Who was born on January 29?
January 29 is packed with notable birthdays. Explore 103 famous birthdays, sorted by recent English Wikipedia pageviews. Top ranked names include Jarell Quansah, William McKinley, Heather Graham, Justin Hartley, Adam Lambert. Filter by actor, musician, athlete, and more — or open any other calendar day.
January 29
103 people
-
Jarell Quansah
Jarell Amorin Quansah (born 29 January 2003) is an English professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen and the England national team.
-
William McKinley
William McKinley (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades. McKinley successfully led the U.S. in the Spanish–American War and oversaw a period of American expansionism, with the annexations of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and American Samoa. McKinley was the last president to have served in the American Civil War; he was the only one to begin his service as an enlisted man and end it as a brevet major. After the war, he settled in Canton, Ohio, where he practiced law and married Ida Saxton. In 1876, McKinley was elected to Congress, where he became the Republican expert on the protective tariff, believing protectionism would bring prosperity. His 1890 McKinley Tariff was highly controversial and, together with a Democratic Party redistricting aimed at gerrymandering him out of office, led to his defeat in the Democratic landslide of 1890. He was elected governor of Ohio in 1891 and 1893, steering a moderate course between capital and labor interests. McKinley secured the Republican nomination for president in 1896 amid a deep economic depression and defeated his Democratic rival William Jennings Bryan after a front porch campaign in which he advocated "sound money" (the gold standard unless altered by international agreement) and promised that high tariffs would restore prosperity. McKinley's presidency saw rapid economic growth. He rejected free silver in favor of keeping the nation on the gold standard, and raised protective tariffs, signing the Dingley Tariff of 1897 to protect manufacturers and factory workers from foreign competition and securing the passage of the Gold Standard Act of 1900. McKinley's foreign policy emulated the era's overseas imperialism of the great powers in Oceania, Asia, and the Caribbean Sea. The United States annexed the independent Republic of Hawaii in 1898, and it became the Territory of Hawaii in 1900. McKinley hoped to persuade Spain to grant independence to rebellious Cuba without conflict. Still, when negotiations failed, he requested and signed Congress's declaration of war to begin the Spanish-American War of 1898, in which the United States saw a quick and decisive victory. As part of the peace settlement, Spain turned over to the United States its main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, while Cuba was promised independence but remained under American control until 1902, after McKinley's death. In the Philippines, a pro-independence rebellion began; it was eventually suppressed. McKinley acquired what is now American Samoa when his administration partitioned the Samoan Islands with the empires of Britain and Germany in the Tripartite Convention, during a period of warming ties between the UK and US known as the Great Rapprochement. McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election in a campaign focused on imperialism, protectionism, and free silver. His second term ended early when he was shot on September 6, 1901, by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. McKinley died eight days later and was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, whose popularity overshadowed McKinley's legacy. Historians regard McKinley's 1896 victory as a realigning election in which the political stalemate of the post-Civil War era gave way to the Republican-dominated Fourth Party System, beginning with the Progressive Era. The United States retains control over the major territories McKinley annexed, aside from the Philippines which became independent in 1946. McKinley is generally ranked among the middle tier of presidents.
-
Heather Graham
Heather Joan Graham (born January 29, 1970) is an American actress. The accolades she has received include nominations for two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and an Independent Spirit Award. After appearing in television commercials, her first starring role in a feature film came with the teen comedy License to Drive (1988), followed by the critically acclaimed film Drugstore Cowboy (1989). She then played supporting roles on the television series Twin Peaks (1991), and in films such as Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and Swingers (1996). She gained critical praise for her role as "Rollergirl" in the film Boogie Nights (1997). This led to major roles in the comedy films Bowfinger and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (both 1999). Graham had leading roles in Say It Isn't So (2001) and From Hell (2001), and continued to play supporting roles in the films Mary (2005); The Hangover (2009) and its sequel, The Hangover Part III (2013); At Any Price (2012); and Horns (2013). She has had roles on television series such as Scrubs (2004-05) and Californication (2014). In 2018, Graham made her directorial debut with the comedy Half Magic. Graham is a public advocate for Children International and supported the climate change campaign Global Cool in 2007.
-
Justin Hartley
Justin Scott Hartley (born January 29, 1977) is an American actor, television producer, and director. He has played Fox Crane on the NBC daytime soap opera Passions (2002–2006), Oliver Queen on the WB/CW television series Smallville (2006–2011), and Adam Newman on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless (2014–2016) which earned him a Daytime Emmy nomination. He also had recurring roles in the third season of the television drama series Revenge (2013–2014) and in the final three seasons of the drama series Mistresses (2014–2016). Hartley gained wider attention for starring as Kevin Pearson in the NBC drama series This Is Us, from 2016 to 2022, for which he was thrice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He has since starred in the films A Bad Moms Christmas (2017) and The Noel Diary (2022). In 2024, he began starring in the CBS action drama series Tracker.
-
Adam Lambert
Adam Mitchel Lambert (born January 29, 1982) is an American singer, songwriter and actor. He is known for his dynamic vocal performances that combine his theatrical training with modern and classic genres. Lambert rose to fame in 2009 after finishing as runner-up on the eighth season of American Idol. Later that year, he released his debut album For Your Entertainment, which debuted at number three on the U.S. Billboard 200. The album spawned several singles, including "Whataya Want from Me", for which he received a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. He is also known for replacing Paul Rodgers for a reunion project known as Queen + Adam Lambert, which features the remaining members of rock band Queen. In 2012, Lambert released his second studio album Trespassing. The album premiered at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, making him the first openly gay artist to top the album charts. In 2015, Lambert released his third album The Original High, which debuted at number three on the U.S. Billboard 200 and produced the single "Ghost Town". Since 2009, he has sold over three million albums and five million singles worldwide. Alongside his solo career, Lambert has performed with Queen in several worldwide tours from 2012. Their first album, Live Around the World, was released in October 2020, and debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. In late 2019, Lambert founded the non-profit Feel Something Foundation, anchoring his ongoing philanthropy, LGBTQ+ and human rights activism. Its particular focus is support for organizations and projects that directly and disproportionately impact the LGBTQ+ community, including education and the arts, mental health, suicide prevention and homelessness. Lambert made his Broadway debut in 2024, replacing Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in the revival of Cabaret on September 16.
-
Edward Burns
Edward Fitzgerald Burns (born January 29, 1968) is an American actor and filmmaker. He rose to fame with The Brothers McMullen (1995), his low-budget independent film that became successful worldwide. His other film appearances include Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Holiday (2006), 27 Dresses (2008), Man on a Ledge (2012), Friends with Kids (2012), and Alex Cross (2012). Burns directed films such as She's the One (1996), Sidewalks of New York (2001), and The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (2012). On television, he appeared as Bugsy Siegel in the TNT crime drama series Mob City and as Terry Muldoon in TNT's Public Morals.
-
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов; 29 January [O.S. 17 January] 1860 – 15 July [O.S. 2 July] 1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer. Widely considered one of the greatest writers of all time, his career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text." Chekhov began writing stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He wrote that it is not the duty of writers to solve problems, but to correctly state them.
-
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (January 29, 1874 – May 11, 1960) was an American financier and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the fifth child and only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center, making him one of the largest real estate holders in the city at that time. Towards the end of his life, he was famous for his philanthropy, donating over $500 million to a wide variety of different causes, including educational establishments. Among his projects was the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He was widely blamed for having orchestrated the Ludlow Massacre and other offenses during the Colorado Coalfield War. Rockefeller was the father of six children: Abby, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David.
-
Sam Trammell
Sam Trammell (born January 29, 1969) is an American actor, best known for his role as Sam Merlotte on the HBO fantasy drama series True Blood. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Miller in Ah, Wilderness!
-
Clare Balding
Clare Victoria Balding (born 29 January 1971) is an English broadcast journalist and author. She currently presents programmes for BBC Sport and Channel 4, and previously for BT Sport. She also formerly presented Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2. Balding served as President of the Rugby Football League between July 2020 and December 2022.
-
Terry Kinney
Terry Kinney (born January 29, 1954) is an American actor, theater director, and founding member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, with Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry. Kinney is best known for his role as Tim McManus on HBO's prison drama Oz.
-
John Forsythe
John Lincoln Forsythe (né Freund; January 29, 1918 – April 1, 2010) was an American stage, film/television actor, producer, narrator, and drama teacher whose career spanned six decades. He also appeared as a guest on several talk and variety shows and as a panelist on numerous game shows. In 1943, he signed up with Warner Bros. as a minor contract player, but he starred in The Captive City (1952) and co-starred opposite Loretta Young in It Happens Every Thursday (1953), Edmund Gwenn and Shirley MacLaine in The Trouble with Harry (1955), and Olivia de Havilland in The Ambassador's Daughter (1956). He also enjoyed a long successful television career, starring in three television series in three genres: as the single playboy father Bentley Gregg in the sitcom Bachelor Father (1957–1962); as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend in the crime drama Charlie's Angels (1976–1981)—a role he reprised in the 2000 and 2003 film adaptations; and as patriarch Blake Carrington in the prime time soap opera Dynasty (1981–1989). He hosted the series World of Survival (1971–1977), and was the host of the 38th Miss Universe Pageant, broadcast on CBS in 1989.
-
Victor Mature
Victor John Mature (January 29, 1913 – August 4, 1999) was an American stage, film, and television actor who was a leading man in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. His best known film roles include One Million B.C. (1940), My Darling Clementine (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Robe (1953). He also appeared in many musicals opposite such stars as Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable.
-
Marc Gasol
Marc Gasol Sáez (Catalan: [ˈmaɾɡ ɡəˈzɔl], Spanish: [ˈmaɾk gaˈsol]; born 29 January 1985) is a Spanish former professional basketball player who is the president of Bàsquet Girona of the Liga ACB. The center is a two-time All-NBA Team member and a three-time NBA All-Star. He was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year with the Memphis Grizzlies in 2013, and won an NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019. Gasol was drafted 48th overall by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2007 NBA draft. After having his rights traded to Memphis in February 2008 in a deal that sent his older brother Pau Gasol to the Lakers, he signed with the Grizzlies and remained with the franchise until being traded to Toronto in 2019. He rejoined the Lakers in 2020 for one season. Gasol has been a regular member of the Spain national team since 2006. He has won two Olympic silver medals and two FIBA Basketball World Cup titles. In the EuroBasket, he has won two titles, a silver medal, and two bronze medals.
-
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield (January 29, 1880 – December 25, 1946), better known as W. C. Fields, was an American actor, comedian, juggler and writer. His career in show business began in vaudeville, where he attained international success as a silent juggler. He began to incorporate comedy into his act and was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies for several years. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy Poppy (1923), in which he played a colorful small-time con man. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters. Among his trademarks were his physical comedy, raspy drawl, large nose, and grandiloquent vocabulary. His film and radio persona was generally identified with Fields himself. It was maintained by the publicity departments at Fields's studios (Paramount and Universal) and was further reinforced by Robert Lewis Taylor's 1949 biography W. C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes. Beginning in 1973, with the publication of Fields's letters, photos, and personal notes in grandson Ronald Fields's book W. C. Fields by Himself, it was shown that Fields was married (and subsequently estranged from his wife), financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren.
-
Andrew Keegan
Andrew Keegan is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor, making his film debut with a supporting role in Camp Nowhere (1994). Keegan later received recognition for his main role as Jack Kelly on season 2 of the ABC sitcom Thunder Alley (1994–1995). After recurring roles as Wilson West on the CW television series 7th Heaven (1997–2002) and Reed Isley on the Fox series Party of Five (1997–1998), Keegan had his breakout with a starring role in the teen romantic comedy film 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). In the 2000s, he starred in the films The Broken Hearts Club (2000), O (2001), A New Wave (2006), and Waiting for Dublin (2007), and had a recurring role as Zach on the WB series Related (2005–2006). In the 2010s and 2020s, Keegan starred in the films Living Among Us (2018), Adverse (2020), and The Activated Man (2023), and had a supporting role in the film Love, Wedding, Marriage (2011).
-
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specialising in English and women's literature, Greer has held academic positions in England at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge, and in the United States at the University of Tulsa. She started living in the UK in 1964, and from the 1990s until her later years, divided her time between Queensland, Australia, and her home in Essex, England. Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), made her a household name. An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, it offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women were forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entailed. Greer's subsequent work has focused on literature, feminism, and the environment. She has written over 20 books, including Sex and Destiny (1984), The Change (1991), The Whole Woman (1999), and The Boy (2003). Her 2013 book White Beech: The Rainforest Years describes her efforts to restore an area of rainforest in the Numinbah Valley in Australia. In addition to her academic work and activism, she has been a prolific columnist for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Independent, and The Oldie, among others. Greer is a liberation (or radical) rather than equality feminist. Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and "agreeing to live the lives of unfree men". "Women's liberation", she wrote in The Whole Woman (1999), "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues instead that liberation is about asserting difference and "insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination". It is a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate".
-
Teresa Teng
Teng Li-Chun (simplified Chinese: 邓丽君; traditional Chinese: 鄧麗君; pinyin: Dèng Lìjūn; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), also known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, television personality, musician, and philanthropist. Widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures in the Chinese-speaking world of the 20th century, she is considered to be one of the most successful and influential Asian musicians of all time. Her contributions to Chinese pop has given birth to the phrase, "Wherever there are Chinese-speaking people, there is music of Teresa Teng." A polyglot, Teng's music has transcended geographical, linguistic, and political boundaries across Asia for several decades. With a career spanning almost thirty years, Teng established herself as a dominant and influential force in Asia throughout most of her career, particularly in East and Southeast Asia, and to some extent South Asia. Teng is credited as the Far East's first pop superstar and a pioneer of modern Chinese pop music — a major force in the development of the Chinese music industry by incorporating western and eastern styles into her music, replacing the mostly revolutionary songs then prevalent in mainland China and laying the foundation for modern Chinese popular music. Throughout her career, Teng recorded more than 1,700 songs in her native language, Mandarin, but also in Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese, Indonesian, English and Italian. Teng is considered instrumental in bridging the political and cultural divides across Chinese-speaking regions. She was one of the first artists to connect Japan to East and Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, Teng rose to fame for entertaining the armed forces and singing patriotic songs that appealed to the people of the island. She was nicknamed "the patriotic entertainer" and "the soldiers' sweetheart". To date, Teng's songs have been covered by hundreds of artists worldwide. Teng has sold over 48 million albums, excluding sales in Mainland China, according to the IFPI. In 1986, she was named by Time as one of the seven greatest female singers in the world. In 2009, in an online poll by a Chinese government web portal to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, Teng was deemed the most influential cultural figure in China since 1949 with 8.5 million votes. On the eve of International Women's Day in 2010, she was named the most influential woman in modern China in a poll conducted by various Chinese media outlets. Teng was inducted into the Popular Music Hall of Fame at the Koga Masao Museum of Music in Tokyo in 2007, making her the only non-Japanese person to be inducted.
-
Tony Blackburn
Antony Kenneth Blackburn (born 29 January 1943) is an English disc jockey, singer and television presenter, whose career spans over 60 years. Blackburn first achieved fame broadcasting on the pirate stations Radio Caroline and Radio London in the 1960s, before joining the BBC, initially broadcasting on the BBC Light Programme. Blackburn was the first disc jockey to broadcast on BBC Radio 1 at its launch, on 30 September 1967, and has had several stints working for the corporation. He has also worked for Capital London, Classic Gold Digital and BBC Local Radio, and currently BBC Radio 2 and British Forces Broadcasting Service. As a DJ, Blackburn is known for his championing of Motown and soul music as well as his popular presenting style. In 2002, Blackburn was the first winner of the British reality TV series I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!
-
Henry Lee III
Henry Lee III (January 29, 1756 – March 25, 1818) was an early American patriot and politician who served as the ninth governor of Virginia and as the Virginia representative to the United States Congress. Lee's service during the American Revolution as a cavalry officer in the Continental Army earned him the nickname by which he is best known, "Light-Horse Harry". He was a member of the Lee Family of Virginia and the father of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
-
Jason James Richter
Jason James Richter (born January 29, 1980) is an American actor, musician, producer, and director. Originally from Medford, Oregon, Richter rose to fame as a child actor, starring in the Free Willy franchise. His career includes a wide range of roles in film and television, as well as work behind the camera. He has appeared in notable productions such as The Little Things (2021), Last Call (2021), and The NeverEnding Story III (1994). His television credits include guest roles on popular series like Bones, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. In recent years, Richter has expanded his career into producing and directing. He has produced several films, including Natty Knocks (2023) and The Last Rampage (2017). His directorial debut came with the short film The Quiet Loud in 2013, which he also wrote and produced. Throughout his career, Richter has received recognition for his performances, including a Young Artist Award for his role in Free Willy and nominations for MTV Movie Awards. As of 2025, Richter continues to be active in the industry, with his most recent acting credit in Final Heist (2024).
-
Judy Norton
Judy Norton (born January 29, 1958) is an American actress and theater director who is best known for her role as Mary Ellen Walton on The Waltons television series and subsequent Waltons TV movies.
-
Emanuel Swedenborg
Emanuel Swedenborg (; Swedish: [ɛˈmɑ̂ːnʉɛl ˈsvêːdɛnˌbɔrj] ; born Emanuel Swedberg; 29 January 1688 – 29 March 1772) was a Swedish polymath; a scientist, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, Christian theologian, philosopher, and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758). Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741, at 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions, notably on Easter Weekend, on 6 April 1744. His experiences culminated in a "spiritual awakening" in which he received a revelation that Jesus Christ had appointed him to write The Heavenly Doctrine to reform Christianity. According to The Heavenly Doctrine, the Lord had opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes so that from then on, he could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels, demons, and other spirits and that the Last Judgment had already occurred in 1757, the year before the 1758 publication of De Nova Hierosolyma et ejus doctrina coelesti (English: Concerning the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine). Over the last 28 years of his life, Swedenborg wrote 18 published theological works—and several more that remained unpublished. He termed himself a "Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ" in True Christian Religion, which he published himself. Some followers of The Heavenly Doctrine believe that of his theological works, only those that were published by Swedenborg himself are fully divinely inspired. Others have regarded all Swedenborg's theological works as equally inspired, saying for example that the fact that some works were "not written out in a final edited form for publication does not make a single statement less trustworthy than the statements in any of the other works". The New Church, also known as Swedenborgianism, is a Restorationist denomination of Christianity originally founded in 1787 and comprising several historically related Christian churches that revere Swedenborg's writings as revelation.
-
Ann Jillian
Ann Jillian (born Ann Jura Nauseda; January 29, 1950) is an American former actress and singer whose career began as a child actress in 1960. She is best known for her role as the sultry waitress Cassie Cranston on the 1980s sitcom It's a Living.
-
Tenoch Huerta
José Tenoch Huerta Mejía (Spanish: [teˈnotʃ ˈweɾta]; born January 29, 1981) is a Mexican actor and activist. He has appeared in a number of movies in Latin America and Spain, and has had a starring role in the crime drama Narcos: Mexico (2018–2020). He has since portrayed Namor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and will reprise his role in the upcoming film Avengers: Doomsday (2026).
-
James Jamerson
James Lee Jamerson (January 29, 1936 – August 2, 1983) was an American bassist. He was the uncredited bassist on most of the Motown Records hits in the 1960s and early 1970s (Motown did not list session musician credits on their releases until 1971), and is now regarded as one of the greatest and most influential bass players in modern music history. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. As a session musician he played on twenty-three Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits, as well as fifty-six R&B number-one hits. In its special issue "The 100 Greatest Bass Players" in 2017, Bass Player magazine ranked Jamerson number one and called him the most important and influential bass guitarist. In 2020, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Jamerson number one in its list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.
-
Paddy Chayefsky
Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (; January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981) was an American playwright and screenwriter. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for writing both Adapted and Original screenplays. He was one of the most renowned dramatists of the Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, dramatizing the lives of ordinary Americans. Martin Gottfried wrote in All His Jazz that Chayefsky was "the most successful graduate of television's slice of life school of naturalism." Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky became a noted playwright and screenwriter. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). The movie Marty was based on his own television drama about two lonely people finding love. Network was a satire of the television industry and The Hospital was also satiric. Film historian David Thomson called The Hospital "years ahead of its time. … Few films capture the disaster of America's self-destructive idealism so well." His screenplay for Network is often regarded as his masterpiece, and has been hailed as "the kind of literate, darkly funny and breathtakingly prescient material that prompts many to claim it as the greatest screenplay of the 20th century." Chayefsky's early stories were frequently influenced by the author's childhood in The Bronx. Chayefsky was part of the inaugural class of inductees into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Television Hall of Fame. He received this honor three years after his death, in 1984.
-
Abdus Salam
Mohammad Abdus Salam (; 29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current". He was the first Pakistani, first Muslim scientist, and second person from any Muslim country (after Anwar Sadat of Egypt) to win a Nobel Prize. Salam was scientific advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology in Pakistan from 1960 to 1974, a position from which he played a major and influential role in the development of the country's science infrastructure. Salam contributed to numerous developments in theoretical and particle physics in Pakistan. He was the founding director of the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO). For this, he is viewed as the "scientific father" of this program. In 1974, Abdus Salam departed from his country in protest after the Parliament of Pakistan unanimously passed a parliamentary bill declaring members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, to which Salam belonged, non-Muslim. Salam's notable achievements include the Pati–Salam model, a Grand Unified Theory he proposed along with Jogesh Pati in 1974, magnetic photon, vector meson, work on supersymmetry and most importantly, electroweak theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Salam made a major contribution at Imperial College London. Salam made important contributions to the modern theory on neutrinos, as well as the work on modernising quantum mechanics. As a teacher and science promoter, Salam is remembered as a founder and scientific father of theoretical physics in Pakistan during his term as the chief scientific advisor to the president. Salam heavily contributed to the rise of Pakistani physics within the global physics community.
-
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire.
-
Gauri Lankesh
Gauri Lankesh (29 January 1962 – 5 September 2017) was an Indian activist and journalist from Bangalore, Karnataka. She worked as an editor in Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly started by her father P. Lankesh, and ran her own weekly called Gauri Lankesh Patrike. She was murdered outside her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on 5 September 2017. At the time of her death, Gauri was known for being a critic of right-wing Hindu extremism. She was honoured with the Anna Politkovskaya Award for speaking against right-wing Hindu extremism, campaigning for women's rights and opposing caste-based discrimination.
-
Sharif Atkins
Sharif Atkins (born January 29, 1975) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Dr. Michael Gallant on ER (2001–2006), FBI Agent Clinton Jones on White Collar (2009–2014), and Captain Norman 'Boom Boom' Gates on NCIS: Hawaiʻi (2021–2024).
-
Kyary Pamyu Pamyu
Kiriko Takemura (桐子, Kiriko; born January 29, 1993), known professionally as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (Hiragana: きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ), is a Japanese singer, model and tarento. Her public image is associated with Japan's kawaii and decora culture, centered in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. Kyary's music is produced by musician Yasutaka Nakata of electronic music duo Capsule. Her 2011 single "Pon Pon Pon" reached the top ten on Japan's Oricon music chart; the 2012 singles "Candy Candy" and "Fashion Monster" followed this success. Kyary has since released five full-length albums: Pamyu Pamyu Revolution (2012), Nanda Collection (2013), Pika Pika Fantajin (2014), Japamyu (2018), and Candy Racer (2021). Though most of her success as a recording artist has been in Asia, she has also gained popularity in Western countries due in part to Internet videos which have gone viral. Media outlets have referred to Kyary as a "Fashion Monster", and she has been photographed for magazines such as Dazed & Confused. In 2013, she signed a distribution deal with Sire Records to release her material in the United States. As of February 2020, Kyary has sold over 970,000 physical albums and singles in Japan as well as over 2.25 million downloads of her singles.
-
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch (; January 29, 1892 – November 30, 1947) was a German and American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch". Among his best known works are Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Heaven Can Wait (1943). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director three times, for The Patriot (1928), The Love Parade (1929), and Heaven Can Wait (1943); his pictures The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour with You were also nominated for Outstanding Production in 1932. In 1946, he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture.
-
Albert Gallatin
Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin (January 29, 1761 – August 12, 1849) was a Genevan-American politician, diplomat, ethnologist, and linguist. Often described as "America's Swiss Founding Father", he was a leading figure in the early years of the United States, helping shape the new republic's financial system and foreign policy. Gallatin was a prominent member of the Democratic-Republican Party, represented Pennsylvania in both chambers of Congress, and held several influential roles across four presidencies, most notably as the longest serving U.S. secretary of the treasury. He is also known for his contributions to academia, namely as the founder of New York University and cofounder of the American Ethnological Society. Gallatin was born in Geneva in present-day Switzerland and spoke French as a first language. Inspired by the ideals of the American Revolution, he immigrated to the United States in the 1780s, settling in western Pennsylvania. He served as a delegate to the 1789 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention and won election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Gallatin was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1793, emerging as a leading Anti-Federalist and opponent of Alexander Hamilton's economic policies. However, he was soon removed from office on a party-line vote due to not meeting requisite citizenship requirements; returning to Pennsylvania, Gallatin helped calm many angry farmers during the Whiskey Rebellion. Gallatin won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1795, where he helped establish the House Ways and Means Committee. He became the chief spokesman on financial matters for the Democratic-Republican Party and led opposition to the Federalist economic program. Gallatin helped Thomas Jefferson prevail in the contentious 1800 U.S. presidential election, and his reputation as a prudent financial manager led to his appointment as Treasury Secretary. Under Jefferson, Gallatin reduced government spending, instituted checks and balances for government expenditures, and financed the Louisiana Purchase and advocated for internal improvements, most notably through his Report on Roads and Canals. He retained his position through James Madison's administration until February 1814, maintaining much of Hamilton's financial system while presiding over a reduction in the national debt. Gallatin served on the American commission that agreed to the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. In the aftermath of the war, he helped found the Second Bank of the United States. Declining another term at the Treasury, Gallatin served as U.S. Ambassador to France from 1816 to 1823, struggling with scant success to improve relations during the Bourbon Restoration. In the 1824 U.S. presidential election, Gallatin was nominated for Vice President by the Democratic-Republican Congressional caucus but never wanted the position and ultimately withdrew due to a lack of popular support. In 1826 and 1827, he served as the American ambassador to Britain and negotiated several agreements, such as a ten-year extension of the joint occupation of Oregon Country. He thereafter retired from politics and dedicated the rest of his life to various civic, humanitarian, and academic causes. He became the first president of the New York branch of the National Bank from 1831 to 1839, and in 1842 joined John Russell Bartlett to establish the American Ethnological Society; his studies of Indigenous languages of North America have earned him the moniker "father of American ethnology." Gallatin remained active in public life as an outspoken opponent of slavery and an advocate for fiscal responsibility, free trade, and individual liberty.
-
Katharina von Bora
Katharina von Bora (29 January 1499? – 20 December 1552; German: [fɔn ˈboːʁaː]), also referred to as "die Lutherin" ('the Lutheress'), or sometimes by modernized naming conventions Katharina Luther, was the wife of the German reformer Martin Luther and a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation. Although little is known about her, she is often considered to have been important to the Reformation, her marriage setting a precedent for Protestant family life and clerical marriage.
-
Diane Delano
Diane Delano (January 29, 1957 – December 13, 2024) was an American character actress. She was known for her numerous roles in films and television, such as Sergeant Barbara Semanski on the CBS television series Northern Exposure and Roberta "Bobbi" Glass on The WB television series Popular.
-
José Abreu
José Dariel Abreu Correa (born January 29, 1987) is a Cuban-born former professional baseball first baseman. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros. Abreu played in the Cuban National Series for Cienfuegos before his defection from Cuba in August 2013. After being granted free agency by MLB, Abreu signed with the White Sox in October 2013. Abreu won the AL Rookie of the Year Award in 2014, the Silver Slugger Award in 2014, 2018, and 2020, and the American League's Most Valuable Player Award in 2020. He led the American League in runs batted in in 2019 and 2020. He signed with the Astros before the 2023 season and was released in 2024.
-
Sacha Distel
Alexandre "Sacha" Distel (29 January 1933 – 22 July 2004) was a French musician and singer who had hits with a cover version of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" in 1970, which reached No. 10 on the UK charts, "Scoubidou", and "The Good Life". He was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur in 1997. He had also scored a hit as a songwriter when Tony Bennett recorded "The Good Life" in 1963. It peaked at No. 18 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart and reached the top 10 of the Easy Listening chart. He was referenced in the 1969 hit song Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? by Peter Sarstedt.
-
Roddy Frame
Roddy Frame (born 29 January 1964) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. He was the founder of the 1980s new wave band Aztec Camera and has undertaken a solo career since the group's dissolution. In November 2013, journalist Brian Donaldson described Frame as: "Aztec Camera wunderkind-turned-elder statesman of intelligent, melodic, wistful Scotpop." Since the end of the Aztec Camera project, Frame has released four solo albums, the last of which is 2014's Seven Dials.
-
Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst
Field Marshal Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst (29 January 1717 – 3 August 1797) was a British Army officer and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces. He is credited as the architect of Britain's successful campaign to conquer the territory of New France during the Seven Years' War. He was also the first British governor general in the territories that eventually became Canada. Son of a lawyer from Kent, Amherst enlisted in the Grenadier Guards in 1735 and first saw active service during the War of the Austrian Succession. Early in the Seven Years' War, he conducted the successful siege at Louisbourg, and was appointed commander-in-chief in North America in its wake. Under his command, British forces went on to capture Quebec, Montreal and several major fortresses, bringing an end to French rule in North America. He was named Governor-General of British North America in 1760 and received a knighthood a year later. In early 1763, in response to Amherst's policies, a confederation of Native Americans launched what came to be known as Pontiac's War. His handling of the uprising provoked criticism and led to his recall to Britain, and he was subsequently replaced as commander-in-chief in North America by Thomas Gage. Amherst was created a peer in 1776, and served as commander-in-chief of the British Army on two occasions, under which capacity he oversaw the suppression of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London. He retired a field marshal in 1796 and died a year later at the age of 80. Numerous places in Canada and the United States are named after Amherst. His modern legacy is controversial due to his expressed desire to spread smallpox among the indigenous people during Pontiac's War, which has led to a push to remove his name from various locales and institutions.
-
Megan McArdle
Megan Jennifer McArdle (born January 29, 1973) is an American columnist and blogger based in Washington, D.C. She writes for The Washington Post, mostly about economics, finance, and government policy. McArdle began her writing career with a blog, "Live from the WTC", started in November 2001. Other publications she has worked for include The Atlantic, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, and Bloomberg View. She published book reviews and opinion pieces in the New York Post, The New York Sun, Reason, The Guardian, and Salon.
-
Irlene Mandrell
Ellen Irlene Mandrell (born January 29, 1956) is an American musician. She is the younger sister of country singers Barbara and Louise Mandrell. Irlene Mandrell first rose to prominence as a model for CoverGirl, and later gained national attention when she appeared from 1980 to 1982 with her siblings on the highly rated Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters TV variety show. Shortly after the show's cancellation, she joined the cast of Hee Haw for a number of years as one of the "Hee Haw Honeys." She also appeared on two episodes of The Love Boat, and worked as a commercial spokesperson for a wide range of products. She has also competed in auto racing. Since the late 1990s, Mandrell has hosted the annual Irlene Mandrell Celebrity Shoot to raise money for Wish Upon a Star, Inc. and the Boy Scouts of America.
-
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland (French: [ʁɔmɛ̃ ʁɔlɑ̃]; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings". He was an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, wrote a still relevant biography of Gandhi, and is also noted for his correspondence with numerous writers and thinkers across the globe including Maxim Gorki, Rabindranath Tagore and Sigmund Freud.
-
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius (born Fritz Theodor Albert Delius; ; 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, his music did not make regular appearances in concert programmes until 1907, after Thomas Beecham took it up. Beecham conducted the full premiere of A Mass of Life in London in 1909 (he had premiered Part II in Germany in 1908); he staged the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet at Covent Garden in 1910; and he mounted a six-day Delius festival in London in 1929, as well as making gramophone recordings of many of the composer's works. After 1918, Delius began to suffer the effects of syphilis, contracted during his earlier years in Paris. He became paralysed and blind, but completed some late compositions between 1928 and 1932 with the aid of an amanuensis, Eric Fenby. The lyricism in Delius's early compositions reflected the music he had heard in America and the influences of European composers such as Grieg and Wagner. As his skills matured, he developed a style uniquely his own, characterised by his individual orchestration and his uses of chromatic harmony. Delius's music has been only intermittently popular, and often subject to critical attacks. The Delius Society, formed in 1962 by his more dedicated followers, continues to promote knowledge of the composer's life and works, and sponsors the annual Delius Prize competition for young musicians.
-
Strive Masiyiwa
Strive Masiyiwa (born 29 January 1961) is a London-based Zimbabwean billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and executive chairman of international technology groups Econet Global and Cassava Technologies. As of 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth at US$2.2 billion.
-
Leslie Bricusse
Leslie Charles Bricusse ( BRIK-əss; 29 January 1931 – 19 October 2021) was a British composer, lyricist, and playwright who worked on theatre musicals and wrote theme music for films. He was best known for writing the music and lyrics for the films Doctor Dolittle; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Scrooge; Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory; Tom and Jerry: The Movie; the titular James Bond film songs "Goldfinger" and "You Only Live Twice"; "Can You Read My Mind? (Love Theme from Superman)" (with John Williams) from Superman; and "Le Jazz Hot!" (with Henry Mancini) from Victor/Victoria.
-
Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American painter. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense of place that viewers experience with art and incorporate the simplest forms to emphasize this feeling.
-
Moses Cleaveland
Moses Cleaveland (January 29, 1754 – November 16, 1806) was an American lawyer, politician, soldier, and surveyor from Connecticut who founded the city of Cleveland, Ohio, while surveying the Connecticut Western Reserve in 1796. During the American Revolution, Cleaveland was the brigadier general of the Connecticut militia.
-
John Raitt
John Emmet Raitt (; January 29, 1917 – February 20, 2005) was an American actor and singer best known for his performances in musical theatre. His most notable role was Billy Bigelow in the original Broadway cast of Carousel.
-
Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the international feminist movement. Her 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful was cited by the New York Public Library as "One of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century". She has written more than 20 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and was editor of Ms. magazine. During the 1960s, she participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements; in the late 1960s, she was a founding member of radical feminist organizations such as New York Radical Women and W.I.T.C.H. She founded or co-founded the Feminist Women's Health Network, the National Battered Women's Refuge Network, Media Women, the National Network of Rape Crisis Centers, the Feminist Writers' Guild, the Women's Foreign Policy Council, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, GlobalSister.org, and Greenstone Women's Radio Network. She also co-founded the Women's Media Center with activist Gloria Steinem and actor/activist Jane Fonda. In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.
-
Lee Dae-hwi
Lee Dae-hwi (Korean: 이대휘, born January 29, 2001), known mononymously as Daehwi, is a South Korean singer-songwriter, producer and television personality. He is a member of South Korean boy group AB6IX, and is known for his participation in the reality competition show Produce 101 Season 2, where he finished in third place overall and became a member of the boy group Wanna One. In addition to singing and writing songs for various artists, he guest hosted and then became the permanent host for the long-time running variety show M Countdown.
-
Bill Peet
William Bartlett Peet (né Peed; January 29, 1915 – May 11, 2002) was an American children's book illustrator and a story writer and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios. Peet joined Disney in 1937 and worked first on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) near the end of its production. Progressively, his involvement in the Disney studio's animated feature films and shorts increased, and he remained there until early in the development of The Jungle Book (1967). A row with Walt Disney over the direction of the project led to him resigning in 1964. Peet's subsequent career was as a writer and illustrator of numerous children's books, including Capyboppy (1966), The Wump World (1970), The Whingdingdilly (1970), The Ant and the Elephant (1972), and Cyrus the Unsinkable Serpent (1975).
-
Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta
Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (French: [ibʁa.im bubakaʁ ke.ita]; 29 January 1945 – 16 January 2022), often known by his initials IBK, was a Malian politician who served as the president of Mali from September 2013 to August 2020, when he was forced to resign in the 2020 Malian coup d'état. He served as Mali's prime minister from February 1994 to February 2000 and as president of the National Assembly of Mali from September 2002 to September 2007. Keïta founded the centre-left political party Rally for Mali (RPM) in 2001. After a number of unsuccessful campaigns, he was elected president in the 2013 presidential election and reelected in 2018. He was deposed by mutinous elements of the Malian Armed Forces on 18 August 2020 and officially resigned the following day.
-
Joel Eriksson Ek
Joel Eriksson Ek (last name sometimes stylized as Eriksson-Ek, born 29 January 1997) is a Swedish professional ice hockey player who is a centre for the Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League (NHL). Born and raised in Sweden, Eriksson Ek played junior hockey for Färjestad BK in the J18 Elit and J20 Nationell league. He made his professional debut as a teenager with Färjestad BK during the 2014–15 SHL season. Eriksson Ek earned praise from hockey pundits throughout the season and entered the draft as one of the highest ranked international skaters. He was ultimately taken 20th overall by the Wild in the 2015 NHL entry draft. He did not immediately join the Wild, instead returning to Sweden and recording 15 points during the 2015–16 SHL season. Eriksson Ek made his NHL debut with the Wild during the 2016–17 season and later became the first teenager in franchise history to record three assists in one game. Known for his strong two-way play, Eriksson Ek has established himself as a reliable centreman for the Wild, contributing both offensively and defensively. Over the years, he has become known for his physicality, defensive prowess, and ability to contribute points. Starting during the 2019–20 season, Eriksson Ek began playing on a line with Jordan Greenway and Marcus Foligno, which was aptly referred to as the GREEF line. They consistently found success and were considered the Wild's top shutdown line before Greenway was traded. Internationally, Eriksson Ek has represented his home country Sweden at both the junior and senior levels, winning gold once at the 2017 IIHF World Championship.
-
Sean Burke
Sean Burke (born January 29, 1967) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender and the current director of goaltending for the Vegas Golden Knights, with whom he won the Stanley Cup with in 2023. He played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the New Jersey Devils, Hartford Whalers, Carolina Hurricanes, Vancouver Canucks, Philadelphia Flyers, Florida Panthers, Phoenix Coyotes, Tampa Bay Lightning and Los Angeles Kings between 1988 and 2007. He was born in Windsor, Ontario, but grew up in Toronto, Ontario.
-
David Agus
David B. Agus (/ˈeɪgəs/) is an American physician and author specializing in advanced cancer. He serves as professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering, as well as the founding director and CEO of the Ellison Medical Institute. He is also the cofounder of several personalized medicine companies and a contributor to CBS News on health topics. Agus has developed new cancer treatments with the aid of private foundations, as well as national agencies including the National Cancer Institute. Agus has also served as chair of the Global Agenda Council on Genetics for the World Economic Forum.
-
Tim Gleason
Timothy Patrick Gleason (born January 29, 1983) is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman and current assistant coach to the Carolina Hurricanes. Drafted by the Ottawa Senators in the first round, 23rd overall, at the 2001 NHL entry draft, Gleason played in the NHL for the Los Angeles Kings, Carolina Hurricanes, Toronto Maple Leafs and the Washington Capitals.
-
Johann Reuchlin
Johann Reuchlin (; German: [ˈjoːhan ˈʁɔʏçlɪn]; 29 January 1455 – 30 June 1522), sometimes called Johannes, was a German Catholic humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, whose work also took him to modern-day Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France. Most of Reuchlin's career centered on advancing German knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.
-
Elio Petri
Eraclio Petri (29 January 1929 – 10 November 1982), commonly known as Elio Petri, was an Italian film and theatre director, screenwriter and film critic. The Museum of Modern Art described him as "one of the preeminent political and social satirists of 1960s and early 1970s Italian cinema". His film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, and his subsequent film The Working Class Goes to Heaven received the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Other noted films by Petri include The 10th Victim (1965), the prize-winning We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) and A Quiet Place in the Country (1968), and the controversially received Todo modo (1976).
-
Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez
Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (born 29 January 1942) is a Cuban military officer, legislator, and former cosmonaut. In 1980, as a member of the crew of Soyuz 38, he became the first Cuban citizen, the first Latin American, the first person of African descent, and the first person from a country in the Western Hemisphere other than the United States to travel into Earth orbit.
-
Pete Geren
Preston Murdoch "Pete" Geren III (born January 29, 1952) is an appointed member and President of the Board of Managers of the Fort Worth Independent School District and the president of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas. Previously, he was an attorney and politician who served as the 20th United States Secretary of the Army from July 16, 2007, to September 16, 2009. He is a former member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas's 12th congressional district, under the Democratic ticket. Geren has a mixed voting record, having switched to the Republican party since 2024. Geren is a member of the board of trustees of the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia.
-
Chris Bourque
Christopher Ray Bourque (born January 29, 1986) is an American former professional ice hockey forward. Originally drafted by the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League (NHL), he has played 51 NHL games for the Capitals, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Boston Bruins. Bourque currently serves as a free agent scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
-
Mohamed Abou Gabal
Mohamed Qotb Abou Gabal Ali (Arabic: مُحَمَّد قُطْب أَبُو جَبَل عَلِيّ; born 29 January 1989), also known as Gabaski, is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper.
-
Ernst Kummer
Ernst Eduard Kummer (German: [ˈkʊmɐ]; 29 January 1810 – 14 May 1893) was a German mathematician. Skilled in applied mathematics, Kummer trained German army officers in ballistics; afterwards, he taught for 10 years in a gymnasium, the German equivalent of high school, where he inspired the mathematical career of Leopold Kronecker.
-
Joseph Kruskal
Joseph Bernard Kruskal, Jr. (; January 29, 1928 – September 19, 2010) was an American mathematician.
-
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (Spanish pronunciation: [biˈθente ˈβlaskojˈβaɲeθ], 29 January 1867 – 28 January 1928) was a journalist, politician, and a bestselling Spanish novelist in various genres whose most widespread and lasting fame in the English-speaking world is from Hollywood films that were adapted from his works.
-
Brian Wood
Brian Wood (born January 29, 1972) is an American writer, illustrator, and graphic designer, known for his work in comic books, television and video games. His noted comic book work includes the series DMZ, Demo, Northlanders, The Massive, Marvel Comics' The X-Men, and Star Wars. His web series work includes adaptations of his own short stories from the comics series The Massive and Conan the Barbarian for Geek & Sundry and YouTube, and his video game work includes three years on staff at Rockstar Games, co-writing 1979 Revolution: Black Friday and story contributions to Aliens: Fireteam Elite. His television work includes pilot scripts for AMC, Amazon Studios, and Sonar Entertainment. He is a contributing writer on HBO Max's DMZ adaptation of his own work. Wood's work is well known for sociopolitical commentary, particularly on the topics of media and conflicts, climate change, and identity. Much of his work is about or takes place in New York City. He's contributed the character of Zula Hendricks to the Aliens franchise, created the character of Shogo Lee, Jubilee's adopted son, to the X-Men/Marvel Universe, and created Nomi Blume for the Ultimate Marvel universe.
-
Allen B. DuMont
Allen Balcom DuMont (; January 29, 1901 – November 14, 1965) was an American electronics engineer, scientist, and inventor who improved the cathode-ray tube in 1931 for use in television receivers. Seven years later he manufactured and sold the first commercially practical television set to the public. In June 1938, his Model 180 television receiver was the first all-electronic television set sold to the public, a few months prior to RCA's first TV set in April 1939. In 1946, DuMont founded the first television network to be licensed, the DuMont Television Network, by linking station WABD…
-
Daniel Auber
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (French: [danjɛl fʁɑ̃swa ɛspʁi obɛːʁ]; 29 January 1782 – 12 May 1871) was a French Romantic composer and director of the Paris Conservatoire. Born into an artistic family, Auber was at first an amateur composer before he took up writing operas professionally when the family's fortunes failed in 1820. He soon established a professional partnership with the librettist Eugène Scribe that lasted for 41 years and produced 39 operas, most of them commercial and critical successes. He is mostly associated with opéra-comique and composed 35 works in that genre. With…
-
Havergal Brian
William Havergal Brian (29 January 1876 – 28 November 1972) was an English composer, librettist, and church organist. He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies—an unusually high number amongst his contemporaries—25 of them after the age of 70. His best-known work is his Symphony No. 1, The Gothic, which calls for some of the largest orchestral forces demanded by a conventionally structured concert work. He also composed five operas and a number of other orchestral works, as well as songs, choral music and a small amount of chamber music. Brian enjoyed a period of popularity earlier…
-
Ayobami Adebayo
Ayobami Adebayo (; born 29 January 1988) is a Nigerian writer, whose debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature in 2017. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in the same year.
-
Linda B. Buck
Linda Brown Buck (born January 29, 1947) is an American biologist best known for her work on the olfactory system. She was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors. She is currently on the faculty of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
-
Raymond Keene
Raymond Dennis Keene (born 29 January 1948) is an English chess grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author. He won the British Chess Championship in 1971, and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974, at the Nice Olympiad. In 1976, he became the second Englishman (following Tony Miles) to be awarded the Grandmaster title, and he was the second British chess player to beat an incumbent World Chess Champion (following Jonathan Penrose's defeat of Mikhail Tal in 1960). He represented England in eight Chess Olympiads.…
-
Markel Brown
DeMarious Markel Brown (born January 29, 1992) is an American professional basketball player for Pallacanestro Trieste of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A (LBA). He played college basketball for the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
-
Greg Ballard
Gregory Ballard (January 29, 1955 – November 9, 2016) was an American professional basketball player and NBA assistant coach. A collegiate All-American at Oregon, Ballard averaged 12.4 points and 6.1 rebounds over an eleven-season NBA career with the Washington Bullets, Golden State Warriors and briefly, the Seattle SuperSonics.
-
Giuseppe Bonno
Giuseppe Bonno (29 January 1711 – 15 April 1788) was an Austrian composer of Italian origin. (His name is sometimes given as Josef or Josephus Johannes Baptizta Bon.) The son of a footman from Brescia who served at the Austrian court, he was born in Vienna and studied music with Johann Georg Reinhardt, imperial court organist, later Kapellmeister of St Stephen's. A gifted pupil, he was then sent to Naples in 1726 where he studied church music under Francesco Durante and opera under Leonardo Leo. He moved back to Vienna in 1736, becoming a court composer there, and working as Kapellmeister to…
-
Raman Subba Row
Raman Subba Row (29 January 1932 – 17 April 2024) was a 20th-century Anglo-Indian cricket player and administrator, who played Test cricket for England and captained Northamptonshire CCC (1958–61), later serving as Chairman of the Test and County Cricket Board (1985–90).
-
Sydney Chapman
Sydney Chapman (29 January 1888 – 16 June 1970) was a British mathematician and geophysicist. His work on the kinetic theory of gases, solar-terrestrial physics, and the Earth's ozone layer has inspired a broad range of research over many decades.
-
Georg Christoph Wagenseil
Georg Christoph Wagenseil (29 January 1715 – 1 March 1777) was an Austrian composer. He was born in Vienna, and became a favorite pupil of the Vienna court's Kapellmeister, Johann Joseph Fux. Wagenseil himself composed for the court from 1739 to his death. He also held positions as harpsichordist and organist. His pupils included Johann Baptist Schenk (who was to teach Ludwig van Beethoven), and Marie Antoinette. He traveled little, and died in Vienna having spent most of his life there. Wagenseil was a well-known musical figure in his day — both Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are…
-
Alice Catherine Evans
Alice Catherine Evans (January 29, 1881 – September 5, 1975) was an American microbiologist. She became a researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture where she investigated bacteriology in milk and cheese. She proved that Bacillus abortus (called Brucella abortus) caused the disease brucellosis (undulant fever or Malta fever) in both cattle and humans, which led to the pasteurization of milk in the US in 1930. Evans was the first woman president elected by the Society of American Bacteriologists.
-
Cho-liang Lin
Cho-Liang Lin (Lin Cho-liang, Chinese: 林昭亮, born January 29, 1960) is a Taiwanese-American violinist who is renowned for his appearances as a soloist with major orchestras. Musical America named him its "Instrumentalist of the Year" in 2000. He founded the Taipei International Music Festival in 1997, the largest classical music festival in the history of Taiwan, performing to an indoor audience of over 53,000 and the Taipei Music Academy & Festival in 2019, a summer music festival.
-
Justino Díaz
Justino Díaz (born January 29, 1940) is a Puerto Rican operatic bass-baritone. In 1963, Díaz won an annual contest held at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, becoming the first Puerto Rican to obtain such an honor and as a consequence, made his Metropolitan debut in October 1963 in Verdi's Rigoletto as Monterone.
-
Lelio Sozzini
Lelio Francesco Maria Sozzini (Italian: [ˈlɛːljo franˈtʃesko maˈriːa sotˈtsiːni]; 29 January 1525 – 4 May 1562), often known in English by his Latinized name Laelius Socinus ( LEE-lee-əs soh-SY-nəs), was an Italian Renaissance humanist and theologian, and, alongside his nephew Fausto Sozzini, founder of the Nontrinitarian Christian belief system known as Socinianism. His doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.
-
Muna Lee
Muna Lee (January 29, 1895 – April 3, 1965) was an American poet, author, and activist, who first became known and widely published as a lyric poet in the early 20th century. She also was known for her writings that promoted Pan-Americanism and feminism. She translated and published in Poetry a 1925 landmark anthology of Latin American poets, and continued to translate from poetry in Spanish. A long-term resident of Puerto Rico from 1920 to her death 45 years later, she was an activist in the 1920s and 1930s, working on issues of women's suffrage and equal rights in Puerto Rico and Latin…
-
Karol Olszewski
Karol Stanisław Olszewski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkarɔl ɔlˈʂɛfskʲi]; 29 January 1846 – 24 March 1915) was a Polish chemist, mathematician, and physicist. Together with Zygmunt Wróblewski, in 1883 he was the first scientist in the world to liquify oxygen and nitrogen.
-
Jeff Clyne
Jeffrey Ovid Clyne (29 January 1937 – 16 November 2009) was a British jazz bassist (playing both bass guitar and double bass). Clyne worked with Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott in their group the Jazz Couriers for a year from 1958, and was part of the group of musicians who opened Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in November 1959. He was a regular member of Hayes' groups from 1961. Clyne accompanied Blossom Dearie, Stan Tracey (on his Jazz Suite Inspired by Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood" album), Ian Carr, Gordon Beck (on Experiments With Pops, with John McLaughlin), Dudley Moore, Zoot Sims, Norma…
-
Florida Ruffin Ridley
Florida Ruffin Ridley (born Florida Yates Ruffin; January 29, 1861 – February 25, 1943) was an African-American civil rights activist, suffragist, teacher, writer, and editor from Boston, Massachusetts. She was one of the first black public schoolteachers in Boston, and edited The Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African-American women.
-
Franciscus Junius
Franciscus Junius (29 January 1591 – 1677),[1] also known as François du Jon, was a pioneer of Germanic philology. As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts. In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.
-
Frederic Hymen Cowen
Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen (29 January 1852 – 6 October 1935), was an English composer, conductor and pianist.
-
Henry Ward Ranger
Henry Ward Ranger (January 29, 1858 – November 7, 1916) was an American artist. Born in western New York State, he was a prominent landscape and marine painter, an important Tonalist, and the leader of the Old Lyme Art Colony. Ranger became a National Academician (1906), and a member of the American Water Color Society. Among his paintings are, Top of the Hill, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and East River Idyll, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
-
Paul Gayten
Paul Leon Gayten (January 29, 1920 – March 26, 1991) was an American R&B pianist, songwriter, producer, and record company executive.
-
Giuliano Bugiardini
Giuliano di Piero di Simone Bugiardini (29 January 1475 – 17 February 1555) was an Italian Renaissance painter. He was born and was mainly active in Florence. He was a painter primarily of religious subjects but he also executed a number of portraits and a few works with mythological subjects.
-
Geater Davis
Vernon "Geater" Davis (January 29, 1946 – September 29, 1984) was an American soul singer and songwriter. He has been described as "one of the South's great lost soul singers, an impassioned stylist whose voice was a combination of sweetness and sandpaper grit."
-
Lemuel H. Arnold
Lemuel Hastings Arnold (January 29, 1792 – June 27, 1852) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Rhode Island. A Whig, he served as the 12th governor of the State of Rhode Island and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
-
Johannes Bernardus van Bree
Johannes Bernardus van Bree (29 January 1801 – 14 February 1857) was a Dutch composer, violinist and conductor.
-
Johann Georg Graevius
Johann Georg Graevius (originally Grava or Greffe; Latin: Joannes/Johannes Georgius Graevius; 29 January 1632 – 11 January 1703) was a German classical scholar and critic. He was born in Naumburg, in the Electorate of Saxony.
-
Doris Davenport
Doris Davenport, sometimes styled as doris davenport (January 29, 1949 – December 2, 2024), was an American writer, educator, and literary and performance poet. She wrote an essay featured in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color entitled "The Pathology of Racism: A Conversation with Third World Wimmin." She also focuses her efforts on poetry and education. Davenport identifies as African American, Appalachian, Feminist, and LGBTQ, which all heavily influence her writings. Today, she holds many workshops and poetry performances.
-
Sir Richard Gregory, 1st Baronet
Sir Richard Arman Gregory, 1st Baronet FRS, FRAS (29 January 1864 – 15 September 1952) was a British astronomer and promoter of science. Some of his work was published as by Richard A. or R. A. Gregory. Richard Arman Gregory was born in Bristol on 29 January 1864. His father was John Gregory, 'the poet cobbler'. Gregory was professor of astronomy at Queen's College, London, and wrote textbooks on astronomy, chemistry, hygiene, physics and other scientific subjects. He was also a member of the Council of British Association for the advancement of science and Chairman of the Committee on…
-
Karl Freudenberg
Karl Johann Freudenberg (29 January 1886 Weinheim, Baden – 3 April 1983 Weinheim) was a German chemist who did early seminal work on the absolute configurations to carbohydrates, terpenes, and steroids, and on the structure of cellulose (first correct formula published, 1928) and other polysaccharides, and on the nature, structure, and biosynthesis of lignin. The Research Institute for the Chemistry of Wood and Polysaccharides at the University of Heidelberg was created for him in the mid to late 1930s, and he led this until 1969.
-
Juhan Aavik
Juhan Aavik (29 January 1884 – 26 November 1982) was an Estonian composer.
-
Paul Rabaut
Paul Rabaut (29 January 1718 – 25 September 1794) was a French pastor of the Huguenot "Church of the Desert". He was regarded by many as the leader and director of the proscribed church. He was a peacemaker and a scholar despite, due to persecution, living like a troglodyte for more than 30 years.
-
Alan Cowley
Alan Herbert Cowley FRS (29 January 1934 – 2 August 2020) was a British chemist, and Robert A. Welch Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a 1976 Guggenheim Fellow.
-
Roy Markham
Roy Markham FRS (29 January 1916 – 16 November 1979) was a British plant virologist who served as the fifth director of the John Innes Centre from 1967 until his death in 1979.
Who's birthday is it today? — FAQ
Who's birthday is it today?
You're viewing January 29 (not today). See who's birthday it is today.
How are famous birthdays ranked?
Each person gets a popularity index from recent English Wikipedia pageviews. Higher visits means they appear higher in the “who birthday today” list.
Can I check another date?
Yes — use the day picker above, or open clean URLs like /birthday/january-29. Every calendar day has its own page for famous birthdays.
Where does the data come from?
Birth lists are scraped from English Wikipedia on-this-day pages. Gender and living status come from Wikidata when available.
Is there an API for apps and AI assistants?
Yes. Use /api/today for today's ranked birthdays (JSON), /api/birthdays for any date, /openapi.json for the schema, and /llms.txt for LLM-oriented site instructions.