Who was born on February 8?
February 8 is packed with notable birthdays. Explore 111 famous birthdays, sorted by recent English Wikipedia pageviews. Top ranked names include Mary Steenburgen, Kathryn Newton, James Dean, Nick Nolte, Creed Bratton. Filter by actor, musician, athlete, and more — or open any other calendar day.
February 8
111 people
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Mary Steenburgen
Mary Nell Steenburgen (; born February 8, 1953) is an American actress, comedian, singer, and songwriter. After studying at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse in the 1970s, she made her professional acting debut in the Western comedy film Goin' South (1978). Steenburgen went on to earn critical acclaim for her role in Time After Time (1979) and Jonathan Demme's comedy-drama film Melvin and Howard (1980), for which she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Steenburgen received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Miloš Forman's drama film Ragtime (1981). Her other films include A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), Cross Creek (1983), Back to the Future Part III (1990), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Philadelphia (1993), Nixon (1995), The Brave One (2007), Last Vegas (2013), A Walk in the Woods (2015), Book Club (2018), Nightmare Alley (2021), and Book Club: The Next Chapter (2023). She also played mothers in a string of comedy films including Parenthood (1989), Elf (2003), Step Brothers (2008), Four Christmases (2008), The Proposal (2009), Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), The Help (2011), and Happiest Season (2020). She received nominations for a BAFTA TV Award for the miniseries Tender Is the Night (1985) and a Primetime Emmy Award for the television film The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank (1988). Steenburgen has worked as a singer-songwriter for numerous films, in some of which she starred. For her song "Glasgow (No Place Like Home)", written for the musical film Wild Rose (2018), she received the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Song. Steenburgen was awarded with Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2025.
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Kathryn Newton
Kathryn Love Newton (born February 8, 1997) is an American actress. She is known for her starring roles as Louise Brooks in the CBS comedy series Gary Unmarried (2008–2010), Abigail Carlson in the HBO mystery drama series Big Little Lies (2017–2019), and Allie Pressman in the Netflix teen drama series The Society (2019). She is also known for portraying the older versions of Claire Novak in The CW dark fantasy series Supernatural (2014–2018) and Joanie Clark in the AMC period drama series Halt and Catch Fire (2016–2017). Newton has appeared in various films, including Bad Teacher (2011), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Blockers (2018), Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019), The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), and The Devil's Mouth (2026). For her roles in the horror films Paranormal Activity 4 (2012), for which she received the Young Artist Award for Best Leading Young Actress in a Feature Film, Freaky (2020), Lisa Frankenstein and Abigail (both 2024), and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026), Newton has been dubbed as a scream queen.
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James Dean
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American actor. He became one of the most influential figures in Hollywood in the 1950s, and his impact on cinema and popular culture was profound, although his career lasted only five years. He appeared in just three major films: Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he portrayed a disillusioned and rebellious teenager; East of Eden (1955), which showcased his intense emotional range; and Giant (1956), a sprawling drama. These have been preserved in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for their "cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance". He was killed in a car accident at the age of 24 in 1955, leaving him a lasting symbol of rebellion, youthful defiance, and the restless spirit. For his role in East of Eden, Dean became the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. The following year, he earned a second nomination for his performance in Giant, making him the only actor to receive two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, he was honored by the American Film Institute, being ranked as the 18th greatest male film star from Golden Age Hollywood on their "AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars" list. Time magazine recognized Dean in 2012 as one of the "All-Time Most Influential Fashion Icons". Dean's film roles and style had a strong impact on Hollywood, capturing the spirit of 1950s youth and creating an enduring legacy that helped shape American pop culture and define rebellious, countercultural attitudes for generations.
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Nick Nolte
Nicholas King Nolte ( NOHL-tee; born February 8, 1941) is an American actor. Known for his leading man roles in both dramas and romances, he has received a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. Nolte first came to prominence for his role in the ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for The Prince of Tides (1991). He has received three Academy Award nominations for The Prince of Tides (1991), Affliction (1998), and Warrior (2011). His other notable films include The Deep (1977), Who'll Stop the Rain (1978), North Dallas Forty (1979), 48 Hrs. (1982), Cannery Row (1982), Under Fire (1983), Teachers (1984), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Three Fugitives (1989) Another 48 Hrs. (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Jefferson in Paris (1995), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Good Thief (2002), Hulk (2003), Hotel Rwanda (2004), Over the Hedge (2006), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), Tropic Thunder (2008), Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010), The Company You Keep (2012), Gangster Squad (2013), A Walk in the Woods (2015), Head Full of Honey (2018), and Angel Has Fallen (2019). His television credits include the HBO series Luck (2011–2012), the Fox miniseries Gracepoint (2014), the Disney+ series The Mandalorian (2019) and Peacock crime drama Poker Face (2023). From 2016 to 2017, Nolte played President Richard Graves in the Epix series Graves for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy.
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Creed Bratton
Creed Bratton (born William Charles Schneider; February 8, 1943) is an American actor and musician. A former member of the rock band the Grass Roots, he is best known for playing a fictionalized version of himself on the NBC comedy The Office (2005–2013), which earned him five nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.
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Anderson .Paak
Brandon Paak Anderson (born February 8, 1986), known professionally as Anderson .Paak ( PACK or PAHK), is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer. He released his debut mixtape, O.B.E. Vol. 1, in 2012 and went on to release his debut album, Venice, in 2014. In 2016, he followed up with his second album, Malibu, which received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album, followed by his third album, Oxnard (2018). At the 61st Grammy Awards, Paak won his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance with his 2018 non-album single "Bubblin". In 2020, he won two additional Grammy Awards for Best R&B Album with his fourth album Ventura, while a song from the album won Best R&B Performance with "Come Home" (featuring André 3000). Apart from his solo career, Anderson formed the duo NxWorries in 2015 with record producer Knxwledge. He is frequently accompanied by the band Free Nationals, who play a variety of instruments, such as electric guitar, bass, piano, keyboards and drums, and also serve as backing vocalists. In 2021, he formed the duo Silk Sonic with fellow singer-songwriter Bruno Mars. The duo's debut single, "Leave the Door Open", became Anderson's first single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and was the recipient of four awards at the 64th Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year.
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Jack Lemmon
John Uhler Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor. Considered proficient in both dramatic and comic roles, he was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in comedy-drama films. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards and one Volpi Cup. He also received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1988, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1991, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996. The Guardian labeled him as "the most successful tragi-comedian of his age". Lemmon received two Academy Awards: for Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts (1955) and for Best Actor for Save the Tiger (1973). He was Oscar-nominated for Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The China Syndrome (1979), Tribute (1980), and Missing (1982). He is also known for his roles in Irma la Douce (1963), The Great Race (1965), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). He produced two films in which he did not appear, Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Kotch (1971), the latter of which he also directed, both through his production company, Jalem Productions. For his work on television, Lemmon received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for Tuesdays with Morrie (1999). He was Emmy-nominated for The Entertainer (1975), The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988), 12 Angry Men (1997), and Inherit the Wind (1999). On stage, Lemmon made his Broadway debut in the play Room Service (1953). He went on to receive two Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nominations for his roles in the Bernard Slade play Tribute (1978) and in the Eugene O'Neill revival Long Day's Journey into Night (1986). Lemmon had a long-running collaboration with actor and friend Walter Matthau, which The New York Times called "one of Hollywood's most successful pairings", that spanned ten films between 1966 and 1998 including The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Odd Couple (1968), The Front Page (1974) and Grumpy Old Men (1993).
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Rui Hachimura
Rui Hachimura (Japanese: 八村 塁, Hepburn: Hachimura Rui; Japanese: [hatɕiꜜmɯɾa ɾɯꜜi], born February 8, 1998) is a Japanese professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Gonzaga Bulldogs and has played for the Japan national team. He plays the power forward position. After being selected ninth overall by the Washington Wizards in the 2019 NBA draft, he was named to the NBA All-Rookie Second Team in 2020. Born in Toyama Prefecture, Hachimura achieved success at the youth level in Japan, leading Meisei High School to three straight All-Japan High School Tournament titles and being a top player for the Japanese under-17 and under-19 national teams in FIBA competition. He joined Gonzaga in 2016 as the fifth Japanese-born men's NCAA Division I player and in 2017 became the first Japanese national to play in the NCAA Division I men's tournament. As a sophomore, he earned first-team All-WCC honors. He was named a finalist for the Naismith Player of the Year.
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Big Show
Paul Donald Wight II (born February 8, 1972) is an American professional wrestler and actor. He is signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where he performs under his real name and is a color commentator for Collision. He is best known for his tenure with World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from 1995 to 1999 as (the) Giant and his tenure with the World Wrestling Federation/WWE from 1999 to 2021 under the ring name (the) Big Show. Wight played college basketball at Wichita State University before transferring to other schools. He began his wrestling career in 1994. In 1995, he signed with WCW, where, due to his great height and large frame, he was known by the ring name The Giant and initially introduced as "the son of André the Giant". In early 1999, he left WCW to join the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Between WWF/WWE and WCW, he has held 23 total championships, including being a seven-time world champion, having held the WCW World Heavyweight Championship twice, the WWF/WWE Championship twice, WWE's World Heavyweight Championship twice and WWE's ECW Championship once, (making him the only wrestler who has won all four titles), and an 11-time world tag team champion, holding the WWF/World, WWE and WCW World Tag Team Championships multiple times with various partners. Having also won the Intercontinental, United States and Hardcore championships, he is the 24th Triple Crown and 12th Grand Slam winner in WWE history. He also won the 60-man battle royal at World War 3 and the 30-man André the Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania 31. He has headlined multiple pay-per-view events for WCW and WWF/WWE since 1995, including the 16th edition of WWE's premier annual event, WrestleMania. Outside of professional wrestling, Wight has appeared in feature films and television series such as Jingle All the Way, The Waterboy, Star Trek: Enterprise, and two USA Network's comedy-dramas Royal Pains, Psych and the action-drama Burn Notice. He had lead roles in the WWE Studios comedy film Knucklehead and the Netflix sitcom The Big Show Show.
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William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman ( tih-KUM-sə; February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American businessman, author, and United States Army general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865). As a general he earned recognition for his command of military strategy but criticism for the harshness of his scorched-earth policies, which he implemented in his military campaign against the Confederate States. Born in Lancaster, Ohio, into a politically prominent family, Sherman graduated in 1840 from the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 1853, he interrupted his military career to pursue private business ventures, without much success. In 1859, he became superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy, now Louisiana State University, but resigned when Louisiana seceded from the Union. Sherman commanded a brigade of volunteers at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, and then was transferred to the Western Theater. He was stationed in Kentucky, where his pessimism about the outlook of the war led to a breakdown that required him to be briefly put on leave. He recovered and forged a close partnership with General Ulysses S. Grant. Sherman served under Grant in 1862 and 1863 in the Battle of Fort Henry and the Battle of Fort Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, and the Chattanooga campaign, which culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of Tennessee. In 1864, when Grant went east to serve as the General-in-Chief of the Union Armies, Sherman succeeded him as the commander in the Western Theater. He led the capture of the strategic city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. Sherman's subsequent famous "March to the Sea" through Georgia and the Carolinas involved little fighting but large-scale destruction of military and civilian infrastructure, a systematic policy intended to undermine the ability and willingness of the Confederacy to continue fighting. Sherman accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865, but the terms that he negotiated were considered too generous by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ordered General Grant to modify them. When Grant became President of the United States in March 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army. Sherman served in that capacity from 1869 until 1883 and was responsible for the U.S. Army's engagement in the Indian Wars, in which he used "hard-war" tactics similar to those he had employed in the Civil War. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into party politics. In 1875, he published his memoirs, which became one of the best-known first-hand accounts of the Civil War.
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Gary Coleman
Gary Wayne Coleman (February 8, 1968 – May 28, 2010) was an American actor, known as a high-profile child star of the late 1970s and 1980s. Born in Zion, Illinois, Coleman grew up with his adoptive parents. Due to the corticosteroids and other medications used to treat a kidney disease, his growth was limited to 4 ft 8 in (142 cm). In the mid-1970s, he appeared in commercials and acted in an episode of Medical Center. He caught the attention of a producer after acting in a pilot for a revival of The Little Rascals (1977), who decided to cast him as Arnold Jackson in the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978–1986), a role that launched Coleman into stardom. For playing the role of Arnold he received several accolades, which include two Young Artist Awards; in 1980 for Outstanding Contribution to Youth Through Entertainment and in 1982 for Best Young Actor in a Comedy Series; and three People's Choice Awards; consecutive three wins for Favorite Young TV Performer from 1980 to 1983; as well as nominations for two TV Land Awards. He was rated first on a list of VH1's "100 Greatest Kid Stars", and an influential child actor. Coleman was the highest-paid child actor on television throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. During his prime, he reprised the role of Jackson in Hello, Larry (1979), The Facts of Life (1979–1980), Silver Spoons (1982), and Amazing Stories (1985). He acted in high-profile television series such as The Jeffersons, Good Times (both 1978), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979–1980), and Simon & Simon (1986). He starred in the television films The Kid from Left Field (1979), Scout's Honor (1980), The Kid with the Broken Halo (1982), The Kid with the 200 I.Q. (1983), The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins (1984), and Playing with Fire (1985). Additionally, he was the star of his own Saturday morning cartoon The Gary Coleman Show (1982). He also headlined two motion pictures, On the Right Track (1981) and Jimmy the Kid (1982), both financial successes. Coleman struggled financially in later life; in 1989, he successfully sued his parents and business adviser over misappropriation of his assets, only to declare bankruptcy a decade later. Very few details of Coleman's medical history have been made public, although his battles with issues such as growth deficiency, substance abuse, and depression during his life earned significant media coverage. Moving forward, a lot of his acting career consisted of him playing himself in guest appearances on television shows and films. He played roles in various television shows and films, which were rarely recurring roles. He also provided his acting talents to two video games, The Curse of Monkey Island (1997) and Postal 2 (2003). Coleman died at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Utah, on May 28, 2010, aged 42. He had been admitted two days earlier after falling down the stairs at his home in Santaquin and striking his head, resulting in an epidural hematoma.
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Vince Neil
Vincent Neil Wharton (born February 8, 1961) is an American musician and singer. He is the lead vocalist of heavy metal band Mötley Crüe, which he fronted from their 1981 formation until his departure in 1992. Neil reunited with the band in 1996 and continued with them until the band's 2015 retirement, and again from the band's 2018 reunion onwards. Outside of Mötley Crüe, Neil has also released three studio albums as a solo artist – the most recent of which, Tattoos & Tequila, was released in 2010. Neil's visual aesthetic and distinctive singing voice are considered synonymous with the American glam metal movement of the 1980s.
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John Grisham
John Ray Grisham Jr. ( GRISH-əm; born February 8, 1955) is an American writer, lawyer, and former politician, known for his best-selling legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 37 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three Anglophone authors to have sold two million copies on the first printing. Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practiced criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990. Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. It was later adapted into the 1996 feature film of the same name. Grisham's first bestseller, The Firm, sold more than seven million copies, and was also adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series that continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel. Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas.
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Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne ( VURN, French: [ʒyl ɡabʁijɛl vɛʁn]; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account contemporary scientific knowledge and the technological advances of the time. In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical accounts, poetry, songs, and scientific, artistic and literary studies. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games. Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation was markedly different in the Anglosphere where he had often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels have often been printed. Since the 1980s, his literary reputation has improved. Jules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the "father of science fiction", a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. In the 2010s, he was the most translated French author in the world. In France, 2005 was declared "Jules Verne Year" on the occasion of the centenary of the writer's death.
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Hakan Çalhanoğlu
Hakan Çalhanoğlu (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈhaːkan ˈtʃaɫhanoːɫu], born 8 February 1994) is a professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for Serie A club Inter Milan. Born in Germany, he plays for and captains the Turkey national team. Çalhanoğlu began his career at German second division club Karlsruher SC in 2010 and moved to top-flight side Hamburger SV two years later, spending another season back at his first club on loan. His performance in his first Bundesliga season earned him a €14.5 million transfer to Bayer Leverkusen in 2014. He played for three seasons there, totalling 28 goals in 115 official appearances. In 2017, Çalhanoğlu signed for AC Milan for an initial €20 million fee, before joining city rivals Inter on a free transfer in the summer of 2021. Born in Germany, Çalhanoğlu represents Turkey at international level, from under-16 level onwards. He made his senior debut in 2013, and was part of their squad at the UEFA European Championship in 2016, 2020 and 2024, and the FIFA World Cup in 2026.
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Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo
Guillaume Emmanuel "Guy-Manuel" de Homem-Christo (French pronunciation: [ɡijom emanɥɛl də ɔmɛm kʁisto], [ɡi manɥɛl]; born 8 February 1974) is a French musician, record producer, DJ, and composer. He is best known as one-half of the former French house music duo Daft Punk, alongside Thomas Bangalter. He has produced several works from his now-defunct record label Crydamoure with label co-owner Éric Chedeville.
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Constantine XI Palaiologos
Constantine XI Dragases Palaiologos or Dragaš Palaeologus (Greek: Κωνσταντῖνος Δραγάσης Παλαιολόγος, romanized: Kōnstantīnos Dragásēs Palaiológos; 8 February 1404 – 29 May 1453) was the last reigning Byzantine emperor from 23 January 1449 until his death in battle at the fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453. Constantine's death marked the definitive end of the Eastern Roman Empire, which traced its origin to Constantine the Great's foundation of Constantinople as the Roman Empire's new capital in 330. Constantine was the fourth son of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and Serbian noblewoman Helena Dragaš. Little is known of his early life, but from the 1420s onward, he repeatedly demonstrated great skill as a military general. Based on his career and surviving contemporary sources, Constantine appears to have been primarily a soldier. This does not mean that Constantine was not also a skilled administrator: he was trusted and favored to such an extent by his older brother, Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, that he was designated as regent twice during John VIII's journeys away from Constantinople in 1423–1424 and 1437–1440. In 1427–1428, Constantine and John fended off an attack on the Morea (the Peloponnese) by Carlo I Tocco, ruler of Epirus, and in 1428 Constantine was proclaimed Despot of the Morea and ruled the province together with his older brother Theodore and his younger brother Thomas. Together, they extended Roman rule to cover almost the entire Peloponnese for the first time since the Fourth Crusade more than two hundred years before and rebuilt the ancient Hexamilion wall, which defended the peninsula from outside attacks. Although ultimately unsuccessful, Constantine personally led a campaign into Central Greece and Thessaly in 1444–1446, attempting to extend Byzantine rule into Greece once more. In October 1448, John VIII died without children, and as his favored successor, Constantine was proclaimed emperor on 6 January 1449. During his brief reign, Constantine would have to deal with three main issues. First, there was the issue of an heir, as Constantine was also childless. Despite attempts by Constantine's friend and confidant George Sphrantzes to find him a wife, Constantine ultimately died unmarried. The second concern was religious conflict within what little remained of his empire. Emperor Constantine and his predecessor John VIII both supported the reunion between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Churches proclaimed at the Council of Florence. They accordingly sought to secure military aid from Catholic Europe, but much of the Byzantine populace, led by Mark of Ephesus, opposed the church union. Finally, the most important concern was the growing Ottoman Empire, which by 1449 completely surrounded Constantinople. In April 1453, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II laid siege to Constantinople with an army perhaps numbering as many as 80,000 men. Even though the city's defenders may have numbered less than a tenth of the sultan's army, Constantine considered the idea of abandoning Constantinople unthinkable. The emperor stayed to defend the city, which fell on 29 May 1453. Constantine died in battle on the following day. Although no reliable eyewitness accounts of his death survived, most historical accounts agree that the emperor died fighting in a last stand against the Ottomans. Constantine was the last Christian ruler of Constantinople, which alongside his bravery at the city's fall cemented him as a near-legendary figure in later histories and Greek folklore. Some saw the foundation of Constantinople (the New Rome) under Constantine the Great and its loss under another Constantine as fulfillment of the city's destiny, just as Old Rome had been founded by a Romulus and lost under another, Romulus Augustulus. He became known in later Greek folklore as "The Marble Emperor" (Greek: Μαρμαρωμένος Βασιλιάς, Marmaroménos Vasiliás lit. 'Emperor turned into Marble'), reflecting a popular legend that Constantine had not actually died, but had been rescued by an angel and turned into marble, hidden beneath the Golden Gate of Constantinople awaiting a call from God to be restored to life and reconquer both the city and the old empire.
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Stephanie Courtney
Stephanie Courtney (born February 8, 1970) is an American actress and comedian, best known for playing the advertising character Flo in television and radio commercials for Progressive Corporation beginning in 2008. Courtney is also noted for her recurring roles on several television series, including the voices of Renee the Receptionist and Joy Peters on the Adult Swim comedy Tom Goes to the Mayor (2004–2006), Marge on the AMC drama Mad Men (2007), and Diane on the ABC comedy Cavemen (2007). She also appeared in the season 2 premiere of Men of a Certain Age, and played Essie Karp in The Goldbergs. Courtney was a member of The Groundlings, an improvisational and sketch comedy theater in Los Angeles, California.
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Brooke Adams
Brooke Adams (born February 8, 1949) is an American actress, best known for her film roles in Days of Heaven (1978), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and The Dead Zone (1983).
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Bethany Hamilton
Bethany Meilani Hamilton (born February 8, 1990) is an American professional surfer and writer. On October 31, 2003, she survived a shark attack in which her left arm was bitten off; ultimately, she returned to professional surfing and wrote about her experiences in the 2004 autobiography, Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board. The book was adapted into the 2011 feature film, Soul Surfer. Hamilton attributes her strength to her Christian faith. Hamilton is also the subject of a 2018 documentary, Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable, in which she discusses how marriage and motherhood have affected her professional surfing career.
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Henry Czerny
Henry Czerny ( CHAIR-nee; born February 8, 1959) is a Canadian stage, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in the films The Boys of St. Vincent, Clear and Present Danger, The Ice Storm, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Fido, Remember, Ready or Not, and Scream VI, in particular for his role as Eugene Kittridge in Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, as well as for numerous television programs in both guest and starring roles, including a regular role as Conrad Grayson on the ABC primetime soap opera Revenge, a loose adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. Czerny has received the Theatre World Award and two Gemini Awards, and was nominated for the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Other Half.
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Alessia Russo
Alessia Mia Teresa Russo (Italian: [aˈlɛssja ˈmiːa teˈrɛːza ˈrusso]; born 8 February 1999) is an English professional footballer who plays as a forward for Women's Super League club Arsenal and the England national team. She is the current holder of FWA Women's Footballer of the Year for the season 2024–25. She previously played club football for Chelsea, Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester United, as well as college soccer for North Carolina Tar Heels. At Manchester United, Russo won awards from the club including Player of the Year and Goal of the Season, and was twice top scorer. She has also been awarded Player of the Month and Goal of the Month in the WSL for Arsenal. Russo was awarded an MBE on King Charles's birthday honours list of 2026, released on the 12th June 2026. She has been awarded this with other England Women's National Football Team players. Russo has represented England internationally at various youth levels, from U15 to U21, including captaining the U16 side. She made her senior debut in 2020 and scored her first goals in 2021 against Latvia, the fastest scored hat-trick in history by an England player at just 11 minutes. As a Euro winner with England, Russo was awarded Goal of the Tournament and the Bronze Boot in the Euro 2022 tournament. For the 2023–24 season she was voted England Women's Player of the Year.
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Mohammad Azharuddin
Mohammad Azizuddin Azharuddin (born 8 February 1963) is an Indian politician and a former cricketer who also served as the Indian national cricket team's captain. He was a right-handed middle order batter and an occasional medium fast bowler. He played 99 Test matches and 334 One Day Internationals for India. As a captain, he led the team to wins in the 1990–91 and 1995 Asia Cups and reached the semi-finals of the 1996 Cricket World Cup. He was considered as one of the best ODI batsmen in the world and one of the greatest of his era. He captained India in three Cricket World Cups, the most by any Indian captain, all during the 1990s. He was also a part of the Indian squad which won the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. His cricketing career came to an abrupt end in 2000 after he was banned by the Board of Control for Cricket in India for life due to his involvement in a match fixing scandal. In 2012, the Andhra Pradesh High Court lifted the life ban after appeal. After that, the original ban led to distrust among the masses about the country's judicial system. In September 2019, he was elected as the president of Hyderabad Cricket Association. In 2009, Azharuddin joined Indian National Congress and was elected as a member of parliament for Moradabad. He was appointed as the Working President of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee in 2018. Azharuddin took oath as Minister in Telangana Cabinet on 31 October 2025, allocated Minorities Welfare and Public Enterprises portfolios on 4 November and assumed charge on 10 November in Telangana Secretariat.
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John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was an English polymath – a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth. Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale, The King of the Golden River. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability, ethical consumerism, and craft. Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal duty of the artist is "truth to nature". This meant rooting art in experience and close observation. From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. Its practical outcome was the founding of the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
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Roger Lloyd-Pack
Roger Anthony Lloyd Pack (8 February 1944 – 16 January 2014) was a British actor. He is best known for playing Trigger in Only Fools and Horses from 1981 to 2003, and Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley from 1994 to 2007. He later starred as Tom in The Old Guys with Clive Swift. He is also well known for the role of Bartemius Crouch in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and for his appearances in Doctor Who as John Lumic in the episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel".
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William Jackson Harper
William Fitzgerald Harper (born February 8, 1980), known professionally as William Jackson Harper, is an American actor and playwright. He gained acclaim for his role as Chidi Anagonye in the NBC comedy series The Good Place (2016–2020), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Harper started his career as a main cast member of the PBS Kids Go! series The Electric Company (2009–2011). As a playwright, he wrote We Live Here (2010) and Travisville (2018). He made his Broadway acting debut portraying civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael in the play All the Way (2013). Harper's other notable roles on stage include Romeo & Juliet (2012), After the Blast (2017), and Primary Trust (2023). For his role as Astrov in the Lincoln Center Theatre revival of Uncle Vanya (2024) he earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He has starred in the Amazon limited series The Underground Railroad (2020), the second season of the HBO Max comedy series Love Life (2021) and in the Peacock comedy mystery series The Resort (2022). Harper has taken supporting roles in films such as Paterson (2016), Midsommar (2019), and Dark Waters (2019). He portrayed Quaz in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023).
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Benigno Aquino III
Benigno Simeón "Noynoy" Cojuangco Aquino III (locally [bɛˈniːɡ.no ʔɐˈkiː.no]; February 8, 1960 – June 24, 2021), also known colloquially as PNoy, was the 15th president of the Philippines, serving from 2010 to 2016. A member of the Liberal Party, he was the son of assassinated politician Ninoy Aquino and 11th president Corazon Aquino, and a fourth-generation politician as part of the Aquino family of Tarlac. Aquino served as a member of the House of Representatives and Senate from 1998 to 2010. During his tenure in the lower house, he served as a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives from 2004 to 2006. Shortly after the death of his mother, he announced his candidacy in the 2010 presidential election, which he eventually won. He was sworn into office as the 15th president of the Philippines on June 30, 2010, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Under Aquino's presidency, the nation's economy grew at the highest rates in decades, and the country was dubbed a "Rising Tiger" economy. Known for his confrontational foreign policy, his administration filed an arbitration case, Philippines v. China, before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in an attempt to invalidate China's claims in the South China Sea and assert the Philippines' claims in the area; the court ruled in favor of the Philippines. After leaving office in 2016, Aquino was the subject of legal actions over his role in the Mamasapano clash and for approval of a controversial budget project; he was later acquitted of all charges filed against him regarding the Mamasapano incident.
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Dmitri Mendeleev
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev ( MEN-dəl-AY-əf; 8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1834 – 2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1907) was a Russian chemist known for formulating the periodic law and creating a version of the periodic table of elements. He used the periodic law not only to correct the then-accepted properties of some known elements, such as the valence and atomic weight of uranium, but also to predict the properties of three elements that were yet to be discovered (germanium, gallium, and scandium). The synthetic element mendelevium is named in his honor.
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Audrey Meadows
Audrey Meadows (born Audrey Cotter; February 8, 1922 – February 3, 1996) was an American actress who portrayed the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy The Honeymooners. She was the younger sister of actress Jayne Meadows.
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Dan Seals
Danny Wayland Seals (February 8, 1948 – March 25, 2009), also known as England Dan, was an American musician. The younger brother of Seals & Crofts member Jim Seals, he first gained fame as one half of the soft rock duo England Dan & John Ford Coley, who charted nine singles between 1976 and 1980, including the No. 2 Billboard Hot 100 hit "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight". After the duo disbanded, Seals began a solo career, starting in soft rock then shifting to country music. Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, he released 16 studio albums and charted more than 20 singles on the country charts. Eleven of his singles reached number one: "Meet Me in Montana" (with Marie Osmond), "Bop" (also a No. 42 pop hit), "Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)", "You Still Move Me", "I Will Be There", "Three Time Loser", "One Friend", "Addicted", "Big Wheels in the Moonlight", "Love on Arrival", and "Good Times". Five more of his singles also reached top ten on the same chart.
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Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was an American writer who was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. Cassady published only two short fragments of prose in his lifetime, but exerted considerable intellectual and stylistic influence through his conversation and correspondence. Letters, poems, and an unfinished autobiographical novel have been published since his death. He was prominently featured as himself in the "scroll" (first draft) version of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in the 1957 version of that book. In many of Kerouac's later books, Cassady is represented by the character Cody Pomeray. Cassady also appeared in Allen Ginsberg's poems and in several other works of literature by other writers.
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Bill Finger
Milton "Bill" Finger (February 8, 1914 – c. January 18, 1974) was an American comic book writer who is credited with co-creating the DC Comics character Batman with Bob Kane. Despite making major (sometimes, signature) contributions as an innovative writer, visionary mythos/world builder and illustration architect, Finger (like other creators of his era) was often given "ghostwriter" status on comics he created or co-created, including those featuring Batman and the original Green Lantern. In recent years, Finger's lost legacy has been restored. While Kane privately admitted in a 1980s audio interview with his autobiographer that Finger was responsible for "50–75% of all the creativity in Batman", he publicly denied Finger had been anything more than a subcontractor executing Kane's ideas for decades. As a result, Finger died in obscurity and poverty while the Batman brand, and Kane, amassed international fame and wealth. In the 2000s, Finger biographer Marc Tyler Nobleman's research uncovered previously unknown heirs. At the urging of Nobleman, the online comics fan community, and others, Finger's granddaughter revived the fight to restore his lost legacy, which continued for years. In 2015, DC Comics's parent company conditionally agreed to recognize Finger's intellectual property claim as co-creator of the Batman characters and mythos, officially adding his name, going forward, to the "created by" credit line Kane had been contractually guaranteed in 1939.
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Sherri Martel
Sherry Lynn Schrull (née Russell; February 8, 1958 – June 15, 2007) was an American professional wrestler and manager, better known by her ring names, Sherri Martel and Sensational Sherri. Martel began her professional wrestling career in the Mid South after training in Columbia, South Carolina. She joined the American Wrestling Association (AWA) in the mid-1980s and held its AWA World Women's Championship three times. In the late 1980s, she joined the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), where she held the WWF Women's Championship. Also in the WWF, Martel continued to act as a manager to wrestlers such as Randy Savage, Ted DiBiase, and Shawn Michaels. She appeared in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in the 1990s. In the latter, Martel acted as the manager for the tag team Harlem Heat. After leaving WCW, she made few wrestling related appearances until her death in 2007. She also appeared in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in September 2006 as a manager for Bobby Roode which ended up being her last televised wrestling appearance. Her titular ring name, "Sensational Sherri", was used as the episode title in the fifth season of Viceland's docuseries, Dark Side of the Ring, aired on April 23, 2024.
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I.N
Yang Jeong-in (Korean: 양정인; born February 8, 2001), known professionally as I.N (아이엔), is a South Korean singer. He is a member of the South Korean boy band Stray Kids formed by JYP Entertainment in 2017. I.N made his acting debut in the final episode of the web series A-Teen 2 in 2019.
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Dave Farrell
David Michael Farrell (born February 8, 1977), also known by his stage name Phoenix, is an American musician, best known as the bassist of the rock band Linkin Park. He was also a member of Tasty Snax, a ska punk band.
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Pauly Fuemana
Paul Lawrence Fuemana (8 February 1969 – 31 January 2010) was a New Zealand singer, songwriter and musician from Auckland. One of the first globally successful pioneers of his country's unique style of hip-hop, Fuemana was one of New Zealand's greatest popular music icons of the 1990s. Born in Ōtara, South Auckland, to a Niuean father and a Māori mother, Fuemana gravitated towards making music with his brothers due to his poverty-stricken childhood. Speaking Niuean as his first language, his music with OMC often reflected Polynesian themes. Leading the rap trio and then joint music project, the Otara Millionaires Club (abbreviated to OMC) his 1996 debut album How Bizarre and its eponymous lead single became a huge success across the world. The name OMC was ironic, as its namesake of his home of Ōtara was one of the poorest communities in the whole of the large island nation. Along with his brother Phil Fuemana, Pauly cultivated the unique South Auckland musical genre of Urban Pasifika, bringing it to worldwide commercial and critical acclaim. Fuemana was often considered a one-hit wonder because of the unequalled success of "How Bizarre", which overshadowed his other, relatively successful work, such as the singles "On the Run", "Never Coming Back" and "Land of Plenty". In a 1997 interview, he reflected on what was once a witticism to himself and his home – an "Otara millionaire" – now represented his reality. Shortly after his rise to fame, OMC was put on indefinite hiatus due to disputes with his US record label. In 1998, he was also involved in a lawsuit filed by his producer and co-writer Alan Jansson over royalties due to Jansson. It was settled in arbitration. Fuemana focused on his wife Kristine and six children, but grew sick during the mid 2000s; by the end of the decade, he had been diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, an extremely rare neurological disorder similar to multiple sclerosis. Fuemana kept his illness private. He died in 2010, at age 40. Posthumously, his music has found success on TikTok.
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Zakir Husain
Zakir Husain Khan (8 February 1897 – 3 May 1969) was an Indian educationist and politician who served as the vice president of India from 1962 to 1967 and president of India from 13 May 1967 until his death on 3 May 1969. Born in Hyderabad in an Afridi Pashtun family, Husain completed his schooling in Etawah and went on to study at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, Aligarh and the University of Berlin from where he obtained a doctoral degree in economics. A close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Husain was a founding member of the Jamia Millia Islamia which was established as an independent national university in response to the Non-cooperation movement. He served as the university's vice-chancellor from 1926 to 1948. In 1937, Husain chaired the Basic National Education Committee which framed a new educational policy known as Nai Talim (literally meaning "New Education" in Urdu) which emphasized free and compulsory education in the first language. He was opposed to the policy of separate electorates for Muslims and, in 1946, the Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah vetoed a proposal by the Indian National Congress to include Husain in the Interim Government of India. Following Independence and the Partition of India Husain stayed on in India and, in 1948, was appointed Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University which he helped retain as a national institution of higher learning. For his services to education, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 and was made a nominated member of the Indian Parliament during 1952 to 1957. Husain served as Governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962 and was elected the Vice President of India in 1962. The following year, he was conferred the Bharat Ratna. He was elected president in 1967, succeeding Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and became the first Muslim to hold the highest constitutional office in India. He was also the first incumbent to die in office and had the shortest tenure of any Indian president. His mazar lies in the campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. An author and translator of several books into Urdu and a prolific writer of children's books, Husain has been commemorated in India through postage stamps and several educational institutions, libraries, roads and Asia's largest rose garden that have been named after him.
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Martin Buber
Martin Buber (German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈbuːbɐ] ; Hebrew: מרטין בובר; Yiddish: מארטין בובער; 8 February 1878 – 13 June 1965) was an Austrian-Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I–Thou relationship and the I–It relationship. Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. He produced writings about Zionism and worked with various bodies within the Zionist movement extensively over a nearly 50-year period spanning his time in Europe and the Near East. In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature ten times, and the Nobel Peace Prize seven times.
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Robert Klein
Robert Klein (born February 8, 1942) is an American stand-up comedian, singer, and actor. He is known for his appearances on stage and screen. He has released four standup comedy albums: A Child of the 50s (1973), Mind Over Matter (1974), New Teeth (1975), and Let's Not Make Love (1990). The first two albums received Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nominations. Klein hosted Saturday Night Live in its first season in 1975 and again in 1978. Klein made his Broadway debut in the 1966 production of The Apple Tree opposite Alan Alda. He earned a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical nomination for his performance in Neil Simon's musical comedy They're Playing Our Song (1979). He also starred on his own show, Robert Klein Time, which aired on USA Network from 1986 to 1988. He is known for his film roles in The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), Mixed Nuts (1994), One Fine Day (1996), Primary Colors (1998), The Safety of Objects (2001), Two Weeks Notice (2002), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), and Reign Over Me (2007). He is also known for his recurring television roles in Law & Order: SVU (2009–2012), The Good Wife (2013–2014), Madam Secretary (2014) and Will & Grace (2018–2019). He has received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his specials, Child in his 50's (2001), and Unfair and Unbalanced (2010). He was profiled in the Starz documentary Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg (2016).
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Ranveer Brar
Ranveer Singh Brar (born 8 February 1978) is an Indian celebrity chef, television personality, author, restaurateur and actor. He is known as the host of several television food shows, and as a judge in MasterChef India, After graduating from a hospitality institute in Lucknow, Brar stepped into the culinary career, now spanning more than nearly three decades.
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Betty Field
Betty Field (February 8, 1916 – September 13, 1973) was an American film and stage actress.
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Kirk Muller
Kirk Christopher Muller (born February 8, 1966) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey centre and coach. He played in the NHL for 19 seasons from 1984–85 until 2002–03 with the Dallas Stars, Florida Panthers, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, Toronto Maple Leafs and won the Stanley Cup in 1993 as member of the Montreal Canadiens. Muller also previously served as head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes from 2011 to 2014, and was an associate coach with the Canadiens from 2016 to 2021 following a previous stint as assistant coach with the team between 2006–2011. He was an assistant coach for the Washington Capitals from 2023-2026.
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Jose Maria Sison
Jose Maria Canlas Sison (Tagalog: [hoˈse mɐˈɾija kɐnˈlas ˈsisɔn]; February 8, 1939 – December 16, 2022), also known as Joma (Tagalog: [dʒ'ma]), was a Filipino writer, poet, and activist who founded and led the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and added elements of Maoism to its philosophy—which would be known as National Democracy. His ideology was formed by applying Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to the history and circumstances of the Philippines. Sison was born in Ilocos Sur to a landowning political family. He was educated in Manila, studying at Ateneo de Manila University, Colegio de San Juan de Letran, and the University of the Philippines. He then became a professor of literature, political science, and Rizal studies. During his youth, he learned about the rebellion of the communist Hukbalahap (Huk), which ended in 1954. Sison joined the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP; "Philippine Communist Party") in 1962 and became a member of its executive committee in early 1963. In 1964 he co-founded the Kabataang Makabayan ("Patriotic Youth"). However, Sison's faction had several disagreements with the PKP leading to the First Great Rectification Movement. After Sison's faction were expelled from the PKP, he founded and became the chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968. Three months later, Sison and Bernabe Buscayno, who led a faction of Huk holdouts, organized the New People's Army (NPA) to stage a proletarian revolution. Sison was captured in 1977 and was imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, until the People Power Revolution of 1986. The new government under President Corazon Aquino released him for the sake of "national reconciliation" and for his role in opposing the martial law regime of President Ferdinand Marcos. Nonetheless, he also criticized the Aquino administration. In 1988, while in the Netherlands as part of his international lecture tour, his passport was revoked and he was charged in the Philippines for violating the Anti-Subversion Act. From then on, he lived in the Netherlands but continued to advise the communist movement in the Philippines. From August 2002, Sison had been classified as a "person supporting terrorism" by the United States. The European Court of First Instance ruled in September 2009 to delist him as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze his assets. Sison was charged with several counts of murder in the Philippines and the Netherlands (later dropped). He died in exile in 2022. The CPP, NPA, and the National Democratic Front (NDF) are considered terrorist organizations by the Philippines' Anti-Terrorism Council.
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Daniel Bernoulli
Daniel Bernoulli (8 February [O.S. 29 January] 1700 – 27 March 1782) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family from Basel. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics. His name is commemorated in Bernoulli's principle, a particular example of the conservation of energy, which describes the mathematics of the mechanism underlying the operation of two important technologies of the 20th century: the carburetor and the aeroplane wing.
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King Vidor
King Wallis Vidor ( VEE-dor; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. His 67-year career spanned the silent and sound eras, with works distinguished by a sympathetic depiction of contemporary social issues. Considered an auteur director, Vidor approached multiple genres and allowed the subject matter to determine the style, often pressing the limits of film-making conventions. His most acclaimed and successful film in the silent era was The Big Parade (1925). Vidor's sound films of the 1940s and early 1950s, such as Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), An American Romance (1944), and The Fountainhead (1949), have been characterized as some of his best. His dramatic depictions of the American western landscape endow nature with a sinister force where his characters struggle for survival and redemption. Vidor's earlier films tend to identify with the common people in a collective struggle, whereas his later works place individualists at the center of his narratives. He was considered an "actors' director"; many of his players received Academy Award nominations or awards, among them Wallace Beery, Robert Donat, Barbara Stanwyck, Jennifer Jones, Anne Shirley, and Lillian Gish. Vidor was nominated five times by the Academy Awards for Best Director. In 1979, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator." Additionally, he won eight national and international film awards during his career, including the Screen Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1957. In 1962, he was head of the jury at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival.
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Freddie Blassie
Frederick Kenneth Blassie (February 8, 1918 – June 2, 2003) was an American professional wrestler and manager, known by the ring name "Classy" Freddie Blassie. His achievements in the ring included holding the Los Angeles-based World Wrestling Associates (WWA) world title four times. Renowned as "The Hollywood Fashion Plate", he was a one-time NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion and was inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame in 1994. He is regarded as one of the greatest wrestling heels, or villains, of all time.
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Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin (, also US: ; born Katherine O'Flaherty; February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, and she is among the most frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage. She is best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening. Of maternal French and paternal Irish descent, Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She married and moved with her husband to New Orleans. They later lived in the country in Cloutierville, Louisiana. From 1892 to 1895, Chopin wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in national magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion. Her stories aroused controversy because of her subjects and her approach; they were condemned as immoral by some critics. Her major works were two short story collections and two novels. The collections are Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories included "Désirée's Baby" (1893), a tale of an interracial relationship in antebellum Louisiana, "The Story of an Hour" (1894), and "The Storm" (written 1898, first published 1969). ("The Storm" is a sequel to her "At the 'Cadian Ball" (1892), which appeared in Bayou Folk, her first collection of short stories.) Chopin's two novels, At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), are set in New Orleans and nearby Grand Isle. The characters in her stories are usually residents of Louisiana, and many are Creoles of various ethnic or racial backgrounds. Many of her works are set in Natchitoches in north-central Louisiana, a region where she lived. Within a decade of her death, Chopin was widely recognized as one of the leading writers of her time. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote "some of [Chopin's] work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. [She displayed] what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius." She was not related to famous Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, but she did have a son named Frederick Chopin, who was named after the composer.
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Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century." She was also a painter, and her poetry is noted for its careful attention to detail; Ernest Hilbert wrote “Bishop’s poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist’s discretion and attention."
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Marques Johnson
Marques Kevin Johnson (born February 8, 1956) is an American former professional basketball player and character actor who is a basketball analyst for the Milwaukee Bucks on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin. He played as a small forward in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1977 to 1989, where he was a five-time All-Star. He played the majority of his career with the Bucks. Johnson was a Los Angeles City Section player of the year in high school before playing college basketball for the UCLA Bruins, winning a national championship in 1975. In his senior year, he won multiple national player of the year awards. Johnson was the third overall pick in the 1977 NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks. He played seven seasons with Milwaukee before finishing his NBA career with the Los Angeles Clippers and the Golden State Warriors.
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Richard S. Ewell
Richard Stoddert Ewell (February 8, 1817 – January 25, 1872) was an American military officer and a Confederate general during the American Civil War. He achieved fame as a senior commander under Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and fought effectively through much of the war. Still, his legacy was clouded by controversies over his actions at the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.
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Franz Marc
Franz Moritz Wilhelm Marc (8 February 1880 – 4 March 1916) was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of German Expressionism. He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it. His mature works mostly are animals, and are known for bright colors. He was drafted to serve in the German Army at the beginning of World War I, and died two years later at the Battle of Verdun. In the 1930s, the Nazis named him a degenerate artist as part of their suppression of modern art. However, most of his work survived World War II, securing his legacy. His work is now exhibited in many eminent galleries and museums. His major paintings have attracted large sums, with a record of £42,654,500 for Die Füchse (The Foxes) in 2022.
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Kenedy
Robert Kenedy Nunes do Nascimento (born 8 February 1996), known as Kenedy, is a Brazilian professional footballer who plays as a left winger for Liga MX club Pachuca. Kenedy made his professional debut aged 17 for Fluminense, scoring five goals in 40 official games before a £6.3 million move to Chelsea in 2015. Kenedy has represented Brazil at under-17 and under-20 levels.
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Alejandro Rey
Alejandro Rey (February 8, 1930 – May 21, 1987) was an Argentine-American actor and television director.
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Bruno Martins Indi
Rolando Maximiliano "Bruno" Martins Indi (born 8 February 1992) is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a defender for Eredivisie club Sparta Rotterdam. Martins Indi began his career with Dutch club Feyenoord, after progressing through the club's youth teams. He spent four seasons at De Kuip, making 120 appearances before moving to Portugal in July 2014 to play for Porto for a fee of €7.7 million. In August 2016, Martins Indi joined Premier League side Stoke City on loan for the 2016–17 season. A year later, he signed for Stoke permanently for a fee of £7 million. After 137 games for the club, he returned to the Eredivisie with AZ in 2021, initially on loan. He departed in 2025, joining Sparta Rotterdam. A full international for the Netherlands since 2012, he has gained over 30 caps and was part of their squad which finished third at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
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Proclus
Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 CE – 17 April 485 CE), called Proclus the Successor (Ancient Greek: Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, Próklos ho Diádokhos), was a Greek Neoplatonic philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity. He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism and, through later interpreters and translators, exerted an influence on Byzantine philosophy, early Islamic philosophy, scholastic philosophy, and German idealism, especially G. W. F. Hegel, who called Proclus's Platonic Theology "the true turning point or transition from ancient to modern times, from ancient philosophy to Christianity."
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Charlie Ruggles
Charles Sherman Ruggles (February 8, 1886 – December 23, 1970) was an American comic character actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films, often in mild-mannered and comic roles. He was also the elder brother of director, producer, and silent film actor Wesley Ruggles (1889–1972).
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Adelir Antônio de Carli
Adelir Antônio de Carli (8 February 1967 – between 20 April 2008 and 4 July 2008), also known as Padre Baloeiro or Padre do Balão (Brazilian Portuguese for 'Balloon Priest'), was a Brazilian Catholic priest who died after a cluster-ballooning attempt on 20 April 2008. Carli undertook the exercise to raise money to fund a spiritual rest area for truck drivers in the port city of Paranaguá.
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Demchugdongrub
Demchugdongrub (8 February 1902 – 23 May 1966), also known as Prince De (Chinese: 德王), courtesy name Xixian (Chinese: 希賢), was a Qing dynasty Chinese Mongol prince descended from the Borjigin imperial clan who lived during the 20th century and became the leader of an independence movement in Inner Mongolia. He was most notable for being the chairman of the pro-Japanese Mongol Military Government (1938–39) and later of the puppet state of Mengjiang (1939–45), during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In the modern day, some see Demchugdongrub as a Mongol nationalist promoting Pan-Mongolism, while others view him as a traitor and a pawn of the Japanese during World War II.
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Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans (8 February 1888 – 14 October 1976) was an English actress. She was best known for her work on the West End stage, but also appeared in films at the beginning and towards the end of her career. Between 1964 and 1968, she was nominated for three Academy Awards. Evans's stage career spanned sixty years, during which she played more than 100 roles, in classics by Shakespeare, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan and Wilde, and plays by contemporary writers including Bernard Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Noël Coward. She created roles in two of Shaw's plays: Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929), and Epifania in The Millionairess (1940) and was in the British premières of two others: Heartbreak House (1921) and Back to Methuselah (1923). Evans became widely known for portraying haughty aristocratic women, as in two of her most famous roles as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Miss Western in the 1963 film of Tom Jones. During her performance as Lady Bracknell, her elongated delivery of the line 'A handbag' has become synonymous with the Oscar Wilde play. By contrast, she played a downtrodden maid in The Late Christopher Bean (1933), an eccentric, impoverished old woman in The Whisperers (1967) and – one of her most celebrated roles – Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, which she played in four productions between 1926 and 1961.
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Claro M. Recto
Claro Mayo Recto Jr. (February 8, 1890 – October 2, 1960) was a Filipino lawyer, jurist, writer, author, columnist, diplomat, and statesman who served as a senator of the Philippines from 1931 until his death in 1960. Recto was the primary author of the 1935 Philippine Constitution, one of the foremost figures in the Philippine Independence from the United States, and is remembered as the "Great Dissenter" and the "Great Academician", as a fierce opponent of U.S. neocolonialism in Asia in his later years, and a staunch Filipino nationalist throughout his career. Recto began his political career as the representative for the 3rd District of Batangas in 1919 and held the position until 1928, emerging as a prominent member of the Democrata Party. He was elected as a senator to the 10th Philippine Legislature, where he opposed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, and later became president of the 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention that drafted the 1935 Constitution. Recto and future president Manuel L. Quezon personally presented the constitution to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also appointed Recto as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines—the last to be appointed by the United States. At the height of World War II, Recto was detained by the United States for suspected collaboration with the Japanese, but was nonetheless reelected in 1941, garnering the highest number of votes among the elected senators. He joined the KALIBAPI during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and served in President Jose P. Laurel's wartime cabinet. Recto was faced with treason and collaboration charges at the end of the war, but refused the amnesty issued by President Manuel Roxas and chose to defend himself in court instead. He was acquitted of all charges. He was reelected to the Senate in 1949 and 1955, where he was an outspoken critic of continued American influence in Asia—as well as Presidents Elpidio Quirino and Ramon Magsaysay—for which he was targeted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Following Carlos P. Garcia's assumption to the presidency in 1957, Recto and Senator Lorenzo Tañada defected from Nacionalista and established the Nationalist Citizens' Party (NCP). The pair ran under the NCP in the hotly-contested 1957 presidential election, but ultimately lost, ending up fourth in the national vote. In 1960, Recto was appointed the Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Philippines' cultural envoy. He died under mysterious circumstances (reported as a heart attack) on October 2, 1960, in Rome, on a diplomatic mission en route to Spain. Historians believe that the CIA may have had a hand in his death. He is the father of former Batasang Pambansa assemblyman Rafael Recto and grandfather of Secretary of Finance Ralph Recto.
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Joe Raposo
Joseph Guilherme Raposo, OIH (February 8, 1937 – February 5, 1989) was an American composer and songwriter. He is best known for his work on the children's television series Sesame Street, for which he wrote the theme song, and several notable songs, including "Bein' Green", "C Is For Cookie" and "Sing" (later a #3 hit for The Carpenters). He also wrote music for other television shows including The Electric Company, Shining Time Station and the sitcoms Three's Company and The Ropers, including their theme songs. Additionally, he composed scores for three Dr. Seuss television specials produced by DePatie–Freleng Enterprises: Halloween Is Grinch Night (1977), Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? (1980), and The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat (1982).
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Gia Long
Gia Long (Chữ Hán: 嘉隆) (Vietnamese: [zaː lawŋ] (North), [jaː lawŋ] (South); 8 February 1762 – 3 February 1820), born Nguyễn Phúc Ánh (阮福暎) or Nguyễn Ánh (阮暎), was the founding emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, the last dynasty of Vietnam, which would rule the unified territories that constitute modern-day Vietnam until 1945. A nephew of the last Nguyễn lord who ruled over south Vietnam, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh was forced into hiding in 1777 as a 15-year-old when his family was slain in the Tây Sơn revolt. After several changes of fortune in which his loyalists regained and again lost Saigon, he befriended the French Catholic Bishop Pierre Pigneau de Behaine. Pigneau championed Nguyễn Phúc Ánh's cause to regain the throne to the French government and managed to recruit volunteers however, that soon encountered difficulties. From 1789, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh was once again in the ascendancy and began his northward march to defeat the Tây Sơn, reaching the border with the Qing dynasty by 1802, which had previously been under the control of the Trịnh lords. Following their defeat, he succeeded in reuniting Vietnam after centuries of internecine feudal warfare, with a greater landmass than ever before, stretching from the Qing's borders down to the Gulf of Siam. Gia Long's rule was noted for its Confucian orthodoxy. He defeated the Tây Sơn rebellion and reinstated the classical Confucian education and civil service system. He moved the capital from Hanoi south to Huế as the country's populace had also shifted south over the preceding centuries, and built up several fortresses and a palace in his new capital. Using French expertise, he modernized Vietnam's defensive capabilities. In deference to the assistance of his French friends, he tolerated the activities of Roman Catholic missionaries, something that became increasingly restricted under his successors. Under his rule, Vietnam strengthened its military dominance in Indochina, expelling Siamese forces from Cambodia and turning it into a vassal state.
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Afonso IV of Portugal
Afonso IV (Afonso Dinis; 8 February 1291 – 28 May 1357), called the Brave (Portuguese: o Bravo), was King of Portugal from 1325 until his death in 1357. He was the only legitimate son of King Denis of Portugal and Elizabeth of Aragon.
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Caroline Augusta of Bavaria
Princess Caroline Augusta of Bavaria (German: Karoline Auguste; 8 February 1792 – 9 February 1873) was Empress of Austria by marriage to Francis I of Austria. She was the penultimate child and third daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and Princess Augusta Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt. She firstly married to Crown Prince William of Württemberg in 1808, but they lived separately in 1814.
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Ba Maw
Ba Maw (Burmese: ဘမော်, pronounced [ba̰ mɔ̀]; 8 February 1893 – 29 May 1977), known honorifically as Dr. Ba Maw, was a Burmese lawyer and politician, active during the interwar period and Second World War. He was the first Burma Premier (1937–1939) and head of State of Burma from 1943 to 1945.
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Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich of Russia
Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich of Russia (Russian: Михаи́л Па́влович; 8 February [O.S. 28 January] 1798 – 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1849) was a Russian grand duke, the tenth child and fourth son of Paul I of Russia and his second wife, Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg, who took the name Maria Feodorovna. He was the younger brother of two Tsars, Alexander I and Nicholas I, and the disputed Tsar Konstantin I.
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Elisabeth Murdoch
Dame Elisabeth Joy Murdoch, Lady Murdoch (née Greene; 8 February 1909 – 5 December 2012), also known as Elisabeth, Lady Murdoch, was an Australian philanthropist and matriarch of the Murdoch family. She was the wife of Australian newspaper publisher Sir Keith Murdoch and the mother of international media proprietor Rupert Murdoch. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1963 for her charity work in Australia and overseas.
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Javi García
Francisco Javier "Javi" García Fernández (Spanish pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko xaˈβjeɾ ˈxaβi ɣaɾˈθi.a feɾˈnandeθ]; born 8 February 1987) is a Spanish former professional footballer. A defensive midfielder by nature, he could also play as a central defender. He started his career with Real Madrid, but represented mostly the reserve team, going on to have a three-year spell with Benfica in Portugal. In 2012 he signed with Manchester City, then spent a further three seasons in the Russian Premier League with Zenit Saint Petersburg. He returned to Spain with Betis in 2017, and retired at Boavista. García represented Spain at various youth levels, including the victorious under-19s at the 2006 European Championship, and made his senior international debut in 2012.
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Emperor Sakuramachi
Teruhito (Japanese: 昭仁; 8 February 1720 – 28 May 1750), posthumously honored as Emperor Sakuramachi (桜町天皇, Sakuramachi-tennō) was the 115th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. He was enthroned as Emperor in 1735, a reign that would last until 1747 with his abdication. As with previous Emperors during the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate had control over Japan. The Emperor's role was a religious figure who performed limited duties. This changed when Sakuramachi was granted permission from the Shōgun to restore some Imperial rites. Ceremonies such as the Harvest Festival that had previously been absent for over 250 years were now allowed. Sakuramachi had one wife and a concubine with whom he fathered 4 children. His first son would go on to become Emperor Momozono, while his second daughter would later be Empress Go-Sakuramachi. Sakuramachi died on 28 May 1750, which was almost three years after his abdication.
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Nam Woo-hyun
Nam Woo-hyun (Korean: 남우현; born February 8, 1991), known mononymously as Woohyun, is a South Korean singer, songwriter, and actor. He is a vocalist of South Korean boy group Infinite. Nam began his solo career in 2016 with released EP Write.., which charted at number two on Gaon Album Chart and number nine on the Billboard World Albums chart. Since then, he continued to release more solo music, Second Write.. (2018), A New Journey (2019), and With (2021).
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Thomas Selfridge
Thomas Etholen Selfridge (February 8, 1882 – September 17, 1908) was an American first lieutenant in the U.S. Army and the first person to die in an airplane crash. He was also the first active-duty member of the U.S. military to die in a crash while on duty. He was killed while seated as a passenger in a Wright Flyer, on a demonstration flight piloted by Orville Wright.
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Gabriel Deck
Gabriel Alejandro "Gaby" Deck (born February 8, 1995) is an Argentine professional basketball player for Real Madrid of the Spanish Liga ACB and the EuroLeague. At a height of 1.98 m (6 ft 6 in) he can play at both the small forward and power forward positions.
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Paula Modersohn-Becker
Paula Modersohn-Becker (8 February 1876 – 20 November 1907) was a German Expressionist painter and draftswoman of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is noted for the many self-portraits, including nudes. She is considered one of the most important representatives of early expressionism, producing more than 700 paintings and over 1000 drawings during her active painting life. She is recognized both as the first known woman painter to paint nude self-portraits, and the first woman to have a museum devoted exclusively to her art (the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, founded 1927). Additionally, she is believed to be the first woman artist to depict herself pregnant. Her career was cut short when she died from postpartum pulmonary embolism at the age of 31.
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Marinho Chagas
Francisco das Chagas Marinho (8 February 1952 – 31 May 2014), generally known as Marinho Chagas or Francisco Marinho, was a Brazilian professional footballer. One of the best left-backs of his era, he is best known for his flowing curly blond hair and his performance at the 1974 FIFA World Cup, in which Brazil finished fourth. At club level he is mostly associated with Botafogo FR of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo FC, but he played for numerous other teams, as well as in the North American Soccer League, in a career which spanned from 1969 to 1987.
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Guercino
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (8 February 1591 – 22 December 1666), better known as (il) Guercino (Italian pronunciation: [ɡwerˈtʃiːno] ), was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous naturalism of his early manner contrasts with the classical equilibrium of his later works. His many drawings are noted for their luminosity and lively style.
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Georges Guétary
Georges Guétary (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ ɡetaʁi]), born Yorgos Lambros (Greek: Γιώργος Λάμπρος Yorgos Lambros ['yorgos ˈlambros]; 8 February 1915 – 13 September 1997) was a French singer, dancer, cabaret performer and film actor, best known for his role in the 1951 musical An American in Paris.
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Lonnie Johnson
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson (February 8, 1899 – June 16, 1970) was an American blues and jazz singer, guitarist, violinist and songwriter. He was a pioneer of jazz guitar and jazz violin and is recognized as the first to play an electrically amplified violin.
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Aidy Boothroyd
Adrian Neil Boothroyd (born 8 February 1971) is an English former footballer who was most recently the manager of Indian Super League club Jamshedpur. At club level, he was manager of Watford from 2005 to 2008. During his time with Watford, he was regarded as one of the best young managers in England. At the time of his departure, he was the youngest and the second longest serving manager in the division. Boothroyd then had short spells at Colchester United and Coventry City. In 2011, he replaced Gary Johnson at Northampton Town. After saving the club from relegation in the 2011–12 season, he took Northampton to the League Two play-off final in May 2013, only to be defeated in the final. After a poor start to the 2013–14 season, he was relieved of his duties on 21 December 2013, with the club bottom of the Football League.
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Chester Carlson
Chester Floyd Carlson (February 8, 1906 – September 19, 1968) was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington. Carlson invented electrophotography (now xerography, meaning "dry writing"), producing a dry copy in contrast to the wet copies then produced by the Photostat process; it is now used by millions of photocopiers worldwide.
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Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ṭughj ibn Juff ibn Yiltakīn ibn Fūrān ibn Fūrī ibn Khāqān (8 February 882 – 24 July 946), better known by the title al-Ikhshīd (Arabic: الإخشيد) after 939, was an Abbasid commander and governor who became the autonomous ruler of Egypt and parts of Syria (Levant) from 935 until his death in 946. He was the founder of the Ikhshidid dynasty, which ruled the region until the Fatimid conquest of 969. The son of Tughj ibn Juff, a general of Turkic origin who served both the Abbasids and the autonomous Tulunid rulers of Egypt and Syria, Muhammad ibn Tughj was born in Baghdad but grew up in Syria and acquired his first military and administrative experiences at his father's side. He had a turbulent early career: he was imprisoned along with his father by the Abbasids in 905, was released in 906, participated in the murder of the vizier al-Abbas ibn al-Hasan al-Jarjara'i in 908, and fled Iraq to enter the service of the governor of Egypt, Takin al-Khazari. Eventually he acquired the patronage of several influential Abbasid magnates, chiefly the powerful commander-in-chief Mu'nis al-Muzaffar. These ties led him to being named governor first of Palestine and then of Damascus. In 933, he was briefly named governor of Egypt, but this order was revoked after the death of Mu'nis, and Ibn Tughj had to fight to preserve even his governorship of Damascus. In 935, he was re-appointed to Egypt, where he quickly defeated a Fatimid invasion and stabilized the turbulent country. His reign marks a rare period of domestic peace, stability and good government in the annals of early Islamic Egypt. In 938 Caliph al-Radi granted his request for the title of al-Ikhshid, which had been borne by the rulers of his ancestral Farghana Valley. It is by this title that he was known thereafter. Throughout his governorship, al-Ikhshid was engaged in conflicts with other regional strongmen for control over Syria, without which Egypt was vulnerable to invasion from the east, but unlike many other Egyptian leaders, notably the Tulunids themselves, he was prepared to bide his time and compromise with his rivals. Although he was initially in control of the entirety of Syria, he was forced to cede the northern half to Ibn Ra'iq between 939 and 942. Following Ibn Ra'iq's murder, al-Ikhshid reimposed his control over northern Syria, only to have it challenged by the Hamdanids. In 944 al-Ikhshid met Caliph al-Muttaqi at Raqqa; the caliph had fled there from the various strongmen vying to kidnap him and control the caliphal government in Baghdad. Although unsuccessful in persuading the caliph to come to Egypt, he received recognition of hereditary rule over Egypt, Syria and the Hejaz for thirty years. Following his departure, the ambitious Hamdanid prince Sayf al-Dawla seized Aleppo and northern Syria in the autumn of 944, and although defeated and driven out of Syria by Ibn Tughj himself in the next year, a treaty dividing the region along the lines of the agreement with Ibn Ra'iq was concluded in October. Ibn Tughj died nine months later, and was buried in Jerusalem. He left his son Unujur as ruler of his domains, under the tutelage of the powerful black eunuch Abu al-Misk Kafur.
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Zac Guildford
Zachary Robert Guildford (born 8 February 1989) is a retired New Zealand professional rugby union player who played as a wing most notably for National Provincial Championship club Hawke's Bay and the New Zealand national team.
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Steve Gohouri
Lohoré Steve Ulrich Gohouri (8 February 1981 – 31 December 2015) was an Ivorian professional footballer who played as a defender. Gohouri started his career in France, playing in the youth teams at CS Brétigny and Paris Saint-Germain. Due to a lack of first team opportunities, he had a brief spell in Israel with Bnei Yehuda before moving to Switzerland and joining Yverdon-Sport. He spent the next seven seasons in the Swiss leagues, later playing for Vaduz, where he made his debut in a European competition, and Young Boys, where he won a runners-up medal in the Swiss Cup. In 2007, he signed…
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Henry Walter Bates
Henry Walter Bates (8 February 1825 – 16 February 1892) was an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the rainforests of the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace, starting in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection on the return voyage when his ship caught fire. When Bates arrived home in 1859 after a full eleven years, he had sent back over 14,712 species (mostly of insects) of which 8,000 were (according to Bates, but see Van Wyhe) new to science. Bates wrote up his findings in his…
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Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (8 February 1807 – 27 January 1894) was an English sculptor and natural history artist renowned for his work on the life-size models of dinosaurs in the Crystal Palace Park in south London. The models, accurately made using the latest scientific knowledge, created a sensation at the time. Hawkins was also a noted lecturer on zoological topics.
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André Grétry
André Ernest Modeste Grétry (French: [gʁɛtʁi]; baptised 11 February 1741; died 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium), who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his opéras comiques. His music influenced Mozart and Beethoven both of whom wrote variations on his works.
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Ulrich, Duke of Württemberg
Duke Ulrich of Württemberg (8 February 1487 – 6 November 1550) succeeded his kinsman Eberhard II as Duke of Württemberg in 1498. He was declared of age in 1503. His volatile personality made him infamous, being called the "Swabian Henry VIII" by historians.
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Elly Ameling
Elisabeth Sara "Elly" Ameling (born 8 February 1933) is a Dutch soprano, who is particularly known for lieder recitals and for performing works by Johann Sebastian Bach. Performing with distinguished pianists and ensembles around the globe, she was awarded various honours and recording prizes.
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Greta Keller
Margaretha "Greta" Keller (8 February 1903 – 11 November 1977) was an Austrian and American cabaret singer and actress, who worked in some Hollywood movies and television dramas.
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Maxime Du Camp
Maxime Du Camp (8 February 1822 – 9 February 1894) was a French writer and photographer.
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Agrippa d'Aubigné
Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné (French pronunciation: [teo.dɔʁ aɡʁipa dobiɲe], 8 February 1552 – 29 April 1630) was a French poet, soldier, propagandist and chronicler. His epic poem Les Tragiques (1616) is widely regarded as his masterpiece. In a book about his Catholic contemporary Jean de La Ceppède, the English poet Keith Bosley called d'Aubigné "the epic poet of the Protestant cause," during the French Wars of Religion. Bosley added, however, that after d'Aubigné's death, he "was forgotten until the Romantics rediscovered him."
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Aaron Cook
Aaron Lane Cook (born February 8, 1979) is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Colorado Rockies and Boston Red Sox. He won the Tony Conigliaro Award in 2005 and was an All-Star in 2008 with the Rockies.
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Vital-Justin Grandin
Vital-Justin Grandin (8 February 1829 – 3 June 1902) was a Roman Catholic priest and bishop. He has been labelled as a key architect of the Canadian Indian residential school system by contemporary news sources, which has been considered an instrument of cultural genocide. In June 2021, this led to governments and private businesses to begin removing his name from institutions and infrastructure previously named for him. He served the Church in the western parts of what is now Canada both before and after Confederation. He is also the namesake or co-founder of various small communities and…
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Cliff Allison
Henry Clifford Allison (8 February 1932 – 7 April 2005) was a British racing driver from England, who participated in Formula One during seasons 1958 to 1961 for the Lotus, Scuderia Centro Sud, Ferrari and UDT Laystall teams. He was born and died in Brough, Westmorland (now Cumbria).
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Khaled Mashud
Khaled Mashud, popularly known as Khaled Mashud Pilot (Bengali: খালেদ মাসুদ; born 8 February 1976) is a former Bangladeshi cricketer who was the country's Test and ODI captain. A wicketkeeper and middle-order batsman, he was a regular member of the national team between 1995 and 2007. Bangladeshi coach Dav Whatmore called Mashud the "best wicketkeeper in Asia." He contributed to Bangladesh's first ever ODI hat-trick by taking two catches off Shahadat Hossain's bowling. After his international retirement in 2008, he continued to play domestic cricket in Bangladesh as captain of the Rajshahi…
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Petra Cetkovská
Petra Cetkovská (Czech pronunciation: [ˈpɛtra ˈtsɛtkofskaː]; born 8 February 1985) is a Czech retired tennis player. Having turned professional in 2000, she reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 25, on 18 June 2012. Over her career, Cetkovská defeated top-ten players Marion Bartoli, Elena Dementieva, Angelique Kerber, Li Na, Agnieszka Radwańska, Caroline Wozniacki, and Vera Zvonareva.
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Robert Burton
Robert Burton (8 February 1577 – 25 January 1640; sometimes writing under the pen name Democritus Junior) was an English author and fellow of Oxford University, known for his encyclopaedic The Anatomy of Melancholy. Born in 1577 to a comfortably well-off family of the landed gentry, Burton attended two grammar schools and matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford in 1593, age 15. Burton's education at Oxford was unusually lengthy, possibly drawn out by an affliction of melancholy, and saw an early transfer to Christ Church. Burton received an MA and BD, and by 1607 was qualified as a tutor.…
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Snowy Baker
Reginald Leslie "Snowy" Baker (8 February 1884 – 2 December 1953) was an Australian athlete, sports promoter, and actor. Born in Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Baker excelled at a number of sports, winning New South Wales swimming and boxing championships while still a teenager. Playing rugby union for Eastern Suburbs, he played several games for New South Wales against Queensland, and in 1904 represented Australia in two Test matches against Great Britain. At the 1908 London Olympics, Baker represented Australasia in swimming and diving, as well as taking part…
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Arlie Petters
Arlie Oswald Petters, MBE (born February 8, 1964) is a Belizean-American mathematical physicist, who is the Benjamin Powell Professor of mathematics and a professor of physics and economics at Duke University. Petters became the provost at New York University Abu Dhabi effective September 1, 2020. Petters's research is focused on problems connected to the interplay of gravity and light and employing tools from astrophysics, cosmology, general relativity, high energy physics, differential geometry, singularities, and probability theory. His monograph "Singularity Theory and Gravitational…
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Sean Bergenheim
Sean Bergenheim (born February 8, 1984) is a Finnish former professional ice hockey winger who played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers and Minnesota Wild.
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Daniele Barbaro
Daniele Matteo Alvise Barbaro (also Barbarus) (8 February 1514 – 13 April 1570) was an Italian cleric and diplomat. He was also an architect, writer on architecture, and translator of, and commentator on, Vitruvius. Barbaro's fame is chiefly due to his vast output in the arts, letters, and mathematics. A cultured humanist, he was a friend and admirer of Torquato Tasso, a patron of Andrea Palladio, and a student of Pietro Bembo. He was also friends with Pierre Arélin, Niccolô Franco, Bernardo Tasso, and Benedetto Varchi. Francesco Sansovino considered Daniele to be one of the three best…
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Joseph Leopold Eybler
Joseph Leopold Eybler (8 February 1765 – 24 July 1846) was an Austrian composer and contemporary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
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Moses Gomberg
Moses Gomberg (February 8, 1866 – February 12, 1947) was a chemistry professor at the University of Michigan. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and served as president of the American Chemical Society.
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Sophie Kanza
Sophie Lihau-Kanza or Zala Lusibu N'Kanza (8 February 1940 – 2 April 1999) was a Congolese politician and sociologist. She was the first woman of her country to receive a secondary education, the first to graduate from a university, and the first to hold a government office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, serving as Minister of Social Affairs from 31 October 1966 to 6 December 1970. In her later life she held positions within the United Nations.
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Jermaine Anderson
Jermaine Anderson (born February 8, 1983) is a Canadian retired professional basketball player who is currently General Manager and Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Brampton Honey Badgers of the CEBL. He is a veteran member of the Canadian national basketball team.
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Michelle Brogan
Michelle Brogan (born 8 February 1973) is an Australian former basketball player who won the bronze medal with the Australia women's national basketball team at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Four years later she was on the side that claimed the silver medal in Sydney, Australia, when she was known as Michelle Griffiths. She attended the Australian Institute of Sport in 1988–1990. Michelle Brogan is the older sister of former National Basketball league player and AFL player Dean Brogan. Brogan's son, Bailey Griffiths, played for South Adelaide in the SANFL. Her son, Che, played for the Adelaide…
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Barney Danson
Barnett Jerome "Barney" Danson (February 8, 1921 – October 17, 2011) was a Canadian politician and Cabinet minister.
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Karine Chemla
Karine Chemla (born 8 February 1957) is a French historian of mathematics and sinologist who works as a director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). She is also a senior fellow at the New York University Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
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Charles-Jean-François Hénault
Charles-Jean-François Hénault (French: [ʃaʁl ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa eno]; 8 February 1685 – 24 November 1770) was a French writer and historian.
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Keegan Meth
Keegan Orry Meth (born 8 February 1988) is a former Zimbabwean cricketer. He played domestically for the Matabeleland Tuskers and represented Zimbabwe in international cricket. An all-rounder, he bowled right-arm medium-fast and generally batted in the lower middle order.
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Adella Brown Bailey
Adella Brown Bailey (1860–1937) was an American politician and suffragist.
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Isak Penttala
Isak Penttala (8 February 1883 – 28 February 1955) was a Finnish newspaper editor, politician and member of the Parliament of Finland, the national legislature of Finland. A member of the Social Democratic Party, he represented Vaasa Province South between March 1927 and July 1951. Prior to being elected, he was imprisoned for political reasons during and following the Finnish Civil War.
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