More on this Day - January, 3 (2024)

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134 Biographies

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Mel Gibson

American-born Australian actor, director, and producer

January 3, 1956 -

Mel Gibson is an American-born Australian actor who became an international star with a series of action-adventure films in the 1980s and later earned acclaim as a director and producer. When he was 12...

J.R.R. Tolkien

English author

January 3, 1892 - September 2, 1973

J.R.R. Tolkien was an English writer and scholar who achieved fame with his children’s book The Hobbit (1937) and his richly inventive epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). At age four Tolkien,...

Michael Schumacher

German race–car driver

January 3, 1969 -

Michael Schumacher is a German race-car driver who set records for the most Formula One (F1) Grand Prix race victories (91, later broken by Lewis Hamilton) and F1 series championships (seven, later tied...

Eli Manning

American football player

January 3, 1981 -

Eli Manning is an American professional gridiron football player who quarterbacked the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL) to two Super Bowl championships (2008 and 2012), earning the...

Peter Naur

Danish astronomer and computer scientist

October 25, 1928 - January 3, 2016

Peter Naur was a Danish astronomer and computer scientist and winner of the 2005 A.M. Turing Award, the highest honour in computer science, for “fundamental contributions to programming language design...

Danica McKellar

American actress and author

January 3, 1975 -

Danica McKellar is an American actress, mathematician, and author who first garnered attention for her role on the television series The Wonder Years (1988–93) and later promoted math education, especially...

Jack Ruby

American assassin

March 25, 1911? - January 3, 1967

Jack Ruby was an American nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin of Pres. John F. Kennedy, on November 24, 1963, as Oswald was being transferred to a county jail. Despite...

Conrad Hilton

American businessman

December 25, 1887 - January 3, 1979

Conrad Hilton was an American businessman and founder of one of the world’s largest hotel organizations. As a boy in the little New Mexican desert town of San Antonio, Hilton helped his enterprising father...

Sergio Leone

Italian director

January 3, 1929 - April 30, 1989

Sergio Leone was an Italian motion-picture director who was known primarily for his popularization of the “spaghetti western,” a subgenre of movies that were made in Italy but set in the 19th-century American...

Clement Attlee

prime minister of United Kingdom

January 3, 1883 - October 8, 1967

Clement Attlee was a British Labour Party leader (1935–55) and prime minister (1945–51). He presided over the establishment of the welfare state in Great Britain and the granting of independence to India,...

Edgar Cayce

American faith healer

March 18, 1877 - January 3, 1945

Edgar Cayce was an American self-proclaimed faith healer and psychic. A Sunday-school teacher with little formal education, Cayce began faith healing in the 1920s, using a combination of spiritual readings...

Gordon Moore

American engineer and entrepreneur

January 3, 1929 - March 24, 2023

Gordon Moore was an American engineer and cofounder, with Robert Noyce, of Intel Corporation. Moore studied chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley (B.S., 1950), and in 1954 he received a Ph.D....

Ngo Dinh Diem

Vietnamese political leader

January 3, 1901 - November 2, 1963

Ngo Dinh Diem was a Vietnamese political leader who served as president, with dictatorial powers, of what was then South Vietnam, from 1955 until his assassination. Diem was born into one of the noble...

Ray Milland

American actor

January 3, 1907 - March 10, 1986

Ray Milland was a Welsh-born American actor. Milland made his film debut in 1929 and moved to Hollywood in 1930. He was the debonair romantic leading man in many movies of the 1930s and ’40s. He won acclaim...

Marion Davies

American actress

January 3, 1897 - September 22, 1961

Marion Davies was an American actor who was more renowned for her 34-year relationship with publishing giant William Randolph Hearst than for her performance career. Nonetheless, she was a popular movie...

William Joyce

English-language propagandist

April 24, 1906 - January 3, 1946

William Joyce was an English-language propaganda broadcaster from Nazi Germany during World War II whose nickname was derived from the sneering manner of his speech. Though his father was a naturalized...

Bobby Hull

Canadian hockey player

January 3, 1939 - January 30, 2023

Bobby Hull was a Canadian professional ice hockey player, notably for the National Hockey League (NHL) Chicago Black Hawks (later spelled Blackhawks) from 1957 to 1972. His swinging slap shot made him...

Victor Borge

American comedian and musician

January 3, 1909 - December 23, 2000

Victor Borge was a Danish-born American pianist and comedian who was known worldwide for his irrepressible humour, which combined deadpan delivery, clever wordplay, satire, irreverence, and physical comedy...

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo

explorer

- January 3, 1543?

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was a soldier and explorer in the service of Spain, chiefly known as the discoverer of California. Virtually nothing definitive is known of Cabrillo’s early life. Although more...

Sakamoto Ryōma

Japanese imperial loyalist

January 3, 1836 - December 10, 1867

Sakamoto Ryōma was a noted imperial loyalist whose effort to forge the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance (1866) between those two large feudal domains, or hans, was critical in setting the stage for the Meiji Restoration...

Catherine of Valois

French princess

October 27, 1401 - January 3, 1437

Catherine of Valois was a French princess, the wife of King Henry V of England, mother of King Henry VI, and grandmother of the first Tudor monarch of England, Henry VII. Catherine was the daughter of...

Lucretia Mott

American social reformer

January 3, 1793 - November 11, 1880

Lucretia Mott was a pioneer reformer who, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, founded the organized women’s rights movement in the United States. Lucretia Coffin grew up in Boston, where she attended public school...

Cheryl Miller

American basketball player

January 3, 1964 -

Cheryl Miller is a former basketball player who is considered one of the greatest in the history of the women’s game. Miller is credited with both popularizing women’s basketball and elevating it to a...

St. Damien of Molokai

Belgian priest

January 3, 1840 - April 15, 1889

St. Damien of Molokai ; canonized October 11, 2009; feast day May 10) was a Belgian priest who devoted his life to missionary work among the Hawaiian lepers and became a saint of the Roman Catholic Church....

Joseph-Jacques-Césaire Joffre

French general

January 12, 1852 - January 3, 1931

Joseph-Jacques-Césaire Joffre was the commander in chief (1914–16) of the French armies on the Western Front in World War I, who won fame as “the Victor of the Marne.” After graduating from the École Polytechnique,...

Josiah Wedgwood

English craftsman

July 12, 1730 - January 3, 1795

Josiah Wedgwood was an English pottery designer and manufacturer, outstanding in his scientific approach to pottery making and known for his exhaustive researches into materials, logical deployment of...

Dame Judith Anderson

Australian actress

February 10, 1898 - January 3, 1992

Dame Judith Anderson was an Australian-born stage and motion-picture actress. Anderson was only 17 years old when she made her stage debut in 1915 in Sydney and 20 when she first appeared in New York City....

Edward Brooke

United States senator

October 26, 1919 - January 3, 2015

Edward Brooke was an American lawyer and politician who was the first African American popularly elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served two terms (1967–79). Brooke earned his undergraduate degree...

Joy Adamson

conservationist

January 20, 1910 - January 3, 1980

Joy Adamson was a conservationist who pioneered the movement to preserve African wildlife. Following an education in Vienna, she relocated to Kenya (1939), where she married George Adamson (1944), a British...

Philip V

king of France

c.1293 - January 3, 1322

Philip V was the king of France (from 1316) and king of Navarre (as Philip II, from 1314), who largely succeeded in restoring the royal power to what it had been under his father, Philip IV. Philip was...

John Sturges

American director

January 3, 1910 - August 18, 1992

John Sturges was an American director best known for taut war movies and westerns. His films include such classics as Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Magnificent Seven (1960), and The Great Escape (1963)....

Grace Coolidge

American first lady

January 3, 1879 - July 8, 1957

Grace Coolidge was the American first lady (1923–29), the wife of Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States. Grace Goodhue was the only child of Andrew Issachar Goodhue, a mechanical engineer,...

August Macke

German artist

January 3, 1887 - September 26, 1914

August Macke was a German painter who was a leader of Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), an influential group of Expressionist artists. Macke studied at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1904 to 1906. During...

Jeremiah Horrocks

British astronomer

1618 - January 3, 1641

Jeremiah Horrocks was a British astronomer and clergyman who applied Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion to the Moon and whose observations of a transit of Venus (1639) are the first recorded. Horrocks...

Keorapetse Kgositsile

South African poet

September 19, 1938 - January 3, 2018

Keorapetse Kgositsile was a South African poet and essayist whose writings focus on Pan-African liberation as the fruit of informed heroism and compassionate humanism. Kgositsile’s verse uniquely combines...

Mary Daly

American theologian, philosopher, and ethicist

October 16, 1928 - January 3, 2010

Mary Daly was an American theologian, philosopher, and ethicist who pioneered radical feminist theology. Daly was born into a Roman Catholic family. After earning a Ph.D. in religion from St. Mary’s College...

Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison

British statesman

January 3, 1888 - March 6, 1965

Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison was a British Labour statesman who played a leading role in London local government for 25 years and was a prominent member of the coalition government in World...

Eric Voegelin

German-American political scientist

January 3, 1901 - January 19, 1985

Eric Voegelin was a German-American political scientist and interdisciplinary scholar known for his studies of modern political thought and for his efforts to create a comprehensive philosophy of man,...

Kōhei Uchimura

Japanese gymnast

January 3, 1989 -

Kōhei Uchimura is a former Japanese gymnast who is considered one of the greatest male gymnasts of all time, renowned for his near-perfect execution of highly difficult routines. During an incredible run...

Mary Garden

Scottish singer

February 20, 1874 - January 3, 1967

Mary Garden was a soprano famous for her vivid operatic portrayals. She was noted for her acting as well as her singing and was an important figure in American opera. Garden went to the United States from...

George Monck, 1st duke of Albemarle

British general

December 6, 1608 - January 3, 1670

George Monck, 1st duke of Albemarle was an English general who fought in Ireland and Scotland during the English Civil Wars and who was the chief architect of the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in...

St. Anterus

pope

- January 3, 236

St. Anterus ; feast day January 3) was the pope for several weeks at the end of 235 and the beginning of 236. He was elected while St. Pontian, his predecessor, was condemned to the Sardinian mines. Anterus...

Jaroslav Hašek

Czech writer

April 30, 1883 - January 3, 1923

Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech writer best known for his satirical novel The Good Soldier Schweik. Hašek worked in Prague as a bank clerk, although at 17 he was already writing satirical articles for Czech...

Victor Sjöström

Swedish actor and director

September 20, 1879 - January 3, 1960

Victor Sjöström was a motion-picture actor and director who contributed significantly to the international preeminence of the Swedish silent film in the post-World War I era. Influenced by the novels of...

Monique Wittig

French writer

1935 - January 3, 2003

Monique Wittig was a French avant-garde novelist and radical feminist whose works include unconventional narratives about utopian nonhierarchical worlds, often devoid of men. Wittig attended the Sorbonne...

Élisa Bonaparte

sister of Napoleon

January 3, 1777 - August 7, 1820

Élisa Bonaparte was Napoleon I’s eldest sister to survive infancy. She was married on May 1, 1797, to Félix Baciocchi, a member of a Corsican noble family. Napoleon gave her the principality of Piombino...

Walter Cunningham

American astronaut

March 16, 1932 - January 3, 2023

Walter Cunningham was an American astronaut and civilian participant in the Apollo 7 mission (October 11–22, 1968), in which the first crewed flight of Apollo Command and Service modules was made. Cunningham...

Milton Avery

American painter

March 7, 1893 - January 3, 1965

Milton Avery was a painter noted in his later years for depicting the human figure as a contoured flat pattern in vivid colours. In 1905 his family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he studied briefly...

Luca Giordano

Italian painter

October 18, 1634 - January 3, 1705

Luca Giordano was the most celebrated and prolific Neapolitan painter of the late 17th century. His nickname Luca Fa Presto (“Luca, Work Quickly”) is said to derive from his painter-copyist father’s admonitions,...

Dorothy Arzner

American filmmaker

January 3, 1897? - October 1, 1979

Dorothy Arzner was an American filmmaker who was the only woman directing feature-length studio films in Hollywood during the 1930s. From 1927 to 1943 she was credited with directing 17 films, including...