Who was born on May 26?
May 26 is packed with notable birthdays. Explore 104 famous birthdays, sorted by recent English Wikipedia pageviews. Top ranked names include Lauryn Hill, Helena Bonham Carter, Miles Davis, Mary of Teck, Jeremy Corbyn. Filter by actor, musician, athlete, and more — or open any other calendar day.
May 26
104 people
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Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Noelle Hill (born May 26, 1975) is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. She is considered one of the most influential musicians of her time. A definitive figure in neo soul and a pioneer of rap-singing and melodic rap, The Telegraph credited Hill with the popularization of hip-hop. NPR named her one of the 50 Great Voices and stated that her "voice is the story of the hip-hop generation". She was the only woman named on the lists of "Greatest MCs of All Time" (2006) by MTV and 10 Greatest Rappers by Billboard, and appeared on Rolling Stone's 200 Greatest Singers and VH1's 100 Women in Music. Hill began her career as a teen actress, portraying Kira Johnson in the soap opera As the World Turns (1991) before appearing in Steven Soderbergh's film King of the Hill (1993). She received acclaim for her role as Rita Watson in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), which featured her rendition of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow." Hill achieved prominence as the frontwoman of the Fugees. Their second album, The Score (1996), included the singles "Killing Me Softly" and "Ready or Not," and sold over 22 million copies worldwide. It won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, making Hill the first woman to receive the honor. Her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), debuted atop the Billboard 200 with the highest first-week sales for a female artist at the time and became the first recording by a female rapper to be certified diamond. Its lead single "Doo Wop (That Thing)" debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making Hill the first artist whose first appearance on both charts debuted at number one. The album produced several hits, including "Ex-Factor," "Everything Is Everything," and "Lost Ones." At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards, Hill became the first rapper to win Album of the Year and the first woman to win five awards in a single night. It remains one of the best-selling albums worldwide and ranked atop Apple Music's 100 Best Albums. Afterwards, she embarked on The Miseducation Tour and became the first rapper to appear on the cover of Time. Around this period, Hill became a noted collaborator, featuring on "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)" by Nas, "Guantanamera" by Wyclef Jean with Celia Cruz, "The Sweetest Thing" by Refugee Camp All-Stars, and the virtual duet "Turn Your Lights Down Low" with Bob Marley. She wrote "A Rose Is Still a Rose" by Aretha Franklin, and produced recordings for Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, and Santana. Her live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 (2002), featured original songs such as "I Gotta Find Peace of Mind" and "Mystery of Iniquity", the latter of which was notably interpolated on "All Falls Down" by Kanye West. In the years that followed, Hill made fewer public appearances while occasionally releasing acclaimed music like the Black Lives Matter protest song "Black Rage" and the Nas collaboration "Nobody". Hill is the recipient of numerous accolades including eight Grammy Awards (the most for any female rapper), the inaugural BET Living Legend Icon Award, the ASCAP Golden Note Award, four NAACP Image Awards (including the President's Award), and six MTV Video Music Awards (including Video of the Year), with inductions into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the National Recording Registry, and the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame. She is one of the highest-grossing rappers in live music. In 2026, she was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter (born 26 May 1966) is a British actress. She is known for her character roles as eccentric women in blockbusters and independent films, particularly period dramas. Bonham Carter rose to prominence by playing Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View (1985) and the title character in Lady Jane (1986). Her early period roles saw her typecast as a virginal "English rose", a label with which she was uncomfortable. Bonham Carter is recognized for her unconventional fashion choices and dark aesthetic. For her role as Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove (1997), Bonham Carter received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in The King's Speech (2010), she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Bonham Carter's other films include Hamlet (1990), Howards End (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Fight Club (1999), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), the Harry Potter series as Bellatrix Lestrange (2007–2011), Great Expectations (2012) as Miss Havisham, Les Misérables (2012), Cinderella (2015), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Enola Holmes (2020). Her collaborations with director and ex-husband Tim Burton include Big Fish (2003), Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Terminator Salvation (2009), Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Dark Shadows (2012). For her role as children's author Enid Blyton in the BBC Four biographical film Enid (2009), Bonham Carter won the 2010 International Emmy Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. Her other television films include Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald (1993), Live from Baghdad (2002), Toast (2010), and Burton & Taylor (2013). From 2019 to 2020, Bonham Carter portrayed Princess Margaret in seasons three and four of Netflix's The Crown, earning two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
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Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and painter. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. In a career spanning nearly five decades, Davis was at the forefront of several major stylistic developments in jazz, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, third stream, modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, and jazz fusion. His legacy extends into rock, funk, classical, and hip-hop. Born into an affluent family in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis started on the trumpet in his early teens. He left to study at the Juilliard School in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly afterwards, he recorded the Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music under Prestige Records. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term contract with Columbia Records, and recorded the album 'Round About Midnight in 1955. It was his first work with saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Chambers, key members of the sextet he led into the early 1960s. During this period, he alternated between orchestral jazz collaborations with arranger Gil Evans, such as the Spanish music–influenced Sketches of Spain (1960), and band recordings, such as Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959). The latter recording remains one of the most popular jazz albums of all time, having sold more than five million copies in the U.S. alone and 6.4 million copies worldwide. Davis made several lineup changes while recording Someday My Prince Will Come (1961), his 1961 Blackhawk concerts, and Seven Steps to Heaven (1963), another commercial success that introduced bassist Ron Carter, pianist Herbie Hancock and drummer Tony Williams. After adding saxophonist Wayne Shorter to his new quintet in 1964, Davis led them on a series of more abstract recordings often composed by the band members, helping pioneer the post-bop genre with albums such as E.S.P. (1965) and Miles Smiles (1967), before transitioning into his electric period. During the 1970s, he experimented with rock, funk, African rhythms, emerging electronic music technology, and an ever-changing lineup of musicians, including keyboardist Joe Zawinul, drummer Al Foster, bassist Michael Henderson and guitarist John McLaughlin. This period, beginning with Davis's 1969 studio album In a Silent Way and concluding with the 1975 concert recording Agharta, was the most controversial in his career, alienating and challenging many in jazz. His million-selling 1970 record Bitches Brew helped spark a resurgence in the genre's commercial popularity with jazz fusion as the decade progressed. After a five-year retirement due to poor health, Davis resumed his career in the 1980s, employing younger musicians and pop sounds on albums such as The Man with the Horn (1981), You're Under Arrest (1985) and Tutu (1986). Critics were often unreceptive but the decade garnered Davis his highest level of commercial recognition. He performed sold-out concerts worldwide, while branching out into visual arts, film and television work, before his death in 1991 from the combined effects of a stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure, aged 65. In 2006, Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which recognized him as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz". Rolling Stone magazine described him as "the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time, not to mention one of the most important musicians of the 20th century," while Gerald Early called him inarguably one of the most influential and innovative musicians of that period.
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Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck (Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes; 26 May 1867 – 24 March 1953) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from 6 May 1910 until 20 January 1936 as the wife of King George V. Born in Kensington and raised in Belgravia, Mary was the daughter of Francis, Duke of Teck, a German nobleman, and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a granddaughter of King George III. She was informally known as "May", after the month of her birth. At the age of 24, she was betrothed to her second cousin once removed Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, who was second in line to the throne. Six weeks after the announcement of the engagement, he died unexpectedly during a pandemic. The following year, she became engaged to Albert Victor's only surviving brother, George, who subsequently became king. Before her husband's accession, she was successively Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall, and Princess of Wales. As queen consort from 1910, Mary supported her husband through the First World War, his ill health, and major political changes arising from the aftermath of the war. After George's death in 1936, she became queen mother when her eldest son, Edward VIII, ascended the throne. To her dismay, he abdicated later the same year in order to marry twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. She supported her second son, George VI, until his death in 1952. Mary died the following year, ten weeks before her granddaughter Elizabeth II was crowned. An ocean liner, a battlecruiser, and a university were named in her honour.
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Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn ( ; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North since 1983. He is the parliamentary leader of Your Party, which he co-founded with Zarah Sultana in July 2025. Corbyn had previously been a member of the Labour Party from 1965 until his automatic expulsion in 2024 for standing for election as an independent MP, and served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020 and was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group parliamentary caucus. He identifies ideologically as a socialist on the political left. Born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, Corbyn joined the Labour Party as a teenager. Moving to London, he became a trade union representative. In 1974, he was elected to Haringey Council and became Secretary of Hornsey Constituency Labour Party until elected as the MP for Islington North in 1983. His activism has included Anti-Fascist Action, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and advocating for a united Ireland and Palestinian statehood. As a backbencher, Corbyn routinely voted against the Labour whip, including New Labour governments. A vocal opponent of the Iraq War, he chaired the Stop the War Coalition from 2011 to 2015, and received the Gandhi International Peace Award and Seán MacBride Peace Prize. Following Ed Miliband's resignation after the party had lost the 2015 general election, Corbyn won the 2015 party leadership election to succeed him. The Labour Party's membership increased sharply, both during the leadership campaign and following his election. Taking the party to the left, Corbyn advocated renationalising public utilities and railways, a less interventionist military policy, and reversals of austerity cuts to welfare and public services. Although he had historically been critical of the European Union (EU), he supported the Remain campaign in the 2016 EU membership referendum. After Labour MPs sought to remove him in 2016 through a leadership challenge, he won a second leadership contest against Owen Smith. In the 2017 general election, Corbyn led Labour to increase its vote share by 10 percentage points to 40 per cent, their largest rise since the 1945 general election. During his tenure as leader, Corbyn was criticised for antisemitism within the party. He condemned antisemitism and apologised for its presence, while his leadership saw a strengthening of disciplinary procedures regarding hate speech and racism. In 2019, after deadlock in Parliament over Brexit, Corbyn endorsed holding a referendum on the withdrawal agreement, with a personal stance of neutrality. In the 2019 general election, Labour's vote share fell to 32 per cent, leading to a loss of 60 seats, leaving it with 202, its fewest since the 1935 general election. Corbyn remained Labour leader for four months while the leadership election to replace him took place. His resignation as Labour leader formally took effect in April 2020 following the election of Keir Starmer, who led the party to victory at the next general election in 2024 with a vote share of 33.7 per cent. After asserting that the scale of antisemitism within the party had been overstated for political reasons, Corbyn was suspended from the party in 2020. In May 2024, after the 2024 general election had been called, Corbyn was not allowed to stand as a Labour candidate for his constituency, and subsequently announced he would stand as an independent candidate for Islington North; he was then expelled from Labour. He won re-election with a majority of 7,247. In July 2025, Corbyn and fellow independent MP Zarah Sultana announced the formation of Your Party, and in March 2026 he was elected as the party's parliamentary leader.
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James Arness
James King Arness (né Aurness; May 26, 1923 – June 3, 2011) was an American actor, best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon for 20 years in the series Gunsmoke. He has the distinction of having played the role of Dillon in five decades: 1955 to 1975 in the weekly series, then in Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge (1987) and four more made-for-television Gunsmoke films in the 1990s. In Europe, Arness reached cult status for his role as Zeb Macahan in the Western series How the West Was Won. He was the older brother of actor Peter Graves.
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Peter Cushing
Peter Wilton Cushing (26 May 1913 – 11 August 1994) was an English actor. His acting career spanned over six decades and included appearances in more than 100 films, as well as many television, stage and radio roles. He achieved recognition for his leading performances in the Hammer Productions horror films from the 1950s to 1970s and as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977). Born in Kenley, Surrey, Cushing made his stage debut in 1935 and spent three years at a repertory theatre before moving to Hollywood to pursue a film career. After making his motion-picture debut in the film The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), Cushing began to find modest success in American films before returning to England at the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite performing in a string of roles, including one as Osric in Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Hamlet (1948), Cushing struggled to find work during this period. His career was revitalised once he started to work in live television plays and he soon became one of the most recognisable faces in British television. He earned particular acclaim for his lead performance as Winston Smith in a BBC adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954). Cushing gained worldwide fame for his appearances in twenty-two horror films from the Hammer studio, particularly for his role as Baron Frankenstein in six of their seven Frankenstein films and Doctor Van Helsing in five Dracula films. Cushing often appeared alongside the actor Christopher Lee, who became one of his closest friends, and occasionally with the American horror star Vincent Price. Cushing appeared in several other Hammer films, including The Abominable Snowman (1957), The Mummy and The Hound of the Baskervilles (both 1959), the last of which marked the first of the several occasions he portrayed the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Cushing continued to perform in a variety of roles, although he was often typecast as a horror film actor. He played Dr. Who in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966), and became even better known through his part in the original Star Wars film. Cushing continued acting into the early to mid-1990s and wrote two autobiographies.
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Vilasrao Deshmukh
Vilasrao Dagadojirao Deshmukh (26 May 1945 – 14 August 2012) was an Indian politician who served as the 14th Chief Minister of Maharashtra, first term from 18 October 1999 to 16 January 2003 and second term, from 1 November 2004 to 5 December 2008. He also served in the Union cabinet as the Minister of Science and Technology and Minister of Earth Sciences. Deshmukh was a Member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha, India. He had previously held the posts of Minister of Rural Development and Minister of Panchayati Raj, Government of India and Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Government of India. He was a member of Rajya Sabha representing Maharashtra. Vilasrao Deshmukh was two-time Chief Minister of Maharashtra, from 1999 to 2003 and from 2004 to 2008. He was a member of the Indian National Congress and originally belonged to Latur district in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. Critically ill with kidney and liver failures, Deshmukh died on 14 August 2012 due to multiple organ failure at Global Hospitals, Chennai. One of his sons Riteish Deshmukh is a well-known Bollywood actor.
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Jack Kevorkian
Murad Jacob Kevorkian (May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011), also known by the nickname "Dr. Death", was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote, "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999. Kevorkian was tried four times for assisting suicides between 1994 and 1997, being acquitted the first three times and the fourth ending in a mistrial. In 1998, Kevorkian was arrested and tried for murder after broadcasting the voluntary euthanasia of a man named Thomas Youk who had Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS. He was convicted of second-degree murder and served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence. He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition he would not offer advice about, participate in, or be present at the act of any type of euthanasia to any other person, nor that he promote or talk about the procedure of assisted suicide.
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Aldrich Ames
Aldrich Hazen Ames (; May 26, 1941 – January 5, 2026) was an American counterintelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. Ames was responsible for the arrest and eventual execution of numerous Soviet and Russian officials secretly working on behalf of the United States intelligence community. He served a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in various federal prisons until his death in 2026 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. He had compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other intelligence officer until the arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen in 2001. Both Ames and Hanssen were recruited by Victor Cherkashin, a high-ranking KGB officer.
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Gong Myung
Kim Dong-hyun (Korean: 김동현; born on May 26, 1994), known professionally as Gong Myung (Korean: 공명), is a South Korean actor. He is a member of 5urprise. He is known for his roles in the television series Be Melodramatic (2019), and Lovers of the Red Sky (2021), as well as the film Extreme Job (2019).
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Pope Clement VII
Pope Clement VII (Latin: Clemens VII; Italian: Clemente VII; born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici; 26 May 1478 – 25 September 1534) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 November 1523 to his death on 25 September 1534. Deemed "the most unfortunate of the popes", Clement VII's reign was marked by a rapid succession of political, military, and religious struggles—many long in the making—which had far-reaching consequences for Christianity and world politics. Elected in 1523 at the end of the Italian Renaissance, Clement came to the papacy with a high reputation as a statesman. He had served with distinction as chief advisor to Pope Leo X (1513–1521, his cousin), Pope Adrian VI (1522–1523), and commendably as gran maestro of Florence (1519–1523). Assuming leadership at a time of crisis, with the Protestant Reformation spreading, the Church nearing bankruptcy, and large foreign armies invading Italy, Clement initially tried to unite Christendom by making peace among the many Christian leaders then at odds. He later attempted to liberate Italy from foreign occupation, believing that it threatened the Church's freedom. The complex political situation of the 1520s thwarted Clement's efforts. Inheriting unprecedented challenges, including Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe; a vast power struggle in Italy between Europe's two most powerful kings, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and Francis I of France, each of whom demanded that the Pope choose a side; and Turkish invasions of Eastern Europe led by Suleiman the Magnificent. Clement's problems were exacerbated by souring relations with Charles V in 1527, which led to the violent Sack of Rome, during which Clement was imprisoned. After escaping confinement in the Castel Sant'Angelo, Clement—with few economic, military, or political options remaining—compromised the Church's and the Papal States' independence by allying with his former enemy, Charles V. However, his problems continued during Henry VIII of England's contentious divorce, resulting in England breaking away from the Catholic Church. In contrast to his tortured pontificate, Clement was personally respectable and devout, possessing a "dignified propriety of character", "great acquirements both theological and scientific", as well as "extraordinary address and penetration—Clement VII, in serener times, might have administered the Papal power with high reputation and enviable prosperity. But with all of his profound insight into the political affairs of Europe, Clement does not seem to have comprehended the altered position of the Pope in relation to Europe's emerging nation-states and Protestantism. Clement left a significant cultural legacy in the Medici tradition. He commissioned artworks by Raphael, Benvenuto Cellini, and Michelangelo, including Michelangelo's The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. In matters of science, Clement is best known for approving, in 1533, Nicolaus Copernicus's theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun—99 years before Galileo Galilei's heresy trial.
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Al Jolson
Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson, Yiddish: אַסאַ יואלסאָן; c. May 26, 1886 (O.S.) June 9, 1886 (N.S.) – October 23, 1950) was an American singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. Self-billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer", Jolson was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1910s and 1920s. He was known for his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach" towards performing, along with popularizing many of the songs he sang. According to music historian Larry Stempel, "No one had heard anything quite like it before on Broadway." Stephen Banfield wrote that Jolson's style was "arguably the single most important factor in defining the modern musical." Jolson has been referred to by modern critics as "the king of blackface performers". Although best remembered today as the star of the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer (1927), he starred in a series of successful musical films during the 1930s. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was the first star to entertain troops overseas during World War II. After a period of inactivity, his stardom returned with The Jolson Story (1946), in which Larry Parks played the younger Jolson, but with sung vocals dubbed by Jolson himself. The formula was repeated in a sequel, Jolson Sings Again (1949). In 1950, he again became the first star to entertain GIs on active service in the Korean War, performing 42 shows in 16 days. He died weeks after returning to the U.S., partly owing to the physical exhaustion from the performance schedule. Defense Secretary George Marshall posthumously awarded him the Medal for Merit. With his dynamic style of singing, he became widely successful by extracting traditionally black music and popularizing it for White American audiences. Despite his promotion and perpetuation of Black stereotypes of the time, his work was often well regarded by Black publications, and he has been credited for fighting against Black discrimination on Broadway as early as 1911. In an essay written in 2000, music critic Ted Gioia remarked, "If blackface has its shameful poster boy, it is Al Jolson", showcasing Jolson's complex legacy in American society.
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Matt Busby
Sir Alexander Matthew Busby (26 May 1909 – 20 January 1994) was a Scottish football player and manager, who managed Manchester United between 1945 and 1969 and again for the second half of the 1970–71 season. He was the first manager of an English team to win the European Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest managers of all time. Before going into management, Busby was a player for two of Manchester United's greatest rivals, Manchester City and Liverpool. During his time at City, Busby played in two FA Cup Finals, winning one of them. After his playing career was interrupted by the Second World War, Busby was offered the job of assistant coach at Liverpool, but they were unwilling to give him the control that he wanted over the first team. As a result, he took the vacant manager's job at Manchester United instead, where he built the famous Busby Babes team that won successive Football League First Division titles and challenged for the European Cup. Eight of these players died in the Munich air disaster, but Busby rebuilt the team and won two more First Division titles as well as other domestic cups before he took United to European Cup glory a decade later. In his 25 years with Manchester United, Busby won five league championships, two FA Cups and the European Cup. He was among the inaugural inductees into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Scottish Football Hall of Fame in 2004.
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John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough
General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, 1st Prince of Mindelheim, 1st Count of Nellenburg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (26 May 1650 – 16 June 1722 O.S.) was a British army officer and statesman. From a gentry family, he served as a page at the court of the House of Stuart under James, Duke of York, through the 1670s and early 1680s, earning military and political advancement through his courage and diplomatic skill. He is known for never having lost a battle. Churchill's role in defeating the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 helped secure James on the throne, but he was a key player in the military conspiracy that led to James being deposed during the Glorious Revolution. Rewarded by William III with the title Earl of Marlborough, persistent charges of Jacobitism led to his fall from office and temporary imprisonment in the Tower of London. William recognised his abilities by appointing him as his deputy in Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium) before the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701, but not until the accession of Queen Anne in 1702 did he secure his fame and fortune. Marriage to Sarah Jennings and her relationship with Anne ensured Marlborough's rise, first to the captain-generalcy of British forces, then to a dukedom. As de facto leader of Allied forces in the Low Countries, his victories at the battles of Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709) ensured his place in history as one of Europe's great generals. His wife's stormy relationship with the Queen, and her subsequent dismissal from court, was central to his own fall. Incurring Anne's disfavour, and caught between Tory and Whig factions, Marlborough was forced from office and went into self-imposed exile. He returned to favour with the accession of George I to the throne in 1714, but a stroke in 1716 ended his career. Marlborough's leadership of the main Allied army against Louis XIV from 1701 to 1711 helped to consolidate Britain's emergence as a front-rank power, while his ability to maintain unity in the fractious coalition demonstrated his diplomatic skills. He is often remembered by military historians as much for his organisational and logistic skills as his tactical abilities. Marlborough's military exploits have resulted in successive historians describing him as one of the finest military commanders in history.
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Ashley Massaro
Ashley Marie Massaro (May 26, 1979 – May 16, 2019) was an American professional wrestler. She was best known for her time with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) where she performed under her real name. Massaro made her debut in WWE after winning the WWE Raw Diva Search in 2005. She was first assigned to the Raw brand, where she had her first wrestling feud against Vince's Devils (a villainous female stable) while aligning herself with Trish Stratus to defeat the team. With Stratus, she was involved in another feud with the then-debuting Mickie James, who was obsessed with Stratus and jealous of Massaro's friendship with her, attacking and causing her to lose matches. Massaro was later drafted to SmackDown and became the valet for the WWE Tag Team Champions, Paul London and Brian Kendrick. Her most high-profile matches were a WWE Women's Championship match against Melina at WrestleMania 23 and a Playboy Bunnymania Lumberjill match at WrestleMania XXIV. Massaro left WWE in July 2008. During her tenure in the company, she had appeared on the covers of several magazines, including the April 2007 issue of Playboy, and also made appearances on television and in music videos. She also competed on Survivor: China, where she became the second person voted out. In addition, she spent the last two years of her life working as a radio DJ for 94.3 The Shark.
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Micah Parsons
Micah Aaron Parsons (born May 26, 1999) is an American professional football linebacker for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). Parsons played college football for the Penn State Nittany Lions, where he earned consensus All-American honors and was named the 2019 Big Ten Linebacker of the Year. Selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the first round of the 2021 NFL draft, Parsons was named Defensive Rookie of the Year and earned four Pro Bowl and three All-Pro selections in four seasons with the team. He was traded to the Packers in 2025 amid a contract holdout and signed a four-year, $188 million extension, making him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time.
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Mehmed III
Mehmed III (Ottoman Turkish: محمد ثالث, Meḥmed-i sālis; Turkish: III. Mehmed; 26 May 1566 – 22 December 1603) was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595 until his death in 1603. Mehmed was known for ordering the execution of his brothers and leading the army in the Long Turkish War, during which the Ottoman army was victorious at the Battle of Keresztes. This victory was however undermined by some military losses such as in Győr and Nikopol. He also ordered the successful quelling of the Jelali rebellions. The sultan also communicated with the court of Elizabeth I on the grounds of stronger commercial relations and in the hopes of England to ally with the Ottomans against the Spanish.
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Tarsem Singh
Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (born 26 May 1961), known professionally as Tarsem, is an Indian director who has worked on films, music videos, and commercials. He directed The Cell (2000), The Fall (2006), Immortals (2011), Mirror Mirror (2012), Self/less (2015), and Dear Jassi (2023).
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Simon Armitage
Simon Robert Armitage (born 26 May 1963) is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. He has published over 20 collections of poetry, starting with Zoom! in 1989. Many of his poems concern his home town of Marsden in West Yorkshire; these are collected in Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems. He has translated classic poems including the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and has dramatised the Odyssey. He has written several travel books including Moon Country and Walking Home: Travels with a Troubadour on the Pennine Way. He has edited poetry anthologies including one on the work of Ted Hughes. He has participated in numerous television and radio documentaries, dramatisations, and travelogues.
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Nobuhiro Watsuki
Nobuhiro Nishiwaki (Japanese: 西脇 伸宏, Hepburn: Nishiwaki Nobuhiro; born May 26, 1970), better known by his pen name Nobuhiro Watsuki (和月 伸宏, Watsuki Nobuhiro), is a Japanese manga artist. He is best known for his samurai-themed series Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story (1994–1999), which has over 70 million copies in circulation, and a sequel he is currently creating, Rurouni Kenshin: The Hokkaido Arc (2017–present). Watsuki has written three more manga series, Gun Blaze West (2001), Buso Renkin (2003–2005), and Embalming: The Another Tale of Frankenstein (2007–2015). He has mentored several well-known manga artists, including One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda, Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei, and Mr. Fullswing creator Shinya Suzuki. Watsuki was convicted of possessing child pornography in 2018.
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Peter Kürten
Peter Kürten (German: [ˈpeːtɐ ˈkʏʁtn̩]; 26 May 1883 – 2 July 1931) was a German serial killer, known as The Vampire of Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Monster, who committed a series of murders and sexual assaults between February and November 1929 in the city of Düsseldorf. In the years before these assaults and murders, Kürten had amassed a lengthy criminal record for offences including arson and attempted murder. He also confessed to the 1913 murder of a nine-year-old girl in Mülheim am Rhein and the attempted murder of a 17-year-old girl in Düsseldorf. Described by Karl Berg as "the king of the sexual perverts", Kürten was found guilty of nine counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder for which he was sentenced to death by beheading in April 1931. He was executed via guillotine in July 1931, at age 48. Kürten became known as the "Vampire of Düsseldorf" because he occasionally made attempts to drink the blood from his victims' wounds; and the "Düsseldorf Monster" both because the majority of his murders were committed in and around the city of Düsseldorf, and due to the savagery he inflicted upon his victims' bodies.
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Manorama
Gopishantha (26 May 1937 – 10 October 2015), better known by her stage name Manorama, also called Aachi, was an Indian actress, comedian and playback singer who had appeared in more than 1500 films and 5000 stage performances predominantly in the Tamil and also in Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Sinhala. She was honoured with Kalaimamani award in 1995. In 2002, Government of India awarded Manorama the Padma Shri for her contribution in the field of arts. She is a recipient of one National Film Award, one Filmfare Award South and seven Tamil Nadu State Film Awards.
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Ramón Calderón
José Ramón Calderón Ramos (born 26 May 1951) is a Spanish lawyer who is the former President of Real Madrid. He got his Law Degree in the University of Navarra, Spain in 1974 and he worked in London, England, as a lawyer, in 1975 and 1976. A member of the Madrid Bar Association since 1976, Calderón opened his Law Firm: Calderon Abogados, where he has been working during the last 40 years.
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Yeji
Hwang Ye-ji (Korean: 황예지; born May 26, 2000), known mononymously as Yeji, is a South Korean singer and dancer. She is the leader of the South Korean girl group Itzy, formed by JYP Entertainment in 2019. Yeji released her debut solo extended play (EP), Air, in March 2025.
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Robert Morley
Robert Adolph Wilton Morley (26 May 1908 – 3 June 1992) was an English actor who enjoyed a lengthy career in both Britain and the United States. He was frequently cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment, often in supporting roles. In 1939 he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of King Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette. In Movie Encyclopedia, film critic Leonard Maltin describes Morley as "recognisable by his ungainly bulk, bushy eyebrows, thick lips and double chin, ... particularly effective when cast as a pompous windbag." Ephraim Katz in his International Film Encyclopaedia describes Morley as "a rotund, triple-chinned, delightful character player of the British and American stage and screen." In his autobiography, Responsible Gentleman, Morley said his stage career started with managements valuing his appearance for playing "substantial gentleman" roles – as a doctor, lawyer, accountant or other professional member of society.
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Black
Colin Vearncombe (26 May 1962 – 26 January 2016), known by his stage name Black, was an English singer-songwriter. He emerged from the punk rock music scene and achieved mainstream pop success in the late 1980s, most notably with the 1986 single "Wonderful Life", which was an international hit the next year. William Ruhlmann of AllMusic described Vearncombe as a "smoky-voiced singer/songwriter, whose sophisticated jazz-pop songs and dramatic vocal delivery place him somewhere between Bryan Ferry and Morrissey". Michael Hann of The Guardian described his voice as a "slightly frayed baritone".
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Dayle Haddon
Dayle Haddon (May 26, 1948 – December 27, 2024) was a Canadian model and actress, known for promoting anti-aging products manufactured by L'Oréal. Additionally, she was credited as the author of Ageless Beauty: A Woman's Guide to Lifelong Beauty and Well-Being. During the earlier part of her career as a model, Haddon appeared on the covers of many top fashion and beauty magazines, as well as the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1973. Haddon also served as a wellness contributor to CBS News where she appeared regularly on The Early Show at the turn of the 21st century. Haddon married French businessman Glenn Souham, who was murdered because of his believed connections to the Iran-Contra affair. They had one daughter, journalist and producer Ryan Haddon. Haddon died at her daughter's property due to carbon monoxide poisoning in December 2024.
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Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.
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Robert W. Chambers
Robert William Chambers (May 26, 1865 – December 16, 1933) was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895.
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János Kádár
János József Kádár (né Csermanek; 26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989) was a Hungarian Communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health led to his retirement in 1988, and he died in 1989 after being hospitalized for pneumonia. Kádár was born in Fiume in poverty to a single mother. After living in the countryside for some years, Kádár and his mother moved to Budapest. He joined the Party of Communists in Hungary's youth organization, KIMSZ, and went on to become a prominent figure in the pre-1939 Communist party, eventually becoming First Secretary. As a leader, he would dissolve the party and reorganize it as the Peace Party, but the new party failed to win much popular support. After World War II, with Soviet support, the Communist party took power in Hungary. Kádár rose through the party ranks, serving as Interior Minister from 1948 to 1950. In 1951, he was imprisoned by the government of Mátyás Rákosi but was released in 1954 by reformist Prime Minister Imre Nagy. On 25 October 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, Kádár replaced Ernő Gerő as General Secretary of the Party, taking part in Nagy's revolutionary government. A week later, he broke with Nagy over his decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. After Soviet intervention in Hungary, Kádár was selected to lead the country. He ordered Nagy to be executed shortly after coming to power. He gradually moderated, releasing the majority of remaining prisoners of this period in an amnesty in 1963. His leadership was characterized by unrelenting Realpolitik; for a long time, he successfully maneuvered between Moscow's wishes, local interests and the expectations of the Western world. In an interview with a Western journalist, he called himself a "toiler for compromise". Kádár was succeeded by Károly Grósz as General Secretary on 22 May 1988. Grósz would only serve a year in this post due to the fall of Communism in Europe in 1989. During his time as leader of Hungary, Kádár pushed for an improvement in standards of living. Kádár increased international trade with non-communist countries, in particular those of Western Europe. Kádár's policies differed from those of other Communist leaders, such as Nicolae Ceaușescu, Enver Hoxha, and Erich Honecker, all of whom favored more orthodox interpretations of Marxism–Leninism. Kádár's reformist policies and the increasing commercial ties to the Western World would in turn worsen relations with Leonid Brezhnev in the Soviet Union. As the leader of Hungary, Kádár attempted to liberalize the Hungarian economy with a greater focus on consumer goods, in what would become known as Goulash Communism. Kádár’s legacy remains contested; nevertheless, nostalgia for the Kádár era continues to be widespread in Hungary. A 2020 survey conducted by Policy Solutions found that 54% of respondents believe that life was better under Kádár than it is at present, whereas 31% disagreed with this assessment.
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Jacques Bergerac
Jacques Bergerac (26 May 1927 – 15 June 2014) was a French actor and businessman.
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Kay Hagan
Janet Kay Hagan (née Ruthven; May 26, 1953 – October 28, 2019) was an American lawyer, banking executive, and politician who served as a United States senator from North Carolina from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the North Carolina Senate from 1999 to 2009. By defeating Republican Elizabeth Dole in the 2008 election, she became the first woman to defeat an incumbent woman in a U.S. Senate election. She ran for re-election in 2014 and lost to Republican Thom Tillis, Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, in a close race. As of 2025, she is the last Democrat to represent North Carolina in the U.S. Senate.
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Mathew Barzal
Mathew Michael Paul Barzal (born May 26, 1997) is a Canadian professional ice hockey player who is a forward for the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League (NHL). Barzal was selected by the Islanders in the first round, 16th overall, of the 2015 NHL entry draft. He won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL's top rookie in 2017–18, the fifth Islander to win the award.
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Abraham de Moivre
Abraham de Moivre (French pronunciation: [abʁaam də mwavʁ]; 26 May 1667 – 27 November 1754) was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, a formula that links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He moved to England at a young age due to the religious persecution of Huguenots in France which reached a climax in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, and James Stirling. Among his fellow Huguenot exiles in England, he was a colleague of the editor and translator Pierre des Maizeaux. De Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, said to have been prized by gamblers. De Moivre first discovered Binet's formula, the closed-form expression for Fibonacci numbers linking the nth power of the golden ratio φ to the nth Fibonacci number. He also was the first to postulate the central limit theorem, a cornerstone of probability theory, of which he proved a special case.
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Alan Hollinghurst
Sir Alan James Hollinghurst (born 26 May 1954) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award and the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2004, he won the Booker Prize for his novel The Line of Beauty. Hollinghurst is credited with having helped gay-themed fiction to break into the literary mainstream through his seven novels since 1988.
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Bob Fitzsimmons
Robert James Fitzsimmons (26 May 1863 – 22 October 1917) was a Cornish-New Zealand professional boxer who was the sport's first three-division world champion. He achieved fame for beating "Gentleman Jim" Corbett (the man who beat John L. Sullivan), and he is in The Guinness Book of World Records as the lightest heavyweight champion, weighing just 167 pounds when he won the title. Nicknamed Ruby Robert and The Freckled Wonder, he took pride in his lack of scars and appeared in the ring wearing heavy woollen underwear to conceal the disparity between his trunk and leg-development. After defeating George Gardiner for the world light-heavyweight title on November 25, 1903, Fitzsimmons became the oldest champion at 40, a record that lasted until George Foreman's 1994 WBA heavyweight title win. Considered one of the hardest punchers in boxing history, Fitzsimmons is ranked No. 8 on The Ring magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time. Boxing writer and founder of The Ring magazine, Nat Fleischer, ranked Fitzsimmons the third greatest heavyweight of all time and regarded him as the greatest pound for pound knockout puncher in boxing history.
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Paul Collingwood
Paul David Collingwood (born 26 May 1976) is an English cricket coach and former player, who played in all three formats of the game internationally for England. He played for Durham County Cricket Club. Collingwood was a regular member of the England Test side and captain of the One Day International (ODI) team (2007–2008). He was the first T20I captain for England. As captain, he led the England team to win their first ICC trophy, the 2010 World Twenty20, and scored the winning run in the final. He captained his county club, Durham County Cricket Club, for the final six seasons of his career. A batting all-rounder, whose batting combined natural strokeplay with great tenacity, Collingwood also bowled reliable medium pace. Described as a "natural athlete", he was regarded as one of the finest fielders of his time, usually fielding at backward point or at third or fourth slip in Tests; he also deputised as wicket-keeper for England. His first-class debut was in 1996 and he made his first appearance for England in One Day International cricket in 2001 and made his Test match debut in 2003. For two years he remained an occasional Test player but after selection for the final Test of the 2005 Ashes, he secured a regular place. His 206 during the 2006–07 Ashes was the first double century by an England batsman in Australia for 78 years and in a match that England lost. A series of three consecutive match-winning performances by Collingwood at the end of the 2006–07 Commonwealth Bank Series in Australia brought him enthusiastic approval in the British media. His "allround display of incredible nerve and tenacity" helped to secure the trophy for England. Until May 2019, he was England's most capped ODI cricketer and was, until surpassed by Ian Bell in 2015, the leading ODI run scorer. He announced his retirement from Test cricket in January 2011, during the fifth Test of the 2010–11 Ashes series. He finished on a high, becoming a three-times Ashes winner as England won a series in Australia for the first time in 24 years, with three innings victories contributing to a 3–1 win. He retired from first-class and List A cricket in September 2018. Having retired from playing, Collingwood moved into coaching. He was part of the coaching team for Scotland and for Durham CCC, before joining the staff of the England Cricket Team in 2014 as a limited-overs specialist and fielding coach. In February 2022, he was named interim head coach of the men's England cricket team.
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Fiona Shackleton
Fiona Sara Shackleton, Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia, (née Charkham; born 26 May 1956) is an English solicitor and Conservative politician, who has represented members of the British royal family and celebrities, including Paul McCartney, Charles III, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Princess Haya bint Hussein, and Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer. Her charm and resoluteness earned her the nickname "Steel Magnolia".
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Philip Treacy
Philip Anthony Treacy (born 26 May 1967) is an Irish haute couture milliner, or hat designer, who has been mostly based in London for his career, and who was described by Vogue magazine as "perhaps the greatest living milliner". In 2000, Treacy became the first milliner in eighty years to be invited to exhibit at the Paris haute couture fashion shows. He has won British Accessory Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards five times, and has received public honours in both Britain and Ireland. His designs have been displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1989, Treacy was discovered and then mentored by fashion editor Isabella Blow, whom Treacy described as the "biggest inspiration" on his life. Blow would wear and promote Treacy's designs at important fashion events and helped Treacy to break into some of the main fashion houses, particularly Chanel and Givenchy. Treacy is associated with celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Sarah Jessica Parker. He has been associated with British royalty and has designed hats for royal occasions, including the fascinator (or "pretzel hat") worn by Princess Beatrice in 2011. In 2024, Treacy was granted a royal warrant by Queen Camilla.
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Imi Lichtenfeld
Imre "Imi" Lichtenfeld (Hebrew: אימריך "אימי" ליכטנפלד; Hungarian: Lichtenfeld Imre; 26 May 1910 – 9 January 1998), also known as Imi Sde-Or (אימי שדאור), was a Hungarian-born Israeli martial artist. He is widely recognized for developing Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art.
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Diomedes Díaz
Diomedes Díaz Maestre (26 May 1957 – 22 December 2013) was a Colombian vallenato singer and composer. He has been named the "King of Vallenato" and is nicknamed El Cacique de La Junta (The Chieftain of La Junta), which was given to him by another vallenato singer, Rafael Orozco Maestre, in honor of Díaz's birthplace. Diomedes is the greatest Colombian singer-songwriter of vallenato music and the biggest seller of records in that musical genre, surpassing 20 million copies. Diomedes Díaz is the biggest record seller in the history of vallenato, exceeding 20 million throughout his career. Due to this, he was awarded gold, platinum and diamond records, unique in Colombia until 2008. In 2010 he won the Latin Grammy in the "Cumbia / Vallenato category". Loved and idolized by many, Diomedes' followers adopted the nickname "diomedistas", while Diomedes called them his "fanaticada". His personal life was marked by family instability, controversial friendships, ups and downs with the consumption of alcohol and drugs, accidents, financial and legal problems, especially the death under strange circumstances of Doris Adriana Niño.
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Philippe de Champaigne
Philippe de Champaigne (French pronunciation: [filip də ʃɑ̃paɲ]; 26 May 1602 – 12 August 1674) was a Brabant-born French Baroque era painter, a major exponent of French Baroque painting. He was a founding member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, the premier art institution in the Kingdom of France during the Ancien Régime. Especially in the 1630s and 1640s, he was the leading French court painter of portraits and religious subjects. He continued to work almost until his death, exhibiting a Supper at Emmaus in 1673.
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Adolfo de la Huerta
Felipe Adolfo de la Huerta Marcor (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈðolfo ðelaˈweɾta]; 26 May 1881 – 9 July 1955) was a Mexican politician, the 45th President of Mexico from 1 June to 30 November 1920, following the assassination of President Venustiano Carranza, with Sonoran generals Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles under the Plan of Agua Prieta. He is considered "an important figure among Constitutionalists during the Mexican Revolution."
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Nicolaus Zinzendorf
Nikolaus Ludwig, Reichsgraf von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf (26 May 1700 – 9 May 1760) was a German religious and social reformer, bishop of the Moravian Church, founder of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, Christian mission pioneer and a major figure of 18th-century Protestantism. Born in Dresden, Zinzendorf was called Ludwig or Brother Ludwig by his intimates. He was notable for providing shelter for German-speaking Moravian exiles at Herrnhut, an effort that was influenced by Pietist ideas from the Lutheran faith he was brought up in. Zinzendorf was critical of slavery, and played a role in starting the Protestant mission movement by supporting two determined Moravian missionaries Johann Leonhard Dober and David Nitschmann to go (via Copenhagen) to the Danish colony of Saint Thomas to minister to the enslaved population there (see Moravian slaves). In spite of having Danish royal support from Charlotte Amalie of Denmark, these missionaries faced discouragement in several forms, including by some Moravians at Herrnhut (including Christian David), by the Danish West India Company, by planters in Saint Thomas, by the risk of getting malaria, and by the slaves themselves. His projects were often misunderstood. In 1736 he was banished from Saxony, but in 1749 the government rescinded its decree and begged him to establish within its jurisdiction more settlements like that at Herrnhut. Zinzendorf's effect on the Moravian Church was significant, and is still evident nearly three centuries later. He is commemorated as a hymnwriter and a renewer of the church by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on its Calendar of Saints on 9 May.
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William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, and the Detroit Music Award, and was named Composer of the Year by Musical America in 2007. He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 to 2008 and was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 2006. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
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William Petty
Sir William Petty (26 May 1623 – 16 December 1687) was an English economist, physician, scientist and philosopher. He first became prominent serving Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth in Ireland. He developed efficient methods to survey the land that was to be confiscated and given to Cromwell's soldiers. He also remained a significant figure under King Charles II and King James II, as did many others who had served Cromwell. Petty was also a scientist, inventor, and merchant, a charter member of the Royal Society, and briefly a member of the Parliament of England. However, he is best remembered for his theories on economics and his methods of political arithmetic. He was knighted in 1661.
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Rubén González
Rubén González Fontanills (26 May 1919 – 8 December 2003) was a Cuban pianist. Together with Lilí Martínez and Peruchín he is said to have "forged the style of modern Cuban piano playing in the 1940s". Between the 1940s and his retirement in the 1980s, he played with Cuba's most successful acts, including Paulina Álvarez, Arsenio Rodríguez, Orquesta América del 55, Orquesta Riverside and Enrique Jorrín. In the 1990s, he came out of retirement to play in the revival ensembles Afro-Cuban All Stars and Buena Vista Social Club, also recording solo material and performing live until 2002.
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Demy de Zeeuw
Demy Patrick René de Zeeuw (born 26 May 1983) is a Dutch former professional footballer who played as a defensive midfielder. He previously played for AGOVV, Go Ahead Eagles, AZ and AFC Ajax. While at AZ he was a key player in the squad that won the 2008–09 Dutch league, the club's first championship victory in 28 years. Following this success he transferred to Ajax, with whom he won the 2009–10 Dutch Cup, and the 2010–11 Dutch league title. A good tackler and a gifted passer of the ball, he made 24 appearances for the Netherlands national team.
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Glenn Turner
Glenn Maitland Turner (born (1947-05-26)26 May 1947) is a New Zealand former cricketer and coach. A right-handed batter who predominantly opened the batting, he played 41 Test and 41 One Day International (ODI) matches for New Zealand from 1969 to 1983. In New Zealand domestic cricket, Turner represented Otago between 1964 and 1976, as well as Northern Districts in 1976/1977. He also represented Worcestershire in English county cricket from 1967 to 1982. Turner served as the coach of New Zealand between 1985 and 1987, and for the second time between 1995 and 1996.
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Caitlín R. Kiernan
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan (born 26 May 1964) is an Irish-born American paleontologist and writer of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including 10 novels, series of comic books, and more than 250 published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.
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Paula Findlay
Paula Findlay (born May 26, 1989) is a Canadian triathlete from Edmonton, Alberta.
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Anthony Ervin
Anthony Lee Ervin (born May 26, 1981) is an American competitive swimmer who has won four Olympic medals and two World Championship golds. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, he won a gold medal in the men's 50-meter freestyle, and earned a silver medal as a member of the second-place United States relay team in the 4×100-meter freestyle event. He was the second swimmer of African descent, after Anthony Nesty of Suriname, to win an individual gold medal in Olympic swimming. He is the first United States citizen of African descent to earn a gold medal in an individual Olympic swimming event. In 2017, he knelt for the US national anthem prior to the start of a competition in Brazil. Ervin stopped swimming competitively at the age of 22 in 2003 and auctioned off his 2000 Olympic gold medal on eBay to aid survivors of the 2004 tsunami, but he began to train again in 2011. Ervin competed in the 50-meter freestyle event at the 2012 Summer Olympics where he placed fifth. In the spring of 2016, Akashic Books released Ervin's memoir, Chasing Water, co-authored by Ervin and Constantine Markides. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, 16 years after his first Olympic gold medal, he won the event for the second time, at the age of 35, becoming the oldest individual Olympic gold medal winner in swimming.
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John Baird
John Russell Baird (born May 26, 1969) is a retired Canadian politician. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2015 in the cabinet of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He had been a member of the federal cabinet, in various positions, since 2006. Previously he was a provincial cabinet minister in Ontario during the governments of Premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves. Baird resigned from Harper's cabinet on February 3, 2015, and as a Member of Parliament on March 16, 2015. A long-time resident of the former city of Nepean, where he attended Bell High School, and a graduate of Kingston's Queen's University, he was the member of the House of Commons of Canada for the riding of Ottawa West—Nepean until 2015. Baird was elected there as a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada in the 2006 federal election, when his party defeated Paul Martin's Liberal Party and established a minority government. Baird was sworn in as Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, replacing Jay Hill, on August 6, 2010. Prior to this, Baird served as Transport Minister starting October 30, 2008, Environment Minister starting January 2007, and President of the Treasury Board during the Conservatives' first year in power. Baird served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1995 to 2005 for the riding of Nepean—Carleton (part of Nepean until 1999), and was a cabinet minister in the Progressive Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves. He served as the Minister for Children, Community and Social Services, Energy and Francophone Affairs in addition to being the Government's Chief Whip. After the Conservatives' defeat by Dalton McGuinty's Ontario Liberal Party, he was the party's critic for key portfolios including finance, culture and health. Baird had been a member of the Conservatives since 1985, when he was the youngest delegate at that time and was also a political aide for the federal Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in the late 1980s. During his tenure in the Harris Cabinet he supported an attempt to sell Hydro One, the publicly owned utility firm. As the federal President of the Treasury Board in the Harper Cabinet, he moved the Federal Accountability Act, which was put in place after the Gomery Commission which investigated the federal sponsorship scandal in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As Minister of the Environment, Baird signalled the Canadian government's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. He also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and President of the Treasury Board.
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Dean Lukin
Dinko "Dean" Lukin, OAM (born 26 May 1960) is an Australian retired weightlifter. Lukin won the gold medal in the Super Heavyweight category at the 1984 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles. He carried the Australian flag during the closing ceremony of the 1984 games, and remains Australia's only Olympic gold medallist for weightlifting. He also saw success in the Commonwealth Games, winning gold medals in the super heavyweight division of the 1982 Brisbane games and the 1986 Edinburgh games. Lukin was born in Sydney, but his family moved to the South Australian town of Port Lincoln when he was five years old. Lukin was a tuna fisherman who shot to fame as a weightlifter in the 1980s, then returned to run the family fishing business. In 2000, a portrait of him was hung in the Archibald Prize called Strongest Man of the Games, painted by David Bromley. In a press conference following his 1984 Los Angeles Olympics gold medal, Lukin reportedly told assembled journalists that instead of focusing upon his victory, they should assemble for the disabled games and show those competitors as much time and respect as they had shown him. This was because their achievements were "far greater than mine". In a bid to get healthier during the late 1980s, Lukin went on a diet and lost a lot of the weight that made him one of the top Super Heavyweight weightlifters in the world, claiming that his waist was now the size that his upper thighs were during the 1984 Olympic Games. Lukin was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985.
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Ole Bornedal
Ole Bornedal (born 26 May 1959) is a Danish film director, actor and producer.
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Frankie Manning
Frank Manning (May 26, 1914 – April 27, 2009) was an American dancer, instructor, and choreographer. Manning is considered one of the founders of Lindy Hop, an energetic form of the jazz dance style known as swing.
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Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt (pronounced [ɛdmɔ̃ d(ə) ɡɔ̃kuʁ]; 26 May 1822 – 16 July 1896) was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt.
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Ah Young
Cho Ah-young (Korean: 조자영; born May 26, 1991), better known by her stage name Ah Young (아영), is a South Korean singer and actress, as well known as a member of the South Korean girl group Dal Shabet.
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Natalya Gorbanevskaya
Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya (Russian: Ната́лья Евге́ньевна Горбане́вская, IPA: [nɐˈtalʲjə jɪvˈɡʲenʲjɪvnə ɡərbɐˈnʲefskəjə] ; 26 May 1936 – 29 November 2013) was a Russian poet, a translator of Polish literature and a civil-rights activist. She was one of the founders and the first editor of A Chronicle of Current Events (1968–1982). On 25 August 1968, with seven others, she took part in the 1968 Red Square demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1970 a Soviet court sentenced Gorbanevskaya to incarceration in a psychiatric hospital. She was released from the Kazan…
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Prince Koreyasu
Prince Koreyasu (惟康親王, Koreyasu Shinnō; 26 May 1264 – 25 November 1326; reigned 1266 – 1289), also known as Minamoto no Koreyasu (源 惟康), was the seventh shōgun of the Kamakura shogunate of medieval Japan. He was the nominal ruler virtually controlled by the Hōjō clan regents. Prince Koreyasu was the son of Prince Munetaka who was the sixth shōgun. 26 August 1266 (Bun'ei 3, 24th day of the 7th month): Koreyasu was installed as the 7th shōgun at the age of two when his father was deposed. 17 July 1287 (Kōan 10, 6th day of the 6th month): The shōgun was given the offices of Chūnagon and Udaijin…
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Michael Devine
Michael James Devine (Irish: Mícheál Ó Daimhín; 26 May 1954 – 20 August 1981) was an Irish militant and Republican activist. He was a volunteer in the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), and the last hunger striker to die during the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
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Ba U
Sir Ba U (Burmese: ဘဦး, pronounced [ba̰ ʔú]; 26 May 1887 – 9 November 1963), was an Anglo-Burmese politician and lawyer. He served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Burma from 1948 to 1952, and the second president of Burma from 16 March 1952 to 13 March 1957.
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Erica Terpstra
Erica Georgina Terpstra (born 26 May 1943) is a retired Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). Terpstra, a swimmer by occupation, participated in the 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics. She was elected as a Member of the House of Representatives after the Dutch general election of 1977 serving from 8 June 1977 until 22 August 1994 when she became Undersecretary for Health, Welfare and Sport in the Cabinet Kok I serving from 22 August 1994 until 3 August 1998. After the Dutch general election of 1998 Terpstra returned to the House of Representatives serving from 19…
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Antonio Barrette
Antonio J. Barrette (May 26, 1899 – December 15, 1968) was a Canadian politician born in Joliette, Quebec, Canada, who served as the 18th premier of Quebec.
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Fernando León de Aranoa
Fernando León de Aranoa (born 26 May 1968) is a Spanish screenwriter and film director. León de Aranoa entered the film industry as a screenwriter. He made his feature film directorial debut with Familia, which won him the Goya Award for Best New Director. He is together with Pedro Almodóvar the awardee with most Goya Awards for Best Director (3), which he won with Barrio (1998), Mondays in the Sun (2002), and The Good Boss (2021).
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Carmen Montejo
Carmen Montejo (born María Teresa Sánchez González; May 26, 1925 – February 25, 2013) was a Cuban and Mexican actress.
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Nikos Chatzivrettas
Nikolaos (Nikos) Chatzivrettas (alternate spelling: Hatzivrettas) (Greek: Νικόλαος (Νίκος) Χατζηβρέττας; born May 26, 1977) is a retired Greek professional basketball player. At a height of 1.97 m (6 ft 5 3⁄4 in) tall, he played at the shooting guard and small forward positions. He was inducted into the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame in 2022.
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Eugene Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens (; 26 May 1893 – 13 June 1962) was an English conductor and composer.
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Monika Christodoulou
Monika Christodoulou (Greek: Μόνικα Χριστοδούλου, born May 26, 1985, in Athens, Greece) also known by her stage name Monika, is a Greek singer-songwriter. Her debut album Avatar was released in 2008 and her second album Exit followed in 2010. Both albums achieved platinum status in her native Greece and were met with critical acclaim. Her third album, Secret in the Dark, was the first to be given an international release, in 2015. It was recorded in New York in collaboration with musicians from the Dap-Kings, and sees Christodoulou moving away from the folk, singer-songwriter style of her…
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Neshka Robeva
Neshka Stefanova Robeva (Bulgarian: Нешка Стефанова Робева; born 26 May 1946) is a Bulgarian former rhythmic gymnast and coach.
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Louis-Jean Cormier
Louis-Jean Cormier (born May 26, 1980, in Sept-Îles, Quebec) is a Canadian indie rock singer and songwriter. Formerly associated with the band Karkwa, since that band went on hiatus in 2012 he has recorded and performed as a solo artist and was a judge on the second season of the television singing competition La Voix. While Cormier was with Karkwa, the band's fourth album Les Chemins de verre won the 2010 Polaris Music Prize, being the first French-language work to win the award. His 2012 album Le Treizième étage was a longlisted nominee for the 2013 Polaris Music Prize, and won the Juno…
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Naomi Harris
Naomi Harris (born May 26, 1973) is a Canadian photographer living in Toronto. She is known for her portraits of people from sub-cultures such as retirement communities and nudist beaches.
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Olcay Şahan
Olcay Şahan (Turkish pronunciation: [oɫdʒaj ʃahan], born 26 May 1987) is a Turkish professional football manager and a former player who played as a winger or as an attacking midfielder. Born in Germany, he played for the Turkey national team internationally.
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J. F. Ade Ajayi
Jacob Festus Adeniyi Ajayi, commonly known as J. F. Ade Ajayi, (26 May 1929 – 9 August 2014) was a Nigerian historian and a member of the Ibadan school, a group of scholars interested in introducing African perspectives to African history and focusing on the internal historical forces that shaped African lives. Ade Ajayi favours the use of historical continuity more often than focusing on events only as powerful agents of change that can move the basic foundations of cultures and mould them into new ones. Instead, he sees many critical events in African life, sometimes as weathering episodes…
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William Morgan
William Morgan, FRS (26 May (O.S.) 1750 – 4 May 1833) was a British physician, physicist and statistician, who is considered the father of modern actuarial science. He is also credited with being the first to record the "invisible light" produced when a current is passed through a partly evacuated glass tube: "the first x-ray tube".
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Lars Frölander
Lars Arne Frölander (born 26 May 1974) is a Swedish swimmer. He has competed in six consecutive Olympic Games (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012).
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Inge Borkh
Inge Borkh (born Ingeborg Simon, 26 May 1921 – 26 August 2018) was a German operatic dramatic soprano. She was first based in Switzerland, where she received international attention when she appeared in the first performance in German of Menotti's The Consul, in Basel, in 1951. In 1952, Borkh became a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. She appeared at leading opera houses in Europe and the Americas, and at festivals such as Bayreuth and Salzburg. Trained first as an actress, she was admired for both singing and stage presence, especially in the Richard…
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Arto Bryggare
Arto Kalervo Bryggare (born 26 May 1958) is a Finnish former hurdling athlete. He was a member of the Parliament of Finland, representing the Social Democratic Party of Finland from 1995 to 1999 and 2003 to 2007. His personal best time 13.35, made during trials in 1984 Los Angeles Games, is still the record time in Finland and in Nordic countries. Bryggare made Finnish history by becoming the first Finn to medal in a sprint event shorter than 400 metres.
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Hasan Kabze
Hasan Salih Kabze (born 26 May 1982) is a Turkish former professional footballer who played as a striker. Formerly, he played for Bucaspor, Çanakkale Dardanelspor, Galatasaray SK, Rubin Kazan, Montpellier HSC, Orduspor, Konyaspor, Akhisar Belediyespor, and Sivasspor. In 2006, he made seven appearances for the international scoring twice. He studied at Anadolu University.
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Olaf Gulbransson
Olaf Leonhard Gulbransson (26 May 1873 – 18 September 1958) was a Norwegian artist, painter and designer. He is probably best known for his caricatures and illustrations.
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Jean Bernard
Jean Bernard (26 May 1907 – 17 April 2006) was a French physician and haematologist. During his life, he served as president of the French Academy of Sciences and the French National Academy of Medicine. He was also the first president of the National Ethics Advisory Committee. Bernard was a professor of haematology and director of the Institute for Leukaemia at the University of Paris. After graduating in medicine in Paris in 1926, Bernard commenced his laboratory training with the bacteriologist Gaston Ramon at the Pasteur Institute in 1929. In 1932 Bernard gave the first description of the…
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Lara Goodall
Lara Goodall (born 26 April 1996) is a South African cricketer who represents South Africa in Women's One Day Internationals and Women's Twenty20 Internationals. In February 2019, Cricket South Africa named her as one of the players in the Powerade Women's National Academy intake for 2019. In September 2019, she was named in the M van der Merwe XI squad for the inaugural edition of the Women's T20 Super League in South Africa. On 23 July 2020, Goodall was named in South Africa's 24-woman squad to begin training in Pretoria, ahead of their tour to England. In February 2022, she was named in…
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Henriette Roosenburg
Henriette Roosenburg (26 May 1916 – 20 June 1972) was a Dutch journalist and political prisoner. Her memoir The Walls Came Tumbling Down described her attempts to return to the Netherlands from Germany after being released from prison at the end of World War II. Born in the Netherlands to an upper-class family, she was a graduate student at the University of Leiden at the start of World War II and became a courier in the Dutch resistance, where she served under the code name Zip. During this time she also wrote for the Dutch newspaper Het Parool. In 1944 she was caught and sentenced to death,…
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Ernst Bacon
Ernst Lecher Bacon (May 26, 1898 – March 16, 1990) was an American composer, pianist, and conductor. A prolific composer, Bacon wrote over 250 songs over his career. He was awarded three Guggenheim Fellowships and a Pulitzer Scholarship in 1932 for his Second Symphony.
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Michel Tornéus
Michel Tresor Komesha Tornéus (born 26 May 1986) is a Swedish former long jumper.
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James III, Margrave of Baden-Hachberg
Margrave James III of Baden-Hachberg (26 May 1562 – 17 August 1590) was margrave of Baden-Hachberg from 1584 to 1590 and resided at Emmendingen. He converted, in 1590, from Lutheranism to the Roman Catholic confession, causing some political turmoil.
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Fabio Firmani
Fabio Firmani (born 26 May 1978) is an Italian retired footballer who played as a midfielder. He amassed Serie A totals of 83 games and four goals over the course of ten seasons, representing in the competition Vicenza, Chievo, Bologna and Lazio.
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Phil Edmonston
Louis-Phillip Edmonston (26 May 1944 – 2 December 2022) was a Canadian consumer advocate, writer, journalist, and politician. Along with Andrew Scheer, he was one of the few politicians with dual American and Canadian citizenship to be elected to the Parliament of Canada. Edmonston was best known for his series of annual Lemon-Aid car guides. He lived in Panama at the end of his life.
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August Kopisch
August Kopisch (26 May 1799 – 6 February 1853) was a German poet and painter.
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Maurice Baquet
Maurice Louis Baquet (26 May 1911 – 8 July 2005) was a French actor and cellist. He was born in Villefranche-sur-Saône and died in Noisy-le-Grand. He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris in the same class as Henri Betti, Paul Bonneau, Henri Dutilleux and Louiguy.
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Tamurbek Dawletschin
Tamurbek Dawletschin (also spelled Timurbäk Däwlätşin, 26 May 1904 – 7 September 1983) was a Soviet writer and intellectual, best known for publishing one of the few memoirs by a Soviet prisoner of war held by Germany during World War II. Dawletschin was born in the rural village of Sildjär in Bashkortostan in 1904 and grew up in a Muslim environment. He studied law and economics and became a professor at the University of Kazan. During World War II, he was drafted in to the Red Army as a lieutenant. Two months later, he was captured by German forces in September 1941 near Novgorod. He spent…
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Sébastien Vaillant
Sébastien Vaillant (French pronunciation: [sebastjɛ̃ vajɑ̃]; May 26, 1669 – May 20, 1722) was a French botanist who was born at Vigny in present-day Val d'Oise.
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Monique Gagnon-Tremblay
Monique Gagnon-Tremblay (French: [mɔnik gɑɲɔ̃ tʁɑ̃ble] ; born May 26, 1940, in Plessisville, Quebec) is a politician in Quebec, Canada. She was the MNA for the riding of Saint-François in the Estrie region from 1985 to 2012. She served as Liberal leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly of Quebec from May 1998 to December 1998 and Deputy Premier in 1994 and from 2003 to 2005.
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Vernon Alley
Vernon Alley (May 26, 1915 – October 3, 2004) was an American jazz bassist.
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Jack Cheetham
John Erskine Cheetham (26 May 1920 – 21 August 1980) was a South African cricketer who played in 24 Test matches between 1949 and 1955, captaining South Africa in his last 15 Test matches. He later served as president of the South African Cricket Association.
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W. Otto Miessner
William Otto Miessner (May 26, 1880 - May 27, 1967) was an American composer and music educator. Most of his life was spent in the midwest, particularly Indiana and Wisconsin.
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Jason Adesanya
Jason Adesanya (born 26 May 1993) is a Belgian footballer who currently plays for K Lyra-Lierse Berlaar.
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Percy Perrin
Percival Albert Perrin (26 May 1876 – 20 November 1945), known as either "Percy" or "Peter", was an English cricketer, who played for Essex as a right-handed middle-order batsman for more than thirty years from 1896. Perrin was a Tottenham publican and a property developer who organised his considerable business activities around his cricket, turning out for Essex regularly from 1896 to 1926, and not retiring until 1928. His total of 496 County Championship matches for Essex is a record for an amateur player in English cricket. A tall batsman who initially relied on driving for most of his…
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Andrea Catellani
Andrea Catellani (born 26 May 1988) is an Italian former professional footballer who played as a forward.
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Karim Emami
Karim Emami (Persian: کریم امامی) (26 May 1930, Calcutta, India – 9 July 2005, Tehran, Iran) was an Iranian translator, editor, lexicographer, and literary critic.
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Karin Juel
Karin Juel (26 May 1900 – 2 May 1976) was a Swedish singer, actor and writer, born in Kungsholmen, Stockholm. She originally wrote novels under the pseudonym Katherind van Goeben. She died in Stockholm.
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Eero Loone
Eero Loone (born 26 May 1935 in Tartu) is an Estonian philosopher. He is the son of Nigolas Loone and Leida Loone. Eero Loone graduated from the Moscow State University in 1958 (he studied history). From 1958 to 1960, Loone worked as junior researcher at the USSR institute of Global Economy and International Relations. Since 1966, he has been lecturer of philosophy (specializing in practical philosophy) at the University of Tartu (became a professor in 1988). He became Doctor of Philosophy in 1984. From 1989 to 1990 Eero Loone worked at Clare Hall, Cambridge (he became lifelong member of the…
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Zaher Andary
Zaher Toufic Al Indari (Arabic: زاهر توفيق العنداري; born 26 May 1971) is a Lebanese former footballer who played as a striker.
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