Before his nomination at the Academie royale, Rey gained fame as a conductor in the theatres of Toulouse, Montpellier, Marseille, Bordeaux and Nantes. He was called to Paris in 1776 to assist the then first conductor, Louis-Joseph Francœur, whom he replaced in 1781. In 1779, he was named Maître de musique of Louis XVI's royal chamber. In 1781, Apollon et Coronis, the opera he composed with his brother, the cellist Louis-Charles-Joseph Rey, was performed. He kept his position at the Opera throughout the Revolution and participated in a number of revolutionary ceremonies. In 1799, he entered the recently established Conservatoire to teach harmony. He composed some of the Conservatoire's solfeges but was soon expelled along with the composer Jean-Francois Le Sueur, following internal dissensions. In 1803, both Le Sueur and Rey were called by Napoleon to join his chapel: Le Sueur replaced Paisiello as director, while Rey was named first conductor, with Persuis as his assistant. On 2 December 1804, Rey and Persuis conducted two giant orchestras in Notre-Dame for Napoleon's imperial coronation. He died in Paris.
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Johann Salomo Semler
Johann Salomo Semler (German: [ˈzɛmlɐ]; 18 December 1725 – 14 March 1791) was a German church historian, biblical commentator, and critic of ecclesiastical documents and of the history of dogmas. He is sometimes known as "the father of German rationalism".
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John Booth
John Alfred Booth (born 18 December 1954 in Rotherham, England) is the former Director of Racing at Scuderia Toro Rosso. He is the former team principal of the Virgin/Marussia Formula One team. He was initially the team's sporting director, but took over the role of team principal from Alex Tai less than one month after the team's launch.
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John Hall
Sir John Hall (c. 18 December 1824 – 25 June 1907) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 12th premier of New Zealand from 1879 to 1882. He was born in Kingston upon Hull, England, the third son of George Hall, a captain in the navy. At the age of ten he was sent to school in Switzerland and his education continued in Paris and Hamburg. After returning to England and being employed by the Post Office, at the age of 27 he decided to emigrate. He was also Mayor of Christchurch.
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John Hull
John Hull (December 18, 1624 – October 1, 1683) was an English-born merchant, silversmith, slave trader and politician who spent the majority of his life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. After arriving in North America, he worked as a silversmith in Boston before becoming the moneyer responsible for issuing the colony's pine tree shillings in the mid-17th century. Hull was also a successful merchant and engaged in slave-trading on multiple occasions. He was also an early benefactor of Harvard College and a co-founder of the Old South Church.
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John Leventhal
John Leventhal (born December 18, 1952) is an American musician, producer, songwriter, and recording engineer who has produced albums for William Bell, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Michelle Branch, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Shawn Colvin, Sarah Jarosz, Rodney Crowell, Jim Lauderdale, Joan Osborne, Loudon Wainwright III and The Wreckers. He has won six Grammy Awards.
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Jonathan Cainer
Jonathan Cainer (18 December 1957 – 2 May 2016) was a British astrologer. He wrote astrological predictions six days a week for the Daily Mail, and forecasts for three Australian newspapers: the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Melbourne Herald Sun, and the Perth Sunday Times. Cainer's predictions were also published in Hello, the Auckland Sunday News, the Botswana Echo, and Misty Magazine (Japan). It has been estimated that over twelve million people read his predictions.
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Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and the nation's Premier from 1941 to 1953. Initially presiding over an oligarchic one-party system that governed by plurality, he became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union by the 1930s. Ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies became known as Stalinism. Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin began his revolutionary career by joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as a youth. There, he edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution, Stalin joined the party's governing Politburo, where he was instrumental in overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922. As Lenin fell ill and then died in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership over the country. During Stalin's rule, "Socialism in One Country" became a central tenet of the party's dogma, and Lenin's New Economic Policy was replaced with a centralized command economy. Under the Five-Year Plan system, the country underwent collectivisation and rapid industrialization but experienced significant disruptions in food production that contributed to the famine of 1932–33. To eradicate those regarded as "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the "Great Purge", in which over a million were imprisoned and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. Stalin's government promoted Marxism–Leninism abroad through the Communist International and supported anti-fascist movements throughout Europe during the 1930s, particularly in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, it signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in their joint invasion of Poland. Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite initial setbacks, the Soviet Red Army repelled the German incursion and captured Berlin in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The Soviets annexed the Baltic states and helped establish Soviet-aligned governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe, China and North Korea. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged from the war as the two world superpowers. Tensions arose between the Soviet-backed Eastern Bloc and U.S.-backed Western Bloc which became known as the Cold War. Stalin led his country through its post-war reconstruction, during which it developed a nuclear weapon in 1949. In these years, the country experienced another major famine and an anti-semitic campaign peaking in the doctors' plot. Stalin died in 1953 and was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who denounced his predecessor and initiated a de-Stalinisation process throughout Soviet society. Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Stalin was the subject of a pervasive personality cult within the international Marxist–Leninist movement, for whom Stalin was a champion of socialism and the working class. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin has retained popularity in Russia and Georgia as a victorious wartime leader who established the Soviet Union as a major world power. Conversely, his totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines which caused the deaths of millions.
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Jules Dassin
Julius "Jules" Dassin ( DASS-in, dass-IN; December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008) was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor. A subject of the Hollywood blacklist, he subsequently moved to France, and later Greece, where he continued his career. He was best-known for his noir and crime films, though he also worked in other genres. He won the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival for his pioneering heist film Rififi, and received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Never on Sunday (1960). He adapted Never on Sunday into the stage musical Illya Darling, earning Tony nominations for Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical. Dassin's other notable films included Brute Force (1947), The Naked City (1948), Thieves' Highway (1949), Night and the City (1950), Topkapi (1964), and Uptight (1968). Dassin was the husband of Greek actress and activist Melina Mercouri, and the father of singer-songwriter Joe Dassin. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America.
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Kazuhide Uekusa
Kazuhide Uekusa (植草 一秀, Uekusa Kazuhide; born December 18, 1960) is a Japanese economist, economic analyst, former senior economist at Nomura Research Institute, and chairman of the Three-Nations Research Institute. He was arrested for sexual offenses in 2004 and 2006.
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Kevin Beattie
Thomas Kevin Beattie (18 December 1953 – 16 September 2018) was an English footballer. Born into poverty, he played at both professional and international levels, mostly as a centre-half. He spent the majority of his playing career at Ipswich Town, the club with which he won both the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup. He was also named the inaugural Professional Footballers' Association Young Player of the Year at the end of the 1972–73 season, and featured in the film Escape to Victory alongside many of his Ipswich teammates. Beattie's playing career took him from rags to riches, but according to The Daily Telegraph he was "cursed by being both injury and accident prone". His playing career included some controversy, notably when he went missing after being selected for England's under-23 team. After retiring from playing he descended into unemployment and alcohol abuse, and contemplated suicide, before finding purpose once more and a new career in later life, as a football commentator on television and radio. Beattie has been called Ipswich Town's best ever player by many pundits and polls. Ipswich (and later England) manager Bobby Robson called him the best England player he had seen.
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Lenore Blum
Lenore Carol Blum (née Epstein; born December 18, 1942) is an American computer scientist and mathematician who has made contributions to the theories of real number computation, cryptography, and pseudorandom number generation. She was a distinguished career professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University until 2019 and is currently a professor in residence at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also known for her efforts to increase diversity in mathematics and computer science.
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Leonid Yuzefovich
Leonid Abramovich Yuzefovich (Russian: Леонид Абрамович Юзефович, born December 18, 1947, in Moscow) is a Russian writer known for the series of crime fiction stories taking place in pre-Revolution Russian Empire. He also writes non-fiction books about history, and currently adapts his stories for TV serials. In 1975, he started working as a history teacher at a Moscow school and only retired in 2004 despite being in love with teaching. In 1981 he earned his Ph.D. (Candidate of Sciences) with his thesis on Russian diplomatic etiquette of the 15th-17th centuries. His early fiction works were occasionally published in the USSR through the late 1970s and 1980s but he mostly owed his initial popularity to the well-distributed non-fiction book The Sovereign of the Desert about Roman Ungern von Sternberg, issued in 1993. It influenced Victor Pelevin's novel Chapayev and Void, issued in 1996. He gained more popularity when in 2001 he switched to detective stories set in the late 19th century, re-inventing the fame of detective Ivan Putilin. In 2003 the Russian Booker Prize short-listed Yuzefovich's detective story Kazaroza. Yuzefovich became the main winner of the 2009 Big Book, the Russian national literary award, for his novel Cranes and Pygmies on November 26. He won the National Bestseller Literary Prize in 2016 for his book The Winter Road. Yuzefovich's books have been translated and issued in English, French, German, Italian, Mongolian, Polish, and Spanish languages. Yuzefovich's daughter Galina is a literary critic, by peers she is considered the most influential in her field.
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Lionel Monckton
Lionel John Alexander Monckton (18 December 1861 – 15 February 1924) was an English composer of musical theatre. He became Britain's most popular composer of Edwardian musical comedy in the early years of the 20th century.
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Lizzie Deignan
Elizabeth Mary Deignan (née Armitstead; born 18 December 1988) is an English track and road racing cyclist, who last rode professionally for UCI Women's WorldTeam Lidl–Trek. She was the 2015 World road race champion. She is regarded as the best British female road cyclist of her generation, scoring a total of 43 UCI race wins. Deignan is also the 2014 Commonwealth Games road race champion and a twice winner of the season-long UCI Women's Road World Cup, winning the overall competition in 2014 and the final edition in 2015. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Deignan won the silver medal in the road race. She has won the British National Road Race Championships four times, in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017. In 2021, Deignan won the first ever Paris–Roubaix Femmes to add to victories in the women's versions of Tour of Flanders and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, becoming the first woman to win a 'triple crown' of all women's Monument classics. Twice winner of The Women's Tour, the most important stage race for women in the UK, she has also won Strade Bianche Donne, La Course by Le Tour de France and the Trofeo Alfredo Binda-Comune di Cittiglio. Prior to her road career, Deignan won a total of five medals at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in 2009 and 2010, including a gold medal in team pursuit in 2009 with Joanna Rowsell and Wendy Houvenaghel.
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Lonnie Brooks
Lonnie Brooks (born Lee Baker Jr., December 18, 1933 – April 1, 2017) was an American blues singer and guitarist. The musicologist Robert Palmer, writing in Rolling Stone, stated, "His music is witty, soulful and ferociously energetic, brimming with novel harmonic turnarounds, committed vocals and simply astonishing guitar work." Jon Pareles, a music critic for the New York Times, wrote, "He sings in a rowdy baritone, sliding and rasping in songs that celebrate lust, fulfilled and unfulfilled; his guitar solos are pointed and unhurried, with a tone that slices cleanly across the beat. Wearing a cowboy hat, he looks like the embodiment of a good-time bluesman." Howard Reich, a music critic for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, "...the music that thundered from Brooks' instrument and voice...shook the room. His sound was so huge and delivery so ferocious as to make everything alongside him seem a little smaller."
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Lyman Abbott
Lyman J. Abbott (December 18, 1835 – October 22, 1922) was an American Congregationalist theologian, editor, and author.
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Malcolm Kirk
Malcolm Kirk (18 December 1935 – 23 August 1987) was an English professional wrestler who went by the ring name of "King Kong" Kirk as well as Kojak Kirk, Killer Kirk and "Mucky" Mal Kirk. He started as a professional rugby league player before becoming a professional wrestler. Kirk died of a heart attack on 23 August 1987 after collapsing in the ring during a tag team match at the Hippodrome in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. The wrestling event was run by Joint Promotions with the main event being a tag team match between Kirk and King Kendo (Bill Clarke) against Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree) and Greg Valentine (Steve Crabtree) in front of 1,500 people.
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Marc Rich
Marc Rich (born Marcell David Reich; December 18, 1934 – June 26, 2013) was a Belgian-American commodities trader, financier, and businessman. He founded the commodities company Glencore and was later indicted in the United States on federal charges of tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and selling Iranian oil to Israel during the Iran hostage crisis. He fled to Switzerland at the time of the indictment and never returned to the United States. He received a widely criticized presidential pardon from President Bill Clinton, on his last day in office. Rich had donated large sums to Israeli officials and organizations, which had pleaded extensively on his behalf. Rich's ex-wife Denise had also made donations to the Democratic Party.
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Marcus Butler
Marcus Lloyd Butler (born 18 December 1991) is an English model and former YouTuber, whose channels have reached over 5.4 million subscribers. In 2015, he released an autobiographical book, titled Hello Life!. Butler co-hosted a radio show with fellow YouTuber Alfie Deyes on BBC Radio 1.
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Mario Basler
Mario Basler (born 18 December 1968) is a German football manager and former professional player who mainly played as a right midfielder. A dead-ball specialist, Basler scored numerous goals from free-kicks and two directly from corner kicks during his career, colloquially known as Olympic goals. He was also known for his creativity.
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Matt McGrath
Matthew John McGrath (December 28, 1875 – January 29, 1941) was a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, the New York Athletic Club, and the New York City Police Department. At the time of his death at age 64, he attained the rank of Police Inspector, and during his career received the NYPD's Medal of Valor twice. He competed for the U.S. team in the Olympics in 1908, 1912, 1920 and 1924 (at age 47). In his prime, he was known as "one of the world's greatest weight throwers."
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Miki Ando
Miki Ando (安藤 美姫, Andō Miki; born December 18, 1987) is a retired Japanese figure skater. She is the 2007 and 2011 World champion, 2011 Four Continents champion, 2004 World Junior champion, and a three-time (2003, 2004 & 2010) Japanese national champion. Ando is the first female skater to complete a quadruple jump successfully in competition. She accomplished this at the 2002–03 Junior Grand Prix Final in The Hague, Netherlands.
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Mille Petrozza
Miland "Mille" Petrozza (born 18 December 1967) is a German musician. He is the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of thrash metal band Kreator, which he started playing in as Tyrant in 1982 and renamed into Tormentor in 1984. He is also the principal songwriter of the band and the only member to appear on every Kreator album. In 1994, Petrozza played guitar in the metal all-star band Voodoocult, amongst such artists as Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Chuck Schuldiner of Death. He also shared lead vocals in union with Tomas Lindberg for the track "Dirty Coloured Knife" on the self-titled 2002 album from Israeli metal act Nail Within. He appeared on Edguy's 2004 album, Hellfire Club, providing lead vocals on an alternate version of the album's opening song, "Mysteria", featured as a bonus track to the album. He also appeared on Caliban's 2006 album, The Undying Darkness, on "Moment of Clarity". He also appeared on the 2010 Volbeat album Beyond Hell/Above Heaven on the track titled "7 Shots". Petrozza and drummer Stefan Schwarzmann played for the recording of the 2012 album Revolution by Lacrimosa.
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Mirza Tahir Ahmad
Mirza Tahir Ahmad (مرزا طاہر احمد; 18 December 1928 – 19 April 2003) was the fourth caliph (Arabic: خليفة المسيح الرابع, khalīfatul masīh al-rābi) and the head of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. He was elected as the fourth successor of the founder of the community, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. He was elected on 10 June 1982, the day after the death of his predecessor, Mirza Nasir Ahmad. Following the Ordinance XX that was promulgated by the government of Pakistan in 1984, which prohibited Ahmadi Muslims from any public expression of the Islamic faith, Tahir Ahmad left Pakistan and migrated to London, England, provisionally moving the headquarters of the community to the Fazl Mosque in London. He is noted particularly for his question and answer sessions which he held regularly with people from around the world and for his Quranic discourses. Under his leadership, there was an acceleration in the number of Quran translations produced by the Community; and during his caliphate, the Community experienced structural and financial growth on an international level, including the launch of the first Muslim satellite television network, Muslim Television Ahmadiyya in 1994 through which he could communicate televised messages to the Community globally and have his sermons and other public engagements transmitted throughout the world through this medium. Tahir Ahmad also authored many books including, Some Distinctive Features of Islam; Christianity: A Journey from Facts to Fiction; Murder in the Name of Allah, and his magnum opus Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth.
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Nancy Ryles
Nancy Ann Ryles (December 18, 1937 – September 12, 1990) was an American politician. She served in the Oregon House of Representatives, the Oregon Senate and as one of three members of the state's Public Utility Commission. She was known as an advocate for education and for equality for women and minorities. An elementary school in Beaverton is named after her.
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Norm Provan
Norman Douglas Somerville Provan (18 December 1932 – 13 October 2021) was an Australian professional rugby league footballer and coach. Also nicknamed "Sticks", he was a second-row forward with the St. George Dragons during the first ten of their eleven consecutive premiership-winning years (1956-1966). Named among the nation's finest footballers of the 20th century, he was a representative in the Australia national team from 1954 to 1960, winning 14 Tests and a World Cups. In 2018, he was inducted as the 13th Immortal of Australian rugby league.
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Norman Brown
Norman Brown (born December 18, 1962) is an American smooth jazz guitarist and singer.
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Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis (born Raiford Chatman Davis; December 18, 1917 – February 4, 2005) was an American actor, director, writer, and activist. He was married to Ruby Dee, with whom he frequently performed, from 1948 until his death. He received numerous accolades including an Emmy, a Grammy and a Writers Guild of America Award as well as nominations for four additional Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and Tony Award. Davis was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1994 and received the National Medal of Arts in 1995, then Kennedy Center Honors in 2004. Davis started his career in theatre acting with the Ross McClendon Players in the 1940s. He made his Broadway debut acting in the post-World War II play Jeb (1946). He earned a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical nomination for his role in Jamaica (1958). He wrote and starred as the title character in the satirical farce Purlie Victorious (1961) which was adapted into a 1963 film and 1970 musical. Davis's credits as a film director include Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Black Girl (1972), and Gordon's War (1973). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Scalphunters (1968). Davis also acted in The Hill (1965), A Man Called Adam (1966), Let's Do It Again (1975), School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Grumpy Old Men (1993), The Client (1994), and Dr. Dolittle (1998). For his portrayal of Martin Luther King Sr. in the miniseries King (1978) he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He was also Emmy-nominated for his roles in Teacher, Teacher (1969), Miss Evers' Boys (1997), and The L Word (2005). He won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album with his wife Ruby Dee for Ossie and Ruby (2005).
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Paola Egonu
Paola Ogechi Egonu (Italian: [ˈpaːola oˈɡɛːtʃi eˈɡɔːnu], ; born 18 December 1998) is an Italian professional volleyball player. She plays as an opposite for both the Italian Women's National Team, and the Italian Club, Vero Volley Milano in the A1 division of the Lega Volley Femminile.
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Paul Klee
Paul Klee (German: [ˈpaʊ̯l ˈkleː]; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively. His lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting was for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture in Germany. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
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Pedro Jirón
Pedro Jose Jirón Rugama "Peche Jirón" (18 December 1939 – 7 September 2018) was a Nicaraguan professional footballer who played as a midfielder.
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Peter Boulware
Peter Nicholas Boulware (born December 18, 1974) is an American former professional football player who was a linebacker for nine seasons with the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Florida State Seminoles, earning recognition as a consensus All-American. A first-round pick of Baltimore in the 1997 NFL draft, he played his entire pro career for the Ravens. Boulware was a Republican candidate for the Florida House of Representatives in the 2008 general election.
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Peter Wessel Zapffe
Peter Wessel Zapffe (; Norwegian: [ˈsɑ̂pfə]; 18 December 1899 – 12 October 1990) was a Norwegian philosopher, author, artist, lawyer and mountaineer. He is often noted for his philosophically pessimistic and fatalistic view of human existence. His system of philosophy was inspired by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, as well as his firm advocacy of antinatalism. His thoughts regarding the error of human life are presented in the essay "The Last Messiah" ("Den sidste Messias", 1933). This essay is a shorter version of his best-known work, the philosophical treatise On the Tragic (Om det tragiske, 1941).
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Philipp von Hutten
Philipp von Hutten (18 December 1505 – 17 May 1546) was a German adventurer and an early European explorer and conquistador of Venezuela. He is a significant figure in the history of Klein-Venedig (1528 - 1546), the concession of Venezuela Province to the Welser banking family by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.
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Ramsey Clark
William Ramsey Clark (December 18, 1927 – April 9, 2021) was an American lawyer, activist, and federal government official. A progressive, New Frontier liberal, he occupied senior positions in the United States Department of Justice under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, serving as United States Attorney General from 1967 to 1969; previously, he was Deputy Attorney General from 1965 to 1967 and Assistant Attorney General from 1961 to 1965. As attorney general, Clark was known for his vigorous opposition to the death penalty, aggressive support of civil liberties and civil rights, and dedication to enforcing United States antitrust laws. Clark supervised the drafting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968. After leaving public office, Clark led many progressive activism campaigns, including opposition to the war on terror. He offered advice or legal defense to such prominent figures as Charles Taylor, Slobodan Milošević, Saddam Hussein, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and Lyndon LaRouche. He was the last surviving Cabinet member of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.
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Randy Houser
Shawn Randolph Houser (born December 18, 1975) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Houser has racked up over half a dozen hits and over 1 billion streams. His album How Country Feels topped the country radio charts with the title track, “Runnin’ Outta Moonlight” and “Goodnight Kiss” (also his first No. 1 as a songwriter) and earned critical acclaim for his powerful delivery of the Top 5 smash and nominated CMA Song of the Year, “Like A Cowboy.” In late 2023, he landed on-screen roles in Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed film “Killers of the Flower Moon” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, as well as Dennis Quaid’s “The Hill”. Signed to Universal South Records in 2008, he charted the single "Anything Goes". It was a top 20 hit on the Billboard country singles chart and the title track to his debut album of the same name, which also produced his first top 5 hit, "Boots On". In 2012, he moved to Broken Bow Records imprint Stoney Creek. He reached number one with "How Country Feels", the title track to his third album, and with "Runnin' Outta Moonlight" in 2013. The follow-up singles from the same album were "Goodnight Kiss", which reached number one on the Mediabase Country Chart and number two on the Country Airplay chart, and "Like a Cowboy", which reached number 3 on the Country Airplay chart in March 2015 and received a 2015 Country Music Association Awards Song of the Year nomination. Prior to his success as an artist, Houser lived as a songwriter, co-writing singles including "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" by Trace Adkins, "Back That Thing Up" by Justin Moore, and "My Cowboy" by country pop artist Jessie James.
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Richard Maury
Richard Fontaine Maury (Philadelphia, 18 December 1882 – Córdoba, 10 July 1950) was an American railway engineer and naturalized Argentine. He became known for the project of the Argentine "Ramal C-14" of the Ferrocarril General Manuel Belgrano and the touristic Tren a las Nubes.
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Richard Olivier de Longueil
Richard Olivier de Longueil (1406–1470) (called the Cardinal of Coutances or the Cardinal of Eu) was a French Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal.
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Robert Leckie
Robert Hugh Leckie (December 18, 1920 – December 24, 2001) was an American author and journalist. After serving in the United States Marine Corps during World War II, Leckie worked as a writer and newspaperman, eventually writing more than 40 books, both non-fiction and fiction. His war memoir Helmet for My Pillow, along with Eugene B. Sledge's With the Old Breed, formed the basis for the HBO's 2010 television series The Pacific. In the series, Leckie is portrayed by James Badge Dale.
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Ronald Acuña Jr.
Ronald José Acuña Blanco Jr. (born December 18, 1997) is a Venezuelan professional baseball outfielder for the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball (MLB). After signing with the Braves as an international free agent in 2014, Acuña made his MLB debut in 2018, and won the National League Rookie of the Year Award. Since 2018, Acuña has made five MLB All-Star team appearances, won three Silver Slugger Awards, and twice led the league in stolen bases. During the 2023 season, he became the fifth MLB member of the 40–40 club, set a modern-era franchise record in stolen bases, with 73, and became the first MLB player to accomplish a 40–70 season. Acuña won the 2023 National League Most Valuable Player Award. In 2026, Acuña helped Venezuela win its first ever World Baseball Classic.
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Rosemary Leach
Rosemary Anne Leach (18 December 1935 – 21 October 2017) was a British stage, television and film actress. She won the 1982 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a New Play for 84, Charing Cross Road and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her roles in the films That'll Be the Day (1973) and A Room with a View (1985). She appeared in several TV mini-series, including Germinal (1970), The Jewel in the Crown (1984), The Charmer (1987), The Buccaneers (1995) and Berkeley Square (1998), and had a recurring role on the sitcom My Family (2003–2007).
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Ryan Crouser
Ryan Crouser (born December 18, 1992) is an American track and field athlete who competes in the shot put and discus. He specializes in the shot put, in which he is the only three-time Olympic gold medalist, having won in Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Paris, and also a three-time outdoor World Champion. He holds the world record in the shot put, both indoors and outdoors. He set the outdoor world record at 23.56 meters in May 2023, improving upon his previous record of 23.37 m from July 2021. He has held the indoor record of 22.82 m since January 2021. In his early career, Crouser set a national high school record for the indoor shot put and outdoor discus, and he won gold in the shot put at the 2009 World Youth Championships. At the University of Texas at Austin, he won four NCAA titles in the shot put. He won the national title in the shot put at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships seven of the eight times the event was held between 2016 and 2024. He is also a four-time national champion in the indoor shot put at the USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, with victories in 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2024. Crouser won his first Olympic gold medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics with a throw of 22.52 m and retained his title at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, setting an Olympic record of 23.30 m. He also won the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics with a throw of 22.90 m. At the 2019 World Championships in Doha, he secured a silver medal. Crouser then went on to win gold at both the 2022 World Championships in Eugene and the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. His throw of 23.51 m in Budapest set a record for the farthest throw ever at a World Championships. Crouser has been named Track & Field News World Male Athlete of the Year. He was also awarded USA Track & Field's highest accolade, the Jesse Owens Award, and was twice a finalist for Male Track and Field World Athlete of the Year by World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field. Crouser holds the distinction of earning victories in a Diamond League Championship, Olympic Games, World Indoor Championship, World Outdoor Championship, and World Youth Championship.
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Saki
Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), popularly known by his pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirise Edwardian society and culture. He is considered to be a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, Munro himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse. Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), Munro wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire (the only book published under his own name); a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain.
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Sam Andrew
Sam Houston Andrew III (December 18, 1941 – February 12, 2015) was an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, composer, artist and founding member and guitarist of Big Brother and the Holding Company. During his career as musician and composer, Andrew had three platinum albums and two hit singles. His songs have been used in numerous major motion picture soundtracks and documentaries.
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Santiago Cañizares
José Santiago Cañizares Ruiz (Spanish pronunciation: [xoˈse sanˈtjaɣo kaɲiˈθaɾes ˈrwiθ]; born 18 December 1969) is a Spanish former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. A product of Real Madrid's youth academies, he eventually joined the first team but proved unable to establish himself there, being loaned out twice. He moved to Valencia in 1998, appearing in 416 official matches over the next decade and winning several major titles, including two La Liga championships and the 2004 UEFA Cup. Cañizares represented Spain in three World Cups and as many European Championships, and won a gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
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Sebald Heyden
Sebald Heyden (8 December 1499 – 9 July 1561) was a German musicologist, cantor, theologian, hymn-writer and religious poet. A member of the Haiden family of Nuremberg, he is perhaps best known for his De arte canendi ("On the Art of Singing", third installment published 1540) which is considered to have had a major impact on scholarship and the teaching of singing to young boys. He wrote hymns such as "O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß". It has been speculated that Heyden was the world's first true musicologist.
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Shawn Christian
Shawn Patrick Christian (born December 18, 1965) is an American television and film actor. He began his career playing the role of Mike Kasnoff on the soap opera As the World Turns (1993-97) and later moved to prime time television playing recurring roles on Charmed, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Birds of Prey. He starred in the 2001 monster film Tremors 3: Back to Perfection and the WB drama series, Summerland (2004-2005). He later returned to daytime television playing Daniel Jonas on Days of Our Lives (2008-2017, 2020).
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Simonds d'Ewes
Sir Simonds d'Ewes, 1st Baronet (18 December 1602 – 18 April 1650) was an English antiquary and politician. He was bred for the bar, was a member of the Long Parliament and left notes on its transactions. D'Ewes took the Puritan side in the Civil War. His Journal of all the Parliaments of Elizabeth is of value; he left an Autobiography and Correspondence.
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Sophie of Mecklenburg
Sophie of Mecklenburg, also spelled Sophia (18 December 1481 – 12 July 1503 in Torgau) was a German noblewoman. She was a Duchess of Mecklenburg by birth and by marriage Electoral Princess of Saxony.
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Steve Biko
Bantu Stephen Biko OMSG (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. His ideas were articulated in a series of articles published under the pseudonym Frank Talk. Raised in a poor Xhosa family, Biko grew up in Ginsberg township in the Eastern Cape. In 1966, he began studying medicine at the University of Natal, where he joined the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Strongly opposed to the apartheid system of racial segregation and white-minority rule in South Africa, Biko was frustrated that NUSAS and other anti-apartheid groups were dominated by white liberals, rather than by the blacks who were most affected by apartheid. He believed that well-intentioned white liberals failed to comprehend the black experience and often acted in a paternalistic manner. He developed the view that to avoid white domination, black people had to organise independently, and to this end he became a leading figure in the creation of the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) in 1968. Membership was open only to "Blacks", a term that Biko used in reference not just to Bantu-speaking Africans but also to Coloureds and Indians. He was careful to keep his movement independent of white liberals, but opposed anti-white hatred and had white friends. The white-minority National Party government were initially supportive, seeing SASO's creation as a victory for apartheid's ethos of racial separatism. Influenced by the Martinican philosopher Frantz Fanon, Biko and his compatriots developed Black Consciousness as SASO's official ideology. The movement campaigned for an end to apartheid and the transition of South Africa toward universal suffrage and a socialist economy. It organised Black Community Programmes (BCPs) and focused on the psychological empowerment of black people. Biko believed that black people needed to rid themselves of any sense of racial inferiority, an idea he expressed by popularizing the slogan "black is beautiful". In 1972, he was involved in founding the Black People's Convention (BPC) to promote Black Consciousness ideas among the wider population. The government came to see Biko as a subversive threat and placed him under a banning order in 1973, severely restricting his activities. He remained politically active, helping organise BCPs such as a healthcare centre and a crèche in the Ginsberg area. During his ban he received repeated anonymous threats, and was detained by state security services on several occasions. Following his arrest in August 1977, Biko was beaten to death by state security officers. Over 20,000 people attended his funeral. Biko's fame spread posthumously. He became the subject of numerous songs and works of art, while a 1978 biography by his friend Donald Woods formed the basis for the 1987 film Cry Freedom. During Biko's life, the government alleged that he hated whites, various anti-apartheid activists accused him of sexism, and African racial nationalists criticised his united front with Coloureds and Indians. Nonetheless, Biko became one of the earliest icons of the movement against apartheid, and is regarded as a political martyr and the "Father of Black Consciousness". His political legacy remains a matter of contention.
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Stone Cold Steve Austin
Steve Austin (born Steven James Anderson and formerly Steven James Williams; December 18, 1964), also known by his ring name Stone Cold Steve Austin, is an American media personality, actor, and retired professional wrestler. He is signed to WWE, as an ambassador. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he was integral to the development and success of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as World Wrestling Entertainment or WWE) during the Attitude Era, an industry boom period in the late 1990s and early 2000s where wrestling reached the peak of its mainstream popularity. Austin began his professional wrestling career in 1989, after playing college football at the University of North Texas. He signed with World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1991 and adopted the persona of "Stunning" Steve Austin, a villainous in-ring technician, and he won the WCW World Television Championship and the WCW United States Heavyweight Championship twice each, alongside one reign with a double crown of the WCW World Tag Team Championship and NWA World Tag Team Championship, with Brian Pillman (as the Hollywood Blondes). After a brief stint in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), Austin signed with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in 1995. In the WWF, Austin initially debuted under the short lived gimmick of The Ringmaster, an in-ring technician character before being repackaged as a short-tempered, brash and brazen anti-establishment antihero named "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, becoming the most popular wrestler of the Attitude Era off the back of his feud with company chairman Vince McMahon. He won the WWF Championship six times, the WWF Intercontinental Championship twice, the Million Dollar Championship once, and the WWF Tag Team Championship four times, making him the fifth WWF Triple Crown Champion. He is also a record three-time Royal Rumble winner and also won the 1996 King of the Ring. He was forced to retire from in-ring competition in 2003 after multiple knee injuries and a serious neck injury at the 1997 SummerSlam event, making sporadic appearances ever since. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2009, and returned for a final match against Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 38 in April 2022. Austin hosts the podcast The Steve Austin Show (2013–present), and the video podcast Broken Skull Sessions (2019–2022) available on the WWE Network and Peacock. He collaborates with El Segundo Brewing on Broken Skull IPA and Broken Skull American Lager. He also hosted the reality competition series Steve Austin's Broken Skull Challenge (2014–2017) and Straight Up Steve Austin (2019–2021). Since 2023 Austin has competed in desert racing with a UTV.
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Syd Hartha
Sonia del Rosario (born December 18, 2002), known professionally as Syd Hartha (stylized in lowercase), is a Filipino singer-songwriter. She released her debut extended play (EP) Gabay, released on March 22, 2023, which features the tracks "Kung Nag-aatubili" (If You're Reluctant) and "3:15" (with Filipino rapper kiyo). She is currently signed under Sony Music Philippines.
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T. K. Carter
Thomas Kent Carter (December 18, 1956 – January 9, 2026) was an American actor best known for his roles in the films Corvette Summer (1978), Southern Comfort (1981), The Thing (1982), Doctor Detroit (1983), Runaway Train (1985), Space Jam (1996) and The Corner (2000), as well as for the TV series Just Our Luck (as the series' lead), Punky Brewster, The Sinbad Show, Dave, and Good Morning, Miss Bliss, also known as Saved by the Bell: The Junior High Years. He was also the voice of the animated character Anthony Julian from 1985 to 1988 on the series Jem.
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Ty Cobb
Tyrus Raymond Cobb (December 18, 1886 – July 17, 1961), nicknamed "the Georgia Peach", was an American professional baseball center fielder. A native of rural Narrows, Georgia, Cobb played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). He spent 22 years with the Detroit Tigers and served as the team's player-manager for the last six, and he finished his career with the Philadelphia Athletics. In 1936, Cobb received the most votes of any player on the inaugural ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving 222 out of a possible 226 votes (98.2%); no other player received a higher percentage of votes until Tom Seaver in 1992. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked Cobb third on its list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players." Cobb is credited with setting 90 MLB records throughout his career. Cobb has won more batting titles than any other player, with 12. During his 24-year career, he hit .300 in a record 23 consecutive seasons, with the exception being his rookie season. He also hit .400 in three different seasons, a record he shares with three other players. Cobb has more five-hit games (14) than any other player in major league history. He also holds the career record for stealing home (54 times) and for stealing second base, third base, and home in succession (4 times). His combined total of 4,065 runs scored and runs batted in (after adjusting for home runs) is still the highest ever produced by any major league player. Cobb also ranks first in games played by an outfielder in major league history (2,934). He retained many other records for almost a half century or more, including most career games played (3,035) and at bats (11,429 or 11,434 depending on source) until 1974 as well as the modern record for most career stolen bases (892) until 1977. He also had the most career hits until 1985 (4,189 or 4,191, depending on source) and most career runs until 2001. His .366 or .367 (depending on source) career batting average ranked as the highest-ever recorded up until 2024, when MLB added Negro Leagues players to official historical statistics. Cobb's legacy, which includes a large college scholarship fund for Georgia residents that he endowed with early investments in Coca-Cola and General Motors, has been somewhat tarnished by allegations of racism and violence. These primarily stem from a couple of mostly discredited biographies released following his death. Cobb's reputation as a violent man was exaggerated by his first biographer, sportswriter Al Stump, whose stories about Cobb have been proven to be sensationalized and largely fictional. While he was known for often violent conflicts, he spoke favorably about black players joining the Major Leagues and was a well-known philanthropist.
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Victor Hedman
Victor Erik Olof Hedman (pronounced [ˈvɪ̌kːtɔr ˈhěːdman]; born 18 December 1990) is a Swedish professional ice hockey player who is a defenceman and captain for the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League (NHL). Hedman was selected second overall by the Lightning in the 2009 NHL entry draft and made his NHL debut that year. Widely considered at one time to be one of the best defencemen in the NHL, Hedman is a six-time James Norris Memorial Trophy finalist, winning the award in 2018. Hedman won the Stanley Cup back-to-back with the Lightning in 2020 and 2021, and won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in 2020.
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Vijay Mallya
Vijay Vittal Mallya (born 18 December 1955) is an Indian businessman and a former politician. He is the subject of an extradition effort by the Indian Government to bring him back from the UK to face charges of financial crimes in India. His last formal appeal against extradition was rejected in 2020, but as of April 2025 the order had not been enforced; the judge in a case rejecting his appeal against bankruptcy said "apparently Dr Mallya is still resisting extradition on other bases which have yet to be resolved". The son of a businessman who was also in the alcoholic beverages business, Mallya is the former chairman of United Spirits, the largest spirits company in India, and continues to serve as chairman of United Breweries Group, an Indian conglomerate with interests including beverage alcohol, aviation infrastructure, real estate, and fertilizer. He was the chairman of Sanofi India (previously known as Hoechst AG and Aventis) and of Bayer CropScience in India for over 20 years, as well as of several other companies. Mallya was also the founder and former owner of the defunct Kingfisher Airlines and former co-owner of the Force India Formula One team before it went into administration. He is also a former owner of the Royal Challengers Bangalore cricket team.
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Ōuchi Yoshitaka
Ōuchi Yoshitaka (大内 義隆; December 18, 1507 – September 30, 1551) was the daimyō of Suō Province and the head of the Ōuchi clan, succeeding Ōuchi Yoshioki. In 1522, he fought the Amago clan along with his father, Yoshioki, to win the control of Aki Province. Upon Yoshioki's death in 1528, Yoshitaka became the head of Ōuchi clan. In the 1530s, he led military actions in the northern Kyūshū, defeating Shōni clan to win control of the area. With his back then secure, in 1540 he again started combating the Amago clan and by 1541, managed to gain complete control the Aki province. However, in 1542, an invasion into Izumo Province ended in a disaster, with Yoshitaka losing his adopted son Ōuchi Harumochi along with a large number of troops against Amago Haruhisa. His 1542–43 Siege of Toda Castle ended in failure. He completely lost his ambitions of expanding his domains and devoted his energy to the arts and culture. His retainers split into two factions. Those led by Sagara Taketō wanted the Ōuchi clan to simply do nothing more than maintain the control of their current domains, while those led by Sue Harukata wanted to continue expanding. Yoshitaka sided with the former. Under the patronage of Yoshitaka, foreign trade and the arts flourished, and the Ōuchi home city Yamaguchi prospered greatly. In addition, Yoshitaka also attracted the Spanish missionary Francis Xavier, and allowed him to proselytize while he was in Yamaguchi. At the same time, Yoshitaka fostered a close relationship with Emperor Go-Nara in Kyoto, and sponsored many imperial rites that the imperial court could not have afforded otherwise. On March 27, 1551, the embattled emperor appointed Ōuchi Yoshitaka as Acting Governor of Yamashiro (山城権守), the home province where the imperial capital Kyoto was located, in a bid to leverage the Ōuchi against the ravages of the warlord Miyoshi Nagayoshi, who occupied the capital. Yoshitaka, as Acting Governor of Yamashiro and, by extension, the protector of the court, embarked on a daring plan to relocate the emperor and the court to Yamaguchi. High-ranking courtiers and performers of imperial rites moved to Yamaguchi, including dignitaries such as former regent (kampaku) Nijō Tadafusa and retired Grand Minister (Sadaijin) Sanjō Kin'yori (三条公頼; father-in-law of Takeda Shingen). By the end of the eighth month of 1551, nearly the whole court, save for the emperor himself and the palace ladies, was in Yamaguchi. The military establishment of the Ōuchi resented Yoshitaka's apparent "weakness" and his plan to settle the imperial court in Yamaguchi — such a move would see privileges accorded to the courtiers and undermine their own standing within the Ōuchi clan. In September 1551, the faction led by Sue Harukata revolted and attempted to take over the Ōuchi clan. With the control of troops in Harukata's hand, it was over in few days—the courtiers and ministers were massacred and Yoshitaka was forced to perform seppuku at the Tainei-ji Temple (大寧寺) in Nagato Province after composing his death poem:
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