History of Today 15 September: Important Events, Births and Deaths

Welcome to History of Today 15 September. On this page, you can read important historical events, famous births, notable deaths and general knowledge facts related to 15 September. This information is useful for UPSC, SSC, Banking, Railway, State PSC and other competitive exams.

Last updated on 15 September 2026, 01:00 AM

Important Events on 15 September in History

15 Sep 2020: Signing of the Bahrain–Israel normalization agreement occurs in Washington, D.C., normalizing relations between Israel and two Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Read more
15 Sep 2017: The Parsons Green bombing takes place in London. Read more
15 Sep 2011: Four miners are killed in the Gleision Colliery mining accident in the Swansea Valley, Wales. Read more
15 Sep 2008: Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. Read more
15 Sep 2004: National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players' union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office. Read more
15 Sep 2001: During a CART race at the Lausitzring in Germany, former Formula One driver Alex Zanardi suffers a heavy accident resulting in him losing both his legs. Read more
15 Sep 1995: Malaysia Airlines Flight 2133 crashes at Tawau Airport in Malaysia, killing 34. Read more
15 Sep 1983: Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigns. Read more
15 Sep 1981: The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Read more
15 Sep 1981: The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C. Read more
15 Sep 1978: At the Superdome in New Orleans, Muhammad Ali outpoints Leon Spinks in a rematch to become the first boxer to win the world heavyweight title three times. Read more
15 Sep 1975: The French department of "Corse" (the entire island of Corsica) is divided into two: Haute-Corse (Upper Corsica) and Corse-du-Sud (Southern Corsica). Read more
15 Sep 1974: Air Vietnam Flight 706 is hijacked, then crashes while attempting to land with 75 on board. Read more
15 Sep 1972: A Scandinavian Airlines System domestic flight from Gothenburg to Stockholm is hijacked and flown to Malmö Bulltofta Airport. Read more
15 Sep 1971: The first Greenpeace ship departs from Vancouver to protest against the upcoming Cannikin nuclear weapon test in Alaska. Read more
15 Sep 1968: The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Read more
15 Sep 1966: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation. Read more
15 Sep 1963: Baptist Church bombing: Four children are killed in the bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Read more
15 Sep 1962: The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis. Read more
15 Sep 1959: Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States. Read more
15 Sep 1958: A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train runs through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 48. Read more
15 Sep 1954: Marilyn Monroe's iconic skirt scene is shot during filming for The Seven Year Itch. Read more
15 Sep 1952: The United Nations cedes Eritrea to Ethiopia. Read more
15 Sep 1950: Korean War: The U.S. X Corps lands at Inchon. Read more
15 Sep 1948: The Indian Army captures the towns of Jalna, Latur, Mominabad, Surriapet and Narkatpalli as part of Operation Polo. Read more
15 Sep 1948: The F-86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour (1,080 km/h). Read more
15 Sep 1947: Typhoon Kathleen hits the Kantō region, in Japan killing around 1,000-2,000 people. Read more
15 Sep 1945: A hurricane strikes southern Florida and the Bahamas, destroying 366 airplanes and 25 blimps at Naval Air Station Richmond. Read more
15 Sep 1944: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference to discuss strategy. Read more
15 Sep 1944: World War II: The Battle of Peleliu begins as the United States Marine Corps' 1st Marine Division and the United States Army's 81st Infantry Division hit White and Orange beaches under heavy fire from Japanese infantry and artillery. Read more
15 Sep 1942: World War II: U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp is sunk by Japanese torpedoes at Guadalcanal. Read more
15 Sep 1940: World War II: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Luftwaffe launches its largest and most concentrated attack of the entire campaign. Read more
15 Sep 1935: Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag bearing the swastika. Read more
15 Sep 1935: Nazi Germany announces two new laws related to race and the rights of Jews. These became known as the Nuremberg Race Laws. Read more
15 Sep 1918: World War I: Allied troops break through the Bulgarian defenses on the Macedonian front. Read more
15 Sep 1916: World War I: Tanks are used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme. Read more
15 Sep 1915: New Culture Movement: Chen Duxiu establishes the New Youth magazine in Shanghai. Read more
15 Sep 1894: First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeats the Qing dynasty in the Battle of Pyongyang, causing the Qing army to withdraw to the Chinese border with Korea. Read more
15 Sep 1873: Franco-Prussian War: The last Imperial German Army troops leave France upon completion of payment of indemnity. Read more
15 Sep 1862: American Civil War: Confederate forces capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Read more
15 Sep 1835: HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galápagos Islands. The ship lands at Chatham or San Cristobal, the easternmost of the archipelago. Read more
15 Sep 1830: The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opens; British MP William Huskisson becomes the first widely reported railway passenger fatality when he is struck and killed by the locomotive Rocket. Read more
15 Sep 1821: The Captaincy General of Guatemala declares independence from Spain. Read more
15 Sep 1820: Constitutionalist revolution in Lisbon, Portugal. Read more
15 Sep 1816: HMS Whiting runs aground on the Doom Bar. Read more
15 Sep 1813: Followers of the Eight Trigram Sect loyal to Lin Qing attack the Forbidden City in a failed attempt to oust the Jiaqing Emperor of the Qing dynasty. Read more
15 Sep 1812: The Grande Armée under Napoleon reaches the Kremlin in Moscow during the failed French invasion of Russia. Read more
15 Sep 1812: War of 1812: A second supply train sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. Read more

Famous Births on 15 September

15 Sep 2000: Felix, Australian singer based in South Korea, member of Stray Kids Felix Yongbok Lee, known mononymously as Felix (Korean: 필릭스), is an Australian rapper and singer based in South Korea. He is a member of the South Korean boy band Stray Kids, formed by JYP Entertainment in 2017. Read more
15 Sep 1999: Jaren Jackson Jr., American basketball player Jaren Walter Jackson Jr., nicknamed "The Block Panther", and also known by his initials JJJ, is an American professional basketball player for the Utah Jazz of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Michigan State Spartans. Jackson was selected by the Memphis Grizzlies with the fourth overall pick of the 2018 NBA draft. In 2023, he was named to his first NBA All-Star team, later winning Defensive Player of the Year that same season. Jackson is renowned for his defensive dominance, particularly his exceptional rim protection; he led the league in blocks per game for two consecutive seasons in 2021–22 and 2022–23. Read more
15 Sep 1997: Quin Houff, American racing driver Quin Walton Houff is an American former professional stock car racing driver. He has previously competed in the NASCAR Cup Series, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and the ARCA Racing Series. Read more
15 Sep 1995: Rafael Santos Borré, Colombian footballer Rafael Santos Borré Maury is a Colombian professional footballer who plays as a forward for Argentine Primera División club River Plate and the Colombia national team. Read more
15 Sep 1995: Terry McLaurin, American football player Terry McLaurin is an American professional football wide receiver for the Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL). McLaurin played college football for the Ohio State Buckeyes and was selected by Washington in the third round of the 2019 NFL draft. He earned second-team All-Pro honors in 2024 and set a Commanders record for most touchdown catches in a season with 13. Read more
15 Sep 1995: Joe Ofahengaue, New Zealand-Tongan rugby league player Joseph Anthony Young Ofahengaue is a Tonga at international rugby league footballer who plays as a loose forward and prop forward for the Leigh Leopards in the Super League. Read more
15 Sep 1995: David Raya, Spanish footballer David Raya Martín is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Premier League club Arsenal and the Spain national team. Known for his consistency, distribution, shot-stopping abilities, and box command, he is widely regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the world. Read more
15 Sep 1993: Josh Richardson, American basketball player Joshua Michael Richardson is an American former professional basketball player, who played ten seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Tennessee Volunteers, earning first-team all-conference honors in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) as a senior in 2015. He was selected in the second round of the 2015 NBA draft by the Miami Heat and spent the majority of his career there, but has also played for the Philadelphia 76ers, Dallas Mavericks, Boston Celtics, San Antonio Spurs, and New Orleans Pelicans. Read more
15 Sep 1993: Dennis Schröder, German basketball player Dennis Malik Schröder is a German professional basketball player for the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He previously played for SG Braunschweig and Phantoms Braunschweig in Germany, before joining the Atlanta Hawks for his first five seasons in the NBA. He is the sole owner of his German hometown team, Basketball Loewen Braunschweig of the Basketball Bundesliga, and had been the majority shareholder of the team since 2018. Read more
15 Sep 1991: Lee Jung-shin, South Korean musician and actor Lee Jung-shin, known mononymously as Jungshin, is a South Korean musician, singer, rapper, and actor. He is the bassist of South Korean rock band CNBLUE, which debuted in January 2010 in South Korea. Read more
15 Sep 1991: Phil Ofosu-Ayeh, German-Ghanaian footballer Phil Ofosu-Ayeh is a professional footballer who plays as a right-back. Born in Germany, Ofosu-Ayeh has made one appearance for the Ghana national team. Read more
15 Sep 1990: Aaron Mooy, Australian footballer Aaron Frank Mooy is an Australian former professional soccer player who primarily played as a midfielder. Read more
15 Sep 1990: Matt Shively, American actor Matthew James Shively Jr. is an American actor best known for his role as Ryan Laserbeam on the Nickelodeon television series True Jackson, VP. Beginning in June 2011, he began appearing on two more Nickelodeon shows: Winx Club as Sky and The Troop as Kirby. He co-starred in the ABC television program The Real O'Neals which debuted on March 8, 2016. Read more
15 Sep 1990: Megan Stalter, American actress and comedian Megan Marie Stalter is an American comedian, actress and singer. Stalter is known for her role as Kayla in the HBO Max comedy Hacks, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award, and for starring as Jessica Salmon in the romantic comedy series Too Much. In 2026, under the name Meg Stalter, she released her debut single "Prettiest Girl In America" and announced her debut album Crave. Read more
15 Sep 1988: Chelsea Kane, American actress and singer Chelsea Kane Staub is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Stella Malone in the Disney Channel sitcom television series Jonas and the role of Riley Perrin in the Freeform sitcom, Baby Daddy. She also voiced Bea Goldfishberg in the Disney Channel animated sitcom Fish Hooks. Read more
15 Sep 1988: Tim Moltzen, Australian rugby league player Tim Moltzen is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played for the Wests Tigers in the National Rugby League. He mostly played at fullback, halfback and five-eighth, but could also fill in at centre. Read more
15 Sep 1987: Vaila Barsley, Scottish footballer Vaila Marie Barsley is a Scottish football defender. Read more
15 Sep 1986: Jenna Marbles, American YouTuber and comedian Jenna Nicole Mourey, better known as Jenna Marbles, is an American comedian and former YouTuber. Over the span of ten years, her YouTube channel has accumulated approximately 1.8 billion video views and, at its peak, over 20 million subscribers. After apologizing for a series of accusations involving content in her older videos, Marbles announced her indefinite hiatus from the platform in 2020. Read more
15 Sep 1986: Heidi Montag, American reality television personality and singer Heidi Blair Pratt is an American reality television personality and singer. In 2006, Montag was cast in the MTV reality television series The Hills, which chronicled the personal and professional lives of Lauren Conrad, Montag, and friends Audrina Patridge and Whitney Port. During its production, she briefly attended the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and was employed by event planning company Bolthouse Productions. As the series progressed, Montag began dating fellow cast member Spencer Pratt, which ultimately ended her friendship with Conrad. Their ensuing feud became the central focus of the series and was carried through each subsequent season. Read more
15 Sep 1984: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is a member of the British royal family. He is the younger son of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales, and is fifth in the line of succession to the British throne. Read more
15 Sep 1984: Marshal Yanda, American football player Marshal John Yanda is an American former professional football player who spent his entire 13-year career as a guard for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Iowa Hawkeyes, and was selected by the Ravens in the third round of the 2007 NFL draft. Read more
15 Sep 1983: Yuka Hirata, Japanese actress and model Yuka Hirata is a Japanese actress, voice actress, tarento, and gravure idol from Hokkaido. She portrayed Mele in the Super Sentai Series Juken Sentai Gekiranger. She has also appeared in Food Fight, an episode of Carlos, and several idol videos. Read more
15 Sep 1981: Ben Schwartz, American actor, comedian and writer Benjamin Joseph Schwartz is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He played a recurring role as Jean-Ralphio Saperstein on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, a starring role as Clyde Oberholt on the Showtime series House of Lies, and voiced roles as Randy Cunningham in Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, Dewey Duck in DuckTales, Leonardo in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sonic the Hedgehog in the eponymous film series. He also appeared many times in the CollegeHumor web series Jake and Amir. Read more
15 Sep 1980: David Diehl, American football player and sportscaster David Michael Diehl is a Croatian-German college football coach and former professional player who spent his entire career as an offensive lineman with the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL). He is the assistant offensive line coach for the University of Memphis, a position he has held since 2024. He was the Giants starting left tackle on two Super Bowl championship teams. He played college football for the Illinois Fighting Illini. The Giants selected him in the fifth round of the 2003 NFL draft. Read more
15 Sep 1980: Mike Dunleavy Jr., American basketball player Michael Joseph Dunleavy Jr. is an American professional basketball executive and former player who is the general manager for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Duke Blue Devils, earning consensus second-team All-American honors in 2002. Dunleavy was selected by Golden State with the third overall pick of the 2002 NBA draft. He played in the NBA for the Warriors, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks. He is the son of former NBA player and head coach Mike Dunleavy Sr. Read more
15 Sep 1979: Dave Annable, American actor David Rodman Annable is an American actor. His roles include Justin Walker on the ABC television drama Brothers & Sisters (2006–11), Henry Martin on the ABC supernatural drama 666 Park Avenue (2012–13), Pierce Harrison on the NBC medical drama Heartbeat (2016), and Dr. Neal McNamara on the Paramount+ spy series Lioness (2023-present). Read more
15 Sep 1979: Amy Davidson, American actress Amy Davidson is an American actress. She played Kerry Hennessy in the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules. Read more
15 Sep 1979: Patrick Marleau, Canadian ice hockey player Patrick Denis Marleau is a Canadian former professional ice hockey forward. With 1,779 NHL games played, he is the all-time leader in regular season games played in league history. He passed the record previously held by Gordie Howe in his 1,768th game on April 19, 2021. Marleau scored 1,197 points during his entire NHL career. The San Jose Sharks drafted Marleau second overall in the 1997 NHL entry draft, and Marleau spent the vast majority of his NHL career with the franchise, becoming its all-time leader in goals, even strength goals, power play goals, points, shots, and games played. Marleau is also the fourth player in National Hockey League history to record 900 consecutive games played, reaching the mark one game after breaking the overall games played record. He was the third-last active player who played in the NHL in the 1990s, with the others being Zdeno Chára and longtime teammate Joe Thornton. Read more
15 Sep 1979: Carlos Ruiz, Guatemalan footballer Carlos Humberto Ruiz Gutiérrez, initially nicknamed El Pescadito or "The Little Fish" but later became El Pescado or "The Fish", is a Guatemalan former professional footballer who played as a striker. A product of CSD Municipal's youth academy, Ruiz played for five MLS clubs, scoring 88 goals in 182 MLS regular-season matches and 16 goals in the post-season, which is the second most post-season goals in MLS history. In 2002, he was named the MLS's Most Valuable Player of the season. Read more
15 Sep 1979: Reece Young, New Zealand cricketer Reece Alan Young is a New Zealand former Test cricketer who played for Auckland and Canterbury. He was the 250th Test cap for New Zealand. Read more
15 Sep 1978: Zach Filkins, American guitarist Zachary Douglas Filkins is an American musician, actor and songwriter. He is a guitarist for the pop rock band OneRepublic. Read more
15 Sep 1978: Eiður Guðjohnsen, Icelandic footballer Eiður Smári Guðjohnsen is an Icelandic professional football coach and former player who played as a forward. Eiður saw his greatest success in England and Spain with Chelsea and Barcelona respectively, where he won the UEFA Champions League and La Liga with the latter and the League Cup and Premiership twice with the former. Along with two spells at Bolton Wanderers fourteen years apart, he also played in Iceland, the Netherlands, France, Greece, Belgium, China, Norway and India in a club career lasting 23 years. He is regarded by many to be one of the greatest Icelandic footballers of all time. Read more
15 Sep 1977: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer, whose works include fiction, nonfiction, and lectures. She is widely recognised as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature. Read more
15 Sep 1977: Angela Aki, Japanese singer-songwriter Kiyomi Angela Aki known professionally as Angela Aki , is a Japanese pop singer, songwriter and pianist. Read more
15 Sep 1977: Sophie Dahl, English model and author Sophie Dahl is an English writer and former fashion model. Her first book, a novella, The Man With The Dancing Eyes, was published in 2003, followed by a novel, Playing With The Grown-Ups, in 2007. In 2009, she wrote a cookbook, Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights, which formed the basis for the six-part BBC cooking series The Delicious Miss Dahl (2010). In 2011, her second cookbook, From Season to Season, was published. Read more
15 Sep 1977: Tom Hardy, English actor, producer, and screenwriter Edward Thomas Hardy is an English actor and artist. Known for his intense screen presence and versatility, he has established a career across independent films, blockbusters, and primetime television, often portraying complex and psychologically-driven characters. After training at the Drama Centre London, Hardy made his film debut in Black Hawk Down (2001). He gained early recognition for his roles in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and RocknRolla (2008), before achieving critical acclaim for Bronson (2008), Warrior (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Lawless (2012), and Locke (2013). Read more
15 Sep 1977: Marisa Ramirez, American actress Marisa Maguire Ramirez is an American actress, known for her work on television soap operas and for her role on the police procedural television drama series Blue Bloods and its spin-off Boston Blue as Detective Maria Baez. Read more
15 Sep 1977: Jason Terry, American basketball player Jason Eugene Terry, also known by the initialism JET, is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is an assistant coach for the Utah Jazz of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played 19 seasons in the NBA as a combo guard. With the Dallas Mavericks, Terry won the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2009 and an NBA championship in 2011. A prolific 3-point shooter, Terry has made the twelfth-most 3-point field goals in NBA history as of April 2026. Read more
15 Sep 1976: Brett Kimmorley, Australian rugby league player and sportscaster Brett "Noddy" Kimmorley is an Australian rugby league coach and former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1990s, 2000s, & early 2010s. A New South Wales interstate and Australian international representative halfback, he last played for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs of the NRL. He previously played for five other clubs: Newcastle Knights, Hunter Mariners, Melbourne Storm, Northern Eagles and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks. Kimmorley also represented Country NSW four times and New South Wales ten times as well as playing 15 times for his country including the 2000 World Cup. He also played two Super League Tests. He retired at the end of the 2010 NRL season. Read more
15 Sep 1975: Tom Dolan, American swimmer Thomas Fitzgerald Dolan is an American former competition swimmer, two-time Olympic champion, and former world record-holder. Read more
15 Sep 1975: Martina Krupičková, Czech painter Martina Krupičková is a Czech oil on canvas artist. Read more
15 Sep 1974: Arata Iura, Japanese actor, model, and fashion designer Arata Iura , previously known as Arata, is a Japanese actor, model, and fashion designer. He is the Director of fashion brand Elnest Creative Activity. He holds the position of Director at the Artisan Culture Organisation Institute. Read more
15 Sep 1973: Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland, Swedish prince Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland is a member of the Swedish royal family by marriage to Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, making him the presumptive consort of Sweden. Prior to his marriage to the heir apparent to the Swedish throne, he was a personal trainer and gym owner and ran a company called Balance Training with three gyms in central Stockholm. Read more
15 Sep 1972: Jimmy Carr, English comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter James Anthony Patrick Carr is a British and Irish comedian, presenter and writer. He is known for his rapid-fire deadpan delivery of one-liners and often controversial and edgy dark humour. He began his comedy career in the late 1990s and rose to prominence for hosting the Channel 4 panel shows The Big Fat Quiz of the Year (2004–present), 8 Out of 10 Cats (2005–2021), and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (2012–present). Alongside his television work, Carr has established a successful career as a touring stand-up comedian, performing internationally. Read more
15 Sep 1972: Kit Chan, Singaporean singer-songwriter Chan Kit Yee (Chinese: 陈洁仪; Jyutping: Can4 Git3 Ji4; born 15 September 1972), known professionally as Kit Chan, is a Singaporean singer and actress. Read more
15 Sep 1972: Queen Letizia of Spain, Queen Consort of King Felipe VI of Spain Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano is Queen of Spain as the wife of King Felipe VI. Read more
15 Sep 1971: Nathan Astle, New Zealand cricketer and coach Nathan John Astle is a former New Zealand cricketer, who played all formats of the game. A right-handed batsman who played as an opener in One Day Internationals (ODI), while batting in the middle order in Test matches. In a career that spanned 12 years, Astle played 81 Tests and 223 ODIs accumulating 4,702 and 7,090 runs respectively. As of 2022, he is New Zealand's fourth-most prolific run scorer. Astle collected 154 wickets with his medium-paced bowling at the international level. He holds two records – scoring the fastest double century in Test cricket and the second highest individual score in the fourth innings of a Test match. Both the records were achieved when he made 222 against England in Christchurch in 2002. Astle was a member of the New Zealand team that won the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. His innings of 145 not out was the highest individual score by a batsman in the ICC Champions Trophy, which he scored in the 2004 tournament until it was broken by Ben Duckett in 2025 against Australia when he scored 165. Read more
15 Sep 1971: Josh Charles, American actor and director Joshua Aaron Charles is an American film, television, and theater actor best known for playing Will Gardner on The Good Wife, a role which earned him two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He also appeared in Sports Night, Dead Poets Society and Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. Read more
15 Sep 1971: Wayne Ferreira, South African tennis player Wayne Richard Ferreira is a South African tennis coach and a former professional player. Ferreira won 15 ATP singles titles and 11 doubles titles. His career-high rankings were world No. 6 in singles and world No. 9 in doubles. Read more
15 Sep 1969: Revaz Arveladze, Georgian footballer Revaz Arveladze is a Georgian former professional footballer who played as a midfielder for various sides in Georgia, Germany and Belgium. Read more
15 Sep 1969: Corby Davidson, American radio personality Corby Davidson, is an American radio personality. Read more
15 Sep 1969: Géraldine Carré, French journalist and television presenter (died 2024) Géraldine Carré was a French journalist and television presenter. She was also a voice actress, providing dubs for documentaries and advertisements. She published a book on motherhood with Alix Girod de l'Ain in 1998. Read more
15 Sep 1969: Allen Shellenberger, American drummer (died 2009) Lit is an American rock band formed in the 1990s in Orange County, California. They have released seven studio albums, and they are best known for their 1999 album A Place in the Sun, which featured the single "My Own Worst Enemy", "Zip-Lock" and "Miserable" were also successful, leading to a platinum certification for A Place in the Sun. Read more
15 Sep 1968: Danny Nucci, American actor Danny Nucci is an American actor. He is best known for his supporting roles in blockbuster films, including his roles as Danny Rivetti in Crimson Tide (1995), Lieutenant Shepard in The Rock (1996), Deputy Monroe in Eraser (1996), and Fabrizio de Rossi in Titanic (1997), as well as his lead role as Mike Foster in the Freeform series The Fosters (2013–2018). Read more
15 Sep 1967: Paul Abbott, American baseball player and coach Paul David Abbott is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) between 1990 and 2004 for six different teams. He was part of the 2001 Seattle Mariners team that tied the major-league record for the most wins in a season, with Abbott compiling a 17–4 win–loss record. He has one of the highest lifetime winning percentages as a Mariner, at .679 (36–17). Read more
15 Sep 1967: Rodney Eyles, Australian squash player Rodney James Eyles is a former professional squash player from Australia. He is best remembered for winning the World Open title in 1997. Read more
15 Sep 1966: Wenn V. Deramas, Filipino director and screenwriter (died 2016) Edwin Villanes Deramas, more commonly known as Direk Wenn or Wenn V. Deramas, was a Filipino film and TV director and screenwriter. Read more
15 Sep 1966: Sherman Douglas, American basketball player Sherman Douglas is an American former professional basketball player from Syracuse University who played for the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, New Jersey Nets and the Los Angeles Clippers from 1989 to 2001. His nickname, The General is a play on his first name and his position as a point guard. He was known for revolutionizing the running "floater" shot in the lane. Read more
15 Sep 1964: Robert Fico, Slovak academic and politician, 14th Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico is a Slovak politician and lawyer, who has served as the prime minister of Slovakia since 2023. Fico holds the distinction as the longest-serving prime minister in the country's history. His collective time in power spans over 13 years across four distinct mandates. He founded the left-wing political party Direction – Social Democracy in 1999 and has led the party since. His political positions have been variously described as populist, left-wing and conservative. Read more
15 Sep 1964: Steve Watkin, Welsh cricketer Steven Llewellyn Watkin is a former Welsh cricketer who played for Glamorgan County Cricket Club and the England cricket team. A reliable seam bowler who never suffered serious injury despite several lesser niggles, he played three Test matches in 1991 and 1993, and four One Day Internationals in 1993 and 1994. He was one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1994, the only one of that year's five who was not Australian. Read more
15 Sep 1964: Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein, American guitarist and songwriter Paul Caiafa, known professionally as Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein, is an American guitarist best known for his material with the horror punk band the Misfits and his own self-named band named Doyle. Read more
15 Sep 1963: Pete Myers, American basketball player and coach Peter Eddie Myers is an American former professional basketball player and a former assistant coach for the National Basketball Association (NBA) team Chicago Bulls. He is most famous for having been Michael Jordan's replacement player during Jordan's stint in baseball. Read more
15 Sep 1963: Stephen C. Spiteri, Maltese military historian Stephen C. Spiteri is a Maltese military historian, author, lecturer and preservationist. His work mainly deals with the military history of Malta, particularly military architecture, and he is regarded as the "leading expert on Malta's fortifications." Read more
15 Sep 1962: Amanda Wakeley, English fashion designer Amanda Jane Wakeley OBE is a British fashion designer best known for her evening and cocktail dresses and accessories, and for her “clean glam” signature style, has also developed a presence in daywear, including day-dresses, tailoring and knitwear and a line of accessories and jewellery. Sposa is the brand's bridal collection. Wakeley is an advocate for international organisation Women for Women. Read more
15 Sep 1961: Terry Lamb, Australian rugby league player and coach Terence John Lamb, also nicknamed "Baa", is an Australian former rugby league footballer and coach. He played 350 games, with the Western Suburbs (1980–1983) and Canterbury (1984–1996). Read more
15 Sep 1961: Helen Margetts, British political scientist Helen Zerlina Margetts is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Director of the LSE Data Science Institute. Prior to LSE, she was Professor of Internet and Society at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford and from 2011 to 2018 was Director of the OII. She was formerly Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. She is a political scientist specialising in digital era governance and politics, and has published over a hundred books, journal articles and research reports in this field. Read more
15 Sep 1961: Dan Marino, American football player and sportscaster Daniel Constantine Marino Jr. is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 17 seasons with the Miami Dolphins. He played college football for the Pittsburgh Panthers, earning first-team All-American honors in 1981. Marino was the last quarterback taken in the first round of the famed quarterback class of 1983. He held or currently holds dozens of NFL records associated with the quarterback position, and despite never being on a Super Bowl–winning team, he is recognized among the greatest quarterbacks in American football history. Read more
15 Sep 1961: Patrick Patterson, Jamaican cricketer Balfour Patrick Patterson is a former fast bowler for the West Indies cricket team in the mid-1980s to early 1990s. He is remarkable in that, in an era when the West Indies dominated world cricket through strength of fast bowling, and produced a galaxy of fast bowling stars, he is frequently acknowledged as the fastest of those that played. The West Indies wicket keeper Jeff Dujon, who kept wicket to all of them, stated that Patterson was the quickest he had kept wickets to. Read more
15 Sep 1960: Ed Solomon, American director, producer, and screenwriter Edward James Solomon is an American filmmaker. He is best known for creating the Bill & Ted franchise alongside Chris Matheson. Together, they wrote the screenplays to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). He also wrote the screenplay for Men in Black (1997), and Now You See Me (2013). Read more
15 Sep 1960: Lisa Vanderpump, British restaurateur, television personality, and author Lisa Jane Vanderpump is an English restaurateur, businesswoman and television personality. She initially gained fame as a main cast member on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which she starred in from 2010 until 2019. Since emigrating to the United States from the United Kingdom, Vanderpump has been in the restaurant industry, along with her husband Ken Todd. Her West Hollywood, California restaurant and lounge, SUR, along with its staff, are the premise to Bravo's Vanderpump Rules (2013–present), in which she is a cast member and executive producer. Read more
15 Sep 1959: Mark Kirk, American commander, lawyer, and politician Mark Steven Kirk is an American retired politician and attorney who served as a United States senator from Illinois from 2010 to 2017, and as the United States representative for Illinois's 10th congressional district from 2001 to 2010. A member of the Republican Party, Kirk describes himself as socially liberal and fiscally conservative. As of 2026, he is the last Republican to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Read more
15 Sep 1958: Joel Quenneville, Canadian ice hockey player and coach Joel Norman Quenneville is a Canadian-American professional ice hockey coach and former player who is the head coach for the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League (NHL). Nicknamed "Coach Q", he is second in NHL coaching wins at 1,000 behind Scotty Bowman. Quenneville achieved his greatest success as head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, a team he coached from 2008 to 2018. He led the Blackhawks to three Stanley Cup titles in 2010, 2013 and 2015. The team's championship victory in 2010 was the Blackhawks' first since 1961, ending the then-longest Stanley Cup drought. Read more
15 Sep 1958: Wendie Jo Sperber, American actress (died 2005) Wendie Jo Sperber was an American actress, known for her performances in the films I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), Bachelor Party (1984), and Back to the Future (1985), as well as the television sitcoms Bosom Buddies (1980–1982) and Private Benjamin (1982–1983). Read more
15 Sep 1956: Ross J. Anderson, British academic and educator (died 2024) Ross John Anderson was a British researcher, author, and industry consultant in security engineering. He was Professor of Security Engineering at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge where he was part of the University's security group. Read more
15 Sep 1956: Rick Garcia (activist), American LGBTQ rights activist Rick Garcia was an American LGBTQ activist known primarily for his work in Chicago and for LGBTQ acceptance within the Roman Catholic Church. As a co-founder of Equality Illinois, he advocated for equal treatment and social justice for the LGBTQ community. Read more
15 Sep 1956: Maggie Reilly, Scottish singer-songwriter Maggie Reilly is a Scottish singer and songwriter. She performed lead vocals on the Mike Oldfield songs "Family Man", "Moonlight Shadow", "To France", and "Foreign Affair", all of which were international hits in the early 1980s. Read more
15 Sep 1956: Ned Rothenberg, American saxophonist, clarinet player, and composer Ned Rothenberg is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer. He specializes in woodwind instruments, including the alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, and shakuhachi. He is known for his work in contemporary classical and free improvisation. Rothenberg is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He was a founding member of the woodwind trio New Winds with J. D. Parran and Robert Dick. He has performed with Samm Bennett, Paul Dresher, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Yuji Takahashi, Sainkho Namtchylak, and Katsuya Yokoyama. Read more
15 Sep 1955: Željka Antunović, Croatian politician, 9th Croatian Minister of Defence Željka Antunović is a Croatian former politician who served as acting president of the Social Democratic Party between April and June 2007, and as Minister of Defence from 2002 until 2003 in the second cabinet of Ivica Račan. She was the first and to date only female holder of the office. Read more
15 Sep 1955: Abdul Qadir, Pakistani cricketer (died 2019) Abdul Qadir Khan SI was an international cricketer who bowled leg spin for Pakistan in the late 1970s and 1980s. Qadir's style of bowling consisted of a rhythmic cantering walk before an aggressive ball toss. He was the leading leg-break bowler of his generation and the one younger players like Shane Warne looked up to. Later Qadir was a commentator and chief selector of the Pakistan Cricket Board, from which he resigned in 2009. Read more
15 Sep 1955: Bruce Reitherman, American voice actor, singer, cinematographer, and producer Bruce Reitherman is an American cameraman, filmmaker, naturalist and former child actor. He voiced Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree and Mowgli in The Jungle Book. Read more
15 Sep 1955: Renzo Rosso, Italian fashion designer and businessman, co-founded Diesel Clothing Renzo Rosso is an Italian entrepreneur and a businessman. He is the founder of Diesel and the president of OTB Group, the parent company of Maison Margiela, Marni, Viktor & Rolf, Jil Sander. In 2022, Forbes estimated his net worth to be US$3.6 billion. Read more
15 Sep 1954: Adrian Adonis, American wrestler (died 1988) Keith Adonis Franke was an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, "Adorable" Adrian Adonis. He was best known for his appearances with the American Wrestling Association and World Wrestling Federation throughout the 1980s. Read more
15 Sep 1954: Hrant Dink, Turkish journalist (died 2007) Hrant Dink was a Turkish-Armenian journalist, human rights activist, founder and editor-in-chief of Agos. As editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Dink was a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey best known for advocating Turkish–Armenian reconciliation and human and minority rights in Turkey. He was often critical of both Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide and of the Armenian diaspora's campaign for its international recognition. Dink was prosecuted three times for "insulting Turkishness", while receiving numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists. Read more
15 Sep 1954: Barry Shabaka Henley, American actor Barry Shabaka Henley is an American character actor. Henley has appeared as a regular in a number of television series, has numerous film credits, and is a fixture in films by director Michael Mann, having worked with the director three times. From 2019 to 2024, he co-starred in the CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola as Uncle Tunde. Read more
15 Sep 1953: Margie Moran, Filipino peace advocate and beauty queen, Miss Universe 1973 Maria Margarita "Margie" Roxas Moran-Floirendo is a Filipino model, actress, socialite, peace advocate, and beauty queen who was the president of Ballet Philippines, and previously served as chairperson of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Read more
15 Sep 1953: Keiko Takeshita, Japanese actress Keiko Takeshita is a Japanese actress. She starred in the Japanese version of From Up on Poppy Hill as Hana Matsuzaki. Read more
15 Sep 1952: Richard Brodeur, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster Richard Brodeur, is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender. He was one of a select group of goaltenders to play in every season of the seven-year existence of the World Hockey Association, doing so with the Quebec Nordiques. Nicknamed "King Richard" and "Kermit", Brodeur was the starting goaltender for each of Quebec's runs to the Avco Cup Final, where they lost in 1975 and won in 1977. He moved over to the National Hockey League in 1979, playing just two games before being moved to the Central Hockey League. He then was moved over to the Vancouver Canucks in 1980, where he played the next eight seasons and led the team to their first ever Stanley Cup Final appearance in 1982. He closed out his career with six games behind the net with the Hartford Whalers in 1987 and play with their American Hockey League affiliate in Binghamton in 1988. Read more
15 Sep 1952: Paula Duncan, Australian actress Paula Margaret Duncan is an Australian actress, known for her television roles in Number 96 as Carol Finlayson, The Young Doctors as Lisa Brooks, Cop Shop as Danni Francis and Prisoner as Lorelei Wilkinson. Read more
15 Sep 1952: Ratnajeevan Hoole, Sri Lankan engineer and academic Professor Samuel Ratnajeevan Herbert Hoole is a Sri Lankan Tamil engineer and academic. He was a member of the Election Commission of Sri Lanka. Read more
15 Sep 1952: Kelly Keagy, American singer and drummer Kelly Dean Keagy is an American drummer and vocalist, best known for his work with the hard rock band Night Ranger. Keagy sang lead vocals on several of their hits, such as "Sister Christian", "Sing Me Away", and "Sentimental Street". Read more
15 Sep 1951: Johan Neeskens, Dutch footballer and manager (died 2024) Johannes Jacobus Neeskens was a Dutch football manager and player. A midfielder, he was an important member of the Netherlands national team that finished as runners-up in the 1974 and 1978 FIFA World Cups and is considered one of the greatest midfielders of all time. In 2004, he was named one of the 125 Greatest Living Footballers at a FIFA Awards Ceremony, while in 2017 he was included in the FourFourTwo list of the 100 all-time greatest players, at the 64th position. Read more
15 Sep 1951: Fred Seibert, American television producer, co-founder of MTV Fred Seibert is an American television executive. Seibert began his professional career as a jazz and blues record producer and audio engineer in the 1970s. He co-founded the record label Oblivion Records by 1972 and has received a Grammy Award nomination. Read more
15 Sep 1950: Rajiv Malhotra, Indian author Rajiv Malhotra is an Indian-American author, public intellectual, and a proponent of Hindutva. He is the founder of Infinity Foundation, an organisation known to focus on Indic studies, and financially aid Columbia University's project to translate the Tibetan Buddhist Tengyur. Read more
15 Sep 1950: Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Pakistani-English caliph and scholar Mirza Masroor Ahmad is the current and fifth leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. His official title within the movement is Fifth Caliph of the Messiah. He was elected on 22 April 2003, three days after the death of his predecessor Mirza Tahir Ahmad. Read more
15 Sep 1949: Joe Barton, American lawyer and politician Joseph Linus Barton is an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Texas's 6th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1985 to 2019. The district included Arlington, part of Fort Worth, and several small towns and rural areas south of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. He was also a member of the Tea Party Caucus. In 2014, Barton became the longest-serving member of the Texas congressional delegation. Read more
15 Sep 1947: Russel L. Honoré, American general Russel Luke Honoré is a retired lieutenant general of the United States Army. He served as the 33rd commanding general of the U.S. First Army at Fort Gillem, Georgia, from 2004 until his retirement in 2008. Read more
15 Sep 1947: Viggo Jensen, Danish footballer and manager Viggo Biehl Jensen is a Danish former football player and manager. He was most recently the manager of Danish Superliga side Silkeborg IF. Read more
15 Sep 1947: Diane E. Levin, American educator and author Diane Elizabeth Levin is an American author, educator, and advocate known for her work in media literacy and media effects on children. Read more
15 Sep 1947: Theodore Long, American wrestling referee and manager Theodore Robert Rufus Long is an American retired professional wrestling referee, manager and authority figure. He is best known for his tenures in WWE, WCW and NWA. Read more
15 Sep 1946: Tommy Lee Jones, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter Thomas Lee Jones is an American actor, film director, and former football player. He has received various accolades including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Read more
15 Sep 1946: Mike Procter, South African cricketer, coach, and referee (died 2024) Michael John Procter was a South African cricketer, whose involvement in international cricket was limited by South Africa's banishment from world cricket in the 1970s and 1980s. A fast bowler and hard-hitting batsman, he was regarded as one of South African cricket's top allrounders. Read more
15 Sep 1946: Oliver Stone, American director, screenwriter, and producer William Oliver Stone is an American filmmaker. An acclaimed director who tackled subjects ranging from the Vietnam War and American politics to musical biopics and crime dramas, Stone has received numerous accolades including three Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Primetime Emmy, a Satellite Award, a Sant Jordi Award, three Jupiter Awards, three Independent Spirit Awards, and six Golden Globe Awards. Read more
15 Sep 1945: Carmen Maura, Spanish actress María del Carmen García Maura is a Spanish actress. In a career that has spanned seven decades, she has starred in films such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, ¡Ay Carmela!, Common Wealth, and Volver. With three wins, she holds the record for most Goya Awards for Best Actress. She also won a Cesar Award in 2012 and a Cannes Film Festival Award in 2006. Read more
15 Sep 1945: Jessye Norman, American soprano (died 2019) Jessye Mae Norman was an American opera singer and recitalist. She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but did not limit herself to that voice type. A commanding presence on operatic, concert and recital stages, Norman was associated with roles including Beethoven's Leonore, Wagner's Sieglinde and Kundry, Berlioz's Cassandre and Didon, and Bartók's Judith. The New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound" that "has enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls." Read more
15 Sep 1945: Hans-Gert Pöttering, German lawyer and politician, 23rd President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering is a German lawyer, historian and conservative politician, who served as President of the European Parliament from January 2007 to July 2009 and as Chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation from 2010 to 2017. Read more
15 Sep 1945: Ron Shelton, American director, producer, and screenwriter Ronald Wayne Shelton is an American film director and screenwriter and former minor league baseball infielder. Shelton is known for the many films he has made about sports. His 1988 film Bull Durham, based in part on his own baseball experiences, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Read more
15 Sep 1944: Mauro Piacenza, Italian cardinal Mauro Piacenza is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. A cardinal since 2010, he was Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary from 2013 to 2024. He was Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy from 7 October 2010 to 21 September 2013. where he had been Secretary since 2007. At that Congregation, Pope Benedict XVI, according to one report, valued "his efficiency and in-depth knowledge of how the Congregation worked and its problems" and "his traditionalist ecclesiastical line of thought". Read more
15 Sep 1944: Graham Taylor, English footballer and manager (died 2017) Graham Taylor was an English football player, manager, pundit and chairman of Watford Football Club. He was the manager of the England national football team from 1990 to 1993, and also managed Lincoln City, Watford, Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Read more
15 Sep 1942: Lee Dorman, American bass player (died 2012) Douglas Lee Dorman was an American bass guitarist best known as a member of the psychedelic rock band Iron Butterfly. He was also a founding member of the British-American supergroup Captain Beyond. Read more
15 Sep 1942: Philip Harris, Baron Harris of Peckham, English businessman and politician Philip Charles Harris, Baron Harris of Peckham, is an English businessman and politician. Although a prominent Conservative Party donor and former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Board of Treasurers, he supported the Labour Party at the 2024 general election, but maintained the Conservative Whip. Read more
15 Sep 1942: Ksenia Milicevic, French painter and architect Ksenia Milicevic is a French painter, architect and town planner. She is based in Paris, with a studio in Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre and also maintains a base in South West France. Read more
15 Sep 1941: Flórián Albert, Hungarian footballer and manager (died 2011) Flórián György Albert was a Hungarian professional football player, manager and sports official, who was named European Footballer of the Year in 1967. Nicknamed "The Emperor", he played as a forward, and has been described as one of the most elegant footballers of all time. Read more
15 Sep 1941: Signe Toly Anderson, American rock singer (died 2016) Signe Toly Anderson was an American singer who was one of the founding members of the American rock band Jefferson Airplane. Read more
15 Sep 1941: Mirosław Hermaszewski, Polish general, pilot and cosmonaut (died 2022) Mirosław Hermaszewski was a Polish cosmonaut, fighter plane pilot, and Polish Air Force officer. He became the first and, at the time of his death in December 2022, only Polish national to ever go to space when he flew aboard the Soviet Soyuz 30 spacecraft in 1978. He was the 89th human to reach outer space. Read more
15 Sep 1941: Yuriy Norshteyn, Russian animator, director, and screenwriter Yuri Borisovich Norstein is a Russian animator best known for his animated shorts Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales made in collaboration with his wife, Francheska Yarbusova. Since 1981, he has been working on a feature film called The Overcoat, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name. According to The Washington Post, "he is considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time". Read more
15 Sep 1941: Viktor Zubkov, Russian businessman and politician, 37th Prime Minister of Russia Viktor Alekseyevich Zubkov is a Russian civil servant, politician and businessman who served as the 36th Prime Minister of Russia from September 2007 to May 2008. He was Vladimir Putin's First Deputy Prime Minister during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. Read more
15 Sep 1940: Merlin Olsen, American football player, sportscaster, and actor (died 2010) Merlin Jay Olsen was an American professional football player, announcer, and actor. For his entire 15-year professional football career, he was a defensive tackle with the Los Angeles Rams in the National Football League (NFL). He was selected to play in the Pro Bowl 14 times — every year but his last. The only other football players to have matched or exceeded that number are Bruce Matthews, Tony Gonzalez, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady, who is the only NFL player to have played more times in the Pro Bowl, with 15 selections. Read more
15 Sep 1939: Subramanian Swamy, Indian economist, academic, and politician, Indian Minister of Law and Justice Subramanian Swamy is an Indian politician, economist and statistician. Before joining politics, he was a professor of Mathematical Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is known for his Hindu nationalist views. Swamy was a member of the Planning Commission of India and was a Cabinet Minister in the Chandra Shekhar government. Between 1994 and 1996, Swamy was Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade under former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. Swamy was a long-time member of the Janata Party, serving as its president until 2013 when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has written on foreign affairs of India dealing largely with China, Pakistan and Israel. He was nominated to Rajya Sabha on 25 April 2016 for a six-year term, ending on 24 April 2022. Read more
15 Sep 1939: George Walden, English journalist and politician George Gordon Harvey Walden is an English journalist, former diplomat and former politician for the Conservative Party, who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham from 1983 to 1997 and Minister for Higher Education under Margaret Thatcher. Read more
15 Sep 1938: Gaylord Perry, American baseball player and coach (died 2022) Gaylord Jackson Perry was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB) who played for eight teams from 1962 to 1983, becoming one of the most durable and successful pitchers in history. A five-time All-Star, Perry was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues. He won the American League (AL) award in 1972 after leading the league with 24 wins with a 1.92 earned run average (ERA) for the fifth-place Cleveland Indians and took the National League (NL) award in 1978 with the San Diego Padres after again leading the league with 21 wins; his Cy Young Award announcement just as he turned the age of 40 made him the oldest to win the award, which stood as a record for 26 years until Roger Clemens won the Cy Young in 2004 at 42 years old. He and his older brother Jim Perry, who were Cleveland teammates in 1974–1975, became the first brothers to both win 200 games in the major leagues and remain the only brothers to both win Cy Young Awards. Read more
15 Sep 1937: Joey Carew, Trinidadian cricketer (died 2011) Michael Conrad "Joey" Carew was a West Indian cricketer who played in 19 Tests from 1963 to 1972. Read more
15 Sep 1937: Fernando de la Rúa, Argentinian lawyer and politician, 51st President of Argentina (died 2019) Fernando de la Rúa was an Argentine politician who served as the president of Argentina from 1999 until his resignation in 2001. A member of the Radical Civic Union, he previously served as national senator for Buenos Aires across non-consecutive terms from 1973 to 1996, national deputy for Buenos Aires from 1991 to 1992, the first Chief of Government of Buenos Aires between 1996 and 1999, and president of the National Committee of the Radical Civic Union from 1997 to 1999. Read more
15 Sep 1937: King Curtis Iaukea, American wrestler (died 2010) Curtis Piehu Iaukea III was an American professional wrestler better known as King Curtis Iaukea. Iaukea won championships in several of the major regional U.S. promotions, both as a single and in various tag team combinations, during the 1960s. He then competed in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) where he won the WWF Tag Team Championship with Baron Scicluna. He also wrestled Pedro Morales for the WWWF title. He was also later The Master of the Dungeon of Doom in World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Under the name "Iau Kea" he appeared in the film The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze with Moe Howard declaring "That's not a man! That's a committee!". Read more
15 Sep 1937: Robert Lucas Jr., American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2023) Robert Emerson Lucas Jr. was an American economist at the University of Chicago. Widely regarded as the central figure in the development of the new classical approach to macroeconomics, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1995 "for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy". N. Gregory Mankiw characterized him as "the most influential macroeconomist of the last quarter of the 20th century". In 2020, he ranked as the 10th most cited economist in the world. Read more
15 Sep 1937: Pino Puglisi, Italian priest and martyr (died 1993) Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who openly challenged the Sicilian Mafia controlling his Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio. The Mafia killed him on his 56th birthday. His life story has been retold in a book, Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso (2013), and portrayed in a film, Come into the Light in 2005. He was the first Mafia victim to be beatified by the Catholic Church. Read more
15 Sep 1936: Ashley Cooper, Australian tennis player (died 2020) Ashley John Cooper AO was an Australian tennis player who played between 1953 and 1968. He was ranked as the world's No. 1 amateur player during the years of 1957 and 1958. Cooper won four singles and four doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments. He won three of the four Grand Slam events in 1958. He turned professional in 1959. Cooper won the Slazenger Professional Championships tournament in 1959. He won the Grand Prix de Europe professional tour of Europe in 1960. Cooper won the European Cup professional tour of Europe in 1962. He retired from tennis play at the end of 1962 due to injury. Read more
15 Sep 1936: Sara Henderson, Australian farmer and author (died 2005) Sara Jane Henderson was an Australian pastoralist and author who became an Australia household name after the publication of her autobiography From Strength to Strength in 1993 about rebuilding Bullo River cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia. Read more
15 Sep 1935: Dinkha IV, Iraqi patriarch (died 2015) Mar Dinkha IV, born Dinkha Khanania was an Eastern Christian prelate who served as the Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East. He was born in the village of Darbandokeh (Derbendoki), Iraq, and led the Church in exile in Chicago for most of his life. He was the first patriarch not from the Shimun family since establishment of the Assyrian Church of the East in 1672, and the first following the abolition of hereditary succession. Read more
15 Sep 1933: Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Spanish conductor and composer (died 2014) Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos was a Spanish conductor and composer. Frühbeck was born in Burgos, Spain to a family of German ancestry. He first took up conducting while on military service in the Spanish Army before graduating from the Hochschule für Musik in Munich. Frühbeck was principal conductor of various orchestras around the world, starting with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra from 1958 to 1962, then moving on to the Spanish National Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo and many others. Throughout his career Frühbeck de Burgos recorded on a number of labels. He was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts and History Institución Fernán González. His honours include the 2011 Conductor of the Year award from Musical America. Read more
15 Sep 1933: Jim Rodger, Scottish footballer (died 2024) James McPhail Rodger was a Scottish footballer. An inside forward and a right winger, Rodger played for Rangers, St Mirren, Newport County, Hearts, Queen of the South and East Fife. During his football career, Rodger taught Maths at Hamilton Academy and moving from St Mirren to Hearts at this time. He later became Headmaster at Portree High School. He died on 3 May 2024, at the age of 90. Read more
15 Sep 1932: Neil Bartlett, English-American chemist and academic (died 2008) Neil Bartlett was a British chemist who specialized in fluorine and compounds containing fluorine, and became famous for creating the first noble gas compounds. He taught chemistry at the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley. Read more
15 Sep 1931: Brian Henderson, New Zealand-Australian journalist, actor, and producer (died 2021) Brian Weir Henderson was a New Zealand-born Australian radio and television personality and pioneer known for his association with the Nine Network as a television news anchor in Sydney, as well as a variety show presenter and host of music program Bandstand, the local version of the US music program American Bandstand. Read more
15 Sep 1930: Endel Lippmaa, Estonian physicist and academic (died 2015) Endel Lippmaa was an Estonian scientist, academician, politician, and twice government minister in 1990–1991 and 1995–1996. Read more
15 Sep 1929: Eva Burrows, Australian 13th General of The Salvation Army (died 2015) Eva Evelyn Burrows AC OF was an Australian Salvation Army Officer who was the 13th General of the Salvation Army, serving from 1986 to 1993. She served as an Officer of the Salvation Army from 1951 until her retirement in 1993. In 1993, Henry Gariepy released her biography, General of God's Army: the Authorized Biography of General Eva Burrows. Read more
15 Sep 1929: Murray Gell-Mann, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2019) Murray Gell-Mann was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the fundamental building blocks of the strongly interacting particles, and the renormalization group as a foundational element of quantum field theory and statistical mechanics. He received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions. Read more
15 Sep 1929: John Julius Norwich, English historian and author (died 2018) John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich,, also known as John Julius Norwich, was an English popular historian, writer of widely read travel books, and television personality. Read more
15 Sep 1929: Wilbur Snyder, American football player and wrestler (died 1991) Wilbur Snyder was an American football player and professional wrestler. He played college football for the Utah Utes. Read more
15 Sep 1929: Mümtaz Soysal, Turkish academic and politician, 30th Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs (died 2019) Osman Mümtaz Soysal was a Turkish professor of constitutional law, political scientist, politician, human rights activist, ex-prisoner of conscience, senior advisor, columnist, and author. Read more
15 Sep 1928: Cannonball Adderley, American saxophonist and bandleader (died 1975) Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s. Read more
15 Sep 1927: Rudolf Anderson, pilot and commissioned officer in the United States Air Force (died 1962) Rudolf Anderson Jr. was an American Air Force major and pilot. He was the first recipient of the Air Force Cross, the U.S. military's and Air Force's second-highest award and decoration for valor. The only U.S. fatality by enemy fire during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Anderson was killed when his U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down over Cuba. He had previously served in Korea during the Korean War. Read more
15 Sep 1927: Norm Crosby, American comedian and actor (died 2020) Norman Lawrence Crosby was an American comedian born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was often referred to as "The Master of Malaprop". Read more
15 Sep 1926: Shohei Imamura, Japanese director, producer, and screenwriter (died 2006) Shōhei Imamura was a Japanese film director. His main interest as a filmmaker lay in the depiction of the lower strata of Japanese society. A key figure in the Japanese New Wave, who continued working into the 21st century, Imamura is the only director from Japan to win two Palme d'Or awards, doing so with The Ballad of Narayama (1983) and The Eel (1997). Read more
15 Sep 1926: Jean-Pierre Serre, French mathematician and academic Jean-Pierre Serre is a French mathematician who has made contributions to algebraic topology, algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954 and the inaugural Abel Prize in 2003. Read more
15 Sep 1926: Henry Silva, American actor (died 2022) Henry Silva was an American actor, with a film and television career which spanned fifty years. A prolific character actor in over 140 productions, he was known for his "dark, sepulchral" looks and brooding screen presence that saw him often play criminals, gangsters, or other "tough guys" in crime and action films. He was also closely associated with the "Rat Pack". Read more
15 Sep 1925: Stanley Chapman, English architect and author (died 2009) Stanley Chapman was a British architect, designer, translator and writer. His interests included theatre and 'pataphysics. He was involved with founding the Royal National Theatre in London, became a member of Oulipo in 1961, founder of the Outrapo, and was also a member of the Collège de Pataphysique, the London Institute of Pataphysics and the Lewis Carroll Society. In the early 1950s he contributed poems and designed covers for the literary magazines Listen and Stand, and contributed translations to Chanticleer, a magazine edited by the poet Ewart Milne. His English translation of A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems was received with "admiring stupefaction" by Raymond Queneau. Read more
15 Sep 1925: Erika Köth, German soprano (died 1981) Erika Köth was a German operatic coloratura soprano, particularly associated with the roles of Zerbinetta and Zerlina. Read more
15 Sep 1925: Carlo Rambaldi, Italian special effects artist (died 2012) Carlo Rambaldi was an Italian special effects and makeup effects artist. He was the winner of three Academy Awards: one Special Achievement Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1977 for the 1976 version of King Kong and two Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects in 1980 and 1983 for, respectively, Alien (1979) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). He is most famous for his work in those two last mentioned films, that is for the mechanical head-effects for the creature in Alien and the design of the title character of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In 2017, he was inducted into the Visual Effects Society Hall of Fame. Read more
15 Sep 1925: Helle Virkner, Danish actress and singer (died 2009) Helle Genie Virkner née Lotinga was a Danish actress, author and spouse of Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag Read more
15 Sep 1924: Lucebert, Dutch poet and painter (died 1994) Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk, known professionally as Lucebert, was a Dutch artist who first became known as the poet of the COBRA movement. Read more
15 Sep 1924: György Lázár, Hungarian politician, 50th Prime Minister of Hungary (died 2014) György Lázár was a Hungarian Communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1975 to 1987. He retired from politics in 1988. Read more
15 Sep 1924: Bobby Short, American singer and pianist (died 2005) Robert Waltrip Short was an American cabaret singer and pianist who interpreted songs by popular composers from the first half of the 20th century such as Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Richard A. Whiting, Vernon Duke, Noël Coward and George and Ira Gershwin. Read more
15 Sep 1923: Anton Heiller, Austrian organist, composer, and conductor (died 1979) Anton Heiller was an Austrian organist, harpsichordist, composer and conductor. Read more
15 Sep 1922: Bob Anderson, English fencer and choreographer (died 2012) Robert James Gilbert Anderson was an English Olympic fencer and a renowned film fight choreographer, with a cinema career that spanned more than 50 years and included films such as Highlander, The Three Musketeers, Barry Lyndon, The Princess Bride, The Mask of Zorro, the Star Wars film series, The Lord of the Rings film series, the James Bond film series and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He was regarded as the premier choreographer of Hollywood sword-fighting, and during his career he coached many actors in swordsmanship, including Errol Flynn, Sean Connery, Antonio Banderas, Mark Hamill, Viggo Mortensen, Adrian Paul, and Johnny Depp. He also appeared as a stunt double for Darth Vader's lightsaber battles in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Read more
15 Sep 1922: Jackie Cooper, American actor (died 2011) John Cooper Jr., known professionally as Jackie Cooper, was an American actor and director. He began his career as a child actor and was a featured member of the Our Gang ensemble 1929–1931. At age nine, he became the only child and youngest person nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for the 1931 film Skippy. He then successfully transitioned to adolescent roles in the 1930s and adult roles from 1940 on. Read more
15 Sep 1922: Gaetano Cozzi, Italian historian and academic (died 2001) Gaetano Cozzi was an Italian historian, professor at Padua University, and researcher with the Giorgio Cini Foundation and Fondazione Benetton Studi e Ricerche. He was a specialist in Venetian history, with special attention to the institutions, the relationship between law and society and the cultural environment. Read more
15 Sep 1922: Mary Soames, English author (died 2014) Mary Soames, Baroness Soames was an English author. The youngest of the five children of Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, she worked for public organisations including the Red Cross and the Women's Voluntary Service from 1939 to 1941, and joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941. She was the wife of Conservative politician Christopher Soames. Read more
15 Sep 1921: Richard Gordon, English surgeon and author (died 2017) Richard Gordon, was an English ship's surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere wrote numerous novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He was best known for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme beginning with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television, radio and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex. Read more
15 Sep 1921: Gene Roland, American pianist and composer (died 1982) Gene Roland was an American jazz musician, composer, and arranger who contributed richly to American jazz, especially through his work with the Stan Kenton Orchestra. Born in Dallas, Texas, he played multiple instruments, including the trumpet, trombone, and saxophone, and collaborated with musicians including Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. Roland was pivotal in defining the unique 'Four Brothers' sound that influenced big band jazz. Throughout his career, he contributed groundbreaking arrangements and compositions for many major bands, performing globally and working with Denmark's Radiohus Orchestra. Read more
15 Sep 1920: Kym Bonython, Australian racing driver, drummer, and radio host (died 2011) Hugh Reskymer "Kym" Bonython, was an Australian politician, World War Two veteran, musician, gallery owner, and racing driver. Read more
15 Sep 1919: Fausto Coppi, Italian cyclist and soldier (died 1960) Angelo Fausto Coppi was an Italian cyclist, the dominant international cyclist of the years after the Second World War. His successes earned him the title Il Campionissimo. He was an all-round racing cyclist: he excelled in both climbing and time trialing, and was also a good sprinter. He won the Giro d'Italia five times, the Tour de France twice, and the World Championship in 1953. Other notable results include winning the Giro di Lombardia five times, the Milan–San Remo three times, as well as wins at Paris–Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne and setting the hour record (45.798 km) in 1942. Read more
15 Sep 1919: Heda Margolius Kovály, Czech author and translator (died 2010) Heda Margolius Kovály was a Czech writer and translator. As a Jewish woman during the Holocaust, she survived the Łódź Ghetto and Auschwitz where her parents were murdered. She later escaped while being marched to Bergen-Belsen. Her first husband Rudolf Margolius was the Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade in Czechoslovakia from 1949 until 1952, when he was sentenced to death as a traitor in the antisemitic Slánský show trial. She remarried to Pavel Kovály in 1955, using his name to submit her later work. Read more
15 Sep 1918: Alfred D. Chandler Jr., American historian and academic (died 2007) Alfred DuPont Chandler Jr. was a professor of business history at Harvard Business School and Johns Hopkins University, who wrote extensively about the scale and the management structures of modern corporations. His works redefined business and economic history of industrialization. He received the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He has been called "the doyen of American business historians". Read more
15 Sep 1918: Margot Loyola, Chilean singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2015) Margot Loyola Palacios was a Chilean folklorist, musician, dancer, and teacher. She is considered one of the most influential musicians of Chile, pioneering folkloric research and transforming traditional music education and performance. Read more
15 Sep 1918: Nipsey Russell, American comedian and actor (died 2005) Julius "Nipsey" Russell was an American entertainer best known for his appearances as a panelist on game shows from the 1960s through the 1990s, including Match Game, Password, Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and Pyramid. His appearances were often distinguished by short, humorous poems he recited during the broadcast, which led to his nickname "the poet laureate of television". He had one of the leading roles in the film version of The Wiz as the Tin Man. He was a frequent guest on the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast series and often appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien during the program's early years. Read more
15 Sep 1917: Hilde Gueden, Austrian soprano (died 1988) Hilde Güden was an Austrian soprano who was one of the most appreciated Straussian and Mozartian sopranos of her day. Her youthful and lively interpretations made her an ideal interpreter of roles such as Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. Read more
15 Sep 1917: Buddy Jeannette, American basketball player and coach (died 1998) Harry Edward "Buddy" Jeannette was an American professional basketball player and coach. Read more
15 Sep 1916: Margaret Lockwood, Pakistani-English actress (died 1990) Margaret Mary Day Lockwood was a British actress. One of Britain's most popular film stars of the 1930s and 1940s, her film appearances included The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), The Man in Grey (1943), and The Wicked Lady (1945). She was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress for the 1955 film Cast a Dark Shadow. She also starred in the television series Justice (1971–1974). Ronald Bergan of The Guardian called her "one of the most beautiful, energetic, and spirited actresses in the history of British cinema." Read more
15 Sep 1916: Frederick C. Weyand, American general (died 2010) Frederick Carlton Weyand was a general in the United States Army. Weyand was the last commander of United States military operations in the Vietnam War from 1972 to 1973, and served as the 28th Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1974 to 1976. Read more
15 Sep 1915: Fawn M. Brodie, American historian and author (died 1981) Fawn McKay Brodie was an American biographer and one of the first female professors of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is best known for Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974), a work of psychobiography, and No Man Knows My History (1945), an early biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. Read more
15 Sep 1914: Creighton Abrams, American general (died 1974) Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. was a United States Army general who commanded military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. He was then Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1972 until his death in 1974. Read more
15 Sep 1914: Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentinian journalist and author (died 1999) Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges. He is the author of the Fantastique novel The Invention of Morel. Read more
15 Sep 1914: Orhan Kemal, Turkish author (died 1970) Orhan Kemal is the pen name of Turkish novelist Mehmet Reşit Öğütçü. He is known for his realist novels that describe the life of the poor in Turkey. Read more
15 Sep 1913: Henry Brant, Canadian-American composer and conductor (died 2008) Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques. Read more
15 Sep 1913: Bruno Hoffmann, German glass harp player (died 1991) Bruno Hoffmann was a German glass harpist. Hoffmann is widely acknowledged as the virtuoso who reanimated contemporary interest in the glass harp and glass harmonica. Read more
15 Sep 1913: John N. Mitchell, American lawyer, and politician, 67th United States Attorney General (died 1988) John Newton Mitchell was the 67th attorney general of the United States under President Richard Nixon. He also was chairman of Nixon's 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns. Prior to that, he had been a municipal bond lawyer and one of Nixon's associates. Mitchell was tried and convicted as a result of his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Read more
15 Sep 1913: Johannes Steinhoff, German general and pilot (died 1994) Johannes "Macky" Steinhoff was a Luftwaffe fighter ace during World War II, German general, and NATO official. He was one of very few Luftwaffe pilots who survived to fly operationally through the whole of the war period 1939–45 until he was severely burned during a failed take-off. Steinhoff was also one of the highest-scoring pilots with 176 victories, and one of the first to fly the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter in combat as a member of the Jagdverband 44 squadron led by Adolf Galland. Steinhoff was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, and later received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and several foreign awards including the American Legion of Merit and the French Legion of Honour. He played a role in the so-called Fighter Pilots' Revolt late in the war, when several senior air force officers confronted Hermann Göring. Read more
15 Sep 1911: Karsten Solheim, Norwegian-American businessman, founded PING (died 2000) Karsten Solheim was a golf club designer and businessman. He founded Karsten Manufacturing, a golf club maker better known by the name of PING, and the Solheim Cup, the premier international team competition in women's golf. Read more
15 Sep 1911: Luther Terry, American physician and academic, 9th Surgeon General of the United States (died 1985) Luther Leonidas Terry was an American physician and public health official. He was appointed the ninth Surgeon General of the United States from 1961 to 1965, and is best known for his warnings against the dangers and the impact of tobacco use on health. Read more
15 Sep 1910: Betty Neels, English nurse and author (died 2001) Betty Neels was an English prolific writer of over 134 romance novels, beginning in 1969 and continuing until her death. Her work is known for being particularly chaste. Read more
15 Sep 1909: C. N. Annadurai, Indian educator and politician, 7th Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu (died 1969) Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai, also known as Perarignar Anna, was an Indian politician who was the founder and first general-secretary of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). He served as the fourth and last chief minister of Madras State from 1967 until 1969, and then as the first chief minister of Tamil Nadu for 20 days before his death in office. He was the first member of a Dravidian party to hold either post. Read more
15 Sep 1909: Phil Arnold, American actor (died 1968) Phil Arnold was an American screen, stage, television, and vaudeville actor and dancer. He appeared in approximately 150 films and television shows between 1939 and 1968. Read more
15 Sep 1908: Kid Sheik, American trumpet player (died 1996) George Colar, actually Cola but he used Colar, better known as Kid Sheik or Kid Sheik Cola, was a New Orleans jazz trumpeter and band leader. He is most associated with Dixieland jazz and was a long-term performer with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. His nickname "Kid Sheik" came from his chic style of clothing as he wore sheik suites as a young man. Read more
15 Sep 1908: Penny Singleton, American actress and singer (died 2003) Penny Singleton was an American actress and labor leader. During her six decade career on stage, screen, radio and television, Singleton appeared as the comic-strip heroine Blondie Bumstead in a series of 28 motion pictures from 1938 until 1950 and the popular Blondie radio program from 1939 until 1950. Singleton also provided the voice of Jane Jetson in the animated series The Jetsons from 1962 to 1963. Read more
15 Sep 1907: Gunnar Ekelöf, Swedish poet and author (died 1968) Bengt Gunnar Ekelöf was a Swedish poet and writer. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1958 and was awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy by Uppsala University in 1958. He won a number of prizes for his poetry. Read more
15 Sep 1907: Fay Wray, Canadian-American actress (died 2004) Vina Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress best known for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film King Kong. Through an acting career that spanned nearly six decades, Wray attained international recognition as an actress in horror films. She has been dubbed the first "scream queen". Read more
15 Sep 1906: Jacques Becker, French actor, director, and screenwriter (died 1960) Jacques Becker was a French film director and screenwriter. His films, made during the 1940s and 1950s, encompassed a wide variety of genres, and they were admired by some of the filmmakers who led the French New Wave movement. Read more
15 Sep 1906: Walter E. Rollins, American songwriter (died 1973) Walter Engle "Jack" Rollins was an American musician born in Scottdale, Pennsylvania and raised in Keyser, West Virginia. Read more
15 Sep 1904: Umberto II of Italy (died 1983) Umberto II was the last king of Italy. Umberto's reign lasted for 34 days, from 9 May 1946 until his formal deposition on 12 June 1946, although he had been the de facto head of state since 1944. Due to his short reign, he was nicknamed the May King. Read more
15 Sep 1904: Sheilah Graham Westbrook, English-American actress, journalist, and author (died 1988) Sheilah Graham was a British-born, internationally syndicated American gossip columnist during Hollywood's "Golden Age". In her youth, she had been a showgirl and a freelance writer for Fleet Street in London. These early experiences would converge in her career in Hollywood, which spanned nearly four decades, as a successful columnist and author. Read more
15 Sep 1903: Roy Acuff, American singer-songwriter and fiddler (died 1992) Roy Claxton Acuff was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the "King of Country Music", Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful. In 1952, Hank Williams told Ralph Gleason, "He's the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn't worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God." Read more
15 Sep 1901: Donald Bailey, English engineer, designed Bailey bridge (died 1985) Sir Donald Coleman Bailey, OBE was an English civil engineer who invented the Bailey bridge. Field Marshal Montgomery is recorded as saying that "without the Bailey bridge, we should not have won the war." Read more
15 Sep 1898: J. Slauerhoff, Dutch poet and author (died 1936) Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers. Read more
15 Sep 1897: Merle Curti, American historian and author (died 1997) Merle Eugene Curti was an American progressive historian who influenced peace studies, intellectual history and social history, including by using cliometrics. At Columbia University and for decades at the University of Wisconsin, Curti directed 86 finished Ph.D. dissertations and had a wide range of correspondents. He was known for his commitment to democracy, as well as the Turnerian thesis that social and economic forces shape American life, thought and character. Read more
15 Sep 1895: Magda Lupescu, mistress and later wife of King Carol II of Romania (died 1977) Magda Lupescu, known as Princess Elena of Romania after 1947, was the mistress and later wife of King Carol II of Romania. Read more
15 Sep 1894: Chic Harley, American football player (died 1974) Charles Wesley "Chic" Harley was an American football player and athlete, often credited with bringing Ohio State University's football program to national attention. Harley was Ohio State's first consensus first-team All-American selection and first three-time All-America selection. In 1951, he became a charter inductee in the College Football Hall of Fame. Read more
15 Sep 1894: Oskar Klein, Swedish physicist and academic (died 1977) Oskar Benjamin Klein was a Swedish theoretical physicist now best remembered for the Klein-Gordon equation of relativistic quantum mechanics, the Kaluza-Klein theory, a unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism, and the Klein–Nishina cross section in quantum electrodynamics. Read more
15 Sep 1894: Jean Renoir, French actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (died 1979) Jean Renoir was a French filmmaker, actor, producer and author. His La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. In 2002, he was ranked fourth on the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of the greatest directors. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir. With Claude, he made The River (1951), the first color film shot in India. A lifelong lover of theater, Renoir turned to the stage for The Golden Coach (1952) and French Cancan (1955). He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur; the critic Penelope Gilliatt said a Renoir shot could be identified "in a thousand miles of film." Read more
15 Sep 1892: Silpa Bhirasri, Italian sculptor and educator (died 1962) Silpa Bhirasri, born Corrado Feroci, was an Italian-born Thai sculptor. He is considered the father of modern art in Thailand and was instrumental in the founding of today's Silpakorn University. Read more
15 Sep 1890: Ernest Bullock, English organist and composer (died 1979) Sir Ernest Bullock was an English organist, composer, and teacher. He was organist of Exeter Cathedral from 1917 to 1928 and of Westminster Abbey from 1928 to 1941. In the latter post he was jointly responsible for the music at the coronation of George VI in 1937. Read more
15 Sep 1890: Sonja Branting-Westerståhl, Swedish lawyer (died 1981) Sonja Branting-Westerståhl was a Swedish lawyer and politician. She was one of the first female lawyers in Sweden and specialised in matrimonial law. A social democrat, she was active in raising awareness of the rise of far-right politics in 1930s and 1940s. During the Spanish Civil War, she travelled to France and Africa and inspected refugee camps, and campaigned on against the suffering she saw. In 1948, she served in the lower house of the Riksdag, the Swedish Parliament, for a short period. Read more
15 Sep 1890: Agatha Christie, English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright (died 1976) Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan, Lady Mallowan, usually known by her first married name, Agatha Christie, was an English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence, and Miss Marple. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers, particularly in the mystery genre. Read more
15 Sep 1890: Frank Martin, Swiss-Dutch pianist and composer (died 1974) Frank Théodore Martin was a Swiss composer who spent much of his life in the Netherlands. Read more
15 Sep 1889: Robert Benchley, American humorist, newspaper columnist, and actor (died 1945) Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist, newspaper columnist and actor. From his beginnings at The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry. Read more
15 Sep 1889: Claude McKay, Jamaican-American poet and author (died 1948) Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Read more
15 Sep 1888: Antonio Ascari, Italian race car driver (died 1925) Antonio Ascari was an Italian Grand Prix motor racing champion. He won four Grands Prix before his premature death at the 1925 French Grand Prix. He was the father of two-time World Champion Alberto Ascari. Read more
15 Sep 1887: Carlos Dávila, Chilean journalist and politician, President of Chile (died 1955) Carlos Gregorio Dávila Espinoza was a Chilean political figure, journalist, chairman of the Government Junta of Chile in 1932, and secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) from 1954 until his death in 1955. Read more
15 Sep 1886: Paul Lévy, French mathematician and theorist (died 1971) Paul Pierre Lévy was a French mathematician who was active especially in probability theory, introducing fundamental concepts such as local time, stable distributions and characteristic functions. Lévy processes, Lévy flights, Lévy measures, Lévy's constant, the Lévy distribution, the Lévy area, the Lévy arcsine law, and the fractal Lévy C curve are named after him. Read more
15 Sep 1883: Esteban Terradas i Illa, Spanish mathematician and engineer (died 1950) Esteban Terrades i Illa also known as Esteve Terradas, was a Spanish mathematician, scientist and engineer. He researched and taught widely in the fields of mathematics and the physical sciences, working not only in his native Catalonia, but also in the rest of Spain and in South America. He was also active as a consultant in the Spanish aeronautics, electric power, telephone and railway industries. Read more
15 Sep 1881: Ettore Bugatti, Italian-French businessman, founded Bugatti (died 1947) Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti was an Italian-French automobile designer and manufacturer. He received French citizenship in 1946 and is remembered as the founder and proprietor of the automobile manufacturing company Automobiles E. Bugatti, which he founded in 1909 in the then German town of Molsheim in the Alsace region of what is now France. Bugatti died in Paris and is buried in Dorlisheim, France. Read more
15 Sep 1879: Joseph Lyons, Australian educator and politician, 10th Prime Minister of Australia (died 1939) Joseph Aloysius Lyons was the tenth prime minister of Australia, serving from 1932 until his death in 1939. He held office as the inaugural leader of the United Australia Party (UAP), having previously led the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) before the Australian Labor Party split of 1931. He served as the 26th premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928. Read more
15 Sep 1877: Jakob Ehrlich, Czech-Austrian politician (died 1938) Jakob Ehrlich was an early Zionist and leader of the Jewish Community in Vienna, Austria. Ehrlich represented the city's 180,000 Jewish citizens in the city government before World War II, and was among those deported in the "Prominententransport" to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, soon after the German army entered Vienna in March 1938. He died in Dachau a few weeks later, from beatings. His wife, Irma Hutter Ehrlich emigrated to England, then the USA with their son where she was active in the rescue of Jewish children from Europe, working with WIZO and Hadassah. Read more
15 Sep 1877: Yente Serdatzky, Lithuanian-American author and playwright (died 1962) Yente Serdatzky was a Russian-born American Yiddish-language writer of short fiction and plays, active in New York City. Read more
15 Sep 1876: Bruno Walter, German-American pianist, composer, and conductor (died 1962) Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist, and composer. Born in Berlin, he left Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, conducting the premieres of his Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde. He held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others. He is known for making recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century. Read more
15 Sep 1876: Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengali novelist (died 1938) Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay was a Bengali novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century. He generally wrote about the lives of Bengali family and society in cities and villages. However, his keen powers of observation, great sympathy for fellow human beings, a deep understanding of human psychology, an easy and natural writing style, and freedom from political biases and social prejudices enable his writing to transcend barriers and appeal to all Indians. He remains the most popular, translated, and adapted Indian author of all time. Read more
15 Sep 1867: Vladimir May-Mayevsky, Russian general (died 1920) Vladimir Zenonovich May-Mayevsky KCMG was a Russian military leader who was a general in the Imperial Russian Army and one of the leaders of the counterrevolutionary White movement during the Russian Civil War. Read more
15 Sep 1864: Prince Sigismund of Prussia (died 1866) Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901. She and her prince consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, became the ancestors of many members of European royalty. Read more
15 Sep 1863: Horatio Parker, American organist, composer, and educator (died 1919) Horatio William Parker was an American composer, organist and teacher. He was a central figure in musical life in New Haven, Connecticut in the late 19th century, and is best remembered as the undergraduate teacher of Charles Ives while the composer attended Yale University. Read more
15 Sep 1861: M. Visvesvaraya, Indian engineer, scholar, and Bharat Ratna Laureate, Diwan of the Mysore Kingdom (died 1962) Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, also referred to by his initials, MV, was an Indian civil engineer, administrator, and statesman, who served as the 19th Dewan of Mysore from 1912 to 1918. Read more
15 Sep 1858: Charles de Foucauld, French priest and martyr (died 1916) Charles de Foucauld, born as Charles Eugène, vicomte de Foucauld de Pontbriand, in religion Charles of Jesus, was a French monk, Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg people in the Sahara in Algeria. He was also an explorer, geographer, ethnographer. Before joining the Trappists as a monk, he was a soldier in the 2nd Hussar Regiment. He was murdered by Bedouin bandits in 1916. His inspiration and writings led to the founding of a number of religious congregations inspired by his example. He was canonized in 2022. Read more
15 Sep 1858: Jenő Hubay, Hungarian violinist, composer, and educator (died 1937) Jenő Hubay de Szalatnya, also known by his German name Eugen Huber, was a Hungarian violinist, composer and music teacher. Read more
15 Sep 1857: William Howard Taft, American lawyer, jurist, and politician, 27th President of the United States (died 1930) William Howard Taft was the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and the tenth chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930. He is the only person to have held both offices. Read more
15 Sep 1857: Anna Winlock, American astronomer and academic (died 1904) Anna Winlock (1857–1904) was an American astronomer and human computer, one of the first members of female computer group known as "the Harvard Computers." She made the most complete catalog of stars near the north and south poles of her era. She is also remembered for her calculations and studies of asteroids. In particular, she did calculations on 433 Eros and 475 Ocllo. Read more
15 Sep 1852: Edward Bouchet, American physicist and educator (died 1918) Edward Alexander Bouchet was an American physicist and educator. He was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in any subject from an American university, completing his dissertation in physics at Yale University in 1876. Bouchet was also among the first 20 Americans to receive a Ph.D. in physics and was the sixth to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Yale. After graduation, he became a physics and chemistry teacher and held various posts throughout his career. The Bouchet Graduate Honor Society was co-founded by Yale University and Howard University on September 15, 2005, in commemoration of Bouchet's birthday. Read more
15 Sep 1852: Jan Ernst Matzeliger, Surinamese-American inventor (died 1889) Jan Ernst Matzeliger was a Surinamese-American inventor whose automated lasting machine brought significant change to the manufacturing of shoes. The Consolidated Lasting Machine Company was founded to make his shoe-making devices. Read more
15 Sep 1846: George Franklin Grant, African-American educator, dentist, and inventor (died 1910) George Franklin Grant was the first African-American professor at Harvard. He was also a Boston dentist, and an inventor of an early composite golf tee made from wood and natural rubber tubing. Read more
15 Sep 1830: Porfirio Díaz, Mexican general and politician, 29th President of Mexico (died 1915) José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, commonly known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican army general and politician who was the president of Mexico from 1876 until his overthrow in 1911. Seizing power in a military coup, he served on three occasions, a total of over thirty years, the longest of any Mexican ruler. This period is known as the Porfiriato and has been called a de facto dictatorship. Read more
15 Sep 1828: Alexander Butlerov, Russian chemist and academic (died 1886) Alexander Mikhaylovich Butlerov was a Russian chemist, one of the principal creators of the theory of chemical structure (1857–1861), the first to incorporate double bonds into structural formulas, the discoverer of hexamine (1859), the discoverer of formaldehyde (1859) and the discoverer of the formose reaction (1861). He first proposed the idea of possible tetrahedral arrangement of valence bonds in carbon compounds in 1862. Read more
15 Sep 1819: Cyprien Tanguay, Canadian priest and historian (died 1902) Cyprien Tanguay was a French Canadian priest and historian. Read more
15 Sep 1815: Halfdan Kjerulf, Norwegian journalist and composer (died 1868) Halfdan Kjerulf was a Norwegian composer. Read more

Notable Deaths on 15 September

15 Sep 2024: Tito Jackson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1953) Tariano Adaryll "Tito" Jackson was an American musician, singer and songwriter. He was a founding member of the Jackson 5, a group who rose to fame in the late 1960s and 1970s with the Motown label and had continued success on the Epic label in the late 1970s and 1980s. Read more
15 Sep 2024: Elias Khoury, Lebanese intellectual, playwright and novelist (born 1948) Elias Khoury was a Lebanese novelist and advocate of the Palestinian cause. His novels and literary criticism have been translated into several languages. In 2000, he won the Prize of Palestine for his book Gate of the Sun, and he won the Al Owais Award for fiction writing in 2007. Khoury also wrote three plays and two screenplays. Read more
15 Sep 2023: Fernando Botero, Colombian painter and sculptor (born 1932) Fernando Botero Angulo was a Colombian painter and sculptor. His signature style, also known as "Boterismo", depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volume, which can represent political criticism or humor, depending on the piece. He was considered the most recognized and quoted artist from Latin America in his lifetime, and his art can be found in highly visible places around the world, such as Park Avenue in New York City and the Champs-Élysées in Paris, at different times. Read more
15 Sep 2021: Lou Angotti, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (born 1938) Louis Frederick Angotti was a Canadian professional ice hockey player and coach who played ten seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL). He played for the New York Rangers, Chicago Black Hawks, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and St. Louis Blues from 1964 to 1974. Read more
15 Sep 2019: Ric Ocasek, American musician (born 1944) Richard Theodore Otcasek, known as Ric Ocasek, was an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the primary lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, songwriter, and frontman for the American new wave band the Cars. In addition to his work with the Cars, Ocasek recorded seven solo studio albums. Ocasek's 1986 single, "Emotion in Motion", was a top 20 hit in the United States. Read more
15 Sep 2018: Helen Clare, British singer (born 1916) Helen Clare was a British singer who was well known in the 1930s and 1940s through her work in variety, radio, television and recording. Clare worked extensively in light entertainment, appearing on BBC Radio and recording with British dance bands. Her distinctive soprano voice saw her working with some of the biggest names of the era, including bandleaders Jack Jackson and Henry Hall. She was one of the last surviving professional singers who had been active in the 1930s. Read more
15 Sep 2017: Harry Dean Stanton, American actor (born 1926) Harry Dean Stanton was an American actor and musician. In a career that spanned more than six decades, Stanton played supporting roles in films including Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Repo Man (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Dream A Little Dream (1989), Wild at Heart (1990), The Straight Story (1999), The Green Mile (1999), The Man Who Cried (2000), Alpha Dog (2006), Inland Empire (2006), Rango (2011), The Avengers (2012), and Seven Psychopaths (2012). He had rare lead roles in Paris, Texas (1984) and Lucky (2017). Read more
15 Sep 2015: Harry J. Lipkin, Israeli physicist and academic (born 1921) Harry Jeannot Lipkin, also known as Zvi Lipkin, was an Israeli theoretical physicist specializing in nuclear physics and elementary particle physics. He is a recipient of the prestigious Wigner Medal. Read more
15 Sep 2015: Meir Pa'il, Israeli commander, historian, and politician (born 1926) Meir Pa'il was an Israeli politician, military historian and a former colonel in the Israel Defense Forces. Read more
15 Sep 2015: Bernard Van de Kerckhove, Belgian cyclist (born 1941) Bernard Van de Kerckhove was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer from 1962 to 1971. The highlights of his career were stage win in the 1964 Tour de France, which resulted in him wearing the yellow jersey for two stages. Then again in the 1965 Tour de France he won stage two and wore the jersey for one day. He would reclaim the jersey in this Tour, and wear it for two more days at the beginning of the 2nd week. Read more
15 Sep 2014: John Anderson Jr., American lawyer and politician, 36th Governor of Kansas (born 1917) John Anderson Jr. was an American politician who served as the 36th governor of Kansas, from 1961 until 1965. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the 33rd attorney general of Kansas from 1956 until 1961. Read more
15 Sep 2014: Eugene I. Gordon, American physicist and engineer (born 1930) Eugene Irving Gordon was an American physicist. He was Director of the Lightwave Devices Laboratory of Bell Labs. Read more
15 Sep 2014: Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia (born 1922) Nicholas Romanovich Romanov was a claimant to the headship of the House of Romanov and president of the Romanov Family Association. Although undoubtedly a descendant of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, his claimed titles and official membership in the former Imperial House were disputed by those who maintained that his parents' marriage violated the laws of the Russian Empire. Read more
15 Sep 2014: Jürg Schubiger, Swiss psychotherapist and author (born 1936) Jürg Schubiger was a Swiss psychotherapist and writer of children's books. He won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1996 for Als die Welt noch jung war. Read more
15 Sep 2014: Wayne Tefs, Canadian anthologist, author, and critic (born 1947) Wayne Tefs was a Canadian novelist, writer, editor, critic, and anthologist. Read more
15 Sep 2013: Habib Munzir Al-Musawa, Indonesian cleric and scholar (born 1973) Habib Munzir bin Fuad Al-Musawa was an Indonesian Islamic cleric, teacher, da'i and founder of the Majelis Rasulullah religious organization. Read more
15 Sep 2013: Jerry G. Bishop, American radio and television host (born 1936) Jerry G. Bishop was an American radio and television personality who is known for being Chicago's original "Svengoolie", and for his award-winning twelve-year stint on Sun-Up San Diego. Read more
15 Sep 2013: Gerard Cafesjian, American businessman and philanthropist (born 1925) Gerard Leon Cafesjian was a businessman and philanthropist who founded the Cafesjian Family Foundation (CFF), the Cafesjian Museum Foundation (CMF) and the Cafesjian Center for the Arts. Read more
15 Sep 2013: Jackie Lomax, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1944) John Richard Lomax was an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. He is best known for his association with George Harrison, who produced Lomax's recordings for the Beatles' Apple record label in the late 1960s. Read more
15 Sep 2012: Tibor Antalpéter, Hungarian volleyball player and diplomat, Ambassador of Hungary to the United Kingdom (born 1930) Tibor Antalpéter was a Hungarian volleyball player who played for Csepel SC and the Hungarian national team. He served as Hungarian Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1995. Read more
15 Sep 2012: Nevin Spence, Northern Irish rugby player (born 1990) Nevin Spence was a Northern Irish rugby union player for Ulster in the Pro12. He played as a centre, but could also play wing. He was educated firstly at Dromore High School, where he was introduced to rugby, and then at Wallace High School. He played his club rugby with Ballynahinch. He was also a capable footballer, playing for the Northern Ireland U-16's. Read more
15 Sep 2012: Hajra Masroor, Pakistani writer (born 1930) Hajra Masroor was a Pakistani writer who established herself with her short fiction stories, known as afsana in Urdu literature. Her elder sister, Khadija Mastoor, was also an accomplished short-story writer and novelist. Read more
15 Sep 2011: Frances Bay, Canadian-American actress (born 1919) Frances Evelyn Bay was a Canadian and American character actress and comedian. In a career that spanned 80 years, she acted in a variety of roles both in film and television. Bay was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2008. Read more
15 Sep 2010: Arrow, Caribbean singer-songwriter (born 1949) Alphonsus Celestine Edmund Cassell, known mononymously as Arrow, was a Montserratian calypso and soca musician, regarded as the first superstar of soca from Montserrat. Internationally, his biggest hit song was "Hot Hot Hot" (1982), known from the original by Arrow and numerous later versions by other musicians. Read more
15 Sep 2009: Troy Kennedy Martin, Scottish-English screenwriter (born 1932) Troy Kennedy Martin was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter. He created the long-running BBC TV police series Z-Cars (1962–1978), and the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama Edge of Darkness. He also wrote the screenplay for the original version of The Italian Job (1969). His last film was Ferrari (2023), which was posthumously released. Read more
15 Sep 2008: Richard Wright, English singer-songwriter and keyboard player (born 1943) Richard William Wright was an English keyboardist, singer, and songwriter who co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd. He appeared on almost every Pink Floyd album and performed on all of their tours. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Pink Floyd. Read more
15 Sep 2007: Colin McRae, Scottish race car driver (born 1968) Colin Steele McRae was a Scottish rally driver. He was the 1991 and 1992 British Rally Champion, and in 1995 became the first Scottish driver to win the World Rally Championship Drivers' title. Read more
15 Sep 2007: Jeremy Moore, English general (born 1928) Major-General Sir John Jeremy Moore, was a British senior Royal Marines officer who served as the commander of the British land forces during the Falklands War in 1982. Moore received the surrender of the Argentine forces on the islands. Read more
15 Sep 2007: Aldemaro Romero, Venezuelan pianist, composer, and conductor (born 1928) Aldemaro Romero was a Venezuelan pianist, composer, arranger and orchestral conductor. He was born in Valencia, Carabobo State. Read more
15 Sep 2007: Brett Somers, Canadian-American actress and singer (born 1924) Brett Somers was a Canadian-American game-show personality, actress, and singer. Somers was best known as a panelist on the 1970s game show Match Game and for her recurring role as Blanche Madison opposite her real-life husband, actor Jack Klugman, on ABC's The Odd Couple. Read more
15 Sep 2006: Raymond Baxter, English television host and author (born 1922) Raymond Frederic Baxter OBE was an English television presenter, commentator and writer. He is best known for being the first presenter of the BBC Television science programme Tomorrow's World, continuing for 12 years, from 1965 to 1977. He also provided radio commentary at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the funerals of King George VI, Winston Churchill and Lord Mountbatten of Burma, and the first flight of Concorde. Read more
15 Sep 2006: Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist and author (born 1929) Oriana Fallaci was an Italian journalist and author. As a teenager she joined the Italian resistance movement during World War II, and later had a long and successful journalistic career. Fallaci became famous worldwide for her coverage of war and revolution, and her "long, aggressive and revealing interviews" with many world leaders during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. She received various prizes for her work as a journalist and later wrote a number of best selling books. Read more
15 Sep 2006: Pablo Santos, Mexican-American actor (born 1987) Pablo Santos was a Mexican actor. Read more
15 Sep 2005: Guy Green, English director and cinematographer (born 1913) Guy Mervin Charles Green OBE BSC was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. In 1948, he won an Oscar as cinematographer for the film Great Expectations. In 2002, Green was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the BAFTA, and, in 2004, he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his lifetime contributions to British cinema. Read more
15 Sep 2005: Sidney Luft, American manager and producer (born 1915) Michael Sidney Luft was an American producer and businessman, the second husband of actress Lynn Bari, and later the third husband of actress and singer Judy Garland. Read more
15 Sep 2004: Johnny Ramone, American guitarist and songwriter (born 1948) John William Cummings, better known by his stage name Johnny Ramone, was an American musician who was the guitarist and a founding member of the Ramones, a band that helped pioneer the punk movement. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Until the band's disbandment in 1996, Johnny, along with the lead vocalist Joey Ramone, were the only two original members who stayed since its inception, and appeared on every one of the band’s albums. Read more
15 Sep 2004: Walter Stewart, Canadian journalist and author (born 1931) Walter Douglas Stewart was an outspoken Canadian writer, editor and journalism educator, a veteran of newspapers and magazines and author of more than twenty books, several of them bestsellers. The Globe and Mail reported news of his death with the headline: "He was Canada's conscience." Read more
15 Sep 2003: Garner Ted Armstrong, American evangelist and author (born 1930) Garner Ted Armstrong was an American evangelist and the son of Herbert W. Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God, at the time a Sabbatarian organization that taught observance of seventh-day Sabbath and annual Sabbath days based on Leviticus 23. Read more
15 Sep 2001: June Salter, Australian actress and author (born 1932) June Marie Salter was an Australian actress and author prominent in theatre and television. She is best known for her character roles, in particular as schoolteacher Elizabeth McKenzie in the soap opera The Restless Years and for her regular guest appearances in A Country Practice as Matron Hilda Arrowsmith. Read more
15 Sep 1998: Louis Rasminsky, Canadian economist, 3rd Governor of the Bank of Canada (born 1908) Louis Rasminsky was a Canadian economist who served as the third governor of the Bank of Canada from 1961 to 1973, succeeding James Coyne. He was succeeded by Gerald Bouey. Read more
15 Sep 1997: Bulldog Brower, American wrestler (born 1933) Richard T. Gland, better known by his ring name Dick "Bulldog" Brower, was an American professional wrestler. Read more
15 Sep 1995: Harry Calder, South African cricketer (born 1901) Harry Lawton Calder was named as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1918, then a 17 year old schoolboy. Calder is the youngest person to receive this accolade, one of the game's top honours, and the only Wisden Cricketer of the Year that never played first-class cricket. Read more
15 Sep 1995: Gunnar Nordahl, Swedish footballer and manager (born 1921) Nils Gunnar Nordahl was a Swedish professional footballer. A highly prolific, powerful, and physically strong striker, with an eye for goal, he is best known for his spell at AC Milan from 1949 to 1956, in which he won the scudetto twice, and also the title of pluricapocannoniere, with an unprecedented five top scorer (capocannonieri) awards, more than any other player in the history of the Italian championship. Read more
15 Sep 1993: Pino Puglisi, Italian priest and martyr (born 1937) Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who openly challenged the Sicilian Mafia controlling his Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio. The Mafia killed him on his 56th birthday. His life story has been retold in a book, Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso (2013), and portrayed in a film, Come into the Light in 2005. He was the first Mafia victim to be beatified by the Catholic Church. Read more
15 Sep 1991: John Hoyt, American actor (born 1904) John Hoyt was an American actor. He began his acting career on Broadway, later appearing in numerous films and television series. Read more
15 Sep 1991: Warner Troyer, Canadian journalist and author (born 1932) Warner Troyer was a Canadian broadcast journalist and writer. Read more
15 Sep 1989: Jan DeGaetani, American soprano (born 1933) Jan (Janice) DeGaetani was an American mezzo-soprano known for her performances of contemporary classical vocal compositions. Read more
15 Sep 1989: Olga Erteszek, Polish-American fashion designer (born 1916) Olga Erteszek was a Polish-American undergarment designer and lingerie company owner. She was famous for her nightgowns with full, flowing skirt width and generous sweep. Read more
15 Sep 1989: Robert Penn Warren, American novelist, poet, and literary critic (born 1905) Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. Yale awarded Warren an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1973. Read more
15 Sep 1985: Cootie Williams, American trumpet player (born 1910) Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter. Read more
15 Sep 1983: Prince Far I, Jamaican DJ and producer (born 1944) Prince Far I was a Jamaican reggae deejay and producer, and a Rastafarian. He was known for his gruff voice and critical assessment of the Jamaican government. His track "Heavy Manners" used lyrics about government measures initiated at the time against violent crime. Read more
15 Sep 1981: Rafael Méndez, Mexican trumpet player and composer (born 1906) Rafael Méndez was a Mexican virtuoso solo trumpeter. He is known as the "Heifetz of the Trumpet." Read more
15 Sep 1980: Bill Evans, American pianist and composer (born 1929) William John Evans was an American jazz pianist and composer who worked primarily as the leader of his trio. His extensive use of impressionist harmony, block chords, innovative chord voicings, and trademark rhythmically independent "singing" melodic lines continue to influence jazz pianists today. Read more
15 Sep 1978: Robert Cliche, Canadian lawyer, judge, and politician (born 1921) Robert Cliche was a Canadian lawyer, politician and judge. Read more
15 Sep 1978: Edmund Crispin, English writer and composer (born 1921) Robert Bruce Montgomery was an English crime writer and composer. Known as a composer as Bruce Montgomery, he published his detective novels under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin. Read more
15 Sep 1978: Willy Messerschmitt, German engineer and academic, designed the Messerschmitt Bf 109 (born 1898) Wilhelm Emil "Willy" Messerschmitt was a German aircraft designer and manufacturer who designed a number of prominent aircraft for the Luftwaffe and civil aviation. Read more
15 Sep 1975: Franco Bordoni, Italian race car driver and pilot (born 1913) Franco Bordoni-Bisleri was an Italian aviator and racing car driver. He is one of the top-scoring aces of the Regia Aeronautica, with 19 air victories. His nickname was "Robur" and was painted on most of his aircraft and racing cars. Read more
15 Sep 1973: Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden (born 1882) Gustaf VI Adolf was King of Sweden from 29 October 1950 until his death in 1973. He was the eldest son of Gustaf V and his wife, Victoria of Baden. Before Gustaf Adolf acceded to the throne, he was crown prince for nearly 43 years during his father's reign. As king, and shortly before his death, he gave his approval to constitutional changes which removed the Swedish monarchy's last political powers. He was a lifelong amateur archeologist particularly interested in Ancient Italian cultures. Read more
15 Sep 1972: Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Turkish composer and educator (born 1906) Ulvi Cemal Erkin was a member of the pioneer group of symphonic composers in Turkey, born in the period 1904–1910, who later came to be called The Turkish Five. These composers, all trained in Europe took on the responsibility of creating a new Turkish music style, both universal and also local at the same time. They utilized Western musical forms, i.e. symphony, concerto and opera, and brought in melodic, harmonic, modal and rhythmic elements of Turkish folk music, also known as Anatolian Village Music, and Ottoman Court music, popularly known as Turkish Art Music. Read more
15 Sep 1972: Baki Süha Ediboğlu, Turkish poet and author (born 1915) Baki Süha Ediboğlu was a Turkish poet and author. Read more
15 Sep 1972: Geoffrey Fisher, English archbishop and academic (born 1887) Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Baron Fisher of Lambeth, was an English Anglican priest, and 99th Archbishop of Canterbury, serving from 1945 to 1961. Read more
15 Sep 1965: Steve Brown, American bassist (born 1890) Theodore "Steve" Brown was a jazz musician best known for his work on string bass. Like many New Orleans bassists, he played both string bass and tuba professionally. Read more
15 Sep 1952: Hugo Raudsepp, Estonian author and playwright (born 1883) Hugo Raudsepp was an influential and prolific Estonian playwright and politician. In 1951 he was deported to the Irkutsk region by the Soviet authorities, where he died. Read more
15 Sep 1945: André Tardieu, French journalist and politician, 97th Prime Minister of France (born 1876) André Pierre Gabriel Amédée Tardieu was three times Prime Minister of France and a dominant figure of French political life in 1929–1932. He was a moderate conservative with a strong intellectual reputation, but became a weak prime minister at the start of the worldwide Great Depression. Read more
15 Sep 1945: Anton Webern, Austrian composer and conductor (born 1883) Anton Webern was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist whose modernist music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques. His approach was typically rigorous, inspired by his studies of the Franco-Flemish School under Guido Adler and by Arnold Schoenberg's emphasis on structure in teaching composition from the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the First Viennese School, and Johannes Brahms. Webern, Schoenberg, and their colleague Alban Berg were at the core of what became known as the Second Viennese School. Read more
15 Sep 1945: Linnie Marsh Wolfe, American librarian and author (born 1881) Linnie Marsh Wolfe was an American librarian. She won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for her 1945 biography of John Muir titled Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir. Read more
15 Sep 1940: William B. Bankhead, American lawyer and politician, 47th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (born 1874) William Brockman Bankhead was an American politician who served as the 42nd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1936 to 1940, representing Alabama's 10th and later 7th congressional districts as a Democrat from 1917 to 1940. Bankhead was a strong liberal and a prominent supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal of pro-labor union legislation, thus clashing with most other Southern Democrats in Congress at the time. Bankhead described himself as proud to be a politician, by which he meant that he did not neglect matters that concerned his district or reelection. He was the father of actress Tallulah Bankhead. Read more
15 Sep 1938: Thomas Wolfe, American novelist (born 1900) Thomas Clayton Wolfe was an American novelist and short story writer. He is known largely for his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), and for the short fiction that appeared during the last years of his life. He was one of the pioneers of autobiographical fiction, and along with William Faulkner, he is considered one of the most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon. He has been dubbed "North Carolina's most famous writer." Read more
15 Sep 1930: Milton Sills, American actor and screenwriter (born 1882) Milton George Gustavus Sills was an American stage and film actor of the early twentieth century. Read more
15 Sep 1926: Rudolf Christoph Eucken, German philosopher and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1846) Rudolf Christoph Eucken was a German philosopher. He received the 1908 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his earnest search for truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength in presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life", after he had been nominated by a member of the Swedish Academy. Read more
15 Sep 1921: Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, Austrian-Russian general (born 1886) Baron Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, often referred to as Roman von Ungern-Sternberg or Baron Ungern, was a Russian military leader in the Russian Civil War and then an independent warlord who intervened in Mongolia against China. Read more
15 Sep 1915: Ernest Gagnon, Canadian organist and composer (born 1834) Ernest Gagnon was a Canadian folklorist, composer, and organist. He is best known for compiling a large amount of French Canadian folk music which he published as Chansons populaires du Canada in 1865–1867. He was greatly admired for his virtuoso performances on the organ and was also considered an expert at plainsong accompaniment. Read more
15 Sep 1907: William Wales, English-American inventor (born c. 1838) William Wales was an English-American optical instrument inventor specializing in the manufacture of objectives for use in microscopes. Wales's objective inventions were used frequently in contemporary microscopes and many examples survive in private and museum collections today. Read more
15 Sep 1893: Thomas Hawksley, English engineer (born 1807) Thomas Hawksley was an English civil engineer of the 19th century, particularly associated with early water supply and coal gas engineering projects. Hawksley was, with John Frederick Bateman, the leading British water engineer of the nineteenth century and was personally responsible for upwards of 150 water-supply schemes, in the British Isles and overseas. Read more
15 Sep 1883: Joseph Plateau, Belgian physicist and academic (born 1801) Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistiscope. Read more
15 Sep 1874: Charles-Amédée Kohler, Swiss chocolatier (born 1790) Charles-Amédée Kohler was a Swiss chocolatier and entrepreneur who founded Chocolat Kohler. He notably invented hazelnut chocolate, in his factory opened in 1830 in Lausanne. After his death the Kohler company continued in the Swiss chocolate industry. It merged in 1904 with the Peter and in 1911 with the Cailler chocolate brands; before being finally purchased by Nestlé in 1929. Read more
15 Sep 1864: John Hanning Speke, English soldier and explorer (born 1827) John Hanning Speke was an English explorer and army officer who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and, with Richard Burton, was the first European to reach Lake Victoria. Read more
15 Sep 1859: Isambard Kingdom Brunel, English architect and engineer, designed the Great Western Railway (born 1806) Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an English civil and marine engineer considered "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution", "perhaps the most eminent Victorian engineer", and one whose work "altered the lives of almost every person in Britain, and millions abroad". The first engineer of the Great Western Railway (GWR), he was responsible for the design and construction of its London–Bristol main line. His maritime career saw the construction of the largest steamships in the world at the time, the SS Great Western, SS Great Britain, and SS Great Eastern. His career was marred by continual financial and engineering setbacks. Read more
15 Sep 1852: Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern, German-Estonian philologist and academic (born 1770) Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern was a German philologist in Livonia, the first director of the library of the Imperial University of Dorpat. He coined the term Bildungsroman. Read more
15 Sep 1842: Pierre Baillot, French violinist and composer (born 1771) Pierre Marie François de Sales Baillot was a French violinist and composer born in Passy. He studied the violin under Giovanni Battista Viotti and taught at the Conservatoire de Paris together with Pierre Rode and Rodolphe Kreutzer, who wrote the Conservatoire's official violin method. He was sole author of the instructional L'Art du violon (1834). Baillot's teachings had a profound influence on technical and musical development in an age in which virtuosity was openly encouraged. He was leader of the Paris Opéra, gave solo recitals and was a notable performer of chamber music. Read more
15 Sep 1842: Francisco Morazán, Guatemalan general, lawyer, and politician, President of Central American Federation (born 1792) José Francisco Morazán Quezada was a Central American statesman, military officer, and caudillo who served as the president of the Federal Republic of Central America on three occasions between 1829 and 1839. He also served as the head of state of Honduras thrice between 1827 and 1830, the head of state of El Salvador twice in 1832 and 1839 to 1840, and the head of state of Costa Rica in 1842. Read more
15 Sep 1841: Alessandro Rolla, Italian violinist and composer (born 1757) Alessandro Rolla was an Italian viola and violin virtuoso, composer, conductor and teacher. His son, Antonio Rolla, was also a violin virtuoso and composer. Read more
15 Sep 1830: François Baillairgé, Canadian painter and sculptor (born 1759) François Baillairgé was an architect and artist with expertise in drawing, painting, carpentry, sculpture, and church decoration. Baillairgé was the first artist from Quebec City to complete his education at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, which he attended from 1779 to 1781. Read more
15 Sep 1830: William Huskisson, English financier and politician, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies (born 1770) William Huskisson was a British statesman, financier, and Member of Parliament for several constituencies, including Liverpool. Read more
15 Sep 1813: Antoine Étienne de Tousard, French general and engineer (born 1752) Antoine Étienne de Tousard was a French general and military engineer during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was also the last military engineer of the Order of Saint John. He is the brother of Louis de Tousard. Read more
15 Sep 1803: Gian Francesco Albani, Italian cardinal (born 1719) Gian Francesco Albani was a Roman Catholic Cardinal. He was a member of the Albani family. Read more

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