Who was born on October 31?
October 31 is packed with notable birthdays. Explore 119 famous birthdays, sorted by recent English Wikipedia pageviews. Top ranked names include Ad-Rock, Adam Bouska, Adelbert Ames, Alexander Alekhine, Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta. Filter by actor, musician, athlete, and more — or open any other calendar day.
October 31
119 people
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Ad-Rock
Adam Keefe Horovitz (born October 31, 1966), known professionally as Ad-Rock, is an American rapper, guitarist, and actor. He was a member of the hip-hop group the Beastie Boys. While the Beastie Boys were active, Horovitz performed with a side project, BS 2000. Since the group's dissolution, Horovitz has participated in several Beastie Boys projects, worked as a remixer, producer, and guest musician for other artists, and acted in a number of films.
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Adam Bouska
Adam Bouska (born October 31, 1983, in Decatur, Illinois) is an American fashion photographer who runs a photography studio based out of West Hollywood, California. Known for pictures of male models in particular, he is considered a rising 'superstar photographer' in the gay community. Bouska is most recognized for co-creation of the internationally recognized NOH8 Campaign. Bouska has worked with familiar faces such as Miley Cyrus, Ricky Martin, Liza Minnelli, Barry Manilow, George Takei, Pauley Perrette, and Lisa Ling. Most recently, Bouska helped create book covers for Jane Lynch, Jenny McCarthy, Jenni Pulos and Meghan McCain. No stranger to activism, Bouska's photography has aided a variety of charitable causes including a fund-raising calendar for AIDS Project Los Angeles in 2008, a national ad campaign with Nia Vardalos for HelpUsAdopt.org in 2011, an edgy calendar (6 packs / 9 lives) featuring men and their cats to promote adoptions for FoundAnimals.org in 2012, and 'Lights Out', a marriage equality ad campaign for ECOYA in 2013. In addition to his published work, Bouska has made appearances on TV shows including: Running Russell Simmons, Giuliana & Bill, Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Real Housewives of Orange County, The Millionaire Matchmaker, Million Dollar Listing, The World According to Paris, Hollywood Exes, MelB: It's a Scary World, and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Bouska is openly gay. He lives in Los Angeles, California. Bouska was recognized as the community's leading photographer at the West Hollywood awards in 2007 & 2010, selected as one of The Advocate's '40 Under 40' in 2010, featured as one of Out magazine's 'OUT100' in 2011 and a Shorty Award winner for Photography in 2012.
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Adelbert Ames
Adelbert Ames (October 31, 1835 – April 13, 1933) was an American sailor, soldier, businessman and politician who served with distinction as a Union Army general during the American Civil War. A Radical Republican, he was a military governor, U.S. Senator, and civilian governor in Reconstruction-era Mississippi. In 1898, he served as a United States Army general during the Spanish–American War. He was the last Republican to serve as the state governor of Mississippi until the election of Kirk Fordice, who took office in January 1992, 116 years after Ames vacated the office. A staunch supporter of political equality for African Americans, Ames's tenure as governor of Mississippi was a longstanding point of controversy in the historiography around Reconstruction, with the Dunning School and other "Lost Cause" historians casting him as a villain in American history. Conversely, his cause was championed by Black historians and, from the 1950s onward, other neo-abolitionist writers. Ames was the penultimate surviving general officer of the Civil War, dying at the age of 97 in 1933. He was outlived only by Aaron Daggett, who died in 1938 at the age of 100. However, because Daggett was a brevet rank brigadier general of volunteers, Ames was the last surviving Civil War general who had held his rank in the regular U.S. or Confederate States army and was also the last surviving general of the conflict who had begun his career in the regular U.S. Army.
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Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine (October 31 [O.S. October 19] 1892 – March 24, 1946) was a Russian and French chess player and the fourth World Chess Champion, a title he held for two reigns. By the age of 22, Alekhine was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played. In 1921, Alekhine left Soviet Russia and emigrated to France, which he represented after 1925. In 1927, he became the fourth World Chess Champion by defeating José Raúl Capablanca. In the early 1930s, Alekhine dominated tournament play and won two top-class tournaments by large margins. He also played first board for France in five Chess Olympiads, winning individual prizes in each (four medals and a brilliancy prize). Alekhine offered Capablanca a rematch on the same demanding terms that Capablanca had set for him, and negotiations dragged on for years without making much progress. Meanwhile, Alekhine defended his title with ease against Efim Bogoljubov in 1929 and 1934. He was defeated by Max Euwe in 1935, but regained his crown in the 1937 rematch. His tournament record, however, was uneven, and rising young stars like Paul Keres, Reuben Fine, and Mikhail Botvinnik threatened his title. Negotiations for a title match with Keres or Botvinnik were halted by the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939. Negotiations with Botvinnik for a world title match were proceeding in 1946 when Alekhine died in Portugal, in unclear circumstances. Alekhine is the only World Chess Champion to have died while holding the title. Alekhine is known for his fierce and imaginative attacking style, combined with great positional and endgame skill. He is highly regarded as a chess writer and theoretician, having produced innovations in a wide range of chess openings and having given his name to Alekhine's Defence and several other opening variations. He also composed some endgame studies.
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Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta
Dr. Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta (October 31, 1729 – May 26, 1800) was archbishop of Mexico from September 12, 1772, to May 26, 1800, and viceroy of New Spain from May 8, 1787, to August 16, 1787.
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Alonzo Babers
Alonzo Carl Babers (born October 31, 1961) is an American former athlete, winner of two gold medals at the 1984 Summer Olympics, in the 400 m and the 4 × 400 m relay. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Alonzo Babers was a military dependent who graduated from Kaiserslautern American High School in West Germany. He attended the United States Air Force Academy from 1979 to 1983, graduating with a major in aerospace engineering, where he ran track and played one season of football. The international athletics career of Alonzo Babers consisted of a spectacular rise to fame, followed by a decisive and abrupt end. Up to the end of 1982, Babers's best time in 400 m was 45.9, but he rapidly improved on that during 1983, running a best time of 45.07, but at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki he finished in a disappointing sixth place in the 4 × 400 m relay. Babers continued his rapid improvement in 1984. At the USA Final Olympic Trials in Los Angeles, he won his semi-final in a personal best of 44.95. Later, in the final, he ran another personal best of 44.86 to qualify to the Olympic team. At the Los Angeles Olympic Games he further lowered his personal best to 44.75 when he won his quarterfinal. In the Olympic final, Babers ran 44.27 to win the gold medal. In the 4 × 400 m relay, United States (Babers ran the third leg) won the gold medal easily in 2:57.91. While training for and competing in the 1984 Olympics, Babers held the rank of lieutenant in the United States Air Force. Just one month after his double-gold performance in Los Angeles, Babers reported to flight training school and began his career as a pilot, so his athletics career was over. He was an active-duty officer in the United States Air Force from 1983 to 1991 and continues to serve as a member of the Air Force Reserves. He later became a Boeing 777 captain for United Airlines.
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Alphonso Ford
Alphonso Gene Ford (October 31, 1971 – September 4, 2004) was an American professional basketball player. A 1.92 m (6 ft 3 3⁄4 in) tall, 98 kg (216 lbs.) shooting guard, he was one of the greatest scorers in college basketball history. After a short stint in the NBA, he played professionally in Europe. Ford continued with his scoring ability in the EuroLeague, notwithstanding his chronic health issues. He was the EuroLeague Top Scorer twice (2001, 2002), and earned an All-EuroLeague selection three times. The competition's leading scorer award bears his name, in his honor.
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Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent and popularizer of the auteur theory of film criticism, particularly in The American Cinema (1968).
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Anne Claude de Caylus
Anne Claude de Tubières-Grimoard de Pestels de Lévis, comte de Caylus, marquis d'Esternay, baron de Bransac (Anne Claude Philippe; 31 October 1692 – 5 September 1765), was a French antiquarian, proto-archaeologist and man of letters. Born in Paris, he was the eldest son of Lieutenant-General Anne de Tubières, comte de Caylus. His mother, Marthe-Marguerite de Villette de Mursay, comtesse de Caylus (1673–1729), was the daughter of vice-admiral Philippe, Marquis de Villette-Mursay. His younger brother was Charles de Tubières de Caylus, who became a naval officer and governor of Martinique. He was a cousin of Madame de Maintenon, who brought Marthe-Marguerite up like her own daughter. Marthe-Marguerite wrote valuable Souvenirs of the court of Louis XIV; these were edited by Voltaire (1770), and by many later editors.
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Antonio Davis
Antonio Lee Davis (born October 31, 1968) is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Indiana Pacers, Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls, and New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He also played for Panathinaikos B.C. in Greece and Philips Milano in Italy. Davis is also the former president of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). On October 31, 2012, ESPN announced the hiring of Davis as a studio analyst for NBA broadcasts. He is also currently a co-host/analyst on SiriusXM NBA Radio.
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Arnaud Desplechin
Arnaud Desplechin (French: [aʁno depləʃɛ̃]; born 31 October 1960) is a French filmmaker. His films usually explore contemporary French society, featuring melodramatic settings or heavily inspired by François Truffaut. He is most known for Esther Kahn (2000), Kings and Queen (2004), A Christmas Tale (2008) and My Golden Days (2015), for the latter he won the César Award for Best Director.
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Asbjørg Borgfelt
Asbjørg Borgfelt (31 October 1900 – 5 June 1976) was a Norwegian sculptor.
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B. H. Liddell Hart
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (31 October 1895 – 29 January 1970), commonly known throughout most of his career as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was a British soldier, military historian and military theorist. He wrote a series of military histories that proved influential among strategists. Arguing that frontal assault was bound to fail at great cost in lives, as proven in the First World War, he recommended the "indirect approach" and reliance on fast-moving armoured formations. His pre-war publications are known to have influenced German strategy in the Second World War, though he was accused of prompting captured generals to exaggerate his part in the development of blitzkrieg tactics. He also helped promote the Rommel myth and the "clean Wehrmacht" argument for political purposes, when the Cold War necessitated the recruitment of a new West German army.
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Barbara Bel Geddes
Barbara Bel Geddes (October 31, 1922 – August 8, 2005) was an American stage and screen actress, artist, and children's author whose career spanned almost five decades. She received various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for an Academy Award and two Tony Awards. Bel Geddes was best known for her starring role as Miss Ellie Ewing in the television series Dallas, while her notable films included I Remember Mama (1948) and Vertigo (1958). In theatre, she is best remembered as Maggie in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.
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Bernard Edwards
Bernard Edwards (October 31, 1952 – April 18, 1996) was an American bassist known primarily for his work in disco with guitarist Nile Rodgers, with whom he co-founded Chic. In 2017, Edwards was selected as the 53rd greatest bassist of all time by Bass Player magazine.
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Boston Custer
Boston Custer (October 31, 1848 – June 25, 1876) was the youngest brother of U.S. Army Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer and two-time Medal of Honor recipient Captain Thomas Custer. He was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn along with his two brothers.
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Brian Stokes Mitchell
Brian Stokes Mitchell (born October 31, 1957) is an American actor and singer. A powerful baritone, he has been one of the central leading men of the Broadway theater since the 1990s. He has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and a nomination for a Grammy Award. In 2016 he received the Isabelle Stevenson Award. Mitchell won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Fred Graham / Petruchio in the Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate (2000). His other Tony-nominated performances were in Ragtime (1998), King Hedley II (2001), and Man of La Mancha (2003). Mitchell's other notable roles include in Oh, Kay! (1991), Jelly's Last Jam (1992), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2002), South Pacific (2005), Les Misérables (2008), Guys and Dolls (2009), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (2010), Oliver! (2012), Camelot (2014), Shuffle Along (2016), and Love Life (2025). Mitchell is also known for his television roles, including Dr. Justin Jackson in the CBS medical drama Trapper John, M.D. (1979 to 1986) and recurring roles on shows such as Frasier, Glee, Mr. Robot, The Path, Billions, and The Good Fight. He took the role of Walt in the CBS sitcom Fam (2019). He received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album nomination for The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets in 2001.
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Bruce Bawer
Theodore Bruce Bawer (born October 31, 1956) is an American-Norwegian writer. Born and raised in New York, he has been a resident of Norway since 1999 and became a citizen of Norway in 2024. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and a novelist and poet, who has also written about gay rights, Christianity, and Islam. Bawer proposed same-sex marriage in his book A Place at the Table (1993). While Europe Slept (2006) skeptically examined the rise of Islamism and sharia in the Western world, and The Victims' Revolution (2012) was a criticism of academic identity studies. The author James Kirchick has called Bawer "one of the great literary critics and political writers of the age." While Bawer has sometimes been described as a conservative, he has argued that such labels are misleading or reductionist. He said his views were "motivated by a dedication to individual identity and individual freedom and an opposition to groupthink, oppression, tyranny."
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Carla Boyd
Carla Boyd (born 31 October 1975) is an Australian former professional basketball player in the WNBA as a forward for the Detroit Shock. She won a bronze (1996) and a silver (2000) medal with the Australian Women's Team at the Summer Olympics.
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Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkaʁluz dɾuˈmõ dʒi ɐ̃ˈdɾadʒi]) (October 31, 1902 – August 17, 1987) was a Brazilian poet and writer, considered by some as the greatest Brazilian poet of all time. He has become something of a national cultural symbol in Brazil, where his widely influential poem "Canção Amiga" ("Friendly Song") has been featured on the 50-cruzado novo bill.
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Charles Lavigerie
Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie, M. Afr. (31 October 1825 – 26 November 1892) was a French Catholic prelate and missionary who served as Archbishop of Carthage and Primate of Africa from 1884 to 1892. He previously served as Archbishop of Algiers and Bishop of Nancy. He also founded the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers). He was created a cardinal in 1882. After becoming a bishop in France, Lavigerie established French Catholic missions and missionary orders to work across Africa. Lavigerie promoted Catholicism among the peoples of North Africa, as well as the Black natives further south. He was equally ardent to transform them into French subjects. He crusaded against the slave trade, and he founded the White Fathers, so named for their white cassocks and red fezzes. He also established similar orders of brothers and nuns. He sent his missionaries to the Sahara, Sudan, Tunisia, and Tripolitania. His efforts were supported by the pope and the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Although anti-clericalism was a major issue in France, the secular leader Léon Gambetta proclaimed, "Anti-clericalism is not an article for export", and he supported Lavigerie's work. Lavigerie died in 1892 at the age of 67.
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Charles Leroux
Charles Leroux (born as Joseph Johnson; 31 October 1856 in Waterbury, Connecticut, United States – 24 September 1889 in Tallinn, Estonia, then Russian Empire) was an American balloonist and parachutist. He died on his 239th jump after a water landing in the Tallinn Bay. One hundred years later, in 1989, a commemorative monument to Leroux was opened near his site of death in the Pirita district of Tallinn, capital of Estonia.
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Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek (; 31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975) was a Chinese military commander, revolutionary, and statesman who was the President of the Republic of China from 1948 to 1975 and the head of the Nationalist government from 1925 to 1948. As the de facto leader of the Republic of China (ROC), he ruled the country through World War II and oversaw the relocation of its government to Taiwan following defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Born in Zhejiang, Chiang received a military education in China and Japan, joined Sun Yat-sen's Tongmenghui in 1908, and, after the 1911 Revolution, participated in the National Protection War. In 1923, he was appointed by Sun as chief of staff of the Army and Navy Marshal stronghold, and served as commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy from 1924 until its closure in 1930. After Sun's death, Chiang wrested control of the party and army from Wang Jingwei in the Canton Coup. From 1926 to 1928, Chiang led the Northern Expedition and largely unified China under a Nationalist government based in Nanjing. He broke the First United Front by purging the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members in the Shanghai Massacre, triggering the Chinese Civil War. During the Nanjing decade, Chiang pursued modernization of China while prioritizing the suppression of the Communists over confrontation with Japan following the latter's invasion of Manchuria. The Xi'an Incident in 1936 forced him to form a Second United Front with the CCP against Japan. Between 1937 and 1945, Chiang led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, mostly from the wartime capital of Chongqing. He attended the Cairo Conference to discuss the terms of Japan's surrender, including the retrocession of Taiwan, after which he suppressed the February 28 Incident. When World War II ended, the Chinese Civil War resumed. In 1949, Chiang's KMT was defeated by Mao's CCP and retreated to Taiwan. He imposed martial law and White Terror on the island that lasted until 1987 and 1992, respectively. Beginning in 1948, he was re-elected five times by the same Eternal Parliament with six-year terms as President of the ROC, the head of a de facto one-party state, for 25 years until his death. Chiang presided over land reform, economic growth, and the Taiwan Strait crises twice in 1954–1955 and in 1958. He was considered the legitimate leader of China by the United Nations until 1971, when the ROC's seat was transferred to the People's Republic of China. Chiang is a controversial figure. Supporters credit him with unifying the nation and ending the century of humiliation, leading the resistance against Japan, fostering economic development and preserving Chinese culture in contrast to Mao's Cultural Revolution. He is also credited with safeguarding the Forbidden City's treasures during the wars, a substantial portion now housed at the Taipei Palace Museum. Critics fault him for his early appeasement of Japan, the deliberate flooding of the Yellow River, cronyism and corruption linked to the Four Big Families, and authoritarian rule on both mainland China and Taiwan.
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Chris Alajajian
Christopher Alajajian (born 31 October 1986) is an Australian-Armenian former race car driver.
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Christopher Anstey
Christopher Anstey (31 October 1724 – 3 August 1805) was an English poet who also wrote in Latin. After a period managing his family's estates, he moved permanently to Bath and died after a long public life there. His poem, The New Bath Guide, brought him to fame and began an easy satirical fashion that was influential throughout the second half of the 18th century. Later he wrote An Electoral Ball, another burlesque of Bath society that allowed him to develop and update certain themes in his earlier work. Among his Latin writing were translations and summaries based on both these poems; he was also joint author of one of the earliest Latin translations of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which went through several editions both in England and abroad.
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Cole Aldrich
Cole David Aldrich (born October 31, 1988) is an American former professional basketball player. He played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Clippers and Minnesota Timberwolves. Aldrich played three seasons of college basketball for the Kansas Jayhawks before being drafted by the New Orleans Hornets with the 11th overall pick in the 2010 NBA draft.
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Constance Savery
Constance Winifred Savery (31 October 1897 – 2 March 1999) was a British writer of fifty novels and children's books, as well as many short stories and articles. She was selected for the initial issue of the long-running series entitled The Junior Book of Authors (1951–2008) and for the first, 1971, volume of Anne Commire's Something About the Author, which reached volume 320 in 2018. Savery's World War II novel, Enemy Brothers, received praise and remains in print. In 1980, at age eighty-two, she completed a Charlotte Brontë two-chapter fragment, which was published as "Emma by Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady". The book was translated into Dutch, Spanish, and Russian. Reared in a Wiltshire vicarage, Savery was prepared for university study at King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham. Earning an Exhibition (scholarship) to Somerville College, Oxford, she read English, and in 1920 was in the first group of women to be awarded a degree by the University of Oxford. Seventy-five years later, she was honoured at Oxford as the last surviving member of that event. Savery remained active to the end of a long life, completing a handwritten, 692-page revision of an unpublished manuscript just prior to her ninety-ninth birthday.
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Craig Rodwell
Craig L. Rodwell (October 31, 1940 – June 18, 1993) was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967 - the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors - and as the prime mover for the creation of the New York City gay pride demonstration. Rodwell, who was already an activist when he participated in the 1969 Stonewall uprising, is considered by some to be the leading gay rights activist in the early, pre-Stonewall, homophile movement of the 1960s.
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Dale Brown
Dale Duward Brown (born October 31, 1935) is an American former college basketball coach. He was the head coach of the LSU Tigers for 25 years, and his teams earned Final Four appearances in 1981 and 1986. Brown is also remembered as one of the most vocal critics of the NCAA, saying it "legislated against human dignity and practiced monumental hypocrisy."
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Dale Evans
Dale Evans Rogers (October 31, 1912 – February 7, 2001) was an American actress, singer, and songwriter. She was the second wife of singing cowboy film star Roy Rogers and starred alongside him in many films.
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Dan Alderson
Daniel John Alderson (October 31, 1941 – May 17, 1989) was a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, and a prominent participant in science fiction fandom. He came from a middle-class family and had diabetes. A high school science fair project on the gravitational fields of non-spherical bodies won him a college scholarship to Caltech and a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he wrote the software used to navigate Voyagers 1 and 2. A member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, an Official Editor of the comic book APA CAPA-alpha, and an early member of gaming fandom, he came into contact with a number of science fiction writers, notably Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who, in their books, credit Dan Alderson with ideas that inspired some of their science fiction, notably the Alderson drive and the Alderson disk. As "Dan Forrester" he is a prominent character in Lucifer's Hammer. Alderson did not write science fiction himself, but for his own amusement created the imaginary planet of Toadland, a planet where everyone gets his heart's desire. As the ruler of the world, he assumed the title "Wibblefubwilda", over the Wibblefubs, Wibbles, and Wibs that populated Toadland. He died at an early age from complications of diabetes. He is remembered as a "patron saint" of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, which honored his memory with a parking space reserved in his name in front of their clubhouse until they moved to a new location without dedicated parking. Alderson devised a Fortran program (called TRAM for Trajectory Monitor) for navigation in the Solar System, still used by low-thrust craft in 2008. When Alderson lost his vision to diabetic complications, he was able to continue working at JPL by dictating to an unpaid "seeing eye person." Before he was forced to retire for medical reasons, he created a complex subroutine package (Portable NameList) in Fortran, strictly by dictation. He organized things so well that he was able to create a number of secondary subroutines and functions, keeping all arguments in a strict order to avoid confusion. Alderson was a confirmed night owl. It was well known at JPL that, if someone saw him at his desk at 8 AM, he'd been there all night. As his health failed, he paid less and less attention to the time, sometimes leaving for a 3 PM appointment at 3:30 PM.
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Dan Rather
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist, commentator, and former national evening news anchor. He began his career in Texas, becoming a national name in September 1961 after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla. He has reported on some of the most significant events of the modern age, such as from Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, 9/11, the Iraq War, and the war on terror. Rather also famously reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Based on such reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the United States from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was dismissed. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on the Young Turks YouTube channel. Since 2021, he has been writing the newsletter "Steady" on the Substack platform, with 170 posts in 2024.
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Danielle Rose Russell
Danielle Rose Russell (born October 31, 1999) is an American actress and former model. She is best known for her role as Hope Mikaelson in the The CW supernatural drama series The Originals (2018) and Legacies (2021–2022).
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Daphne Oxenford
Daphne Margaret du Grivel Oxenford (31 October 1919 – 21 December 2012) was an English actress, known for her early stage roles, and later her radio and television work. She was the voice ("Are you sitting comfortably ...?") of BBC radio's Listen with Mother from its inception in 1950 to 1971. She was part of the original cast of ITV TV series soap opera Coronation Street in 1960, playing the role of spinster Esther Hayes, and appearing during the first three years of the show (with subsequent guest returns). Oxenford also had notable TV guest roles including the sitcom Man About the House (1973) as Mrs. Plummer and in EastEnders (1990) as Alice Dutton, and featured in the mini-series The Children of Green Knowe (1986). as Mrs. Oldknow
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David Ogden Stiers
David Allen Ogden Stiers ( STY-ərz; October 31, 1942 – March 3, 2018) was an American actor and conductor. He appeared in numerous productions on Broadway, and originated the role of Feldman in The Magic Show, in 1974. In 1977, Stiers was cast as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, MD, on the television series M*A*S*H, a role he portrayed until the series' conclusion in 1983, and which earned him two Emmy Award nominations. He appeared prominently in the 1980s in the role of District Attorney Michael Reston in several Perry Mason television films, and voiced a number of Disney characters, including Cogsworth in 1991's Beauty and the Beast, Governor Ratcliffe and Wiggins in 1995's Pocahontas, and Dr. Jumba Jookiba in the Lilo & Stitch franchise. He also voiced Kamaji in the English-language version of Spirited Away (2001). He appeared in television again on the supernatural drama series The Dead Zone as Reverend Gene Purdy, a role he portrayed from 2002 to 2007. He joined the cast of Stargate: Atlantis in its third season as Oberoth, leader of the human-form replicators. Stiers continued to contribute voice work for films and television productions in his later years, narrating M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water (2006) and having a recurring role on the Cartoon Network Studios series Regular Show. Stiers spent his later years as a conductor of the Newport Symphony Orchestra.
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Deidre Hall
Deidre Hall (born October 31, 1947) is an American actress and model. She is best known for her portrayal of Marlena Evans on the NBC/Peacock daytime drama Days of Our Lives, whom she has played for 50 years. Hall has won many awards for her portrayal of Marlena, including two Best Actress Soapy Awards in 1982 and 1983. Hall has won three Soap Opera Digest Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in 1984, 1985, and 1995. Hall was the first recipient of the Outstanding Contribution by an Actress/Actor Award in 1986; in addition to receiving a shared award with Drake Hogestyn in 2005 for Favourite Couple: John and Marlena. Hall has also been nominated for a Daytime Emmy three times.
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Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles
Colonel Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles (31 October 1598 – 17 February 1680) was an English politician and army officer who was one of the Five Members whose attempted arrest by Charles I in January 1642 sparked the First English Civil War. When fighting began in August, Holles raised a Parliamentarian regiment which fought at Edgehill before it was nearly destroyed at Brentford in November 1642. This marked the end of Holles' military career and he became leader of the Parliamentarian 'Peace Party', those who favoured a negotiated settlement with the king. A social conservative from a wealthy family, he came to see political radicals like the Levellers and religious Independents like Oliver Cromwell as more dangerous than the Royalists. Following victory in the First English Civil War, he led those who opposed Cromwell and his supporters, and was one of the Eleven Members suspended in June 1647. Recalled prior to the Second English Civil War in June 1648, he was excluded again by Pride's Purge in December and went into exile before being allowed home in 1654. After The Restoration of 1660, Charles II made him Baron Holles and Ambassador to France from 1663 to 1666, an appointment that proved unsuccessful. Holles gradually became part of the Whig opposition, backing the 1673 Test Act and exclusion in 1679 of the Catholic heir, James, Duke of York. He died in February 1680 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. One biographer summarised his career by saying; "...successful in almost everything he privately undertook, (he was) unsuccessful in almost everything he publicly undertook, (while) his passionate parliamentarianism was constantly counter-productive".
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Dick Francis
Richard Stanley Francis (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010) was a British steeplechase jockey and crime writer whose novels centre on horse racing in England. After wartime service in the RAF, Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt. He came to further prominence in 1956 as jockey to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, riding her horse Devon Loch which fell when close to winning the Grand National. Francis retired from horseracing and became a journalist and novelist. Many of his novels deal with crime in the horse-racing world, with some of the criminals being outwardly respectable figures. The stories are narrated by the main character, often a jockey, but sometimes a trainer, an owner, a bookmaker or someone in a different profession, peripherally linked to racing. This person always faces great obstacles, often including physical injury. More than forty of these novels became international best-sellers.
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Edgar Sampson
Edgar Melvin Sampson (October 31, 1907 – January 16, 1973), nicknamed "The Lamb", was an American jazz composer, arranger, saxophonist, and violinist. Born in New York City, he began playing violin aged six and picked up the saxophone in high school. He worked as an arranger and composer for many jazz bands in the 1930s and 1940s. He composed several well-known jazz standards, including "Stompin' at the Savoy", and "Don't Be That Way".
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Edmund Sharpe
Edmund Sharpe (31 October 1809 – 8 May 1877) was an English architect, architectural historian, railway engineer and sanitary reformer. Born in Knutsford, Cheshire, he was educated first by his parents and then at schools locally and in Runcorn, Greenwich and Sedbergh. Following his graduation from Cambridge University he was awarded a travelling scholarship, enabling him to study architecture in Germany and southern France. In 1835 he established an architectural practice in Lancaster, initially working on his own. In 1845 he entered into partnership with Edward Paley, one of his pupils. Sharpe's main focus was on churches, and he was a pioneer in the use of terracotta as a structural material in church building, designing what were known as "pot" churches, the first of which was St Stephen and All Martyrs' Church, Lever Bridge. He also designed secular buildings, including residential buildings and schools, and worked on the development of railways in north-west England, designing bridges and planning new lines. In 1851 he resigned from his architectural practice, and in 1856 he moved from Lancaster, spending the remainder of his career mainly as a railway engineer, first in North Wales, then in Switzerland and southern France. Sharpe returned to England in 1866 to live in Scotforth near Lancaster, where he designed a final church near to his home. While working in his architectural practice, Sharpe was involved in Lancaster's civic affairs. He was an elected town councillor and served as mayor in 1848–49. Concerned about the town's poor water supply and sanitation, he championed the construction of new sewers and a waterworks. He was a talented musician, and took part in the artistic, literary, and scientific activities in the town. Also an accomplished sportsman, he took an active interest in archery, rowing and cricket. Sharpe achieved national recognition as an architectural historian. He published books of detailed architectural drawings, wrote a number of articles on architecture, devised a scheme for the classification of English Gothic architectural styles, and in 1875 was awarded the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was critical of much of the restoration of medieval churches that had become a major occupation of contemporary architects. Towards the end of his career Sharpe organised expeditions to study and draw buildings in England and France. While on such an expedition to Italy in 1877, he was taken ill and died. His body was taken to Lancaster, where he was buried. Sharpe's legacy consists of about 40 extant churches; railway features, including the Conwy Valley Line and bridges on what is now the Lancashire section of the West Coast Main Line; and his archive of architectural books, articles and drawings.
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Elliott Forbes-Robinson
Elliott Forbes-Robinson (born October 31, 1943, in La Crescenta, California) is an American road racing race car driver. He is known for his race wins and championships in many different series, including the American Le Mans Series (ALMS), Super Vee, Trans-Am Series, CanAm, IMSA GTU, and the World Challenge. He is known in NASCAR circles as a road course ringer. He is also a founder of the Legends Cars of 600 Racing and he designed their original car.
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Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include "Dinah", "Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Chlo-e (Song of the Swamp), "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I Blue?", "Birmingham Bertha", "Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African American to star on her own television show, and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
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Eugene Meyer
Eugene Isaac Meyer (October 31, 1875 – July 17, 1959) was an American banker, businessman, financier, and newspaper publisher. He was the fifth chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer purchased The Washington Post in 1933, and was its publisher from 1933 to 1946, with the paper staying in his family throughout the rest of the 20th century. He was the first president of the World Bank Group from June to December 1946. His daughter, Katharine Graham, was the titular head of The Washington Post from 1963 until her death in 2001.
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Fanny Chmelar
Fanny Chmelar (German pronunciation: [ˈfani ˈʃmɪːlaʁ]; born 31 October 1985) is a German former alpine skier who largely competed in Slalom.
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Ferdinand I of Portugal
Ferdinand I (Portuguese: Fernando; 31 October 1345 – 22 October 1383), sometimes called the Handsome (o Formoso) or occasionally the Inconstant (o Inconstante), was the King of Portugal from 1367 until his death in 1383. He was also briefly made King of Galicia, in 1369 (a claim which he would maintain until 1373). Facing a lack of legitimate male heirs, his death led to the 1383–85 crisis, also known as the Portuguese interregnum.
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Franco Gasparri
Franco Gasparri (31 October 1948 – 28 March 1999) was an Italian actor. Born Gianfranco Gasparri in Senigallia, the son of the painter and film poster artist Rodolfo, Gasparri started his career as a child actor, appearing in several peplum films. After military service as a paratrooper, in 1970 he became one of the most successful actors in fotoromanzi. In 1975 Gasparri got a large notoriety playing the inspector Mark Terzi in Mark of the Cop, a successful poliziottesco which generated two sequels, Mark Shoots First and Mark Strikes Again, still with Gasparri in the title role. A skilled and experienced rider, due to a near-fatal motorcycle accident he was forced in a wheelchair, giving up his promising career. He died at 50 years old from respiratory failure.
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Frank Bruni
Frank Anthony Bruni (born October 31, 1964) is an American journalist writing for The New York Times since 1995. Following a wide range of assignments, including a stint as chief restaurant critic, he was named an op-ed columnist in June 2011. Bruni joined Duke University in June 2021 as Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy. Since joining Duke, he continues writing a Times newsletter and remains a contributing opinion writer for the newspaper. In November 2024, Bruni received the North Carolina Award, the state's highest civilian honor, from governor Roy Cooper. Bruni is the author of five books: The Age of Grievance, about indiscriminate pique and political dysfunction in contemporary America; The Beauty of Dusk, about his imperiled eyesight and what his medical odyssey taught him; Born Round, a memoir about his family's love of food and his own struggles with overeating; Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be, about the college admissions mania; and Ambling Into History, about George W. Bush.
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Galileo Ferraris
Galileo Ferraris (31 October 1847 – 7 February 1897) was an Italian university professor, physicist and electrical engineer, one of the pioneers of AC power system and inventor of the induction motor, although he never patented his work. Many newspapers touted that his work on the induction motor and power transmission systems was one of the greatest inventions of all ages. He published an extensive and complete monograph on the experimental results obtained with open-circuit transformers of the type designed by the power engineers Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs.
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Guti
José María Gutiérrez Hernández (born 31 October 1976), known as Guti, is a Spanish former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. During his career, he played almost exclusively for Real Madrid – appearing in 542 official games and serving as vice-captain – helping the club to win 15 trophies, most notably three Champions League titles and five La Liga championships. He also competed in Turkey with Beşiktaş. Guti played 13 times with Spain, making his debut in 1999. He worked as a manager after retiring.
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Hedvig Taube
Hedvig Ulrika Taube (31 October 1714 – 11 February 1744), also Countess von Hessenstein, was a Swedish courtier and countess, a countess of the Holy Roman Empire, and royal mistress to king Frederick I of Sweden from 1731 to 1744. She and Sophie Hagman are the only two official royal mistresses in Swedish history.
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Hedwig, Abbess of Quedlinburg
Hedwig of Saxony (31 October 1445 – 13 June 1511) was Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg from 1458 until her death.
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Henriette of Cleves
Henriette de La Marck (31 October 1542 – 24 June 1601), also known as Henriette of Cleves, was a member of the French high noblility, being a Duchess in her own right and courtier. She was the 4th Duchess of Nevers, suo jure Countess of Rethel, and Princess of Mantua by her marriage with Louis I of Gonzaga-Nevers. Through her marriage to Louis, she is the ancestor of many European Royals. A very talented landowner, she was one of France's chief creditors until her death, which allowed her to enlarge her personal fortune, and make her one of the richest members of the French nobility of her age.
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Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎; c. 31 October 1760 – 10 May 1849) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. His woodblock print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji includes the iconic print The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Hokusai was instrumental in developing ukiyo-e from a style of portraiture largely focused on courtesans and actors into a much broader style of art that focused on landscapes, plants, and animals. His works had a significant influence on Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet during the wave of Japonisme that spread across Europe in the late 19th century. Hokusai created the monumental Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji as a response to a domestic travel boom in Japan and as part of a personal interest in Mount Fuji. It was this series, specifically, The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Fine Wind, Clear Morning, that secured his fame both in Japan and overseas. Hokusai was best known for his woodblock ukiyo-e prints, but he worked in a variety of mediums including painting and book illustration. Starting as a young child, he continued working and improving his style until his death, aged 88. In a long and successful career, Hokusai produced over 30,000 paintings, sketches, woodblock prints, and images for picture books. Innovative in his compositions and exceptional in his drawing technique, Hokusai is considered one of the greatest masters in the history of art.
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Ian Stevenson
Ian Pretyman Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years. He was chair of their department of psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and research professor of psychiatry from 2002 until his death in 2007. He helped to found the Society for Scientific Exploration in 1982. He is best known for his research into evidence of reincarnation – the premise that emotions, memories, and even physical bodily features can be passed on from one life to another. Over his forty years of international research, he amassed three thousand cases of children who claimed to remember past lives. Stevenson was the author of around three hundred papers and fourteen books on reincarnation, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966), Reincarnation and Biology and its simplified version Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (both 1997), and European Cases of the Reincarnation Type (2003). Stevenson was cautious in making claims about reincarnation. He emphasized that the information he collected was suggestive of reincarnation but "was not flawless and it certainly does not compel such a belief." He did, however, believe he had produced a body of evidence for reincarnation that should be taken seriously. His position was that reincarnation might possibly represent a third contributing factor, in addition to genetics and the environment, in the development of certain phobias, philias, unusual abilities, and illnesses. In an obituary for Stevenson in The New York Times, Margalit Fox wrote that Stevenson's supporters saw him as a misunderstood genius, that his detractors regarded him as earnest but gullible, but that most scientists had simply ignored his research. Stevenson's critics contend that ultimately his conclusions are undermined by confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, and were reliant on anecdotal evidence rather than controlled experimental work. His case reports were also criticized for containing errors and omissions. Upon his retirement, Stevenson's work was continued by research colleagues such as Jim B. Tucker, Antonia Mills, Satwant Pasricha, and Erlendur Haraldsson.
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Inka Grings
Inka Grings (born 31 October 1978) is a German former international footballer who played as a striker. She played sixteen years for FCR 2001 Duisburg before joining FC Zürich Frauen. She also played for the Germany national team. Grings is the second all-time leading goalscorer in Germany's top division, the Frauen-Bundesliga, with 195 goals and claimed the league's top-scorer award for a record six seasons. Playing for Germany, she was the top-scorer at two UEFA European Championships. Grings was named Women's Footballer of the Year (Germany) in 1999, 2009 and 2010. She is currently the manager of Club Brugge after previously coached FC Zürich and Switzerland national team
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Irina Denezhkina
Irina Denezhkina (Russian: Ирина Денежкина; born October 31, 1981) is a Russian controversial writer, notable for a vulgar style of her works, which is explained by some as a reflection of the modern reality, as of the Millennial Generation (e.g. her most famous collected stories Give Me [Songs for Lovers], Russian: "Дай мне!", published by Limbus Press in 2002). She was born in Yekaterinburg. Her first works, signed by a pseudonym Niger's sister (сестра Нигера), appeared on the Internet in 2000. At the beginning of 2004, her book was published in the United States. In 2008, she was the recipient of Romania's Ovid Festival Prize, awarded to a prominent young talent.
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JID
Destin Choice Route (born October 31, 1989), better known by his stage name JID (also stylized J.I.D), is an American rapper. Born and raised in Atlanta, he signed with J. Cole's Dreamville Records, an imprint of Interscope Records in 2017. He formed the musical collective Spillage Village with EarthGang in 2010, and later formed the hip hop group Zoink Gang with Smino, Buddy, and Guapdad 4000. His fluent rapping style and usage of wordplay has been frequently acclaimed by music critics. JID gained recognition after self-releasing several projects, including Route of Evil (2012), Para Tu (2013) and DiCaprio (2015). His debut studio album, The Never Story (2017), was met with critical acclaim and contained the single "Never". His second album, DiCaprio 2 (2018), was supported by the singles "151 Rum" and "Off Deez" (with J. Cole), and saw continued critical acclaim. His 2021 single, "Enemy" (with Imagine Dragons)—the opening theme to Netflix's Arcane—peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains his highest-charting song. His third and fourth albums, The Forever Story (2022) and God Does Like Ugly (2025), both received further acclaim and debuted within the Billboard 200's top 15; the former spawned the top 40 single "Surround Sound" (featuring 21 Savage and Baby Tate) and the latter was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 68th Grammy Awards.
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James Lovell
James Lovell (October 31, 1737 – July 14, 1814) was an educator and statesman from Boston, Massachusetts. He was a delegate for Massachusetts to the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1782. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation.
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Jane Jarvis
Jane Jarvis (née Nossette; October 31, 1915 – January 25, 2010) was an American jazz pianist. She was also known for her work as a composer, baseball stadium organist, and music industry executive.
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Jimmy Savile
Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile (; 31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011) was an English media personality and disc jockey. During his lifetime, he was known for his eccentric image, charitable work, and hosting the BBC shows Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It. Following his death, hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse made against him were investigated, leading the police to conclude that he had been a predatory sex offender, possibly one of the United Kingdom's most prolific. Allegations of sexual abuse were made during his lifetime, but they were dismissed and accusers were ignored or disbelieved. Savile's victims allegedly included young children and elderly individuals. As a teenager during the Second World War, Savile worked in coal mines as a Bevin Boy. He began a career playing records in, and later managing, dance halls. His media career started as a disc jockey at Radio Luxembourg in 1958 and at Tyne Tees Television in 1960. From 1964 to 1988, Savile was a regular presenter on the BBC music show Top of the Pops, also co-presenting the last edition in 2006. In 1968, he began hosting his own radio shows for Radio 1, broadcasting until 1987. From 1975 to 1994, he presented Jim'll Fix It, an early Saturday evening television programme which arranged for the wishes of viewers, mainly children, to come true. Savile was known for fundraising and supporting various charities and hospitals, in particular Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Leeds General Infirmary, and Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. In 2009, he was described by The Guardian as a "prodigious philanthropist" and was honoured for his charity work. He was awarded the OBE in 1971 and was knighted in 1990. Following his death in 2011 at the age of 84, Savile was praised in obituaries for his personal qualities and his work raising an estimated £40 million for charities. In October 2012, an ITV documentary examined claims of sexual abuse by Savile. This led to extensive media coverage and a substantial and rapidly growing body of witness statements and sexual abuse claims, including accusations against public bodies for covering up or failure of duty. Scotland Yard launched a criminal investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by Savile spanning six decades, describing him as a "predatory sex offender", and later stated that they were pursuing more than 400 lines of inquiry based on the testimony of 300 potential victims received via 14 police forces. The scandal resulted in inquiries or reviews at the BBC, the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Department of Health. In June 2014, investigations into Savile's activities at 28 NHS hospitals concluded that he had sexually assaulted staff and patients aged between 5 and 75 over several decades. As a result of the scandal, some of the honours that Savile was awarded during his life were posthumously revoked, and his television appearances are no longer shown.
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Joana Valle Costa
Joana Valle Costa (born 31 October 1995) is a Portuguese former professional tennis player.
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Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer ( vər-MEER, vər-MAIR, Dutch: [joːˈɦɑnəs fərˈmeːr]; see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. He produced relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living as an art dealer. He was not wealthy; at his death, his wife was left in debt. Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for making masterful use of light in his work. "Almost all his paintings", Hans Koningsberger wrote, "are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women." The modest celebrity he enjoyed during his life gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists, published 1718) and, as a result, was omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 works to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown enormously.
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John Candy
John Franklin Candy (October 31, 1950 – March 4, 1994) was a Canadian actor and comedian best known for his work in Hollywood comedy films. Candy first rose to prominence in Canada during the 1970s as a member of the Toronto branch of The Second City and its sketch comedy series Second City Television. He achieved international fame in the 1980s with starring roles in comedy films such as Stripes (1981), Splash (1984), Brewster's Millions (1985), Summer Rental (1985), Armed and Dangerous (1986), Spaceballs (1987), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988), Uncle Buck (1989), Who's Harry Crumb? (1989), and Cool Runnings (1993). Candy also had supporting roles in comedy films such as The Blues Brothers (1980), National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Home Alone (1990), Nothing but Trouble (1991), and Rookie of the Year (1993). He co-owned the CFL's Toronto Argonauts, who won the 1991 Grey Cup under his ownership. Candy died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 43 while filming Wagons East (1994); it and the already completed Canadian Bacon (1995) were released posthumously and dedicated to his memory.
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John Evelyn
John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706), an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, has become best known as a diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. John Evelyn's diary (or memoir) spanned the period of his adult life from 1640, when he was a student, to 1706, the year he died. He did not write daily at all times. The many volumes provide insight into life and events at a time before regular magazines or newspapers were published, making diaries of greater interest to modern historians than such works might have been at later periods. Evelyn's work covers art, culture and politics, including the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell's rise and eventual natural death, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London in 1666. John Evelyn's Diary was first published posthumously in 1818, but over the years became overshadowed by that of Samuel Pepys (published from 1825 onwards). Pepys wrote a different kind of diary, in the same era but covering a much shorter period, 1660–1669, and in much greater depth. Evelyn wrote on many subjects, but increasingly focussed on gardening, and he left a huge manuscript on the subject that was not printed until 2001. He published several translations of French gardening books, and his Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees (1664) was highly influential in its plea to landowners to plant trees, of which he believed the country to be dangerously short. Sections from his main manuscript were added to editions of this, and also published separately.
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John Hugenholtz
Johannes Bernhardus Theodorus "Hans" Hugenholtz (31 October 1914 – 25 March 1995), known in English-speaking countries as John Hugenholtz, was a Dutch designer of race tracks and cars.
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John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1888 described his "Ode to a Nightingale" as "one of the final masterpieces". Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. As was typical of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Sleep and Poetry" and the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer". Jorge Luis Borges named his first time reading Keats an experience he felt all his life. In the later Victorian era, Keats's medievalist poems, such as "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "The Eve of St. Agnes", were a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite movement, inspiring poets such as Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Morris.
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John Lucas II
John Harding Lucas II (born October 31, 1953) is an American professional basketball coach and former player who most recently served as an assistant coach for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played basketball and tennis at the University of Maryland, College Park and was an All-American in both.
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John Weir Troy
John Weir Troy (October 31, 1868 — May 2, 1942) was an American Democratic politician who was the Governor of Alaska Territory from 1933 to 1939. He was born in Dungeness, Washington and died in Juneau, Alaska. John Troy began his professional career in journalism, starting as a newspaper reporter in Port Townsend, Washington, shortly after graduating from high school there. He would publish newspapers in Washington and Alaska between 1891 and 1914. He was the editor of Alaska-Yukon Magazine from 1911 to 1912. Following this, he was the editor of the Daily Alaskan Empire for twenty years before being appointed governor in 1933. He was the father-in-law of George A. Lingo, who was the second husband of his younger daughter, Dorothy Minerva. At the time of their marriage, Lingo was a member of the Alaska Territorial House of Representatives and the board of trustees of the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines.
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Jonathan Borden
Jonathan Alan Borden (born October 31, 1962) is an American neurosurgeon who developed the Borden Classification of Dural Arteriovenous Fistulas. He has been involved in internet based telemedicine applications and is an editor of the RDDL specification for XML Namespaces.
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Jordan Bannister
Jordan Scott Bannister (born 31 October 1982) is a former Australian rules football player and umpire, who played for Carlton and Essendon and umpired in the Australian Football League.
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Julia Peterkin
Julia Peterkin (October 31, 1880 – August 10, 1961) was an American author from South Carolina, who advocated for African Americans and wrote about the portrayals of the southern life. In 1929 she won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Scarlet Sister Mary. She wrote several novels about the plantation South, especially the Gullah people of the Low country. As a white author, she developed a unique perspective on the African American lifestyle during her time. She was one of the few white authors who wrote about the African-American experience. She collaborated with photographer Doris Ulmann on Roll, Jordan, Roll.
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Juliette Gordon Low
Juliette Gordon Low (née Gordon; October 31, 1860 – January 17, 1927) was the founder of Girl Scouts of the USA. Inspired by the work of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement, she joined the Girl Guide movement in England, forming her own group of Girl Guides there in 1911. In 1912, she returned to her native United States and established the country's first Girl Guide troop in Savannah, Georgia. In 1915, the United States' Girl Guides became known as the Girl Scouts, and Juliette Gordon Low was its first leader. She remained active until the time of her death. Her birthday, October 31, is celebrated annually by the Girl Scouts as "Founder's Day".
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Karel Hašler
Karel Hašler (31 October 1879 – 22 December 1941) was a Czech songwriter, actor, lyricist, film and theatre director, composer, writer, dramatist, screenwriter and cabaretier. He was murdered in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
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Laura Bassi
Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti (29 October 1711 – 20 February 1778) was an Italian physicist and academic. Recognized and depicted as "Minerva" (goddess of wisdom), she was the first woman to have a doctorate in science, and the second woman in the world to earn the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Working at the University of Bologna, she was the first salaried female teacher in a university. At one time the highest paid employee of the university, by the end of her life Bassi held two other professorships. She was also the first female member of any scientific establishment, when she was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna in 1732 at 21. Bassi did not receive formal education; instead, she was privately tutored from the age of five until she was twenty. By then, she was well-versed in major disciplines, including sciences and mathematics. Noticing her ability, Prospero Lambertini, the Archbishop of Bologna (later Pope Benedict XIV), became her patron. With Lambertini's arrangement, she publicly defended forty-nine theses before professors of the University of Bologna on 17 April 1732, for which she was awarded a doctoral degree on 12 May. A month later, she was appointed by the university as its first female teacher, albeit with the restriction that she was not allowed to teach all-male classes. Lambertini, by then the Pope, helped her to receive permissions for private classes and experiments, which were granted by the university in 1740. Bassi became the most important populariser of Newtonian mechanics in Italy. She was inducted by the Pope to the Benedettini (similar to modern Pontifical Academy of Sciences) as an additional member in 1745. She took up the Chair of Experimental Physics in 1776, the position she held until her death. She is interred at the Church of Corpus Domini, Bologna.
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Lawrence A. Cremin
Lawrence Arthur Cremin (October 31, 1925 – September 4, 1990) was an American educational historian and administrator.
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Leonor, Princess of Asturias
Leonor, Princess of Asturias (Leonor de Todos los Santos de Borbón y Ortiz; born 31 October 2005) is the heir presumptive to the Spanish throne. She is the elder daughter of King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia. Leonor was born during the reign of her paternal grandfather, King Juan Carlos I. She was educated at Santa María de los Rosales School, like her father; after finishing her secondary studies, she studied for an International Baccalaureate at the UWC Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, United Kingdom. In 2014, following her father's accession to the throne after the abdication of her grandfather, Leonor was granted all the traditional titles of the heir to the Spanish crown. These are Princess of Asturias, Princess of Girona, Princess of Viana, Duchess of Montblanc, Countess of Cervera, and Lady of Balaguer. Leonor was formally proclaimed heiress before the Cortes on 31 October 2023, her 18th birthday. Before pursuing higher education, Leonor completed three years of military training, graduating as an officer in all three branches of the Spanish Armed Forces.
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Linn Berggren
Malin Sofia Katarina Berggren (born 31 October 1970) is a former Swedish singer-songwriter, best known as a member of the pop music band Ace of Base. Having been interested and involved in music since her childhood, she formed the band in 1987, along with her sister Jenny, her brother Jonas and their friend Ulf Ekberg. Before forming Ace of Base, Malin sang in her church's choir. She was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. When Ace of Base was signed to Danish label Mega Records in 1990, Malin, or Linn as she became known, chose to put her teaching career on hold. In 1997, Linn said: "I wanted to sing; I never wanted to be a singer". That year, she began to fade out of the spotlight, leading to her last public appearance in 2002. According to her brother Jonas, Linn has been living a peaceful life since then. Her vocal range during her time with the group was contralto.
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Mari Okamoto
Mari Okamoto (岡本 茉利, Okamoto Mari; born October 31, 1954) is a Japanese actress and voice actress.
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Marie Laurencin
Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or.
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Marie Louise Andrews
Marie Louise Andrews (née, Newland; October 31, 1849 – February 7, 1891) was an American author and editor from Indiana. She was a founder of the Western Association of Writers, and served as its secretary from its founding until June 1888, when she retired. She was prolific in both verse and prose, but she never published her works in book form, and little of her work has been preserved.
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Mart Helme
Mart Helme ([ˈmɑrt ˈhelme], born 31 October 1949) is an Estonian politician, diplomat and historian who served as the Minister of the Interior from 2019 to 2020. He was the longtime chairman of the national conservative Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) from 13 April 2013 to 4 July 2020 when he was succeeded by his son Martin Helme. Helme also served as Estonia's ambassador to Russia from 1995 to 1999. Some media outlets have described him as a right-wing populist.
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Mats Näslund
Mats Torsten Näslund (born 31 October 1959), nicknamed "Le Petit Viking", is a Swedish former ice hockey player. He played as a left winger. Despite his small size at only five feet and seven inches, Näslund is best known for being one of the top forwards with the National Hockey League's Montreal Canadiens from 1982 to 1990. In addition to the Canadiens, Näslund played for Timrå IK, Brynäs IF, and Malmö IF of the Swedish Elite League, and HC Lugano of the National League A between 1975 and 1994. He made a short NHL comeback attempt in 1995 with the Boston Bruins following the 1994–95 NHL lockout, and retired after the season's conclusion. In 1986, he won the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens, and he won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1988. He is a three-time Le Mat Trophy champion, once with Brynäs in 1980, and leading Malmö to its only championship wins in 1992 and 1994. Internationally, he won gold medals at the 1991 World Championship in Finland and the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, making him a member of the prestigious Triple Gold Club. He was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2005.
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Meindert Hobbema
Meindert Lubbertszoon Hobbema (bapt. 31 October 1638 – 7 December 1709) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of landscapes, specializing in views of woodland, although his most famous painting, The Avenue at Middelharnis (1689, National Gallery, London), shows a different type of scene. Hobbema was a pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael, the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, and in his mature period produced paintings developing one aspect of his master's more varied output, specializing in "sunny forest scenes opened by roads and glistening ponds, fairly flat landscapes with scattered tree groups, and water mills", including over 30 of the last in paintings. The majority of his mature works come from the 1660s; after he married and took a job as an exciseman in 1668 he painted less, and after 1689 apparently not at all. He was not very well known in his lifetime or for nearly a century after his death, but became steadily more popular from the last decades of the 18th century until the 20th century.
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Mercedes Arn-Horn
Mercedes Arn-Horn (born October 31, 1993) is a Canadian musician, songwriter, director and actor. She is the lead singer and guitarist of Canadian rock band Softcult, and was formerly the lead singer, guitarist and keyboardist of the Canadian rock band Courage My Love.
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Michael Collins
Michael Collins (October 31, 1930 – April 28, 2021) was an American astronaut who flew the Apollo 11 command module Columbia around the Moon in 1969 while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, made the first crewed landing on the surface. He was also a test pilot and major general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Born in Rome, where his father was serving as the U.S. military attaché, Collins graduated in the Class of 1952 from the United States Military Academy. He followed his father, brother, uncle, and cousin into the military. He joined the United States Air Force, and flew F-86 Sabre fighters at Chambley-Bussières Air Base, France. He was accepted into the U.S. Air Force Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in 1960, also graduating from the Aerospace Research Pilot School (Class III). Selected as part of NASA's third group of 14 astronauts in 1963, Collins flew in space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10 in 1966, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed orbital rendezvous with two spacecraft and undertook two extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). On the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, he became one of 24 Apollo astronauts to reach the Moon, which he orbited thirty times. He was the fourth person (and third American) to perform a spacewalk, the first person to have performed more than one spacewalk, and, after Young, who flew the command module on Apollo 10, the second person to orbit the Moon alone. After retiring from NASA in 1970, Collins took a job in the Department of State as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. A year later, he became the director of the National Air and Space Museum, and held this position until 1978, when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1980, he took a job as vice president of LTV Aerospace. He resigned in 1985 to start his own consulting firm. Along with his Apollo 11 crewmates, Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011.
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Michael Landon
Michael Landon Sr. (born Eugene Maurice Orowitz; October 31, 1936 – July 1, 1991) was an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his roles as Little Joe Cartwright in Bonanza (1959–1973), Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie (1974–1983), and Jonathan Smith in Highway to Heaven (1984–1989). Landon appeared on the cover of TV Guide 22 times, second only to Lucille Ball.
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Michalis Chrisochoidis
Michalis Chrisochoidis (Greek: Μιχάλης Χρυσοχοΐδης, born 31 October 1955) is a Greek politician and member of the Hellenic Parliament for the Athens B2 constituency with New Democracy. He currently serves as Minister for Citizen Protection in the Second Cabinet of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. He had served in the same role on four occasions (1999–2003, 2009–2010, 2012 and 2019–2021), as a member of PASOK and an independent politician. He has also served as Minister for the Economy, Competitiveness and Shipping (2010), Minister for Regional Development and Competitiveness (2010–2011), Minister for Development, Competitiveness and Shipping (2011–2012), Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Networks (2013–2015) and Minister for Health (2023–2024).
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Mikkey Dee
Micael Kiriakos Delaoglou (born 31 October 1963), known professionally as Mikkey Dee, is a Swedish musician, who has played drums for German heavy metal band Scorpions since 2016. He was the drummer for English heavy metal band Motörhead from 1992 until 2015, and has played with other artists including King Diamond, Helloween and Don Dokken.
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Muriel Duckworth
Muriel Helen Duckworth (née Ball; October 31, 1908 – August 22, 2009) was a Canadian pacifist, feminist, and social and community activist. She was a practising Quaker, a religious denomination committed to non-violence. Duckworth maintained that war, with its systematic violence against women and children, is a major obstacle to social justice. She argued that money spent on armaments perpetuates poverty while reinforcing the power of privileged elites. She believed that "war is stupid" and she steadfastly refused to accept popular distinctions between "good" and "bad" wars. Duckworth was a founding member of the Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace, a provincial branch of the national peace organization called the Voice of Women (VOW). From 1967 to 1971, she served as president of VOW leading protests against the Canadian government's quiet support for the US-led war in Vietnam. Duckworth was the first woman in Halifax to run for a seat in the Nova Scotia legislature. She also led community organizing efforts seeking improvements in education, housing, social assistance and municipal planning. In her later years, Duckworth performed with the Halifax chapter of the Raging Grannies, a group that composes and sings satirical ballads promoting social justice. Duckworth received many honours and awards including the 1981 Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case and the Order of Canada in 1983. In 1991, she received the Pearson Medal of Peace. She was also granted 10 honorary university degrees.
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Muzzy Izzet
Mustafa Kemal "Muzzy" Izzet (; Turkish: İzzet; born 31 October 1974) is a former professional footballer who played as a midfielder for Chelsea, Leicester City, Birmingham City between 1993 and 2006. Born in England, he played for the Turkey national team internationally. He was part of the Turkey squad for UEFA Euro 2000 and the squad that won bronze at the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
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Napoleon Lapathiotis
Napoleon Lapathiotis (Greek: Ναπολέων Λαπαθιώτης; 31 October 1888 – 7 January 1944) was a Greek poet.
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Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism. Barney was born into a wealthy family. She was partly educated in France, and expressed a desire from a young age to live openly as a lesbian. She moved to France with her first romantic partner, Eva Palmer. Inspired by the work of Sappho, Barney began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900. Writing in both French and English, she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and courtesan Liane de Pougy and longer relationships with writer Élisabeth de Gramont and painter Romaine Brooks. Barney hosted a salon at her home at 20-22 rue Jacob in the 6th arrondissement of Paris for more than 60 years, bringing together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French, American, and British literature. Attendees of various sexualities mingled comfortably at the weekly gatherings. She worked to promote writing by women and hosted a "Women's Academy" (L'Académie des Femmes) in her salon as a response to the all-male French Academy. The salon closed for the duration of World War II while Barney lived in Italy with Brooks. She initially espoused some pro-fascist views, but supported the Allies by the end of the war. After the war, she returned to Paris, resumed the salon, and continued influencing or inspiring writers such as Truman Capote. Barney had a wide literary influence. Remy de Gourmont addressed public letters to her using the nickname l'Amazone (the Amazon), and Barney's association with both de Gourmont and the nickname lasted until her death. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels written by others, ranging from de Pougy's erotic French bestseller Idylle Saphique to Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century.
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Nick Foligno
Nicholas Foligno (; born October 31, 1987) is an American professional hockey player who is a left winger for the Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was selected in the first round, 28th overall by the Ottawa Senators during the 2006 NHL entry draft. Foligno was traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets six years later. His father, Mike Foligno, is a veteran of over 1,000 career NHL games, while his brother, Marcus Foligno, is his teammate on the Wild.
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Nick Saban
Nicholas Lou Saban Jr. ( SAY-bən; born October 31, 1951) is an American sportscaster and former football coach. He serves as an analyst for ESPN's College GameDay, a television program covering college football. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest football coaches of all time. Saban served as head coach of the National Football League (NFL)'s Miami Dolphins and at four universities: the University of Toledo, Michigan State University, Louisiana State University (LSU), and most famously the University of Alabama, where he coached from 2007 to 2023 and led the team to six claimed national championships and one unclaimed championship in nine championship appearances during that period, as well as 9 SEC titles and 10 SEC West Division championships. As a college football head coach, Saban won seven claimed national titles and one unclaimed national title, the most in college football history. His first came when he led the LSU Tigers to the BCS National Championship in 2003. He then coached the Alabama Crimson Tide to BCS and AP national championships in 2009, 2011, 2012, and to College Football Playoff championships in 2015, 2017 and 2020 with Alabama also having an unclaimed National Championship in 2016 that was selected by Colley. He became the first coach in college football history to win a national championship with two different Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools since the inception of the AP Poll in 1936. Saban and Bear Bryant are the only coaches to win an SEC championship at two different schools. Saban's career record as a college head coach is 292–71–1. Saban was inducted into the Independence Hall of Honor in 2008, Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2025. He coached four Heisman Trophy winners at Alabama: Mark Ingram II (2009), Derrick Henry (2015), DeVonta Smith (2020), and Bryce Young (2021). In 2025, Saban was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach.
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Paolo Mantegazza
Paolo Mantegazza (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpaːolo manteˈɡattsa]; 31 October 1831 – 28 August 1910) was an Italian neurologist, physiologist, and anthropologist, known for his experimental investigation of coca leaves and its effects on the human psyche. He was also an author of fiction.
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Pat Murray
Pat Murray (born October 31, 1984) is an American former professional football guard. He was signed by the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent in 2007. He played college football at Truman State. Murray was also a member of the Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, and Cleveland Browns.
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Paul Abrahams
Paul Abrahams (born 31 October 1973) is an English former footballer who played as a forward or as a winger in the Football League, most notably for Colchester United, where he made over 100 league appearances in two spells between 1992 and 1999. He also played for Brentford and for a number of non-league teams after retiring from the professional game through injury. He was most recently manager of Maldon & Tiptree.
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Paul du Toit
Paul Johan du Toit (31 October 1965 – 9 January 2014) was a South African artist, working in painting, sculpture, paper and mixed media. His exhibits have been displayed globally. Most notably, three of his sculptures were selected for the 2001 Florence Biennale. Among the many awards he has received is a medal from the city of Florence in the Biennale Internationale Dell'arte Contemporanea. He was nominated for the Daimler Chrysler Sculpture Award of 2002. Paul was recently invited to work with former president Nelson Mandela and international musicians on the 46664 campaign.
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Phil Goyette
Joseph Georges Philippe Goyette (October 31, 1933 – January 17, 2026) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player who played as a centre in the National Hockey League (NHL) for 16 seasons between 1956 and 1972.
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Princess Margaretha, Mrs. Ambler
Princess Margaretha, Mrs. Ambler (Margaretha Désirée Victoria; born 31 October 1934) is a member of the Swedish royal family. She is the eldest child of Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten, and Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and the eldest sister of King Carl XVI Gustaf.
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Ricardo Fuller
Ricardo Dwayne Fuller (born 31 October 1979) is a retired Jamaican professional footballer who played as a forward. Fuller started his football career with Jamaican side Tivoli Gardens, before he moved to England with Crystal Palace in February 2001. He returned to Jamaica and then went on loan to Hearts, before joining Preston North End. He scored 27 goals in 58 League game at Preston, which prompted Portsmouth to pay £1 million for his services. Fuller failed to make an impact at Portsmouth and joined rivals Southampton in 2005 before Stoke City signed him for £500,000 in August 2006. At Stoke, he became an influential member of the first team and his goals helped the "Potters" gain promotion to the Premier League in 2008. He remained a key figure in the top-flight, despite a poor disciplinary record, and helped Stoke reach the 2011 FA Cup Final, but missed out on the final due to injury. After he recovered from his injury he was only given a bit-part role and he left the club in June 2012 for a one-season stay with Charlton Athletic. He spent the 2013–14 season with Blackpool and 2014–15 with Millwall. He joined Oldham Athletic in October 2015. Fuller played 77 international matches for the Jamaica national team between 1999 and 2012.
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Russ Ballard
Russell Glyn Ballard (born 31 October 1945) is an English rock singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer. Originally rising to prominence as the lead singer and guitarist of the band Argent, Ballard became a prolific songwriter and producer by the late 1970s. His compositions "New York Groove", "You Can Do Magic", "Since You Been Gone", "I Surrender", "Liar", "Winning", "I Know There's Something Going On", "Can't Shake Loose", "So You Win Again", "No More the Fool" and "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" became hits for other artists during the 1970s and 1980s. He also scored several minor hits under his own name in the early and mid-1980s.
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Saint Geevarghese Mar Dionysius of Vattasseril
Geevarghese Dionysius Vattasseril, also Dionysius VI, Dionysius Geevarghese II or, popularly, Vattasseril Thirumeni (31 October 1858 – 23 February 1934), was a bishop of the Malankara Church and 15th Malankara Metropolitan. In 2003, Dionysius was canonized as a saint by the Malankara Orthodox Church, and his feast day is celebrated on February 23 each year. He is known as 'The Great Luminary of Malankara Church' (Malayalam: Malankara Sabha Bhasuran), a title which the Church bestowed on him in recognition of his contribution to the Church.
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Samaire Armstrong
Samaire Rhys Armstrong ( sah-MEE-rah; born October 31, 1980) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in Stay Alive, The O.C., It's a Boy Girl Thing, and as Juliet Darling in the ABC television series Dirty Sexy Money. She has appeared on television as Elaine Richards in the ABC fantasy-drama Resurrection. She has also appeared in music videos for "Penny & Me" by Hanson and "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter.
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Scott McGough
Scott Thomas McGough (born October 31, 1989) is an American professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Miami Marlins, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Athletics and in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
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Senesino
Francesco Bernardi (pronounced [franˈtʃesko berˈnardi]; 31 October 1686 – 27 November 1758), known as Senesino (pronounced [seneˈziːno] or traditionally [seneˈsiːno]), was an Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel. He was also involved in a public scandal with the soprano Anastasia Robinson in 1724, which was circulated widely by the satirist Jonathan Swift, and inspired a number of anonymously-written obscene, misogynistic, and at times sexually subversive epistles written between 1724 and 1736 which have become a topic of study among scholars of Restoration literature.
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Siobhán Bernadette Haughey
Siobhán Bernadette Haughey ( shə-VAWN HAW-hee; Chinese: 何詩蓓; Cantonese pronunciation: [hɔ˩ si˥ pʰuj˩]; born 31 October 1997) is a Hong Kong professional competitive swimmer. She became the first Hong Kong swimmer to win an Olympic medal and the first Hong Kong athlete to win two Olympic medals in any sport, after winning silver in the women's 200-metre freestyle and women's 100-metre freestyle during the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. She later became the only Hong Kong athlete to win four Olympic medals after winning bronze in the women's 200-metre freestyle and the women's 100-metre freestyle at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. She also won the first swimming gold for Hong Kong in 2022 Asian Games, and became the most decorated Hong Kong athlete of all time in one single edition of Asian Games with two golds, one silver, and three bronzes. Haughey is Hong Kong's first World Record holding swimmer after breaking the 200-metre freestyle record at the 2021 World Short Course Championships, as well as the first ever Short Course World and Junior World champion. She has registered 24 Hong Kong records and 6 Asian records in her career, and in total she has broken Hong Kong and Asian records for 99 times and 23 times respectively. She represented Energy Standard in the International Swimming League.
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Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea ( ray; born 31 October 1946) is an Irish actor. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he began his career as a member of Dublin's Focus Theatre, and played many roles on the stage and on Irish television. He came to the attention of international film audiences in Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan's 1992 film The Crying Game, and subsequently starred in many more of Jordan's films, including Interview with the Vampire (1994), Michael Collins (1996), Breakfast on Pluto (2005), and Greta (2018). He also played a starring role in the Hugo Blick 2011 TV series The Shadow Line. As a stage actor, he is known for his performances at The Gate and Abbey theatres in Dublin, and the Royal Court Theatre in London. He is a co-founder of the Field Day Theatre Company with Brian Friel. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Crying Game (1992), and won a BAFTA Award for his role in The Honourable Woman in 2015. In 2020, The Irish Times ranked Rea the 13th greatest Irish film actor of all time.
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Thomas Chapman
Thomas Daniel Chapman (31 October 1815 – 17 February 1884) was the Premier of Tasmania from 2 August 1861 until 20 January 1863. He served as a member of the Tasmanian Parliament for 26 years from August 1856 until his death in 1884.
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Tom O'Connor
Thomas Patrick O'Connor (31 October 1939 – 18 July 2021) was a British comedian, television presenter, and actor. Originally a comedian in working men's clubs, he progressed to hosting TV game shows such as Crosswits, The Zodiac Game, Name That Tune, Password and Gambit.
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Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter whose career spans more than sixty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions. Paxton's songs have been widely recorded, including modern standards such as "The Last Thing on My Mind", "Bottle of Wine", "Whose Garden Was This", "The Marvelous Toy", and "Ramblin' Boy". Paxton's songs have been recorded by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, the Weavers, Judy Collins, Sandy Denny, Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Seekers, Marianne Faithfull, the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, John Denver, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Flatt & Scruggs, the Move, the Fireballs, Francesco Guccini and many others (see covers).
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Toshizō Nishio
Toshizō Nishio (西尾 寿造, Nishio Toshizō; 31 October 1881 – 26 October 1960) was a Japanese general, considered to be one of the Imperial Japanese Army's most successful and ablest strategists during the Second Sino-Japanese War, who commanded the Japanese Second Army during the first years after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
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Vanessa Marano
Vanessa Nicole Marano (born October 31, 1992) is an American actress. She has starred in television movies and had recurring roles in such series as Without a Trace, Gilmore Girls, Malcolm in the Middle, Ghost Whisperer, Scoundrels, Grey's Anatomy, and The Young and the Restless. From 2011 to 2017, she starred as Bay Kennish on the Freeform television series Switched at Birth.
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Vanilla Ice
Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1967), known professionally as Vanilla Ice, is a rapper, singer, actor, and television host. Born in Dallas and raised in Miami, he was the first solo white American rapper to achieve commercial success, following the 1990 release of his best-known hit "Ice Ice Baby". He is credited with breaking down racial barriers in rap and hip-hop for future white rappers, most notably Eminem. Ice released his debut album, Hooked, on the independent Ichiban Records before signing a contract with SBK Records, a record label of the EMI Group, which released a reformatted version under the title To the Extreme; it became the fastest-selling hip hop album of all time and "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard Hot 100. Followed by the live album Extremely Live (1991), Ice made a cameo appearance on the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) where he performed "Ninja Rap", which he co-wrote. He was soon offered and starred in his own film, Cool as Ice (1991), which included the single "Cool as Ice (Everybody Get Loose)" with Naomi Campbell; the film itself was a box office failure. His fast rise in popularity was quickly marred by media controversies about his background. Ice later regretted his business arrangements with SBK, who had also published fabricated biographical information without his knowledge. Ice's second studio album, Mind Blowin' (1994), featured a major image change but was commercially unsuccessful. Following rap rock performances in the underground scene and playing in a local grunge band, Ice released the dark nu metal album Hard to Swallow (1998), followed by the independently released Bi-Polar (2001) and Platinum Underground (2005). In the 2000s, Ice began appearing on television reality shows including The Surreal Life. In 2010, Ice began hosting The Vanilla Ice Project on DIY Network which ran for nine seasons until 2019. In 2022, he started another home improvement television program, The Vanilla Ice Home Show. He is also involved in motocross racing and real estate.
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Wang Yangming
Wang Shouren (Chinese: 王守仁, 26 October 1472 – 9 January 1529), courtesy name Bo'an (Chinese: 伯安), art name Yangmingzi (traditional Chinese: 陽明子; simplified Chinese: 阳明子), usually referred to as Wang Yangming (traditional Chinese: 王陽明; simplified Chinese: 王阳明), was a Chinese statesman, general, and Neo-Confucian philosopher during the Ming dynasty. After Zhu Xi, he is commonly regarded as the most important Neo-Confucian thinker, for his interpretations of Confucianism that denied the rationalist dualism of the orthodox philosophy of Zhu Xi. Wang and Lu Xiangshan are regarded as the founders as the Lu–Wang school, or the School of the Mind. In China, Japan, and Western countries, he is known by his honorific name rather than his private name.
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William H. McNeill
William Hardy McNeill (October 31, 1917 – July 8, 2016) was an American historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in The Rise of the West (1963). He was the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1987. In 1980-81 he held the George Eastman Professorship at the University of Oxford.
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William Orchard
William Henry "Bill" Orchard (31 October 1929 – 27 October 2014) was an Australian water polo player and psychiatrist. He represented Australia at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and at the 1956 Olympics in his home city of Melbourne.
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Willow Smith
Willow Camille Reign Smith (born October 31, 2000), also known mononymously as Willow, is an American singer, actress, and dancer. The daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, she has received various accolades, including a Young Artist Award, an NAACP Image Award, a BET Award, and nominations for two Daytime Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and a MTV Video Music Award. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Smith made her acting debut in the 2007 film I Am Legend alongside her father, and later appeared in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl with Abigail Breslin. She embarked on a musical career with her 2010 single "Whip My Hair", which peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. Previously, Smith had signed with her mentor, Jay-Z's record label Roc Nation, becoming the label's youngest artist. The following year, she released the singles "21st Century Girl" and "Fireball" (featuring Nicki Minaj). Smith's debut studio album, Ardipithecus (2015) explored neo-soul. It spawned the single "Wait a Minute!", which received double platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Her second and third albums, The 1st (2017) and Willow (2019), followed after and were both critically praised. Her fourth album, Lately I Feel Everything (2021), marked her first entry on the Billboard 200 and spawned the single "Transparent Soul", which received gold certification by the RIAA. Later that year, she earned her second top 40 entry on the Billboard Hot 100 with her single "Meet Me at Our Spot", which she released as part of the duo the Anxiety with Tyler Cole. Smith's fifth album, Coping Mechanism (2022) marked her final release with Roc Nation, after which she signed with Gamma to release her sixth album, Empathogen (2024). Smith co-hosted the Facebook Watch talk show Red Table Talk (2018–2022) with her mother Jada and grandmother Adrienne, which earned two Daytime Emmy Award nominations.
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Władysław III of Poland
Władysław III of Poland (31 October 1424 – presumably 10 November 1444), also known as Ladislaus of Varna, was King of Poland and Supreme Duke of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1434, as well as King of Hungary and Croatia as Vladislaus I from 1440 until his presumed death at the Battle of Varna. He was the eldest son of Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila) by his fourth wife, Lithuanian noblewoman Sophia of Halshany. Władysław III succeeded his father shortly before turning ten in 1434 and was, therefore, deemed unfit to rule until coming of age. Cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki acted as regent and a temporary provisores council executed power in the king's name. However, Władysław III's legitimacy to the crown was contested by Lesser Polish nobles favouring the candidacy of Siemowit V of Masovia, who was of Piast lineage. In the aftermath of the coronation, Spytko III of Melsztyn accused Oleśnicki, the council and the Catholic Church of exploiting the king's youth to hold authority. A sympathiser with the Czech Hussites, Spytko was killed at the Battle of Grotniki in 1439, thus ending the hostilities. Władysław III simultaneously faced the effects of the Polish–Teutonic War, which commenced under his father's reign in 1431. The Teutonic Knights began supporting Švitrigaila and the Livonian Order in a military struggle against Poland and Sigismund Kęstutaitis of Lithuania in 1434, shortly after Władysław III assumed the throne. Consequently, the king and the Polish Royal Council, the curia regis, renewed their war efforts by fortifying the borderland regions and sending an army to Lithuania, which was engulfed in a civil war since 1432. Švitrigaila, the Livonians and their allies were ultimately defeated at the Battle of Wiłkomierz, and Władysław forced the Peace of Brześć Kujawski on the Teutonic State in December 1435, which curtailed Teutonic influence in East-Central Europe. The policy of the Kingdom of Poland under Władysław and Oleśnicki was to reclaim lost territories such as Silesia or Pomerania and expand its influence to neighbouring realms. In 1440, Władysław was elected King of Hungary and Croatia following the death of Albert II of Germany. Albert's widow, Elizabeth of Luxembourg, spurned the outcome and advocated for her infant son, Ladislaus the Posthumous, to rule under the guardianship of Frederick III Habsburg whilst purloining the Holy Crown of Hungary. Prolonged hostilities from the Habsburgs, the imminent Ottoman advance into Hungary and Elizabeth's sudden death solidified Władysław's legitimacy to the Hungarian throne. Ruling much of Southeastern and Central Europe, Władysław became compelled in confronting the Ottoman Empire. With the Turkish grip over the Balkans weakened in the aftermath of the Hungarian–Ottoman War (1437–1442), the papacy and papal legate Julian Cesarini urged Władysław to launch the Crusade of Varna. After initial successes, the outnumbered Christian forces engaged in a decisive battle at Varna, where Władysław was reportedly killed in a heroic cavalry charge against Sultan Murad II. His body was never recovered and its disappearance led to numerous survival theories or legends, none of which have been confirmed. Władysław's legacy in Poland and Hungary is divisive, yet Władysław remains a notable figure in countries like Bulgaria, which were under Ottoman domination. He was succeeded in Poland by his younger brother Casimir IV, and in Hungary-Croatia by his rival Ladislaus V the Posthumous.
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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.