Today's Famous Birthdays

[IceWizard]

This is a really incomplete list...
I only am putting in the ones I know/have heard of











John Deere
(February 7, 1804 – May 17, 1886)

was an American blacksmith and manufacturer who founded Deere & Company,
one of the largest and leading agricultural and construction-equipment manufacturers
in the world. Born in Rutland, Vermont, Deere moved to Illinois and invented the first
commercially successful steel plow in 1837.









Charles John Huffam Dickens
(7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870)

was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known
fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.
His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century,
critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories
are widely read today









Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder
(February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957)

was an American writer, mostly known for the Little House on the Prairie series of children's
books, published between 1932 and 1943, which were based on her childhood in a settler
and pioneer family.
The television series Little House on the Prairie (1974–1983) was loosely based on the books,
and starred Melissa Gilbert as Laura and Michael Landon as her father, Charles Ingalls








Clarence Linden Crabbe II
(February 7, 1908 – April 23, 1983),

known professionally as Buster Crabbe, was an American two-time Olympic swimmer
and film and television actor. He won the 1932 Olympic gold medal for 400-meter
freestyle swimming event, which launched his career on the silver screen and later
television. He starred in a variety of popular feature films and movie serials released
between 1933 and the 1950s, portraying the top three syndicated comic-strip
heroes of the 1930s: Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers.








Robert Lorenzo Brazile Jr.
(born February 7, 1953)

is an American former professional football player who was a linebacker in the
National Football League (NFL). Nicknamed "Dr. Doom", Brazile played from
1975 to 1984 for the Houston Oilers and was elected to the
Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018.









James Todd Spader
(born February 7, 1960)

is an American actor. He has portrayed eccentric characters in films such as the drama
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) for which he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for
Best Actor, the action science fiction film Stargate (1994), the controversial psychological
thriller Crash (1996), the erotic romance Secretary (2002) and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012).
He also voiced and performed motion-capture of the titular character of Ultron in Avengers:
Age of Ultron (2015).

His television roles include those of attorney Alan Shore in the last season of The Practice
(2003–2004) and its spin-off Boston Legal (2004–2008) (for which he won three Emmy Awards),
and Robert California in the comedy-mockumentary The Office (2011–2012). He currently
stars as high-profile criminal-turned-FBI-informant Raymond "Red" Reddington in the NBC
crime drama The Blacklist (2013–present) for which he has earned two
Golden Globe Awards nominations.









Troyal Garth Brooks
(born February 7, 1962)

is an American country music singer and songwriter. His integration of pop and rock elements
into the country genre has earned him popularity, particularly in the United States with success
on the country music single and album charts, multi-platinum recordings and record-breaking
live performances, while also crossing over into the mainstream pop arena.








Christopher Julius Rock
(born February 7, 1965)

is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and filmmaker. Known for his work in comic film, television
and stage, he has received multiple accolades, including three Grammy Awards for best comedy album
and four Primetime Emmy Awards as well as a Golden Globe Award nomination. He was ranked No. 5
on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time. He also ranked No. 5 on
Rolling Stone 's list of the 50 Best Stand-Up Comics of All Time.








Christopher Ashton Kutcher
(February 7, 1978)


He began his acting career portraying Michael Kelso in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show (1998–2006).
He made his film debut in the romantic comedy Coming Soon (1999), followed by the comedy film
Dude, Where's My Car? (2000), which was a box office hit. In 2003, Kutcher moved into romantic
comedies, appearing in that year's Just Married and My Boss's Daughter. In 2003, he created and
produced the television series Punk'd, also serving as host for the first eight of its ten seasons.
In 2004, Kutcher starred in the lead role of the psychological film The Butterfly Effect.

[IceWizard]

William Tecumseh Sherman
(February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891)

was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author.
He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865),
achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the
harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the
Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart
declared that Sherman was "the first modern general"








Jules Gabriel Verne 
(8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905)

was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher
Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of
bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864),
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in
Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well documented, are generally set in the
second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.








Lana Turner
(February 8, 1921 – June 29, 1995)

was an American actress. Over the course of her nearly 50-year career, she achieved fame
as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life.
In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid actresses in the United States, and one
of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's (MGM) biggest stars, with her films earning more than $50 million
for the studio during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular
culture icon of Hollywood glamour and a screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema.







Lana Turner
(February 8, 1921 – June 29, 1995)

was an American actress. Over the course of her nearly 50-year career, she achieved fame
as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life.
In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid actresses in the United States, and one
of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's (MGM) biggest stars, with her films earning more than $50 million
for the studio during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular
culture icon of Hollywood glamour and a screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema









John Uhler Lemmon III
(February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001)

was an American actor. Considered equally proficient in both dramatic and comic roles,
Lemmon was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in dramedy
pictures, leading The Guardian to coin him "the most successful tragi-comedian of his age."









Jack Edward Larson
(February 8, 1928 – September 20, 2015)

was an American actor, librettist, screenwriter and producer best known for his portrayal of
photographer/cub reporter Jimmy Olsen on the television series Adventures of Superman.









James Byron Dean
(February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955)

was an American actor. He is remembered as a cultural icon of teenage disillusionment
and social estrangement, as expressed in the title of his most celebrated film,
Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled teenager Jim Stark.
The other two roles that defined his stardom were loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955)
and surly ranch hand Jett Rink in Giant (1956)









Edward James Martin Koppel
(born February 8, 1940)

is a British-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline,
from the program's inception in 1980 until 2005.

Before Nightline, he spent 20 years as a broadcast journalist and news anchor for ABC.
After becoming host of Nightline, he was regarded as one of the outstanding serious-minded
interviewers on American television. Five years after its 1980 debut, the show had a nightly
audience of about 7.5 million viewers.









Nicholas King Nolte
(born February 8, 1941)

is an American actor. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1991 film The Prince of Tides.
He received Academy Award nominations for Affliction (1998) and Warrior (2011), and was
nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series
or Movie for the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man.









Robert Klein
(born February 8, 1942)

is an American stand-up comedian, singer, and actor. He is known for his appearances
on stage and screen. He has released four standup comedy specials: A Child of the 50s (1973),
Mind Over Matter (1974), New Teeth (1975), and Let's Not Make Love (1990). The first two
albums received Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nominations.[1] Klein hosted
Saturday Night Live in its first season in 1975 and again in 1978. Klein made his Broadway debut
in the 1966 production of The Apple Tree opposite Alan Alda. He earned a Tony Award for
Best Actor in a Musical nomination for his performance in Neil Simon's musical comedy
They're Playing Our Song (1979)









Vincent Neil Wharton
(born February 8, 1961)

is an American musician. He is the lead vocalist and occasional rhythm guitarist of heavy metal band
Mötley Crüe, which he fronted from their 1981 formation until his departure in 1992. Neil reunited
with the band in 1996 and continued with them until the band's 2015 retirement, and again from the
band's 2018 reunion onwards. Outside of Mötley Crüe, Neil has also released three studio albums
as a solo artist – the most recent of which, Tattoos & Tequila, was released in 2010.

[IceWizard]

Gary Wayne Coleman
(February 8, 1968 – May 28, 2010)

was an American actor and comedian. Coleman was the highest-paid child actor on television throughout
the late 1970s and 1980s. He was rated first on a list of VH1's "100 Greatest Kid Stars".

Coleman was best known for playing the role of Arnold Jackson in the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978–1986),
which he reprised in numerous other television series such as Hello, Larry (1979), The Facts of Life (1979–1980)
and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1996), among others.










Kevin Ferguson
(February 8, 1974 – June 6, 2016),

better known as Kimbo Slice, was a Bahamian-American mixed martial artist, boxer, bare-knuckle
boxer, professional wrestler, and actor. He became noted for his role in mutual combat street fight
videos which were spread online, leading Rolling Stone to call him "The King of the Web Brawlers".









Seth Benjamin Green
( born February 8, 1974)

is an American actor. His film debut came with a role in the comedy-drama film
The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), and he went on to have supporting roles in comedy films
throughout the 1980s, including Can't Buy Me Love (1987) and My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)

Green's first lead role on television was on the ABC sitcom Good & Evil in 1991, for which he won a
Young Artist Award. Green later gained attention for his supporting roles as Oz, a teenage guitarist
and the boyfriend of Willow Rosenberg, on the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2000),
and as the voice of Chris Griffin on the Fox adult animated sitcom Family Guy (1999–present). He
also voiced Leonardo in the Nickelodeon animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014–2017)
and Joker in the Mass Effect video game series (2007–2012). Green created, directs, writes, and
produces the adult animated comedy series Robot Chicken and its spinoffs (2005–present), which
have earned him three Primetime Emmy Awards and five Annie Awards.

[IceWizard]

William Henry Harrison
(February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841)

was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of
the United States. Harrison died just 31 days after his inauguration in 1841, and had
the shortest presidency in United States history. He was also the first United States
president to die in office, and a brief constitutional crisis resulted as presidential
succession was not then fully defined in the United States Constitution. Harrison was
the last president born as a British subject in the Thirteen Colonies and was the
paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States.









Maria de Lourdes Villiers "Mia" Farrow
( born February 9, 1945)

is an American actress. She first gained notice for her role as Allison MacKenzie in
the television soap opera Peyton Place and gained further recognition for her
subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra. An early film role, as Rosemary in
Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), saw her nominated for a BAFTA Award
and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She went on to appear in several films
throughout the 1970s, such as Follow Me! (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and
Death on the Nile (1978). Her younger sister is Prudence Farrow.







Judith Ellen Light
(born February 9, 1949)

is an American actress. She made her professional stage debut in 1970, before making
her Broadway debut in the 1975 revival of A Doll's House. Her breakthrough role was in
the ABC daytime soap opera One Life to Live from 1977 to 1983, where she played the
role of Karen Wolek; for this role, she won two consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards for
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Light starred as Angela Bower in the
long-running ABC sitcom Who's the Boss? from 1984 to 1992.

[IceWizard]

George Robert Stephanopoulos
(born February 10, 1961)

is an American television host, political commentator, and former Democratic advisor.
Stephanopoulos currently is a co-anchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on
Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC's Sunday morning current
events news program.

Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party.
He rose to early prominence as a communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign
of Bill Clinton and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later
senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996.

[IceWizard]

Alexander Hamilton Stephens
(February 11, 1812 – March 4, 1883)

was an American politician who served as the vice president of the Confederate States
from 1861 to 1865, and later as the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death
in 1883. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state of Georgia in the
United States House of Representatives before and after the Civil War prior to
becoming governor.










Thomas Alva Edison
(February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)

was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as
electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures.
These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early
versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized
world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and
teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees.
He established the first industrial research laboratory.








Leo Szilard
(February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964)

was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain
reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear fission reactor in 1934, and in late 1939 wrote
the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the
atomic bomb. According to György Marx, he was one of the Hungarian scientists known
as The Martians.








Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr.
(February 11, 1921 – May 23, 2006)

was an American politician who was a four-term United States Senator (1971–1993) from Texas
and the Democratic Party nominee for vice president in 1988 on the Michael Dukakis ticket. He
also served as the 69th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton.









Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno
(February 11, 1934 – May 29, 2017)

was a Panamanian dictator, politician and military officer who was the de facto ruler of Panama
from 1983 to 1989. An authoritarian ruler who amassed a personal fortune through drug trafficking
operations, he had longstanding ties to United States intelligence agencies before the U.S. invasion
of Panama removed him from power.








Archibald "Archie" Andrews,
created in 1941

by publisher John L. Goldwater and artist Bob Montana in collaboration with writer Vic Bloom,
is the main character in the Archie Comics franchise, including the long-running Archie Andrews
radio series, a syndicated comic strip, The Archie Show, Archie's Weird Mysteries, and Riverdale.
He is the rhythm guitarist and one of the three singers of the fictional band The Archies. He is
portrayed by KJ Apa on Riverdale. For his physical appearance, he mainly has red hair, freckles
on his cheeks, and light-colored skin. In Archie's Weird Mysteries, he appears to be of
Scottish-American descent, as shown in the episode "The Day the Earth Moved", when his
father wanted to keep with their family tradition and wear a kilt while ringing the bell of Riverdale.









John Ellis "Jeb" Bush
(born February 11, 1953)

is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd governor of Florida from 1999
to 2007. Bush, who grew up in Houston, was the second son of former President George H. W. Bush
and former First Lady Barbara Bush, and a younger brother of former President George W. Bush.
He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and attended the University of
Texas at Austin, where he earned a degree in Latin American affairs. In 1980, he moved to Florida
and pursued a career in real estate development. In 1986, Bush became Florida's Secretary of
Commerce. He served until 1988. At that time, he joined his father's successful campaign
for the Presidency.








Kenneth Wayne Shamrock
(born February 11, 1964)

is an American bare-knuckle boxing promoter and semi-retired professional wrestler, mixed martial artist,
and kickboxer. He is best known for his time in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and other combat
sports. A member of the UFC Hall of Fame, Shamrock is widely regarded as an icon and pioneer of the
sport. He has headlined over 15 main events and co-main events in the UFC and Pride FC and
set numerous MMA pay-per-view records. In the early part of his UFC career, Shamrock was named
"The World's Most Dangerous Man" by ABC News in a special called "The World's Most Dangerous Things".
The moniker has stuck as his nickname.









Sarah Louise Palin
(born February 11, 1964)

is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the
ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 Republican
vice presidential nominee alongside U.S. Senator John McCain.

[IceWizard]

Abraham Lincoln
(February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865)

was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president
of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the Union
through the American Civil War to defend the nation as a constitutional union and
succeeded in abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government,
and modernizing the U.S. economy.








Charles Robert Darwin 
(12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)

was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions
to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a
common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in
science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific
theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural
selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection
involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential
figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.










Omar Nelson Bradley
(February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981)

was a senior officer of the United States Army during and after World War II, rising to the rank
of General of the Army. Bradley was the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and oversaw
the U.S. military's policy-making in the Korean War.









Andrew Jackson Goodpaster
(February 12, 1915 – May 16, 2005)

was an American Army General. He served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR),
from July 1, 1969, and Commander in Chief of the United States European Command (CINCEUR)
from May 5, 1969, until his retirement December 17, 1974.[1] As such, he was the commander
of all NATO (SACEUR) and United States (CINCEUR) military forces stationed in Europe and
the surrounding regions.









James Dawson Chichester-Clark, Baron Moyola, PC, DL
(12 February 1923 – 17 May 2002)

was the penultimate Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and eighth leader of the Ulster Unionist Party
between 1969 and March 1971. He was Member of the Northern Ireland Parliament for South
Londonderry for 12 years, beginning at the by-election to replace his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker
in 1960. He stopped being an MP when the Stormont Parliament was suspended and subsequently
abolished with the introduction of Direct Rule by the British Government.









Brett Michael Kavanaugh
( born February 12, 1965)

is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served
since October 6, 2018. He was previously a United States circuit judge of the United States Court
of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and worked as a staff lawyer for various offices
of the federal government of the United States

[IceWizard]

Elizabeth Virginia Truman
(February 13, 1885 – October 18, 1982)

was the wife of President Harry S. Truman and the first lady of the United States
from 1945 to 1953. She also served as the second lady of the United States from
January to April 1945.








William Bradford Shockley Jr.
(February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989)

was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group
at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists
were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their researches on
semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".









Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager
(February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020)

was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in October
1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.

Yeager was raised in Hamlin, West Virginia. His career began in World War II as a private in
the United States Army, assigned to the Army Air Forces in 1941.[a] After serving as an
aircraft mechanic, in September 1942, he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation
was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II Army Air Force version of the Army's
warrant officer), later achieving most of his aerial victories as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot on the
Western Front, where he was credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft (the half credit is
from a second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown). On October 12, 1944, he attained
"ace in a day" status, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one mission.










Michael Joseph Jackson Jr,
( born on February 13, 1997)

commonly known as Prince, is the eldest son of Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe.
Jackson was named after both his paternal great-grandfather and great-great grandfather,
who were also called Prince. He has one sister, Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson and
one half-brother, Prince Michael "Blanket" Jackson. Prince was raised by his father,
who received full custody rights following his divorce from Rowe in 1999.

[IceWizard]

Frederick Douglass
(born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c.
February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895)

was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping
from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in
Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery
writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample
to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent
American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator
had once been a slave. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.








Christopher Latham Sholes
(February 14, 1819 – February 17, 1890)

was an American inventor who invented the QWERTY keyboard,[2] and, along with Samuel W. Soule,
Carlos Glidden and John Pratt, has been contended to be one of the inventors of the first typewriter
in the United States. He was also a newspaper publisher and Wisconsin politician. In his time,
Sholes went by the names C. Latham Sholes, Latham Sholes, or C. L. Sholes, but never
"Christopher Sholes" or "Christopher L. Sholes".








James Riddle Hoffa
(February 14, 1913 – disappeared July 30, 1975;
declared dead July 30, 1982)

was an American labor union leader who served as the president of the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 until 1971.

From an early age, Hoffa was a union activist, and he became an important regional figure with the
IBT by his mid-twenties. By 1952, he was the national vice-president of the IBT and between 1957
and 1971 he was its general president. He secured the first national agreement for teamsters' rates
in 1964 with the National Master Freight Agreement. He played a major role in the growth and the
development of the union, which eventually became the largest by membership in the United States,
with over 2.3 million members at its peak, during his terms as its leader.

Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975. It is generally accepted that he was murdered by the Mafia,
and in 1982 was declared legally dead. Hoffa's legacy and the circumstances of his disappearance
continue to stir debate.








Michael Rubens Bloomberg
(born February 14, 1942)

is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner,
co-founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P. He was Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and
was a candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. He
has served as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, an independent advisory board that
provides recommendations on artificial intelligence, software, data and digital modernization
to the United States Department of Defense, since June 2022.









Carl Milton Bernstein
(born February 14, 1944)

is an American investigative journalist and author. While a young reporter for The Washington Post
in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward, and the two did much of the original news
reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and
the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called
"maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time" by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.

[IceWizard]

Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei
(15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642)

was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath.
Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (GAL-ih-LAY-oh GAL-ih-LAY-ee,
Italian: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛi]). He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence.
Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics,
the scientific method, and modern science.










Cyrus Hall McCormick
(February 15, 1809 – May 13, 1884)

was an American inventor and businessman who founded the McCormick Harvesting Machine
Company, which later became part of the International Harvester Company in 1902.
Originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, he and many members of the McCormick
family became prominent residents of Chicago. McCormick has been simplistically credited as
the single inventor of the mechanical reaper. He was, however, one of several designing
engineers who produced successful models in the 1830s. His efforts built on more than two
decades of work by his father Robert McCormick Jr., with the aid of Jo Anderson, who was
enslaved by the family. He also successfully developed a modern company, with manufacturing,
marketing, and a sales force to market his products.









Charles Lewis Tiffany
(February 15, 1812 – February 18, 1902)

was an American businessman and jeweler who founded New York City's Tiffany & Co. in 1837.
Known for his jewelry expertise, Tiffany created the country's first retail catalog and introduced
the English standard of sterling silver in imported jewelry in 1851.









Susan B. Anthony
(born Susan Anthony; February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906)

was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the
women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she
collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state
agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.









Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin
(15 February 1856 – 7 October 1926)
was a German psychiatrist.
H. J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific
psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics.

Kraepelin believed the chief origin of psychiatric disease to be biological and genetic malfunction.
His theories dominated psychiatry at the start of the 20th century and, despite the later
psychodynamic influence of Sigmund Freud and his disciples, enjoyed a revival at century's end.
While he proclaimed his own high clinical standards of gathering information "by means of expert
analysis of individual cases", he also drew on reported observations of officials not trained in psychiatry.










Major Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS
(15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922)

was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was
one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Born in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family[1] moved to Sydenham
in suburban south London when he was ten. Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as
third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition of 1901–1904, from which he was
sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set
a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S. During the Nimrod expedition of 1907–1909,
he and three companions established a new record Farthest South latitude at 88°S, only 97 geographical
miles (112 statute miles or 180 kilometres) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in
exploration history. Also, members of his team climbed Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano.
For these achievements, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home.









Yelena Bonner
(15 February 1923-18 June 2011)

(now Mary, Turkmenistan). Her father, Georgy Alikhanov (Armenian name Gevork Alikhanyan), 
was an Armenian who founded the Soviet Armenian Communist Party, and was a highly placed
member of the Comintern; her mother, Ruf (Ruth Bonner), was a Jewish Communist activist.
She had a younger brother, Igor, who became a career naval officer. Her family had a summer
dacha in Sestroretsk and Bonner had fond memories there.

In 1937, Bonner's father was arrested by the NKVD and executed as part of Stalin's Great Purge;
her mother was arrested a few days later as the wife of an enemy of the people, and served ten
years in the Gulag near Karaganda, Kazakhstan, followed by nine years of internal exile. Bonner's
41-year-old maternal uncle, Matvei Bonner, was also executed during the purge, and his wife
internally exiled. All four were exonerated (rehabilitated) following Stalin's death in 1953. In 1941
she volunteered for the Red Army's Hospital when the Soviet Union was invaded, and she became
head nurse. While serving during World War II, Bonner was wounded twice, and in 1946 was
honorably discharged as a disabled veteran. In 1947 Bonner was accepted as student in the
medical institute in Leningrad.[10] After the war she earned a degree in pediatrics from the
First Leningrad Medical Institute, presently First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Peterburg.