Who was born on December 26?
December 26 is packed with notable birthdays. Explore 124 famous birthdays, sorted by recent English Wikipedia pageviews. Top ranked names include Adrian Newey, Ahmed Barusso, Alan Frumin, Albert Gore, Sr., Alejo Carpentier. Filter by actor, musician, athlete, and more — or open any other calendar day.
December 26
124 people
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Adrian Newey
Adrian Martin Newey (born 26 December 1958) is a British engineer, aerodynamicist, automotive designer, and motorsport executive. Since 2026, Newey has served as team principal, technical director, and co-owner of Aston Martin in Formula One; he previously served as technical director of Leyton House and McLaren, chief designer of March and Williams, and chief technical officer of Red Bull Racing. Widely regarded as one of the greatest engineers in Formula One history, Newey's designs have won 14 Drivers' and 12 Constructors' titles and 223 Grands Prix between 1991 and 2024. After designing championship-winning Formula One cars for Williams and McLaren, Newey moved to Red Bull in 2006, his cars winning the Formula One Drivers' and Constructors' titles consecutively from 2010 to 2013, the Drivers' Championship in 2021, and both titles in 2022 and 2023. The Newey-designed RB19 is the most successful Formula One car in history, winning 21 out of the 22 races (95.45%) in which it competed. Newey's designs also won the 1985 and 1986 CART titles. On 1 May 2024, Red Bull Racing announced that Newey would leave his day-to-day Formula One design duties immediately and shift his focus to the RB17 hypercar. Newey departed the company in the first quarter of 2025 and commenced work at Aston Martin, though he is still involved in the RB17 hypercar project, including its updated final design.
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Ahmed Barusso
Ahmed Apimah Barusso (born 26 December 1984) is a Ghanaian professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for Italian club A.S.D. Terme Monticelli.
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Alan Frumin
Alan Scott Frumin (; born December 26, 1946) is a former parliamentarian of the United States Senate.
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Albert Gore, Sr.
Albert Arnold Gore Sr. (December 26, 1907 – December 5, 1998) was an American politician who served as a United States senator from Tennessee from 1953 to 1971. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a U.S. representative from the state's 4th congressional district from 1939 to 1953. He was the father of Al Gore, who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 until 2001, and who held Tennessee's other U.S. Senate seat from 1985 to 1993. A native of Granville, Tennessee, Gore graduated from Middle Tennessee State Teachers College and taught school. From 1932 to 1936 he was superintendent of schools for Smith County. He attended the Nashville Y.M.C.A. Night Law School, now the Nashville School of Law, from which he graduated in 1936. He was admitted to the bar later that year, and also accepted appointment as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Labor, a position he held until 1937. In 1938, Gore was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee's 4th congressional district. He was twice re-elected, and served from 1939 until resigning in December 1944. During World War II, Gore briefly served in the United States Army as part of a program that enabled members of Congress to join the military incognito to obtain firsthand information on training, readiness, and treatment of service members. He served from December 1944 to March 1945, when he was discharged and took the House seat to which he had been elected again in November 1944. He was thereafter re-elected in 1946, 1948, and 1950, and served from 1945 until 1953. In 1952, Gore was a successful candidate for the U.S. Senate. He was reelected in 1958 and 1964, and served from January 1953 to January 1971. Gore was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1970. In the Senate, Gore championed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. In 1956, he also opposed the segregationist Southern Manifesto, but he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Gore reversed course a year later and supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965. During the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, Gore backed most of Johnson's Great Society programs. Gore's 1970 defeat was blamed in part on his opposition to continuing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. After leaving the Senate, Gore practiced and taught law at Vanderbilt University. He later served as a vice president of the Occidental Petroleum Company and was a member of its board of directors. Gore also served on the boards of directors of several other companies and operated a farm on which he bred Angus cattle. Gore died at the age of 90 in Carthage, Tennessee on December 5, 1998, and was buried at Carthage's Smith County Memorial Gardens.
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Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (Spanish pronunciation: [karpanˈtje], French pronunciation: [kaʁpɑ̃tje]; December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of French and Russian parentage, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba, and despite his European birthplace, he strongly identified as Cuban throughout his life. He traveled extensively, particularly in France, and to South America and Mexico, where he met prominent members of the Latin American cultural and artistic community. Carpentier took a keen interest in Latin American politics and often aligned himself with revolutionary movements, such as Fidel Castro's Communist Revolution in Cuba in the mid-20th century. Carpentier was jailed and exiled for his leftist political philosophies. With a developed knowledge of music, Carpentier explored musicology, publishing an in-depth study of the music of Cuba, La música en Cuba and integrated musical themes and literary techniques throughout his works. He explored elements of Afro-Cubanism and incorporated the cultural aspects into the majority of his writings. Although Carpentier wrote in a myriad of genres, such as journalism, radio drama, playwrighting, academic essays, opera and libretto, he is best known for his novels. He was among the first practitioners of magical realism using the technique, lo real maravilloso to explore the fantastic quality of Latin American history and culture. The most famous example of Afro-Cuban influence and use of lo real maravilloso is Carpentier's 1949 novel El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World) about the Haitian revolution of the late 18th century. Carpentier's writing style integrated the resurgent Baroque style, or New World Baroque style that Latin American artists adopted from the European model and assimilated to the Latin American artistic vision. With a first-hand experience of the French Surrealist movement, Carpentier also adapted the Surrealist theory to Latin American literature. Always eager to explore more than Cuban identity, Carpentier used his traveling experiences throughout Europe and Latin America to expand his understanding of Latin American identity. Carpentier wove elements of Latin American political history, music, social injustice and art into the tapestries of his writings, all of which exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American and Cuban writers like Lisandro Otero, Leonardo Padura and Fernando Velázquez Medina. Carpentier died in Paris, France, in 1980 and was buried in Havana's Colon Cemetery with other Cuban political and artistic luminaries.
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Aleksej Pokuševski
Aleksej Pokuševski (Serbian Cyrillic: Алексеј Покушевски; born 26 December 2001) is a Serbian professional basketball player Lokomotiv Kuban of the VTB United League. Standing at 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m) and weighing 210 pounds (95 kg), he plays at the power forward position. Born in Belgrade, Pokuševski was previously a youth player for the Greek club Olympiacos. He debuted for their senior team in 2018, at age 17 and becoming the youngest EuroLeague player in club history. He was selected by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the 17th overall pick in the 2020 NBA draft and traded to the Thunder.
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Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan
Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan (Russian: Анатолий Львович Каплан, Yiddish: תנחום קאפלאן), (1902 – 1980) was a Soviet-era Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins.
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Andrew Lock
Andrew James Lock OAM (born 26 December 1961) is an Australian mountaineer. He became the first, and still remains the only, Australian to climb all 14 "eight-thousanders" (the peaks over 8,000-metres above sea level) on 2 October 2009, and is the 18th person to ever complete this feat. He climbed 13 of the 14 without bottled oxygen, only using it on Mount Everest, which he has summited three times. He retired from eight-thousander climbing in 2012.
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Arsenio Lacson
Arsenio Hilario Sison Lacson Sr. (December 26, 1912 – April 15, 1962) was a Filipino lawyer, journalist and politician who gained widespread attention as the 17th Mayor of Manila and the first to be democratically elected. An active executive likened by Time and The New York Times to New York City's Fiorello La Guardia, he was the first Manila mayor to be reelected to three terms, remaining in office for over a decade from January 1952 to April 1962. Nicknamed "Arsenic" and described as "a good man with a bad mouth", Lacson's fiery temperament became a trademark of his political and broadcasting career. He died suddenly from a stroke amidst talk that he was planning to run in the 1965 presidential election.
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Arthur Percival
Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival, (26 December 1887 – 31 January 1966) was a British Army officer. He saw service in the First World War and built a successful military career during the interwar period, but is best known for his defeat in the Second World War, when Percival commanded British Commonwealth forces during the Malayan campaign, which culminated in a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Singapore. Percival's surrender to the invading Imperial Japanese Army, which was the largest of its kind in British military history, significantly undermined Britain's prestige and military position in East Asia. Some historians, such as Sir John Smyth, have argued that under-funding of British Malaya's defences and the inexperienced, under-equipped nature of the Commonwealth forces in Malaya, not Percival's leadership, were ultimately to blame for the defeat.
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Bahram Beyzai
Bahrām Beyzai (also spelt Beyzāêi, Beizāi, Beyzāêi, Beyzāee, Persian: بهرام بیضائی; 26 December 1938 – 26 December 2025) was an Iranian filmmaker, playwright, theatre director, researcher, and ostād ("master") of Persian literature, mythology, and Iranian studies. Beyzaie was the son of the poet Ne'matallah Beyzai (best known by his literary pseudonym "Zokā'i"), and there were several other poets in his family. Before he started making films in 1970, he was a leading playwright. Despite his belated start in cinema, Beyzai is often considered a pioneer of a generation of filmmakers whose works are sometimes described as the Iranian New Wave. His Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986) was voted "Best Iranian Film of all time" in November 1999 by the Persian movie magazine Picture World poll of 150 Iranian critics and professionals. From 2010, Beyzai lived and taught at Stanford University in California, United States. While in United States he was very critical of Iranian Islamic regime.
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Bazoline Estelle Usher
Bazoline Estelle Usher (December 26, 1885 – February 8, 1992) was an American educator known for her work in the Atlanta Public Schools. As director of education for African-American children in the district prior to integration, she was the first African American to have an office at Atlanta City Hall. She founded the first Girl Scout troop for African-American girls in Atlanta in 1943. Her career as an educator lasted over 50 years, over 40 of which were in the Atlanta schools. A school in Atlanta is named for her, and in 2014 she was posthumously named a Georgia Woman of Achievement.
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Brandon Scherff
Brandon Scherff (born December 26, 1991) is an American former professional football player who was a guard for 10 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Iowa Hawkeyes, earning unanimous All-American honors in 2014. He was selected by the Washington Redskins in the first round of the 2015 NFL draft, where he played for seven seasons and earned five Pro Bowls and one All-Pro selection. He also played for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
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Candy Crowley
Candy Alt Crowley (born December 26, 1948) is an American news anchor who was employed as CNN's chief political correspondent, specializing in American national and state elections. She was based in CNN's Washington, D.C. bureau and was the anchor of its Sunday morning talk show State of the Union with Candy Crowley. She has covered elections for over two decades.
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Caroll Spinney
Caroll Edwin Spinney (December 26, 1933 – December 8, 2019) was an American puppeteer, cartoonist, author, artist and speaker, most famous for playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street from its inception in 1969 until 2018.
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Cecilia Costa Melgar
Cecilia Raquel Costa Melgar (born 26 December 1992) is a Chilean former tennis player. Costa Melgar won four singles and seven doubles titles on the ITF Women's Circuit. On 20 May 2013, she reached her best singles ranking of world No. 367. On 8 September 2014, she peaked at No. 216 in the doubles rankings. Since her debut for Chile in 2010, Costa Melgar has realized a 15–6 record for her country in Fed Cup competition. After retiring from professional tennis, Costa Melgar became a beach tennis player.
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Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered by some to merit the title of "father of the computer". He is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer, the difference engine, that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in his analytical engine, programmed using a principle openly borrowed from the Jacquard loom. As part of his computer work, he also designed the first computer printers. He had a broad range of interests in addition to his work on computers, covered in his 1832 book Economy of Manufactures and Machinery. He was an important figure in the social scene in London, and is credited with importing the "scientific soirée" from France with his well-attended Saturday evening soirées. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century. Babbage, who died before the complete successful engineering of many of his designs, including his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, remained a prominent figure in the ideating of computing. Parts of his incomplete mechanisms are on display in the Science Museum in London. In 1991, a functioning difference engine was constructed from the original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked.
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Charles Pathé
Charles Morand Pathé (French: [pate]; 26 December 1863 – 25 December 1957) was a pioneer of the French film and recording industries. As the founder of Pathé Frères, its roots lie in 1896 Paris, France, when Pathé and his brothers pioneered the development of the moving image. Pathé adopted the national emblem of France, the cockerel, as the trademark for his company. The firm, as Compagnie Générale des Éstablissements Pathé Frères Phonographes & Cinématographes, invented the cinema newsreel with Pathé-Journal.
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Charles de Valois, Duke de Berry
Charles (French: Charles de France; 26 December 1446 – 24/25 May 1472), Duke of Berry, later Duke of Normandy and Duke of Aquitaine, was a son of Charles VII, King of France. He spent most of his life in conflict with his elder brother, King Louis XI.
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Chris Calaguio
Christian Jay Calaguio (born December 26, 1975, in Makati, Philippines) is a Filipino former professional basketball player. He last played for the San Miguel Beermen in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA). He is a former San Beda Red Cub cager and was one of the star players of the Colegio de San Juan de Letran Knights during his college days in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. After playing for the Knights, he went on to play in the defunct Metropolitan Basketball Association as a member of the San Juan Knights. After the MBA disbanded in 2002, he played for the Shell Turbo Chargers and then with the San Miguel Beermen, where he ended up via the dispersal draft after Shell disbanded as well in 2005.
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Colby Cave
Colby Alexander Cave (December 26, 1994 – April 11, 2020) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. He was a centre in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Boston Bruins and the Edmonton Oilers. Cave was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and began playing minor ice hockey in the Saskatchewan Male U18 AAA Hockey League. The Kootenay Ice of the Western Hockey League (WHL) selected him in the first round of the 2009 WHL Bantam Draft, but traded his junior ice hockey rights to the Swift Current Broncos in 2011. As an undrafted free agent in 2015, Cave signed an entry-level contract with the Bruins, and spent five seasons in the Boston system before being claimed off waivers by the Oilers. Cave made 67 total NHL appearances between 2015 and 2020, scoring nine points. On the evening of April 6, 2020, Cave began complaining of headaches. His condition deteriorated throughout the night, and he was airlifted to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, where doctors performed emergency surgery to remove a colloid cyst that was causing brain bleed. After spending four days in a medically induced coma, Cave died on April 11, 2020, at the age of 25. News of his death was met with memorials from his hockey teammates and coaches, as well as the establishment of the Colby Cave Memorial Fund.
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Craig Teitzel
Craig Teitzel (born 26 December 1963) is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1980s and 1990s. Primarily a prop, he played for the Western Suburbs Magpies, Illawarra Steelers, Warrington Wolves and was a foundation player for the North Queensland Cowboys.
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Damir Markota
Damir Markota (born Damir Omerhodžić on December 26, 1985) is a Croatian professional basketball player who last played for Dinamo Zagreb in the Croatian League. Standing at 2.08 m (6 ft 10 in), he plays at the power forward position.
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Daniel Schmid
Daniel Walter Schmid (26 December 1941 – 5 August 2006) was a Swiss theatre and film director.
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David Sedaris
David Raymond Sedaris ( sih-DAIR-iss; born December 26, 1956) is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "Santaland Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. His next book, Naked (1997), became his first of a series of New York Times Bestsellers, and his 2000 collection Me Talk Pretty One Day won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Much of Sedaris's humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating and often concerns his family life, his middle-class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, his Greek heritage, homosexuality, jobs, education, drug use, and obsessive behaviors, as well as his life in France, London, New York, and the South Downs in England. He is the brother and writing collaborator of actress Amy Sedaris. In 2019, Sedaris was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Denis Cheryshev
Denis Dmitriyevich Cheryshev (Russian: Денис Дмитриевич Черышев, IPA: [dʲɪˈnʲis ˈdmʲitrʲɪjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕerɨʂɨf]; born 26 December 1990) is a Russian professional footballer who plays as a left winger for Cypriot First Division club Krasava ENY Ypsonas. A youth product of Real Madrid, he made his debut for the reserves in 2009 and with the first team in 2012. He then had loan spells at Sevilla, Villarreal and Valencia before joining Villarreal permanently in 2016, and returned to Valencia on loan two years later. In June 2019, he signed permanently for the latter. Having earned 45 caps and scored 23 goals in its youth categories, Cheryshev made his debut for Russia in 2012. He was a participant at the 2018 World Cup, scoring four goals as his team reached the quarter-finals, finishing among the tournament's top scorers, and also represented the country at Euro 2020.
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Denis Gifford
Denis Gifford (26 December 1927 – 18 May 2000) was a British writer, broadcaster, journalist, comic artist and historian of film, comics, television and radio. In his lengthy career, he wrote and drew for British comics; wrote more than fifty books on the creators, performers, characters and history of popular media; devised, compiled and contributed to popular programmes for radio and television; and directed several short films. Gifford was also a major comics collector, owning what was perhaps the largest collection of British comics in the world. Gifford's work in the history of film and comics, particularly in Britain, provided an account of the work in those media of previously unattempted scope, discovering countless lost films and titles and identifying numerous uncredited creators. He was particularly interested in the early stages in film and comics history, for which records were scarce and unreliable, and his own vast collection was an invaluable source. Gifford produced detailed filmographies of every traceable fiction, non-fiction and animated film ever released in the UK, and of early animated films in the US. He compiled the first comics catalogue attempting to list every comic ever published in the UK, as well as the first price guide for British comics. His research into the early development of comics and cinema laid the groundwork for their academic study, and his reference works remain key texts in the fields. Gifford was also a cartoonist and comic artist who worked for numerous titles, mostly for British comics in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Although these were largely humour strips, he worked in a range of genres including superhero, Western, science fiction and adventure.
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Dermot Murnaghan
Dermot John Murnaghan (; 26 December 1957 – 11 July 2026) was an English media personality, notable as a journalist, news reporter and television host. He presented for numerous networks, including Channel 4, CNBC Europe, Independent Television News and BBC News. Murnaghan anchored news programmes in a variety of time slots from when he joined Sky News in 2007 until the end of February 2023. He also presented the BBC quiz show Eggheads between 2003 and 2014.
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Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault (né Boursiquot; 26 December 1820 – 18 September 1890) was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. The New York Times hailed him in his obituary as "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century"; he and his second wife, Agnes Robertson Boucicault, applied for, and received, American citizenship in 1873.
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Don Barclay
Don Barclay (born Donn Van Tassel Barclay, December 26, 1892 – October 16, 1975) was an American actor, artist and caricaturist whose many roles spanned the period from the Keystone Cops in 1915 to Mary Poppins in 1964 and whose many paintings and caricatures of celebrities filled establishments worldwide and are archived in the Library of Congress.
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E. D. E. N. Southworth
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth (December 26, 1819 – June 30, 1899) was an American writer of more than 60 novels in the latter part of the 19th century. She was the most popular American novelist of her day. In her novels, her heroines often challenge modern perceptions of Victorian feminine domesticity by showing virtue as naturally allied to wit, adventure, and rebellion to remedy any unfortunate situation. Though The Hidden Hand (1859) was her most popular novel, Southworth's favorite of her works was her novel Ishmael (1876).
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Earle Brown
Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American music composer, producer, and educator who, as a composer, was a close associate of John Cage, and established his own formal and notational systems. As such, he created "open form," a style of musical construction that influenced composers like John Zorn and the downtown New York scene of the 1980s, as well as later generations of composers. Among Brown's most famous works are December 1952, an entirely graphic score, and the open form pieces Available Forms I & II, Centering, Cross Sections and Color Fields. He was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award in 1998.
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Edward C. Prescott
Edward Christian Prescott (December 26, 1940 – November 6, 2022) was an American economist. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004, sharing the award with Finn E. Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles". This research was primarily conducted while both Kydland and Prescott were affiliated with the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (now Tepper School of Business) at Carnegie Mellon University. According to the IDEAS/RePEc rankings, he was the 19th most widely cited economist in the world in 2013. In August 2014, Prescott was appointed an Adjunct Distinguished Economic Professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia. Prescott died of cancer on November 6, 2022, at the age of 81.
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Elisabeth of the Palatinate
Elisabeth of the Palatinate (German: Elisabeth von der Pfalz; 26 December 1618 – 11 February 1680), also known as Elisabeth of Bohemia (Elisabeth von Böhmen), Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate, or Princess-Abbess of Herford Abbey, was the eldest daughter of Frederick V, Elector Palatine (who was briefly King of Bohemia), and Elizabeth Stuart. Elisabeth of the Palatinate was a philosopher best known for her correspondence with René Descartes. She was critical of Descartes' dualistic metaphysics and her work anticipated the metaphysical concerns of later philosophers.
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Elisha Cook, Jr.
Elisha Vanslyck Cook Jr. (December 26, 1903 – May 18, 1995) was an American character actor famed for his work in film noir. He played cheerful, brainy collegiates until he was cast against type as the bug-eyed baby-faced killer Wilmer Cook in the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon. He went on to play deceptively mild-mannered villains. Cook's acting career spanned more than 60 years, with roles in productions including The Big Sleep, Shane, The Killing, House on Haunted Hill and Rosemary's Baby.
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Elizabeth Kostova
Elizabeth Johnson Kostova (born December 26, 1964) is an American author best known for her debut novel The Historian.
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Elmar Muuk
Elmar Muuk (26 December 1901 – 20 November 1941) was an Estonian linguist, lexicographer, and author of a number of dictionaries and textbooks of the Estonian language, and was, together with Johannes Voldemar Veski and Johannes Aavik, responsible for development of Estonian as a modern European language. Muuk was born in Eivere village, in the Kreis Jerwen of the Governorate of Estonia. He took part of the Estonian War of Independence. Muuk was arrested by NKVD on 14 June 1941 in Tallinn and died in imprisonment in Sevurallag, Sverdlovsk oblast.
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Ernst Moritz Arndt
Ernst Moritz Arndt (26 December 1769 – 29 January 1860) was a German nationalist historian, writer and poet. Early in his life, he fought for the abolition of serfdom, later against Napoleonic dominance over Germany. Arndt had to flee to Sweden for some time due to his anti-French positions. He is one of the main founders of German nationalism during the Napoleonic wars and the 19th century movement for German unification. After the Carlsbad Decrees, the forces of the restoration counted him as a demagogue. Arndt played an important role for the early national and liberal Burschenschaft movement and for the unification movement, and his song "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?" acted as an unofficial German national anthem.
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Evan Bayh
Birch Evans "Evan" Bayh III ( BY; born December 26, 1955) is an American politician who served as the 46th governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1997 and as a United States senator representing Indiana from 1999 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he served on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board under President Joe Biden. Bayh is the son of Senator Birch Bayh and the grandson of basketball coach Birch Bayh Sr.. He was first elected to public office as the Secretary of State of Indiana in 1986. He held the position for two years before being elected governor. He left his office after completing two terms and briefly took a job lecturing at Indiana University Bloomington. He was elected to Congress as a senator in 1998 and reelected in 2004. On February 15, 2010, Bayh unexpectedly announced he would not seek reelection to the Senate in 2010. After leaving the Senate, he was replaced by his predecessor, Dan Coats, and became a partner with the law and consulting firm McGuireWoods in the firm's Washington, D.C. office, and also became a senior adviser with Apollo Global Management. He was a part-time contributor for Fox News from March 2011 to July 2016. In June 2011 he became a messaging adviser for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. On October 27, 2011, it was announced that Berry Plastics Corp. had appointed Bayh to its board of directors. Following the withdrawal of 2016 Democratic primary winner Baron Hill, Bayh announced that he would be running to take back his old Senate seat from retiring Republican incumbent Dan Coats. He was defeated by Todd Young in the general election by a nearly 10-point margin (52.1% to 42.4%). On June 15, 2022, President Joe Biden named Bayh to serve as a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.
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Evelyn Bark
Evelyn Elizabeth Patricia Bark, (1900 - 1993) was a leading member of the British Red Cross.
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Fabián Carini
Héctor Fabián Carini Hernández (born 26 December 1979 in Montevideo) is a Uruguayan former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He played three seasons at Uruguayan club Danubio F.C before signing for Italian club Juventus in 2001. During his three seasons at Juventus, he was a backup goalkeeper to Gianluigi Buffon and spent two years on loan at Standard Liège. He signed with Inter in 2004, where he was a backup keeper. After two seasons with La Liga club Murcia, he returned to South America and would play for Atlético Mineiro, Peñarol, Deportivo Quito, and Juventud. He earned 74 caps for the Uruguay national team and represented the team at the 1999 and 2007 editions of the Copa América, as well as the 2002 World Cup.
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Fatih Akyel
Fatih Akyel (born 26 December 1977) is a Turkish football manager and former professional player. He played as a defender for clubs such as Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe during his 15-year career. He was capped by the Turkey national team 64 times from 1997 to 2004, and also won a silver medal with the Olympic team at the 1997 Mediterranean Games.
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Frank Broyles
John Franklin Broyles (December 26, 1924 – August 14, 2017) was an American college football player and coach, college athletics administrator, and broadcaster. He served as the head football coach for one season at the University of Missouri in 1957 and at the University of Arkansas from 1958 to 1976, compiling a career coaching record of 149–62–6. Broyles was also the athletic director at Arkansas from 1974 to 2007. His mark of 144–58–5 in 19 seasons at the helm of the Arkansas Razorbacks football gives him the most wins and the most coached games of any head coach in program history. With Arkansas, Broyles won seven Southwest Conference titles and his 1964 team was named a national champion by a number of selectors including the Football Writers Association of America. Broyles attended Georgia Tech, where he was the starting quarterback for the Yellow Jackets and also lettered in baseball and basketball. Following his playing career, he was an assistant football coach at Baylor University, the University of Florida, and his alma mater, Georgia Tech. Broyles was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1983.
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Frank Swift
Frank Victor Swift (26 December 1913 – 6 February 1958) was an English footballer, who played as a goalkeeper for Manchester City and England. After starting his career with Fleetwood, near his hometown of Blackpool, in 1932 he was signed by First Division Manchester City, with whom he played his entire professional career. Swift broke into the Manchester City first team in 1933, taking part in the club's run to the 1934 FA Cup Final, where the club triumphed 2–1 against Portsmouth. Three years later Swift won a League Championship medal, after playing in every match of Manchester City's championship-winning season. War denied Swift several years of playing in his prime, though during wartime he was chosen to represent his country in international matches. After the war he made his competitive international debut, playing 19 internationals between 1946 and 1949. Swift retired in 1949, taking up a career in journalism as a football correspondent for the News of the World. He died, aged 44, in the Munich air disaster after reporting on Manchester United's European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade.
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Fred Schepisi
Frederic Alan Schepisi ( SKEP-see; born 26 December 1939) is an Australian film director, producer, and screenwriter. His credits include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Plenty, Roxanne, A Cry in the Dark, Mr. Baseball, Six Degrees of Separation, and Last Orders.
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Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm
Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (26 September 1723 – 19 December 1807) was a German-born French-language journalist, art critic, diplomat and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. In 1765 Grimm wrote Poème lyrique, an influential article for the Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos. Like Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi, Grimm became interested in opera reform. According to Martin Fontius, a German literary theorist, "sooner or later a book entitled The Aesthetic Ideas of Grimm will have to be written."
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Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald
Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1803 – 25 August [O.S. 13 August] 1882) was an Estonian writer who is considered to be the father of the national literature for the country. He is the author of Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg.
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Gaby Colebunders
Gaby Colebunders (born 26 December 1972) is a Belgian trade unionist, politician and member of the Flemish Parliament. A member of the Workers' Party of Belgium, he has represented Limburg since July 2024. He had previously been a member of the Chamber of Representatives from June 2019 to May 2024. Colebunders was born on 26 December 1972 in Genk. He studied social work at the Centre for Adult Education (CVO) in Brussels. Colebunders, whose mentor was Jef Ulburghs, has been taking part in protests since he was twelve. He became a trade union representative whilst working for a cardboard company. He then worked at the Ford Genk factory for 25 years where he was a trade union representative for the General Labour Federation of Belgium (ABVV). He was at the forefront of trade union opposition to the closure of the factory announced in 2014. A hardliner, he fell out with the ABVV leadership and joined the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (ACV). He spent a night in police custody after taking part in a union demonstration at Ford Cologne in November 2012. He has also worked for a stone carpet company. Colebunders contested the 2014 regional election as the Workers' Party of Belgium (PVDA)'s first placed candidate in Limburg but the party failed to win any seats in the constituency. He was elected to the municipal council in Genk at the 2018 local election. He was elected to the Chamber of Representatives at the 2019 federal election. He was elected to the Flemish Parliament at the 2024 regional election. Colebunders is married and has three children and a grandchild. His daughter Giada died unexpectedly in June 2022 at the age of 21.
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Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blends character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York City and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United States until 1961. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism and painted watercolors.
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Imperio Argentina
Imperio Argentina (born Magdalena Nile del Río; 26 December 1906[1] – 2003) was an Argentine-born Spanish actress and singer who became one of the biggest stars of Spanish cinema during the Second Republican period. She achieved mainstream stardom after being cast by director Florián Rey in the 1927 silent film Sister San Sulpicio. Throughout her career, she starred in films directed by Spanish filmmakers such as Benito Perojo and Robert Florey, ultimately receiving an Honorary Goya Award in recognition of her institutional impact on Spanish cinema. She remained culturally active until her later years, publishing her autobiography, Malena Clara, in 2001, before dying in Málaga at the age of 97.
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Isaac Viciosa
Isaac Viciosa (born 26 December 1969 in Cervatos de la Cueza) is a Spanish former middle distance runner. Viciosa is a former European record holder at 3000m and the first European man under 7:30. He won European Championships 1998 for 5000m, and was 2nd for 1500m at European Championships 1994. He was the winner of the Cross Internacional de Venta de Baños twice consecutively in 1997 and 1998, and he won the second Cross de Atapuerca race in his native Spain at the age of 35.
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James Kottak
James Kottak (December 26, 1962 – January 9, 2024) was an American drummer, best known for his work with the German hard rock band Scorpions, which he joined in 1996. At the time of his firing from the band in 2016, he was their longest-serving drummer. Kottak was also an original member of Kingdom Come, of whom he was their drummer from 1987 to 1989 and again from 2018 to his death in 2024.
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James Mercer
James Russell Mercer (born December 26, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is the founder, vocalist, lead songwriter, and sole remaining original member of the indie rock group The Shins. In 2009, Mercer and producer Danger Mouse formed the side project Broken Bells, for which they released a self-titled album in March 2010, followed by After the Disco in 2014, and then Into the Blue in 2022. Mercer also has acted, appearing in Matt McCormick's feature film Some Days Are Better Than Others, which premiered in 2010.
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James T. Conway
James Terry Conway (born December 26, 1947) is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general who served as the 34th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Among his previous postings were Director of Operations (J-3) on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Commanding General of 1st Marine Division and I Marine Expeditionary Force, taking part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the First Battle of Fallujah.
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Jared Leto
Jared Joseph Leto ( LET-oh; born December 26, 1971) is an American actor and musician. Known for his method acting in a variety of roles, he has received various accolades over a career spanning three decades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. He is also the frontman of the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars. After beginning his career on the television series My So-Called Life (1994), Leto made his film debut in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and gained critical attention for his performance in Prefontaine (1997). After supporting roles in The Thin Red Line (1998), Fight Club (1999), Girl, Interrupted (1999) and American Psycho (2000), he received praise for his lead role as a drug addict in Requiem for a Dream (2000). He then began to focus more on music, but returned to acting with Panic Room (2002), Alexander (2004), Lord of War (2005), Chapter 27 (2007), and Mr. Nobody (2009). His performance as a transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club (2013) won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has since starred in Suicide Squad (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), The Little Things (2021), House of Gucci (2021), Morbius (2022), and Tron: Ares (2025). Leto is the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter for Thirty Seconds to Mars, a band he formed in 1998 with his older brother Shannon Leto. Its debut album, 30 Seconds to Mars (2002), was released to positive reviews but to limited commercial success. Its second album, A Beautiful Lie (2005), pushed the band into the public eye, and the next releases, This Is War (2009) and Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams (2013), received further critical and commercial success. They were followed by America (2018) and It's the End of the World but It's a Beautiful Day (2023), both of which polarized critics upon release. The band has sold over 15 million albums worldwide.
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Jay Farrar
Jay Stuart Farrar (born December 26, 1966) is an American songwriter and musician based in St. Louis. A member of two critically acclaimed music groups, Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, he began his solo music career in 2001. Beyond being a songwriter, Farrar plays guitar, piano, harmonica, and sings.
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Jean Ferrat
Jean Ferrat (born Jean Tenenbaum; 26 December 1930 – 13 March 2010) was a French singer-songwriter and poet. He specialized in singing poetry, particularly that of Louis Aragon.
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Jean Toomer
Jean Toomer (born Nathan Pinchback Toomer; December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an American poet and novelist commonly associated with modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, though he actively resisted the latter association. His reputation stems from his novel Cane (1923), which Toomer wrote during and after a stint as a school principal at a black school in rural Sparta, Georgia. The novel intertwines the stories of six women and includes an apparently autobiographical thread; sociologist Charles S. Johnson called it "the most astonishingly brilliant beginning of any Negro writer of his generation". He resisted being classified as a "Negro" writer and he identified as "American". For more than a decade Toomer was an influential follower and representative of the pioneering spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff. Toomer continued to write poetry, short stories and essays. His first wife died soon after the birth of their daughter. After he married again in 1934, Toomer moved with his family from New York to Doylestown, Pennsylvania. There, he became a member of the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) and retired from public life. His papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University.
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Jeroen Soete
Jeroen B. Soete (born 26 December 1983) is a Belgian politician and member of the Chamber of Representatives. A member of Vooruit, he has represented West Flanders since June 2024. Soete was born on 26 December 1983 in Ostend. He worked for Flemish Secretary of state John Crombez and was later a parliamentary worker for Crombez. He was then chief of staff for Flemish MP Jurgen Vanlerberghe. Soete was a member of the Socialist Party Different (SP.A)'s youth wing in Ostend. He was later chairman of the SP.A's local branch in West Flanders. He was appointed to the Public Centre for Social Welfare (OCMW) in January 2015. He contested the 2012 local election as the SP.A's 18th placed candidate in Ostend but was not elected. He was appointed to the municipal council in Ostend in September 2015 following the resignation of Franky De Block. He contested the 2018 local election as the Stadslijst's 10th placed candidate in Ostend but was not elected. He was elected to the Chamber of Representatives at the 2024 federal election.
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Joe Alexander
Joseph Anthony Alexander (Hebrew: ג'ו אלכסנדר; born December 26, 1986) is a Taiwan-born American-Israeli former professional basketball player. Alexander, at 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m) played both forward positions, was selected for the 2007 All-Big East squad during his collegiate career with West Virginia and was an All-American Honorable Mention. He was selected eighth overall in the 2008 NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, and became the first Taiwanese-born NBA player.
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Johann Georg Pisendel
Johann Georg Pisendel (5 January 1688 [O.S. 26 December 1687] – 25 November 1755) was a German Baroque violinist and composer who, for many years, led the Court Orchestra in Dresden as concertmaster, then the finest instrumental ensemble in Europe. He was the leading violinist of his time, and composers such as Tomaso Albinoni, Georg Philipp Telemann and Antonio Vivaldi all dedicated violin compositions to him.
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Johannes François Snelleman
Johannes François Snelleman (26 December 1852 – 18 May 1938) was a Dutch zoologist, orientalist, ethnographer and museum director. He was a son of Christiaan Snelleman and Sara Lacombe. Snelleman was married three times, to Josepha Hendrika Dupont, Catharina Johanna Elisabeth Augusta Inckel, and Theodora Maria Beun.
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John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician. He was active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life. Born and raised in Liverpool, Conway spent the first half of his career at the University of Cambridge before moving to the United States, where he held the John von Neumann Professorship at Princeton University for the rest of his career. On 11 April 2020, at age 82, he died of complications from COVID-19.
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John Page
Colonel John Page (c. 1627 – 23 January 1692) was an English-born planter, merchant, slave trader and politician who spent most of his life in North America. Born in Bedfont, Middlesex, Page eventually migrated to the English colony of Virginia, where he lived in Middle Plantation and served as a member of the House of Burgesses from 1665 to 1677 and a member of the Virginia Governor's Council from 1677 to 1692. A wealthy landowner, Page donated land and funds towards construction of the Bruton Parish Church. Page was also involved in the establishment of the College of William & Mary in 1693, as well as being a chief proponent of Middle Plantation being designated the colony's capital in 1698. His efforts eventually resulted in the renaming of Middle Plantation as Williamsburg in 1699, perhaps most well known as the birthplace of democratic governmental principals among Patriot revolutionaries before and during the American Revolution. In the 21st century, Page's Middle Plantation residence serves the modern home of the restored colonial-era tourism destination known as Colonial Williamsburg, a popular travel destination in Virginia.
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John Walsh
John Edward Walsh, Jr. (born December 26, 1945) is an American television presenter, victims' rights activist, and the host/creator of America's Most Wanted. He is known for his anti-crime activism, with which he became involved following the murder of his son, Adam, in 1981; in 2008, deceased serial killer Ottis Toole was officially named as Adam's killer. Walsh was part-owner of the now defunct National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C. He also anchored an investigative documentary series, The Hunt with John Walsh, which debuted on CNN in 2014.
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Josh Wilson-Esbrand
Joshua Darius Kamani Wilson-Esbrand (born 26 December 2002) is an English professional footballer who plays as a left-back for Premier League club Manchester City.
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Joshua John Miller
Joshua John Miller (born December 26, 1974) is an American actor, screenwriter, author, and director. Miller co-writes with his life partner M. A. Fortin; the two wrote the screenplay for the 2015 horror comedy The Final Girls, and the USA Network drama series Queen of the South.
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José Ramos-Horta
José Manuel Ramos-Horta (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ ˈʁɐ̃muz ˈɔɾtɐ]; born 26 December 1949) is an East Timorese politician who has been the seventh president of Timor-Leste since 2022, having previously been the fourth president from 2007 to 2012. He was a co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, for working "towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor". As a founder and former member of Fretilin, Ramos-Horta served as the exiled spokesman for the East Timorese resistance during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor (1975–1999). While he continued to work with Fretilin, he resigned from the party in 1988, becoming an independent politician. After Timor-Leste (East Timor) achieved independence in 2002, Ramos-Horta was appointed as the country's first foreign minister. He served in this position until his resignation on 25 June 2006, amidst political turmoil. On 26 June 2006, following the resignation of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, Ramos-Horta was appointed as acting prime minister by President Xanana Gusmão. Two weeks later, on 10 July 2006, he was sworn in as the second prime minister of Timor-Leste. He was elected as President in 2007. On 11 February 2008, he was shot during an assassination attempt. After leaving office as president in 2012, Ramos-Horta was appointed as the United Nations' Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) on 2 January 2013. He was re-elected to the presidency in 2022.
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José Yves Limantour
José Yves Limantour Marquet (Spanish pronunciation: [xo'se ˈiβ(e)s limanˈtuɾ]; 26 December 1854 – 26 August 1935) was a Mexican financier and politician who served as Secretary of the Finance of Mexico from 1893 until the fall of the Porfirio Díaz regime in 1911. One of the most prominent politicians of the Porfiriato era, he was a key member of Díaz's technocratic advisors known as Los Científicos. Born into a French Mexican family in Mexico City, Limantour received a high education. He studied economics, and after a period working as a legal teacher, he was appointed as Mexico's secretary of finance in 1893. As the secretary of finance, Limantour established the gold standard in Mexico, suspending free coinage of silver, and mandating only government coins be used. He secured the national debt in 1899 with a consortium of foreign banks, and at the time of the outbreak of the Revolution, Mexico was on strong financial basis. Before the Mexican Revolution he was widely seen, along with General Bernardo Reyes, as one of the stronger candidates to succeed President Díaz. After the revolution broke out due to unpopularity of the Díaz regime, he went into exile in France, where he died in 1935.
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Karel Rüütli
Karel Rüütli (born 25 December 1978, in Valga) was Chairman of the Estonian People's Union (Eestimaa Rahvaliit) and also leader of the Estonian People's Union faction in the Estonian Parliament. He left the ERL and joined the Social Democratic Party of Estonia on 14 June 2010.
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Kathleen Crowley
Kathleen Crowley (born Betty Jane Crowley; December 26, 1929 – April 23, 2017) was an American actress. She appeared in over 100 movies and television series in the 1950s and 1960s, almost always as a leading lady.
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Keith Martin Ball
Keith Martin Ball (born 26 December 1960) is a mathematician and professor at the University of Warwick. He was scientific director of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) from 2010 to 2014.
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Kenneth Darby
Kenneth Darby (born December 26, 1982) is an American former professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Alabama Crimson Tide. He was selected by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the seventh round of the 2007 NFL draft. Darby was also a member of the Atlanta Falcons and St. Louis Rams.
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Khan Bahadur Ahsanullah
Khan Bahadur Ahsanullah (27 December 1873 – 9 February 1965) was an educator, litterateur, Islamic theologist and social reformer of pre-partition India. He was instrumental in the formation of the University of Dhaka and is the namesake of Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology.
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Kitty Dukakis
Katharine Virginia "Kitty" Dickson Dukakis ( duu-KAH-kiss; née Dickson; December 26, 1936 – March 21, 2025) was an American author and activist for various social causes. She served as the First Lady of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and 1983 to 1991, as the wife of the Governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis (who was the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 1988).
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Konstantinos Georgakopoulos
Konstantinos Georgakopoulos (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Γεωργακόπουλος; 26 December 1890 – 26 July 1973) was a Greek lawyer, politician and Prime Minister of Greece.
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Leo Carlsson
Leif Leo Olof Carlsson (born 26 December 2004) is a Swedish professional ice hockey player who is a centre and alternate captain for the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was drafted second overall by the Ducks in the 2023 NHL entry draft.
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Leonel Fernández
Leonel Antonio Fernández Reyna (born 26 December 1953) ( lay-oh-NEHL fer-NAHN-dehss), is a Dominican lawyer, academic, and was the 50th and 52nd President of the Dominican Republic from 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2012. From 2016 until 2020, he was the President of the EU–LAC Foundation. Fernández became the first elected president of the Dominican Republic under his political party, the Dominican Liberation Party (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana, or PLD), although party founder Juan Bosch was also sworn in as president in 1963 after the first democratic elections held in roughly four decades in the country. Fernández's administrations have focused much on technological and infrastructural development and macroeconomic and monetary stability. He has served as the party president of the Dominican Liberation Party from 2001 until his resignation on 20 October 2019. He later founded the People's Force and nominated himself as its party's presidential nominee. He is a native of Villa Juana, Distrito Nacional and lived for much of his childhood and early adulthood in New York City. Fernández is a former president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations (2018-2022) and a member of the Inter-American Dialogue.
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Lord George Gordon
Lord George Gordon (26 December 1751 – 1 November 1793) was a British nobleman and politician best known for lending his name to the Gordon Riots of 1780. An eccentric and flighty personality, he was born into the Scottish nobility and sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1780. His life ended after a number of controversies, notably one surrounding his conversion to Judaism, for which he was ostracised. He died in Newgate Prison.
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Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976) was a Chinese communist revolutionary, political theorist and the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led China from the PRC's establishment in October 1949 until his death in September 1976, primarily through his role as the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). His theories, which he advocated as a Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism, are known as Mao Zedong Thought. Born to a peasant family in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao studied in Changsha and was influenced by the 1911 Revolution and ideas of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism. He was introduced to Marxism while working as a librarian at Peking University, and later participated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919. In 1921, Mao became a founding member of the CCP. After the start of the Chinese Civil War, he helped build the Chinese Red Army, and developed a strategy of guerilla warfare. In 1935, Mao became leader of the CCP during the Long March, a military retreat to the Yan'an Soviet in Shaanxi. The CCP allied with the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1937, but the civil war resumed after Japan's surrender in 1945. He defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to the island of Taiwan in 1949. He led land redistribution and industrialisation campaigns, suppressed political opponents, and intervened in the Korean War. Afterwards, a brief period of liberalisation, known as the Hundred Flowers Campaign, was also suppressed. From 1958 to 1962, Mao oversaw the Great Leap Forward, a campaign that aimed to collectivise agriculture and industrialise the country, followed by the Great Chinese Famine. In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, which was marked by violent class struggle, destruction of historical artifacts, and Mao's cult of personality. Mao died in 1976. He was initially succeeded by Hua Guofeng, then in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping. China under his leadership has been described as a totalitarian regime which resulted in tens of millions of deaths, mainly through famine, as well as political persecution, prison labor, and executions. He is credited with transforming China from a semi-colony into a major world power and promoting literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, education, and an increased life expectancy. He is recognized for his role in ending imperialism and consolidating the state in China. Under his rule, China became the fifth state to possess nuclear weapons. Mao was influential in the international communist movement, inspiring various Maoist organisations.
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Marius Canard
Marius Canard FBA (26 December 1888 – 13 September 1982) was a French Orientalist and historian.
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Martin Cooper
Martin Cooper (born December 26, 1928) is an American engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field. On April 3, 1973, Cooper placed the first public call from a handheld portable cell phone while working at Motorola, from a Manhattan sidewalk to his counterpart at competitor Bell Labs. Cooper reprised the first handheld cellular mobile phone (distinct from the car phone) in 1973 and led the team that redeveloped it and brought it to market in 1983. He is considered the "father of the (handheld) cell phone", and received the 2015 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award for this work. Cooper is co-founder of numerous communications companies with his wife and business partner Arlene Harris; He is co-founder and current Chairman of Dyna LLC, in Del Mar, California. Cooper also sits on committees supporting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Commerce. In 2010, Cooper was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for leadership in the creation and deployment of the cellular portable hand-held telephone.
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Mary Somerville
Mary Somerville (née Fairfax, formerly Greig; 1780–1872) was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835 she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first female Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical Society. In John Stuart Mill's 1866 mass petition to the UK Parliament to grant women the right to vote, the first signature on the petition was Somerville's, which she signed before the age of 86. When she died in 1872, The Morning Post declared in her obituary that "Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science". The first use of the word "scientist" in the English language was in a review by William Whewell of Somerville's second book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. Beyond her work as a scientist, she is known and celebrated as a mathematician and philosopher. Somerville College, a college of the University of Oxford, is named after her, reflecting the virtues of liberalism and academic success that the college wished to embody. She is featured on the front of the Royal Bank of Scotland polymer £10 note launched in 2017 along with a quotation from On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences.
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Mathieu Cordang
Mathieu Cordang (6 December 1869 – 24 March 1942) was a Dutch professional cyclist. His specialties were track racing and endurance racing.
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Matt Gordy
Matthew Bell Gordy (December 26, 1909 – August 18, 1989) was an American pole vaulter. In 1933 Gordy shared first place at both the NCAA championships and the national championships and helped Louisiana State University win the NCAA team title.
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Matt Zoller Seitz
Matt Zoller Seitz (born December 26, 1968) is an American film and television critic, author and filmmaker.
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Maurice Utrillo
Maurice Utrillo (French: [mɔʁis ytʁijo, moʁ-]; born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955) was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. From the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre to have been born there.
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Morgan Bulkeley
Morgan Gardner Bulkeley (December 26, 1837 – November 6, 1922) was an American politician of the Republican Party, businessman, and insurance executive. In 1876, he served as the first president of baseball's National League and, because of that, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937, a choice that remains controversial, since his time as a baseball executive was short. Bulkeley was born in East Haddam, Connecticut. His father was Judge Eliphalet Adams Bulkeley, a prominent local lawyer and businessman, who became the first president of the Aetna Life Insurance Company. The family moved to Hartford, where Morgan Bulkeley was educated, before he took a job in the city of Brooklyn, New York. He served briefly in the American Civil War, where he saw no combat. When his father died in 1872, he moved back to Hartford and became a bank president and a board member of Aetna, becoming its president in 1879, a post he held the rest of his life. When the Hartford Dark Blues baseball team was asked to join the new National League in 1876, Bulkeley, the team president, was asked to become league president, despite having minimal baseball experience. He served one season, while most of the work was done by Chicago White Stockings owner William Hulbert. Bulkeley also served on the Hartford Common Council and in 1880 was elected to the first of four two-year terms as mayor of Hartford. Bulkeley was elected Governor of Connecticut, taking office in 1889. He was not renominated by the Republicans, but served a second two-year term because the houses of the state legislature could not agree on the outcome of the 1890 election. Holding over in office after the end of his elected term, he found the entry to the executive offices at the State House was locked against him; he had it opened with a crowbar, thus earning him the nickname "the Crowbar Governor". He left office in 1893, and served one term as U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1905 to 1911. In his final years he remained involved with civic and philanthropic activities. After his death in 1922, several structures in Hartford, including a bridge and a high school, were named for him.
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Norman Angell
Sir Ralph Norman Angell (26 December 1872 – 7 October 1967) was a lecturer, journalist, author and Member of Parliament for the Labour Party. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to promote peace, particularly through writings that argued that modern economic interdependence made war irrational and self-defeating. Angell was one of the principal founders of the Union of Democratic Control. He served on the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was an executive for the World Committee against War and Fascism, a member of the executive committee of the League of Nations Union, and the president of the Abyssinia Association. He was knighted in 1931 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933. Angell is most remembered for his 1910 book The Great Illusion, the thesis of which is that the economic integration of the European countries had grown to such a degree that war between them would be entirely futile, making militarism obsolete. Angell was frequently misunderstood at the time, and afterward, as claiming that a general European war was impossible. Because of this widespread misunderstanding, the advent of World War I exposed Angell to scholarly and popular derision.
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Olga Lopes-Seale
Dame Olga Lopes-Seale DA MBE, (26 December 1918 – 4 February 2011) was a Guyanese-born Barbados-based social and community worker, radio broadcaster and singer.
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Oskar Osala
Oskar Osala (born 26 December 1987) is a Finnish former professional ice hockey player. He played in three National Hockey League (NHL) games with the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes and represented Finland in Olympic Winter Games 2018.
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Pablo Canavosio
Pablo Canavosio (born 26 December 1981 in Córdoba, Argentina) is an Italian Argentine rugby union footballer. Canavosio played for Rovigo, Calvisano, Castres Olympique and Aironi. His usual position is at scrum half or wing. Canavosio has been capped by Italy. He made his international debut in June 2005, as a substitute against Australia in Melbourne. He started in all Italy's games in the 2006 Six Nations Championship, was a replacement in two 2007 Rugby World Cup - Europe qualification matches (in which he scored three tries) and started in the 2006 Autumn internationals against Australia and Argentina. Canavosio played only once during the 2007 Rugby World Cup, against Portugal. He was selected in Italy's squad for the 2008 Six Nations Championship and the 2009 Six Nations Championship. Pablo was selected in Italy's squad for the 2010 Six Nations Championship and he scored a late try as a substitute for Italy in their loss to France. He also played at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
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Paulo Frederico Benevenute
Paulo Frederico Benevenute (born 26 December 1973), known as Paulão, is a retired Brazilian footballer.
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Peter Hillary
Peter Edmund Hillary (born 26 December 1954) is a New Zealand mountaineer and philanthropist. He is the son of Sir Edmund Hillary, who, along with mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, completed the first successful ascent of Mount Everest. When Peter Hillary summited Everest in 1990, he and his father were the first father/son duo to achieve the feat. Hillary has achieved two summits of Everest, an 84-day trek across Antarctica to the South Pole, and an expedition guiding astronaut Neil Armstrong to land a small aircraft at the North Pole. He has climbed many of the world's major peaks, and on 19 June 2008, completed the Seven Summits, reaching the top of the highest mountains on all seven continents, when he summited Denali in Alaska.
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Phan Bội Châu
Phan Bội Châu (Vietnamese: [faːn ɓôjˀ cəw]; 26 December 1867 – 29 October 1940) was a Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary. In 1904, he formed a revolutionary organization called Duy Tân Hội ("Modernization Association") and initiated the Đông Du movement. From 1905 to 1908, he lived in Japan where he wrote political tracts calling for the independence of Vietnam from French colonial rule. After being forced to leave Japan, he moved to China where he was influenced by Sun Yat-sen and gradually shifted his political position from monarchist to democrat. In 1912, he disbanded Duy Tân Hội to form Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội (“Vietnamese Restoration League”), modeled after Sun Yat-sen's republican party. In 1925, French agents seized him in Shanghai. He was convicted of treason and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in Huế.
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Philaret Drozdov
Metropolitan Philaret (Real name Vasily Mikhaylovich Drozdov, Василий Михайлович Дроздов; 26 December 1782 – 1 December 1867) was Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna and the most influential figure in the Russian Orthodox Church for more than 40 years, from 1821 to 1867. He was canonized on 13 October 1994 and his feast day is celebrated on November 19.
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Ragnhild Kaarbø
Ragnhild Kaarbø (26 December 1889 – 20 August 1949) was a Norwegian painter. Influenced by Fauvism, she painted expressionistic portraits. She was also influenced by Cubism, but as her cubistic paintings were criticized by the press, she eventually focused on impressionistic landscape paintings.
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Raja Pervaiz Ashraf
Raja Pervez Ashraf (born 26 December 1950) is a Pakistani politician, businessman and agriculturist who served as the 17th prime minister of Pakistan from June 2012 to March 2013 and as the Speaker of the National Assembly from April 2022 to March 2024. Ashraf was a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from NA-58 (Rawalpindi-II). He has also served as the Senior Vice President of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an alliance of political parties opposed to Imran Khan's PTI party. Prior to being elevated as prime minister, he served as the Minister for Water and Power in the Yousaf Raza Gillani-led government from March 2008 to February 2011. A senior-ranking leader in the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from Rawalpindi District, Ashraf assumed premiership on 22 June 2012 after Yousaf Raza Gillani was disqualified over contempt of court charges. Shortlisted by the PPP as a candidate for the post, he was eventually elected based on a 211–89 vote in the National Assembly. Tackling the corruption scandals, one of the major achievements during his premiership was his interest to develop and implement hydro projects in particular the 970-MW Neelum-Jhelum project. The project had received a big jolt when the Chinese Exim Bank refused to release a $448 million loan linking it to the restoration of the Safe City Project in Islamabad which was stopped by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. During his tenure Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) launched a number of mega and medium-sized projects in Gilgit–Baltistan.
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Ralph Hill
Ralph Anthony Hill (December 26, 1908 – October 17, 1994) was an American runner. He set an American record over the mile in 1930 and won a silver medal in the 5000 m event at the 1932 Olympics. Hill studied at the University of Oregon when competing in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles on the 5000 m. In an exciting race on August 5, 1932, he came in second behind Lauri Lehtinen, with each runner recording a time of 14:30.0. The judges deliberated for an hour before deciding not to disqualify Lehtinen, who had appeared to block Hill twice. Hill refused to file a protest, stating that he believed Lehtinen's obstruction was accidental. Lauri Virtanen came in third, 14 seconds behind. After college, Hill made a career of farming near Klamath Falls. The local Henley High School renamed its football field in September 1992 after its alumnus Hill.
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René Bazin
René François Nicolas Marie Bazin (26 December 1853 – 20 July 1932) was a French novelist.
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Richard Artschwager
Richard Ernst Artschwager (December 26, 1923 – February 9, 2013) was an American painter, illustrator and sculptor. His work has associations with pop art, conceptual art, and minimalism.
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Richard Mayes
Derek Leonard Richard Mayes (26 December 1922 – 22 October 2006) was an English stage, film and television actor. He trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. A well-known face on British television, he was primarily a theatrical actor, described by The Stage as "an RSC stalwart." He appeared in many roles on stage and small screen, including roles in Doctor Who and as Jedediah Dingle in Emmerdale. He suffered a stroke in 2004. Mayes was married to the actress Beryl King, with whom he had two daughters, Susan and Penny.
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Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark (December 26, 1914 – March 24, 2008) was an American actor and film producer. For his debut film role as the villainous Tommy Udo in the film noir Kiss of Death (1947), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won the inaugural Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Early in his film career, Widmark was typecast in similar villainous or anti-hero roles in films noir, but he later branched out into more heroic leading and supporting roles in Westerns, mainstream dramas, and horror films among others. He also produced several films. For his contributions to motion pictures, Widmark received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Robert Bolling
Robert Bolling (December 26, 1646 – July 17, 1709) was an English-born merchant, planter and politician. He was the founder of the Bolling family of Virginia, one of the First Families of Virginia, with at least fifteen descendants (including two of his sons) serving in the Virginia General Assembly as well as holding local offices, as did he.
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Rohan Kanhai
Rohan Bholalall Kanhai (born 26 December 1935) is a Guyanese former cricketer of Indo-Guyanese origin who represented the West Indies in 79 Test matches. Kanhai featured on several great West Indian teams and is considered one of the best batsmen of the 1960s. C. L. R. James wrote in the New World Journal that Kanhai was "the high peak of West Indian cricketing development" and praised his "adventuresome" attitude. Kanhai was part of the West Indian team that won the inaugural, 1975 Cricket World Cup without losing a match.
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Rolf Botvid
Rolf Botvid (26 December 1915 – 22 July 1998) was a Swedish actor and screenwriter. He appeared in over 30 films. He was the son of actor and comedian John Botvid and was married to actress Marianne Gyllenhammar.
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Rose Lok
Rose Lok (26 December 1526 – 21 November 1613) was an English businesswoman and Protestant exile during the Tudor period. At the age of eighty-four, she wrote an account covering the first part of her life.
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Simon Goodwin
Simon Goodwin (born 26 December 1976) is a retired Australian rules football player and coach, who played 275 games for the Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He went on to become the interim senior coach of the Essendon Football Club in 2013 and the senior coach of the Melbourne Football Club between 2017 and 2025, helping lead the club to its first premiership in 57 years in 2021. Throughout his playing career, Goodwin was a high-achieving midfielder who earnt multiple All-Australian selections and best and fairests. He captained the club for three seasons before retiring at the end of the 2010 season. He won two premierships with the Crows in 1997 and 1998. As coach of Melbourne, Goodwin led the Demons back into the finals in 2018, before coaching the side to premiership success three years later. His tenure as coach ended in August 2025, three weeks out from the end of the season, following successive years in which the club failed to initially win and later qualify for finals. Goodwin was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame as a player in 2017.
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Steve Allen
Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was an American television and radio personality, comedian, musician, composer, writer, and actor. Though he got his start in radio, he is best known for his extensive network television career. Allen gained national attention as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. In 1954, he achieved further national fame as the co-creator and first host of The Tonight Show, which was the first late-night nationwide television talk show. He then went on to host numerous game and variety shows, including his own The Steve Allen Show, I've Got a Secret, and The New Steve Allen Show. He was a regular panel member on CBS's What's My Line? and, from 1977 until 1981, he wrote, produced, and hosted the award-winning public broadcasting show Meeting of Minds, a series of historical dramas presented in a talk format. Allen was a pianist and a prolific composer. By his own estimate, he wrote more than 8,500 songs, some of which were recorded by numerous leading singers. Allen won the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Original Jazz Composition for "Gravy Waltz," for which he wrote the lyrics. He also wrote more than 50 books, including novels, children's books, and books of opinions, including his final book, Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio (2001). In 1996, Allen was presented with the Martin Gardner Lifetime Achievement Award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP). He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and The Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood named in his honor.
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Tamara Zidanšek
Tamara Zidanšek (Slovene: [zíːdanˈʃɛːk]; born 26 December 1997) is a Slovenian professional tennis player. She has career-high rankings of world No. 22 in singles and No. 47 in doubles. She has won one singles title and four doubles titles on the WTA Tour along with three singles titles and one doubles title on the WTA Challenger Tour. Additionally, she has won 18 titles in singles and six in doubles on the ITF Circuit. She is currently the No. 2 player from Slovenia. In Juniors, she reached a career-high ranking of No. 16 in December 2015. Playing for the Slovenia Fed Cup team, she has a win–loss record of 12–13 (as of July 2025).
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Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, and classical scholar at Cambridge University, being a fellow first of Peterhouse then of Pembroke College. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751. Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757 after the death of Colley Cibber, though he declined.
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Thomas Wass
Thomas George Wass (26 December 1873 – 27 October 1953) was a Nottinghamshire cricketer, a bowler best remembered, alongside Albert Hallam, for bowling that gave Nottinghamshire a brilliant County Championship win in 1907. Wass also holds the record for the most wickets taken for Nottinghamshire — 1633 for 20.34 each. Tall and solidly built, Wass had a highly rhythmic run-up that allowed him to be, in his prime, fast through the air. However, it was his leg-cutter that made him formidable, and Wass, unlike most fast bowlers of the time, was very dangerous after rain but less effective on a firm pitch when the ball did not turn. He also had a very difficult slower ball that on his best days caught many batsmen unaware. Wass was a very moderate fieldsman, and had no pretensions to be a batsman — though he did score 56 against Derbyshire in 1906, he was dropped four times in doing so. Wass began his career in local cricket but became a professional for Edinburgh Academicals and Liverpool. Qualified by residence, Wass was offered a place on the Lancashire staff but declined, yet he still took some time to establish himself in a Nottinghamshire side that was in the late 1890s exceedingly weak in bowling and it was never understood why he was given so little to do when he finally broke into the team in the last game against Lancashire. In his first two full seasons, he had very modest records, but in 1900 Wass became Nottinghamshire's chief bowler along with John Gunn, and bowled the team to seven victories as against five in the three season from 1897 to 1899. In 1901, apart from one match on a sticky wicket against a weak Derbyshire eleven, Wass was so disappointing he was dropped from the side. He took 58 wickets at the contemporaneously high cost of 29.72. On the wet wickets of 1902 Wass became one of the most difficult bowlers in the game, capturing 140 wickets at 15.89 runs each in all first-class cricket. It remains noteworthy how Wass' bowling was the decisive factor in each Nottinghamshire victory that summer: v Sussex at Hove: seven for 19 and five for 22 TOTAL 12 wickets for 41 runs v Leicestershire at Leicester: eight for 73 and five for 41 TOTAL 13 wickets for 114 runs v Derbyshire at Derby: three for 75 and six for 152 TOTAL 9 wickets for 227 runs (on one of the few hard wickets of a wet summer) v Gloucestershire at Trent Bridge: six for 94 and seven for 60 TOTAL 13 wickets for 154 runs v Derbyshire at Trent Bridge: five for 64 and six for 53 TOTAL 11 wickets for 117 runs v Lancashire at Old Trafford: five for 64 and seven for 48 TOTAL 12 wickets for 112 runs GRAND TOTAL for six wins: 70 wickets for 765 runs, average 10.93 In 1903, despite numerous soft pitches, Wass was less effective, taking 76 wickets, though this was frequently attributed to the extreme placidity of the Trent Bridge pitches in fine weather. Still, in 1904, though overworked in unfavourable conditions, Wass appeared for the Players at Kennington Oval, which was to remain one of only two appearances he ever made in a representative match. In 1905, he was at times deadly but handicapped by an injury in a local game, which kept him out of a third of Nottinghamshire's county matches. May 1906 saw Wass at his deadliest, including one of the most remarkable games in county cricket at Aigburth, where he took 16 wickets in a day on a sticky wicket, yet Nottinghamshire still lost. However, after he recovered from a strain sustained in the Whitsuntide game against Surrey "the long-continued dry weather found out his limitations". In 1907, however, Wass opened with something even more sensational: taking 6 wickets for 3 runs against the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) after two blank days. This time wet weather continued almost continuously all summer, allowing Wass and Hallam to dominate match after match to such an extent that they took 298 wickets between them in just nineteen games, of which Nottinghamshire won fifteen and were never defeated. Nobody else bar John Gunn did any serious work, and Gunn took only 25 wickets in seventeen matches in which he bowled. Wass was chosen in the thirteen for the First Test against South Africa at Lord's in 1907 but left out of the final eleven. In 1908, although Hallam declined owing to rheumatism in his right shoulder, Wass remained at his best and took sixteen for 103 in a day against Essex. 1909, a summer as wet as 1907, was very disappointing: although Hallam was back to full fitness, Wass had his worst record since 1905, but in the following two years he recovered his form, and when helped by the wicket remained as formidable as ever despite having lost much of his former pace. The wet summer of 1912 was disappointing, with the wickets more helpful than ever: Wass took fifty fewer wickets than in 1907. Then in 1913 he failed to reach 100 wickets in a full season for the first time in ten years. 1914, when Wass was handicapped by injury and missed seven games, saw him fall further to 69 wickets at his highest average since 1903. After the war he appeared only once, in Joe Hardstaff senior's benefit match. "Topsy" Wass was regarded as a character but was generally popular drawing a remarkably warm tribute from Sir Pelham Warner when he died.
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Todd Dunivant
Todd Dunivant (born December 26, 1980) is an American soccer executive and former defender who played 13 years in Major League Soccer winning 5 MLS Cup trophies. After retirement he spearheaded the San Francisco Deltas professional soccer team as the Director of Soccer Operations and Business Development, winning the NASL Championship in its expansion season. He served as the president and general manager of Sacramento Republic FC from 2018 to 2025, leading the team to the 2022 U.S. Open Cup Final. Beginning in 2026, Dunivant will be the new sporting director of Major League Soccer side New York City FC.
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Vinicio Cerezo
Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo (born 26 December 1942) is a Guatemalan politician who served as the 40th President of Guatemala from 1986 to 1991. He also served as the Secretary General of the Central American Integration System (SICA) from 2017 to 2021. His tenure as President of Guatemala was characterized by political instability and political corruption. There were two failed coup attempts against Arévalo.
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Virginia Bolten
Virginia Bolten (1870–1960) was an Argentine journalist and anarchist feminist activist. An anarchist agitator from an early age, she became a leading figure among the working women of Rosario, organising for the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA) and leading the first women's strike in the country's history. After being recruited into the anarchist movement in Buenos Aires by the Italian anarchist Pietro Gori, she joined some of the country's first anarchist women's organisations and established one of the world's first anarchist feminist periodicals: La Voz de la Mujer. After years of agitation in Argentina, under the 1902 Law of Residence, she was deported to Uruguay. There she continued her feminist activism, establishing the periodical La Nueva Senda and the radical feminist association Emancipación. Following sustained conflict with socialist feminists, the anarchist feminist movement in Uruguay fell into obscurity. Bolten lived the rest of her life in Montevideo, occasionally speaking at demonstrations, until her death in 1960.
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Wang Lijun
Wang Lijun (born 26 December 1959) is a Chinese former police chief. He served as vice-mayor and police chief of the megacity of Chongqing. Wang is ethnically Mongol and was born in Arxan, Inner Mongolia. Prior to taking on positions in Chongqing, Wang served as vice-mayor and police chief of Jinzhou, Liaoning, and the police chief of Tieling, Liaoning. Wang rose to prominence in Liaoning where he gained a reputation for carrying out effective campaigns against organized crime. He became a close associate of prominent politician Bo Xilai, initially working for Bo in Liaoning province, then taking up the police chief post in Chongqing once Bo became the Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary there. In Chongqing, Wang was known for his role as a political fixer for Bo Xilai, in addition to carrying out the Chongqing gang trials, which gained significant media coverage. In March 2012, Wang, feeling threatened after having fallen out with Bo, abruptly appeared at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in what became known as the Wang Lijun incident, setting off a sensational and protracted political scandal that brought down himself and Bo Xilai. In September 2012, Wang was convicted on charges of abuse of power, bribery, and defection, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He also testified against Bo Xilai at Bo's trial.
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Wilhelm Xylander
Wilhelm Xylander (born Wilhelm Holtzman, graecized to Xylander; 26 December 1532 – 10 February 1576) was a German classical scholar and humanist. He served as rector of Heidelberg University in 1564.
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William Ayers
William Charles Ayers (; born December 26, 1944) is an American retired professor and former community organizer. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the far-left militant organization the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group that sought to overthrow the United States government which they viewed as American imperialism. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings resulted in the deaths of three members, who were killed when one of the group's devices accidentally exploded. The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Ayers was hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others. Ayers went on to become a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, a controversy arose over his contacts with then-candidate Barack Obama. Investigations by The New York Times, CNN, and other news organizations concluded that Obama did not have a close relationship with Ayers. He is married to lawyer and law professor Bernardine Dohrn, who was also a leader in the Weather Underground.
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William Loeb III
William Loeb III (December 26, 1905 – September 13, 1981) was an American newspaper publisher. He is remembered for his unyieldingly conservative political views, which helped made the Manchester Union Leader of Manchester, New Hampshire, one of the best-known small papers in the country. The newspaper also benefited from nationwide attention every four years during the New Hampshire presidential primary. Loeb was publisher of the Union Leader from 1946 until his death, a period of 35 years.
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William Stephens
William Dennison Stephens (December 26, 1859 – April 25, 1944) was an American federal and state politician. A three-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1916, Stephens was the 24th governor of California from 1917 to 1923. Prior to becoming Governor, Stephens served as the 27th lieutenant governor of California from 1916 to 1917, due to the death of John Morton Eshleman, and served a brief time as Mayor of Los Angeles in 1909 due to the resignation of Arthur C. Harper. He served as the 27th Mayor of Los Angeles in 1909. As governor, he was a Progressive who kept the reforms of his predecessor, Hiram Johnson, and remained visible throughout his governorship. He lost a bid for re-nomination in 1922 to California State Treasurer Friend William Richardson, who campaigned as a conservative.
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Yi I
Yi I (Korean: 이이; Hanja: 李珥; 1536–1584) was a Korean philosopher, writer, and Confucian scholar of the Joseon period. Yi is often referred to by his art name Yulgok ("Chestnut valley"). He was also a politician and was the academical successor of Cho Kwangjo.
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Yohan Blake
Yohan Blake (born 26 December 1989) is a Jamaican sprinter specialising in the 100-metre and 200-metre sprint races. He won gold at the 100 m at the 2011 World Athletics Championships as the youngest 100 m world champion ever, and a silver medal in the 2012 Olympic Games in London in the 100 m and 200 m races for the Jamaican team behind Usain Bolt. His times of 9.75 in 100 m and 19.44 in 200 m are the fastest 100 m and 200 m Olympic sprints in history to place second. Blake is the second‑fastest man ever in both 100 m and 200 m. Together with Tyson Gay, he is the joint second fastest man ever over 100 m with a personal best of 9.69 seconds which he ran on 23 August 2012 which he ran into a slight headwind of −0.1 m/s compared to Tyson Gay's +2.0 m/s making his time (with wind adjustments) the second fastest time of all time. Only Usain Bolt has run faster (9.58 s and 9.63 s). His personal best for the 200 m (19.26 seconds) is the second fastest time ever after Bolt (19.19 seconds). Blake holds the Jamaican national junior record for the 100 metres, and was the youngest sprinter to have broken the 10-second barrier at 19 years, 196 days old before Trayvon Bromell ran 100 m in 9.97 seconds at 18 years 11 months and 3 days old. As such, Blake is considered one of the best sprinters of all time. Blake was coached by Glen Mills until 2019. His training partners were Usain Bolt and Daniel Bailey.
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Yun Chi-ho
Yun Ch'iho (Korean: 윤치호; 23 January 1865 – 6 December 1945) was a Korean politician. His name is sometimes spelled Yun Tchi-Ho, his art name was Chwaong (좌옹), and his courtesy name was Sŏnghŭm (성흠). Yun was born a member of a prominent aristocratic (yangban) family. He was the son of General Yun Ung-nyeol, who served as a minister in the Joseon government. Yun's connections earned him the rare opportunity to study abroad, and he did so in China, Japan and the United States. In the United States, he attended both Vanderbilt University and Emory University. Yun was a prominent politician during the late Joseon and Korean Empire periods. He was a member of a number of reformist organizations, including the Independence Club, the People's Joint Association, and the New People's Association. He was a strong nationalist especially in his early years. He served in various government positions. He was also an ardent Methodist Christian, and an early leader of the Korean YMCA. Although Yun was widely considered a nationalist for much of his early career, as Japan tightened its grip over Korea and eventually colonized it in 1910, Yun began to support the cause of the Japanese. He notably did not support many of the actions of the Korean independence movement, such as the March First Movement. As such, many recent Koreans remember him as a collaborator ("chinilpa").
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Étienne Constantin de Gerlache
Étienne Constantin, Baron de Gerlache (French pronunciation: [etjɛn kɔ̃stɑ̃tɛ̃ baʁɔ̃ də ʒɛʁlaʃ]; 26 December 1785 – 10 February 1871) was a lawyer and politician in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and later became in 1831 the first prime minister of the newly founded Belgian state. He was born as son of Francois de Gerlache and Margarethe de Groulart. He studied law in Paris and practised there for some time, but settled at Liège after the establishment of the kingdom of the Netherlands. As member of the states-general he was an energetic member of the opposition, and, though he repudiated an ultramontane policy, he supported the alliance of the extreme Catholics with the Liberal party, which paved the way for the revolution of 1830. On the outbreak of disturbance in August 1830 he still, however, thought the Orange-Nassau dynasty and the union with the Dutch states essential; but his views changed, and, after holding various offices in the provisional government, he became president of congress, and brought forward the motion inviting Leopold of Saxe-Coburg to become king of the Belgians. In 1832 he was president of the chamber of representatives, and for thirty-five years he presided over the court of appeal. He presided over the Catholic congresses held at Mechelen between 1863 and 1867. That his early Liberal views underwent some modification is plain from the Conservative principles enunciated in his Essai sur le mouvement des partis en Belgique (Brussels, 1852). As a historian his work was strongly colored by his anti-Dutch prejudices and his Catholic predilections. His Histoire des Pays-Bas depuis 1814 jusquen 1830 (Brussels, 2 vols., 1839), which reached a fourth edition in 1875, was a piece of special pleading against the Dutch domination. The most important of his other works were his Histoire de Liège (Brussels, 1843) and his Études sur Salluste et sur quelques-uns des principaux historiens de l'antiquité (Brussels, 1847). In 1831, he was elected in Liège for the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, of which he was president until 1832. Later on, he became the first 1st president of the Belgian Court of Cassation, a position he occupied until 1867. He died on 10 February 1871 in Ixelles.
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