History of Today 29 September: Important Events, Births and Deaths

Welcome to History of Today 29 September. On this page, you can read important historical events, famous births, notable deaths and general knowledge facts related to 29 September. This information is useful for UPSC, SSC, Banking, Railway, State PSC and other competitive exams.

Last updated on 29 September 2026, 01:00 AM

Important Events on 29 September in History

29 Sep 2019: Violence and low turnout mar the 2019 Afghan presidential election. Read more
29 Sep 2016: Eleven days after the Uri attack, the Indian Army conducts "surgical strikes" against suspected militants in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Read more
29 Sep 2013: Over 42 people are killed by members of Boko Haram at the College of Agriculture in Nigeria. Read more
29 Sep 2011: The special court in India convicted all 269 accused officials for atrocity on Dalits and 17 for rape in the Vachathi case. Read more
29 Sep 2009: The 8.1 Mw Samoa earthquake results in a tsunami that kills over 189 and injures hundreds. Read more
29 Sep 2008: The stock market crashes with the Dow Jones dropping a then record 778 points after the United States House of Representatives vote on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act fails during the beginning stages of the Great Recession. Read more
29 Sep 2007: Calder Hall, the world's first commercial nuclear power station, is demolished in a controlled explosion. Read more
29 Sep 2006: A Boeing 737 and an Embraer 600 collide in mid-air, killing 154 people and triggering a Brazilian aviation crisis. Read more
29 Sep 2005: John Roberts is confirmed as Chief Justice of the United States. Read more
29 Sep 2004: The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passes within four lunar distances of Earth. Read more
29 Sep 2004: Burt Rutan's Ansari SpaceShipOne performs a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the Ansari X Prize. Read more
29 Sep 1992: Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello is impeached. Read more
29 Sep 1991: A Haitian coup d'état occurs. Read more
29 Sep 1990: Construction of the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (better known as Washington National Cathedral) is completed in Washington, D.C. Read more
29 Sep 1990: The YF-22, which would later become the F-22 Raptor, flies for the first time. Read more
29 Sep 1990: The Tampere Hall, the largest concert and congress center in the Nordic countries, is inaugurated in Tampere, Finland. Read more
29 Sep 1988: NASA launches STS-26, the first Space Shuttle mission since the Challenger disaster. Read more
29 Sep 1981: An Iranian Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft crashes into a firing range near Kahrizak, Iran, killing 80 people. Read more
29 Sep 1979: Equatorial Guinean dictator Francisco Macías Nguema is executed by soldiers from Western Sahara. Read more
29 Sep 1975: WGPR becomes the first black-owned-and-operated television station in the US. Read more
29 Sep 1972: Japan establishes diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China after breaking official ties with the Republic of China. Read more
29 Sep 1971: Oman joins the Arab League. Read more
29 Sep 1959: A Lockheed L-188 Electra crashes in Buffalo, Texas, killing 34 people. Read more
29 Sep 1957: The Kyshtym disaster is the third-worst nuclear accident ever recorded. Read more
29 Sep 1954: The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed. Read more
29 Sep 1941: During World War II, German forces, with the aid of local Ukrainian collaborators, begin the two-day Babi Yar massacre. Read more
29 Sep 1940: Two Avro Ansons collide in mid-air over New South Wales, Australia, remain locked together, then land safely. Read more
29 Sep 1932: Last day of the Battle of Boquerón between Paraguay and Bolivia during the Chaco War. Read more
29 Sep 1923: The Mandate for Palestine takes effect, creating Mandatory Palestine. Read more
29 Sep 1923: The Mandate for Syria and Lebanon takes effect. Read more
29 Sep 1923: The First American Track and Field championships for women are held. Read more
29 Sep 1920: Ukrainian War of Independence: The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic agree to a truce with the Makhnovshchina. Read more
29 Sep 1918: World War I: Bulgaria signs the Armistice of Salonica ending its participation. Read more
29 Sep 1918: World War I: The Hindenburg Line is broken by an Allied attack. Read more
29 Sep 1918: World War I: Germany's Supreme Army Command tells Kaiser Wilhelm II and Imperial Chancellor Georg Michaelis to open negotiations for an armistice to end the war. Read more
29 Sep 1911: Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire, In this war , Italy gains Libya which ends Ottoman rule in North Africa . Read more
29 Sep 1907: The cornerstone is laid at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (better known as Washington National Cathedral) in Washington, D.C. Read more
29 Sep 1885: The first practical public electric tramway in the world is opened in Blackpool, England. Read more
29 Sep 1864: The Battle of Chaffin's Farm is fought in the American Civil War. Read more
29 Sep 1864: The Treaty of Lisbon defines the boundaries between Spain and Portugal and abolishes the Couto Misto microstate. Read more
29 Sep 1855: The Philippine port of Iloilo is opened to world trade by the Spanish administration. Read more
29 Sep 1850: The papal bull Universalis Ecclesiae restores the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. Read more
29 Sep 1848: The Battle of Pákozd is a stalemate between Hungarian and Croatian forces and is the first battle of the Hungarian Revolution. Read more
29 Sep 1829: The Metropolitan Police of London, later also known as the Met, is founded. Read more

Famous Births on 29 September

29 Sep 2000: Jaden McDaniels, American basketball player Jaden McDaniels is an American professional basketball player for the Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Washington Huskies. He attended Federal Way High School in Federal Way, Washington, where he was named a McDonald's All-American and Washington Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior. McDaniels was a five-star recruit and one of the top players in the 2019 class. He is the younger brother of basketball player Jalen McDaniels. Read more
29 Sep 1999: Choi Ye-na, South Korean singer and dancer Choi Ye-na, known mononymously as Yena, is a South Korean singer and actress. She is a soloist and actress under YH Entertainment, and a former member of South Korean–Japanese girl group Iz*One, having finished fourth on Mnet's reality girl group survival show, Produce 48. Yena made her solo debut on January 17, 2022, with the release of her first EP Smiley. Read more
29 Sep 1995: Sasha Lane, American actress Sasha Bianca Lane is an American actress. She made her film debut in American Honey (2016), directed by Andrea Arnold, before portraying Hunter C-20 in the first season of the Disney+ television series Loki, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Read more
29 Sep 1994: Halsey, American singer Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, known professionally as Halsey, is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Noted for her distinctive singing voice, she has received numerous accolades, including three Billboard Music Awards, a Billboard Women in Music Award, and an American Music Award, as well as nominations for three Grammy Awards. She was on Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020. Read more
29 Sep 1994: Nicholas Galitzine, English actor Nicholas Dimitri Constantine Galitzine is an English actor. After his acting debut in The Beat Beneath My Feet (2014), he appeared in an episode of the television series Legends, and had leading roles in the 2016 teen drama films High Strung and Handsome Devil. He later starred in the supernatural horror film The Craft: Legacy (2020) and the musical film Cinderella (2021), also contributing to the latter's accompanying soundtrack. Read more
29 Sep 1993: Enxhi Seli-Zacharias, German politician Enxhi Seli-Zacharias is an Albanian-born German politician who has been a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2022. She is a deputy leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) parliamentary group in the Landtag. Read more
29 Sep 1991: Souleymane Doukara, French footballer Souleymane Doukara is a professional footballer who plays as a striker or a winger for the Mauritania national team. He is nicknamed Dudu or The Duke. Born in France, he plays for the Mauritania national team. Read more
29 Sep 1990: Jordan Schroeder, American ice hockey player Jordan John Schroeder is an American professional ice hockey player. A center, he is currently an unrestricted free agent. He most recently played for Brynäs IF of the Swedish Hockey League (SHL). Read more
29 Sep 1989: Shyima Hall, Egyptian human rights activist Shyima Hall, from South Alexandria, Egypt, is known for advocating against human trafficking by sharing her personal experiences as a child slave. At eight years old, she was sold into slavery by her parents to a rich family in Cairo. Hall was given to the family in order to repay her older sister's debt of about thirty dollars. She worked for Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef and Amal Admed Ewis-Abd El Motelib for two years among other slaves. The family moved to Irvine, California where Hall was forced to live in a small room in the family's garage and do chores for the parents and their five children. A neighbor reported their suspicions to child protective services. In 2002, immigration officers came into her captors' home and took her away. She was put into foster care and lived with three foster families until she was 18. In 2014, she and Lisa Wysocky published Hidden Girl, which detailed her childhood as a slave. She now lives in Banning, California with her boyfriend and four-year-old daughter, campaigning against human trafficking by sharing her story of captivity and rescue. Read more
29 Sep 1988: Kevin Durant, American basketball player Kevin Wayne Durant, also known by his initials KD, is an American professional basketball player for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "the Slim Reaper", he is widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players and one of the greatest scorers of all time. Durant has won two NBA championships, an NBA Most Valuable Player Award, two NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Awards, two NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Awards, four NBA scoring titles, the NBA Rookie of the Year Award, and is the only male basketball player to win four Olympic gold medals. He has been named to 12 All-NBA teams and selected 16 times as an NBA All-Star. In 2021, Durant was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. He ranks fifth among NBA career scoring leaders. Read more
29 Sep 1987: Josh Farro, American musician Joshua Neil Farro is an American musician, best known as co-founder, former lead guitarist and backing vocalist for the rock band Paramore. Since leaving Paramore in 2010, he has pursued a solo career as the lead vocalist and guitarist of his self-named band Farro. His debut solo album, Walkways, was released in 2016. Read more
29 Sep 1986: Inika McPherson, American track and field athlete Inika McPherson is an American track and field athlete specializing in the high jump. She was the 2013 US Indoor champion. Read more
29 Sep 1985: Calvin Johnson, American football player Calvin Johnson Jr. is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL) for nine seasons with the Detroit Lions. Nicknamed "Megatron" after the Transformers character of the same name, he is regarded as one of the greatest wide receivers of all time. Johnson played college football for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, winning the Fred Biletnikoff Award and Paul Warfield Trophy in 2006. He was selected by the Lions second overall in the 2007 NFL draft. Read more
29 Sep 1985: Michelle Payne, Australian jockey Michelle J. Payne is a retired Australian jockey. She won the 2015 Melbourne Cup, riding Prince of Penzance, and is the first female jockey to win the event. Read more
29 Sep 1984: Per Mertesacker, German footballer Per Mertesacker is a German football coach and former professional player who played as a centre back. Read more
29 Sep 1983: Ryan Garry, English footballer and coach Ryan Mayne Felix Garry is an English professional football coach and a former defender who is currently a first team coach for EFL Championship club Norwich City. During his playing career he featured for Arsenal and AFC Bournemouth. Read more
29 Sep 1981: Kelly McCreary, American actress Kelly J. McCreary is an American actress, best known for her role on the ABC drama series Grey's Anatomy as Dr. Maggie Pierce, the half-sister of series protagonist Meredith Grey. She joined the series as a guest at the end of the tenth season, becoming a series regular in the eleventh season. She has reprised her role on the spin-off series Station 19. Read more
29 Sep 1981: Suzanne Shaw, English actress and singer Suzanne Christine Crowshaw, known as Suzanne Shaw, is an English actress, singer and television personality, who rose to fame after winning the talent contest Popstars and subsequently being a member of the pop group Hear'Say. Read more
29 Sep 1980: Dallas Green, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist Dallas Michael John Albert Green is a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter and record producer who records under the name City and Colour. He is also known for his contributions as a singer, rhythm guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the post-hardcore band Alexisonfire. In 2005, he debuted his first full-length album, Sometimes, which achieved platinum certification in 2006. City and Colour began performing in small intimate venues between Alexisonfire tours. The name City and Colour comes from his own name: Dallas, a city, and Green, a colour. His reasoning for the name was that he felt uneasy "putting the album out under the name Dallas Green". Read more
29 Sep 1980: Zachary Levi, American actor and singer Zachary Levi Pugh is an American actor. He starred as Kipp Steadman in the sitcom Less Than Perfect (2002–2006), Chuck Bartowski in the action comedy series Chuck (2007–2012), and as the title character in the superhero film Shazam! (2019) and its 2023 sequel. Read more
29 Sep 1980: Chrissy Metz, American actress Chrissy Metz is an American actress and singer. She played Kate Pearson in the television series This Is Us (2016–2022), which earned her nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. She has also appeared in films such as Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018), Breakthrough (2019) and Faith in the Flames: The Nichole Jolly Story (2025). Read more
29 Sep 1978: Kurt Nilsen, Norwegian singer-songwriter and guitarist Kurt Erik Nilsen is a Norwegian pop/country singer. He won the first season of the Norwegian reality show Idol, which aired on TV 2 in May 2003. He then won a one-off international version of Pop Idol called World Idol on 1 January 2004, featuring winners of the various national Idol shows. Read more
29 Sep 1978: Neville Roach, English footballer Neville Roach is an English former professional footballer who played as a forward. Read more
29 Sep 1978: Nathan West, American actor, musician, and singer Nathan Luke West is an American actor, musician, and singer. Read more
29 Sep 1977: Heath Bell, American baseball player Heath Justin Bell is an American former professional baseball relief pitcher. As a closer with the San Diego Padres from 2009 to 2011, Bell was a three-time All-Star and twice won the Rolaids Relief Man Award. He was also awarded the Delivery Man of the Year Award and The Sporting News Reliever of the Year Award. Read more
29 Sep 1976: Darren Byfield, English-Jamaican footballer Darren Asherton Byfield is a professional football manager and former player who was most recently the caretaker manager of EFL League Two club Walsall. A forward, Byfield scored 110 goals in 484 appearances across all domestic competitions in his playing career. Born in England, he won six caps for Jamaica in 2003. Read more
29 Sep 1976: Kelvin Davis, English footballer Kelvin Geoffrey Davis is an English professional football manager and former footballer who is the manager of National League North club Hednesford Town. Read more
29 Sep 1975: Stephanie Klein, American author Stephanie Klein is an American weight loss strategist and consultant, blogger and the author of Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir and Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp. Read more
29 Sep 1974: Alexis Cruz, American actor Alexis Cruz is an American actor, known for his performances as Rafael in Touched by an Angel and as Skaara in Stargate and Stargate SG-1. Read more
29 Sep 1974: Dedric Ward, American football wide receiver Dedric Lamar Ward is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL) for the New York Jets, Miami Dolphins, Baltimore Ravens, New England Patriots and Dallas Cowboys. He also was an assistant coach in the NFL. He played college football at University of Northern Iowa. Read more
29 Sep 1973: Alfie Boe, English tenor and actor Alfred Giovanni Roncalli Boe is an English actor and singer who performs primarily in musical theatre. Read more
29 Sep 1972: Jörgen Jönsson, Swedish ice hockey player Ulf Peter Jörgen Jönsson is a Swedish former professional ice hockey player who last played for Färjestads BK of the Swedish Elitserien. He has represented the Team Sweden 285 times, making him the record holder for most games played in the national team. Jörgen Jönsson is also the older brother of former NHL-star Kenny Jönsson, and the two played 68 games in North America together as teammates. Jönsson was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2019. Read more
29 Sep 1972: Robert Webb, English comedian, actor and writer Robert Patrick Webb is an English comedian, actor and writer. He rose to prominence alongside David Mitchell as part of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb. Read more
29 Sep 1971: Joanna Brooks, American author and professor Joanna Brooks is an American author and scholar of American literature. Brooks is currently the Associate Vice President of Faculty Advancement and Student Success at San Diego State University (SDSU). Before working in academic administration at SDSU, she was a professor of English and Comparative Literature. She is a frequent media commentator on faith in American life, particularly in relation to her own Mormonism. Politico named her one of 2011's "50 politicos to watch" for her Twitter feed, @askmormongirl. Read more
29 Sep 1971: Ray Buchanan, American football player Raymond Louis Buchanan, nicknamed "Big Play Ray," is an American former professional football player who was a cornerback in the National Football League (NFL). He was selected in the third round of the 1993 NFL draft by the Indianapolis Colts with the 65th overall pick. Buchanan later played for seven seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, appearing in Super Bowl XXXIII, and one season with the Oakland Raiders. He played college football for the Louisville Cardinals. Read more
29 Sep 1971: Mackenzie Crook, English actor and screenwriter Mackenzie Crook is an English actor, director, comedian, and writer, best known for his roles in television and film. He gained widespread recognition for portraying Gareth Keenan in the British sitcom The Office (2001–2003) and for his role as Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (2003–2007). He also played Orell in the HBO series Game of Thrones, and the title role of Worzel Gummidge (2019–2022), which he wrote and directed. Read more
29 Sep 1971: Theodore Shapiro, American composer Theodore Michael Shapiro is an American composer known for his film scores. Read more
29 Sep 1970: Natasha Gregson Wagner, American actress Natasha Gregson Wagner is an American actress. She is the daughter of film producer Richard Gregson and actress Natalie Wood. She has appeared in films including Lost Highway, Two Girls and a Guy, First Love, Last Rites, Urban Legend, Another Day in Paradise and High Fidelity (2000). Read more
29 Sep 1970: Khushbu Sundar, Indian actress, producer, and politician Khusbhu Sundar is an Indian politician, actress, film producer and television personality. She is known for her work predominantly in Tamil and Telugu language films in addition to Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi films. Read more
29 Sep 1970: Emily Lloyd, English actress Emily Alice Lloyd-Pack, known as Emily Lloyd, is a British retired actress. At the age of 16, she starred in her debut and breakthrough role in the 1987 film Wish You Were Here, for which she received critical acclaim and Best Actress awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the Evening Standard British Film Awards. She subsequently relocated to Manhattan at 17, received numerous film offers, and starred in the 1989 films Cookie and In Country. Read more
29 Sep 1970: Russell Peters, Canadian comedian, actor, and producer Russell Dominic Peters is a Canadian stand-up comedian, actor, and producer. He began performing in Toronto in 1989 and won a Gemini Award in 2008. In 2013, he was number three on Forbes' list of the world's highest-paid comedians, and became the first comedian to get a Netflix stand-up special. He also won the Peabody Award and the International Emmy Award for Best Arts Programming for producing Hip-Hop Evolution (2016). He lives in Los Angeles. Read more
29 Sep 1970: Yoshihiro Tajiri, Japanese wrestler Yoshihiro Tajiri is a Japanese professional wrestler and promoter primarily known under the ring name Tajiri, he has also competed under his real name as well as under the names Aquarius and Kikkoman and briefly worked as the masked character Tigre Blanco. Read more
29 Sep 1969: Erika Eleniak, American model and actress Erika Maya Eleniak is an American actress and model known for her role as Shauni McClain in Baywatch. Her film debut was in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). She also starred in the films The Blob (1988), Under Siege (1992), and The Beverly Hillbillies (1993). Read more
29 Sep 1969: Robert Kurzban, American author and professor Robert Kurzban is an American freelance writer and former psychology professor specializing in evolutionary psychology. Read more
29 Sep 1969: Carlos Watson, American entrepreneur, journalist and television host Carlos Watson is an American entrepreneur, journalist, television host, executive producer, and education advocate. Read more
29 Sep 1968: Darius de Haas, American stage actor and singer Darius de Haas is an American stage actor and singer. Read more
29 Sep 1968: Luke Goss, English actor Luke Damon Goss is an English actor, and drummer of the 1980s band Bros. He has appeared in numerous films including Blade II (2002) as Jared Nomak, One Night with the King (2006) as King Xerxes, Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) as Prince Nuada, Tekken (2009) as Steve Fox, Interview with a Hitman (2012) as Viktor, and Traffik (2018) as Red. Read more
29 Sep 1968: Adam Segal, American cybersecurity expert Adam Segal is an American cybersecurity expert. He serves as the Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of three monographs on technology. Read more
29 Sep 1967: Sara Sankey, English badminton player Sara Sankey is a retired English badminton player. Read more
29 Sep 1967: Brett Anderson, English singer and songwriter Brett Lewis Anderson is an English singer best known as the lead singer-songwriter and primary lyricist of the rock band Suede. After Suede disbanded in 2003, he fronted the Tears with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler in 2004–2006, and released four solo albums on which he also played guitar and keyboards. Suede re-formed in 2010; they continue to record and tour. He is noted for his distinctive wide-ranging voice, poetic lyrics, charismatic stage presence and in Suede's early years, an androgynous appearance. Read more
29 Sep 1966: Hersey Hawkins, American basketball player and coach Hersey R. Hawkins Jr. is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). After starring at George Westinghouse College Prep, the 6-foot-3-inch (1.91 m) shooting guard played college basketball for the Bradley Braves. Hawkins played for four teams throughout his 12-year NBA career. Read more
29 Sep 1966: Ben Miles, English actor Benjamin Charles Miles is an English actor. He gained recognition after starring in the television comedy sitcom Coupling (2000–2004) and the drama serial The Forsyte Saga (2002–2003). He also had recurring roles in Lark Rise to Candleford (2008), The Crown (2016–2017) as Peter Townsend, and Andor (2022–2025). Read more
29 Sep 1966: Bujar Nishani, Albanian politician, 7th President of Albania (died 2022) Bujar Faik Nishani was an Albanian politician who served as President of Albania from 2012 to 2017. Read more
29 Sep 1966: Ken Norton Jr., American football player and coach Kenneth Howard Norton Jr. is an American professional football coach and former player who is the linebackers coach for the Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football as a linebacker for the UCLA Bruins and was selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the second round of the 1988 NFL draft. Read more
29 Sep 1966: Alexandra Vieira, Portuguese teacher and politician Maria Alexandra Nogueira Vieira is a teacher and politician. She was a member of the Member of the Assembly of the Republic of Portugal from 2019 to 2022. Vieira is a member of the Left Bloc party. Read more
29 Sep 1966: Jill Whelan, American actress Jill Whelan is an American actress. After working in television commercials, she landed her breakthrough role playing Vicki Stubing, the daughter of Captain Stubing, in six of the nine seasons of the American television series The Love Boat (1977–1986). She later guest starred on the revival Love Boat: The Next Wave. She has had numerous guest roles in TV shows and played Lisa Davis in Airplane! In 2015, she was hired as a celebrations ambassador by Princess Cruises. Read more
29 Sep 1965: Suzanne Kamata, American author and educator Suzanne Kamata is an American author and educator. Read more
29 Sep 1965: Robert F. Worth, American journalist Robert Forsyth Worth is an American author and journalist. He was the former chief of The New York Times Beirut bureau. He is the author of Rage for Order, which won the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize. Read more
29 Sep 1964: PJ Manney, American writer Patricia J. Manney is an American writer and speaker on humanist and futurist topics. She is the author of (R)EVOLUTION, a near-future techno thriller, which Publishers Weekly called "intriguing" and described it as being written with "poignancy and sensitivity". Read more
29 Sep 1963: Dave Andreychuk, Canadian ice hockey player David John Andreychuk is a Canadian former professional ice hockey forward who played in the NHL with the Buffalo Sabres, Toronto Maple Leafs, New Jersey Devils, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, and Tampa Bay Lightning. Read more
29 Sep 1963: Les Claypool, American bass player, singer, songwriter, and producer Leslie Edward Claypool is an American musician, best known as the founder, lead singer, bassist, and primary songwriter of Primus. Ranked as one of the greatest bassists of all time by Rolling Stone, his unique playing style mixes tapping, flamenco-like strumming, whammy bar bends, and slapping and popping. Read more
29 Sep 1963: Francis Jue, American actor and singer Francis Jue is an American actor and singer. Jue is known for his performances on Broadway, in national tours, off-Broadway and in regional theatre, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area and at The Muny in St. Louis. His roles in plays and musicals range from Shakespeare and David Henry Hwang to Rodgers and Hammerstein and Disney. He is also known for his recurring role on the TV series Madam Secretary (2014–2019). Read more
29 Sep 1962: Roger Bart, American actor Roger Bart is an American actor. He won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his performance as Snoopy in the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Read more
29 Sep 1961: Mohammed Dahlan, Palestinian politician Mohammad Yusuf Dahlan is a Palestinian politician. Arrested by Israel for being involved with the Fatah Hawks—the Fatah youth movement—he subsequently helped in negotiations for the Oslo Accords, later becoming a critic of Yasser Arafat. The former leader of Fatah in the Gaza Strip, Dahlan's power there as head of the Preventive Security Force was at one time so substantial that the territory was nicknamed "Dahlanistan". Seen as a favorite by the George W. Bush administration to be Mahmoud Abbas' second-in-command, Dahlan was appointed by the latter to head the Palestinian National Security Council. An antagonist of Hamas, he participated in the Fatah–Hamas Mecca Agreement before his power began to decline after the latter gained the upper hand in the Battle of Gaza. He was controversially elected to the Central Committee of Fatah amid allegations of fraud. Living in exile in Abu Dhabi, Dahlan has, according to Foreign Policy, had a hand in facilitating the Abraham Accords. Read more
29 Sep 1961: Julia Gillard, Welsh-Australian lawyer and politician, 27th Prime Minister of Australia Julia Eileen Gillard is an Australian former politician who served as the 27th prime minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013. She held office as the leader of the Labor Party (ALP), having previously served as the 13th deputy prime minister from 2007 to 2010. She is the first and only woman to hold either office. Read more
29 Sep 1960: Rob Deer, American baseball player Robert George Deer is an American former professional baseball outfielder. Read more
29 Sep 1960: John Paxson, American basketball player and executive John MacBeth Paxson is an American basketball administrator and former player who was vice president of basketball operations for the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 2009 to 2020. He was their general manager from 2003 to 2009. Paxson played eleven NBA seasons for the San Antonio Spurs and Chicago Bulls, winning three championships as a member of the Bulls. He was an All-American college player at the University of Notre Dame. Read more
29 Sep 1959: Jon Fosse, Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Olav Fosse is a Norwegian author, translator, and playwright. He was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." Read more
29 Sep 1959: Marissa Moss, American author Marissa Moss is an American children's book author. Read more
29 Sep 1959: Raf, Italian singer-songwriter Raffaele Riefoli, known as simply Raf, is an Italian singer-songwriter. He first became known in the early 1980s as a singer of Italo disco and as original singer and co-author of the hit "Self Control". He has turned to Italian-language music since the late 1980s and had further hits in his home country. Read more
29 Sep 1958: Andy Straka, American author Andy Straka is a Shamus Award-winning American crime novelist. Born and raised in upstate New York and a graduate of Williams College, he worked in publishing and medical sales for nearly fifteen years before turning to writing in the late 1990s. His debut private-eye novel, A Witness Above, garnered Shamus, Anthony, and Agatha Award nominations for Best First Novel in 2002. A Killing Sky received an Anthony Award nomination in 2003, and Straka's third book, Cold Quarry, won a 2004 Shamus Award. His series of six Frank Pavlicek novels features a former New York City police detective who also spends much of his time flying various hawks to help inspire him to solve criminal cases. The fourth novel in the Pavlicek series, Kitty Hitter, was called a "great read" by Library Journal. Kitty Hitter was re-released with a new title, The Night Falconer, as an e-book and paperback. A fifth book featuring Pavlicek is the novella Flightfall. Another full-length novel, The K Street Hunting Society, was released as book 6 in the Pavlicek series in 2014. Read more
29 Sep 1958: Karen Young, American actress Karen Young is an American film, television, and stage actress. Read more
29 Sep 1957: Chris Broad, English cricketer and referee Brian Christopher Broad is an English cricket official, broadcaster, and former player. He was a part of the English squad which finished as runners-up at the 1987 Cricket World Cup. Read more
29 Sep 1957: Andrew Dice Clay, American comedian and actor Andrew Clay Silverstein known professionally as Andrew Dice Clay is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He rose to prominence in the late 1980s with a brash, deliberately offensive persona known as "The Diceman", a cartoonishly hyper-masculine, Italian-American street-tough caricature that claimed to weaponise misogyny, ethnic bravado and shock but caused widespread offense. Read more
29 Sep 1957: Uwe Foullong, German politician Uwe Foullong is a German politician and member of the Bundestag. A member of The Left, he has represented North Rhine-Westphalia since 2025. Read more
29 Sep 1957: Joel Gallen, American director, producer and screenwriter Joel Gallen is an American director and producer. He is the founder of Tenth Planet Productions, a Los Angeles-based production company. Read more
29 Sep 1957: Mark Nicholas, English cricketer and sportscaster Mark Charles Jefford Nicholas is an English cricket commentator and former cricketer and broadcaster. He played for Hampshire from 1978 to 1995, captaining them from 1985 to his retirement. On 1 October 2023, he succeeded Stephen Fry as president of Marylebone Cricket Club on a one-year term. Read more
29 Sep 1956: Susanne Antonetta, American poet and author Susanne Antonetta is the pen name of Suzanne Paola, an American poet and author who is most widely known for her book Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir. In 2001, Body Toxic was named by The New York Times as a "Notable Book". An excerpt of "Body Toxic" was published as a stand-alone essay which was recognized as a "Notable Essay" in the 1998 Best American Essays 1998 anthology. She has published several prize-winning collections of poems, including Bardo, a Brittingham Prize in Poetry winner, and the poetry books Petitioner, Glass, and most recently The Lives of The Saints. She currently resides in Washington with her husband and adopted son. She is widely published both in newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as in literary journals including Orion, Brevity, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, Seneca Review, and Image. She is the current Editor-in-Chief of Bellingham Review. Read more
29 Sep 1956: Sebastian Coe, English sprinter and politician Sebastian Newbold Coe, Baron Coe, often referred to as Seb Coe, is a British sports administrator, former politician and retired track and field athlete. As a middle-distance runner, Coe won four Olympic medals, including 1500 metres gold medals at the Olympic Games in 1980 and 1984. He set nine outdoor and three indoor world records in middle-distance track events – including, in 1979, setting three world records over the course of 41 days – and the world record he set in the 800 metres in 1981 remained unbroken until 1997. Coe's rivalries with fellow Britons Steve Ovett and Steve Cram dominated middle-distance racing for much of the 1980s. Read more
29 Sep 1956: Suzzy Roche, American singer-songwriter and actress Suzzy Roche is an American singer, best known for her work with the vocal group the Roches, alongside sisters Maggie and Terre. Suzzy is the youngest of the three, and joined the act in 1977. She is the author of the novels Wayward Saints and The Town Crazy and the children's book Want to Be in a Band? Read more
29 Sep 1955: Ann Bancroft, American explorer and author Ann Bancroft is an American author, teacher, adventurer, and public speaker. She was the first woman to finish a number of expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1995. Read more
29 Sep 1955: Joe Donnelly, American politician and lawyer Joseph Simon Donnelly Sr. is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2013 and as a U.S. senator from 2013 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party from Indiana, he would later serve as the United States ambassador to the Holy See from 2022 to 2024 under President Joe Biden. Read more
29 Sep 1955: Gwen Ifill, American journalist (died 2016) Gwendolyn L. Ifill was an American journalist, television newscaster, and author. In 1999, she became the first African-American woman to host a nationally televised U.S. public affairs program with Washington Week in Review. She was the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor and co-managing editor, with Judy Woodruff, of the PBS NewsHour, both of which air on PBS. Ifill was a political analyst and moderated the 2004 and 2008 vice-presidential debates. She authored the best-selling book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Read more
29 Sep 1954: Marshall Holman, American bowler and sportscaster Marshall Holman is a retired professional ten-pin bowler and current American sports broadcaster. He was known for his flamboyant, fiery demeanor and his success on the PBA Tour from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s. He is one of only 17 players in history to reach at least 20 career PBA Tour titles. Holman was sponsored by Columbia 300 and Nike. Read more
29 Sep 1954: Harry E. Johnson, American lawyer and public servant Harry Edward Johnson is an American lawyer, academic, and businessman. Johnson is a former national president of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and was the president and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc. Read more
29 Sep 1954: Geoffrey Marcy, American astronomer Geoffrey William Marcy is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University. Marcy and his research teams discovered many extrasolar planets, including 70 out of the first 100 known exoplanets and also the first planetary system around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae. Marcy was a co-investigator on the NASA Kepler space telescope mission. His collaborators have included R. Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and Steven S. Vogt, Jason Wright, Andrew Howard, Katie Peek, John Johnson, Erik Petigura, Lauren Weiss, Lea Hirsch and the Kepler Science Team. Following an investigation for sexual harassment in 2015, Marcy resigned his position at the University of California, Berkeley. Read more
29 Sep 1954: Mark Mitchell, Australian actor Mark Mitchell is an Australian actor, comedian and contemporary artist, best known for his roles in the sketch comedy series The Comedy Company, most especially his character of Greek Australian greengrocer Con the Fruiterer, as well as his role in Round the Twist as greedy real estate agent Mr. Gribble. Read more
29 Sep 1954: Cindy Morgan, American actress (died 2023) Cynthia Ann Cichorski, known professionally as Cindy Morgan, was an American actress best known for playing Lora Baines/Yori in Tron and Lacey Underall in Caddyshack. Read more
29 Sep 1953: Mona Baker, Egyptian-British professor Mona Baker is former professor of Translation Studies and founder of the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies of the University of Manchester in England. Read more
29 Sep 1953: Drake Hogestyn, American actor (died 2024) Donald Drake Hogestyn was an American actor best known for his long-running role as John Black on the American soap opera Days of Our Lives. Read more
29 Sep 1953: Janis F. Kearney, American author, lecturer and publisher Janis Faye Kearney is an American author, lecturer, and publisher. She served as a personal diarist to President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 2001. Read more
29 Sep 1952: Roy Campbell, Jr., American trumpet player (died 2014) Roy Sinclair Campbell Jr. was an American trumpeter frequently linked to free jazz, although he also performed rhythm and blues and funk during his career. Read more
29 Sep 1952: Pete Hautman, American author Peter Murray Hautman is an American author best known for his novels for young adults. One of them, Godless, won the 2004 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. The National Book Foundation summary is, "A teenage boy decides to invent a new religion with a new god." Read more
29 Sep 1952: Max Sandlin, American lawyer, judge, and politician Max Allen Sandlin Jr. is an American politician who served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Texas's 1st congressional district from 1997 to 2005. Read more
29 Sep 1951: Michelle Bachelet, Chilean politician, President of Chile Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria is a Chilean physician and politician who served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018. A member of the Socialist Party, she was the first woman to be elected president of Chile and the first woman to serve as Chile's minister of health and minister of national defense. Read more
29 Sep 1951: Pier Luigi Bersani, Italian educator and politician, 6th President of Emilia-Romagna Pier Luigi Bersani is an Italian politician and was Secretary of the Democratic Party (PD), Italy's leading centre-left party, from 2009 to 2013. Bersani was Minister of Industry, Commerce and Craftmanship from 1996 to 1999, President of Emilia-Romagna from 1993 to 1996, Minister of Transport from 1999 to 2001, and Minister of Economic Development from 2006 to 2008. Read more
29 Sep 1951: Roslyn Schwartz, Canadian author Roslyn Schwartz is a Canadian children's author and animator. Read more
29 Sep 1951: Mike Enriquez, Filipino television and radio newscaster (died 2023) Miguel "Mike" Castro Enriquez was a Filipino broadcast journalist and television presenter. He started his career as a radio broadcaster in 1969, and after signing with GMA Network in 1995, he became an anchor for Saksi, GMA Network News and 24 Oras. He was also the Consultant for radio operations of GMA Network, and president of the network's regional and radio subsidiary, RGMA Network Inc., and the Station Manager of Super Radyo DZBB 594 AM. Read more
29 Sep 1950: Merle Collins, Grenadian poet and short story writer Merle Collins is a Grenadian poet, novelist and short-story writer. Read more
29 Sep 1949: George Dalaras, Greek singer-songwriter and guitarist George Dalaras is a Greek singer and musician. He is one of the most prominent figures of Greek music. In October 2006, he was selected as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. Read more
29 Sep 1949: Douglas Frantz, American investigative journalist and author Douglas Frantz is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning former investigative journalist and author, and served as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development from 2015 to 2017. Read more
29 Sep 1948: Mark Farner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Fredrick Farner is an American musician. He was the original singer and guitarist of the rock band Grand Funk Railroad, which he co-founded in 1969, and later as a contemporary Christian musician. Read more
29 Sep 1948: Bryant Gumbel, American journalist and sportscaster Bryant Charles Gumbel is a retired American television journalist and sportscaster. He was best known for his 15 years as co-host of NBC's Today. His older brother was sportscaster Greg Gumbel. From 1995 to 2023, he hosted HBO's acclaimed investigative series Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, which has been rated as "flat out TV's best sports program" by the Los Angeles Times. It won a Peabody Award in 2012. Read more
29 Sep 1948: Theo Jörgensmann, German clarinet player and composer (died 2025) Theodor Franz Jörgensmann was a German jazz clarinetist and academic teacher. Professionally known as Theo Jörgensmann, he belonged to the second generation of European free jazz musicians, part of the clarinet renaissance in the jazz and improvising music scene, and one of few clarinet players for whom unaccompanied solo recordings were a significant part of his work. In 1975 he formed a quartet of clarinetists, Clarinet Contrast, and in 1997 a quartet was named after him. Jörgensmann played in many formations internationally. He wrote a philosophical book about improvising in music. Read more
29 Sep 1948: John M. McHugh, American politician John Michael McHugh is an American politician from the U.S. state of New York who served as the 21st United States Secretary of the Army, and represented the state's 23rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. Read more
29 Sep 1947: Richard J. Evans, British historian Sir Richard John Evans is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume The Third Reich Trilogy (2003–2008). Evans was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge from 2008 until he retired in 2014, and President of Cambridge's Wolfson College from 2010 to 2017. He has been Provost of Gresham College in London since 2014.
Evans was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to scholarship in the 2012 Birthday Honours. Read more
29 Sep 1947: Ülo Kaevats, Estonian philosopher, academic, and politician (died 2015) Ülo Kaevats was an Estonian statesman, academic and philosopher. Read more
29 Sep 1947: S. H. Kapadia, Indian lawyer, judge, and politician, 38th Chief Justice of India (died 2016) Sarosh Homi Kapadia was the 38th Chief Justice of India. He was the first chief justice born after the partition of India. Read more
29 Sep 1946: Patricia Hodge, English actress Patricia Hodge is an English actress. She is known on-screen for playing Phyllida Erskine-Brown in Rumpole of the Bailey (1978–1992), Jemima Shore in Jemima Shore Investigates (1983), Penny in Miranda (2009–2015) and Mrs Pumphrey in All Creatures Great and Small (2021–present). Read more
29 Sep 1946: Arturo Lindsay, Panamanian-American artist Arturo Lindsay is a Panamanian-born artist and professor of art and art history at Spelman College. His scholarship specializes in ethnographic research on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions in contemporary American cultures. His Panamanian/American identity is reflected in his art, which focuses on African culture in America. Read more
29 Sep 1945: Kyriakos Sfetsas, Greek composer and poet Kyriakos Sfetsas was a Greek composer. His body of work consists of a large number of compositions: symphonic, choral, ballet and theatre music, chamber, electronic, film scores, pieces for solo instruments, pieces in jazz and fusion style, songs in Greek and world poems. Read more
29 Sep 1945: Lella Cuberli, American soprano Lella Cuberli is an American soprano, particularly associated with the Belcanto repertory. Read more
29 Sep 1944: Isla Blair, British actress and singer Isla Blair Glover is a British actress and singer. She made her first stage appearance in 1963 as Philia in the London debut of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Read more
29 Sep 1944: Mike Post, American composer and producer Mike Post is an American composer. He is best known for his television theme music for various shows, including Law & Order and its spin-offs Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent, The White Shadow, The Rockford Files, The A-Team, Hill Street Blues, Magnum, P.I., NYPD Blue, Quantum Leap, L.A. Law and Mammoth. He is a Primetime Emmy Award and a five-time Grammy Award winner. Read more
29 Sep 1943: Juan Flores, American academic and professor (died 2014) Juan Flores was a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and director of Latino Studies at New York University. He was considered a leading pioneer, scholar, and expert in Latin American and Nuyorican culture, often working with his wife Miriam Jiménez Román. Read more
29 Sep 1943: Lech Wałęsa, Polish electrician and politician, 2nd President of Poland, Nobel Prize laureate Lech Wałęsa is a Polish statesman, anticommunist dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1922 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote. An electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the opposition Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War. Read more
29 Sep 1942: Felice Gimondi, Italian cyclist (died 2019) Felice Gimondi was an Italian professional racing cyclist. With his 1968 victory at the Vuelta a España, only three years after becoming a professional cyclist, Gimondi, nicknamed "The Phoenix", was the second cyclist to win all three Grand Tours of road cycling: Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, and Vuelta a España (1968). He is one of only eight cyclists to have done so. Read more
29 Sep 1942: Madeline Kahn, American actress and singer (died 1999) Madeline Gail Kahn was an American actress, comedian, and singer. She was known for her comedic roles in films directed by Peter Bogdanovich and Mel Brooks, including What's Up, Doc? (1972), Young Frankenstein (1974), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), and her Academy Award–nominated roles in Paper Moon (1973) and Blazing Saddles (1974). Read more
29 Sep 1942: Ian McShane, English actor Ian David McShane is an English actor. His television performances include the title role in the BBC series Lovejoy, Al Swearengen in Deadwood (2004–2006) and its 2019 film continuation, and Mr. Wednesday in American Gods (2017–2021). For the original series of Deadwood, McShane won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama and received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. As a producer of the film, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. Read more
29 Sep 1942: Bill Nelson, American politician Clarence William Nelson II is an American politician, attorney, and former astronaut who served from 2001 to 2019 as a United States senator from Florida and from 2021 to 2025 as the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A member of the Democratic Party, Nelson served from 1979 to 1991 as a U.S. representative from Florida's Space Coast, and from 1972 to 1978 as a member of the Florida House of Representatives. In January 1986, he became the second sitting member of Congress to fly in space, after Senator Jake Garn, when he served as a payload specialist on mission STS-61-C aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Before entering politics, he served in the United States Army Reserve during the Vietnam War. Read more
29 Sep 1942: Jean-Luc Ponty, French violinist and composer Jean-Luc Ponty is a French jazz and jazz fusion violinist and composer. He is considered a pioneer of jazz-rock, particularly for his use of the electric violin starting in the 1970s. He rose to prominence for his collaborations with popular musical artists Frank Zappa and Elton John. In addition to his solo work, he has performed with symphony orchestras in France, the United States, Canada, and Japan. Read more
29 Sep 1942: Janet Powell, Australian educator and politician (died 2013) Janet Frances Powell was an Australian politician. Read more
29 Sep 1942: Steve Tesich, Serbian-American screenwriter and playwright (died 1996) Stojan Steve Tesich was a Serbian-American screenwriter, playwright, and novelist. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1979 for the film Breaking Away. Read more
29 Sep 1941: Oscar H. Ibarra, Filipino-American theoretical computer scientist Oscar H. Ibarra is a Filipino-American theoretical computer scientist, prominent for work in automata theory, formal languages, design and analysis of algorithms and computational complexity theory. He was a Professor of the Department of Computer Science at the University of California-Santa Barbara until his retirement in 2011. Previously, he was on the faculties of UC Berkeley (1967-1969) and the University of Minnesota (1969-1990). He is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UCSB. Read more
29 Sep 1941: Jon Brower Minnoch, famous for being the world's heaviest person recorded (died 1983) Jon Brower Minnoch was an American man who is reported as the heaviest recorded human in history, weighing approximately 1,400 lb at his peak. Obese since childhood, Minnoch normally weighed 800–900 lb during his adult years. He owned a taxi company and worked as a driver around his home in Bainbridge Island, Washington. Read more
29 Sep 1941: Robert Lieber, American writer and academic Robert J. Lieber is an American academic and Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Lieber is the author or editor of eighteen books and has served as the Chair of the Government Department and as Interim Chair of Psychology. Read more
29 Sep 1940: Billy Cobb, English footballer Walter William Cobb, known as Billy Cobb, was an English footballer who scored 38 goals from 199 appearances in the Football League playing for Nottingham Forest, Plymouth Argyle, Brentford and Lincoln City. He played in midfield. He went on to play for Boston United in the Northern Premier League. Read more
29 Sep 1939: Jim Baxter, Scottish footballer (died 2001) James Curran Baxter was a Scottish professional footballer who played as a left half. He is generally regarded as one of the country's greatest ever players. He was born, educated and started his career in Fife, but his peak playing years were in the early 1960s with the Glasgow club Rangers, whom he helped to win ten trophies between 1960 and 1965, and where he became known as "Slim Jim". However, he started drinking heavily during a four-month layoff caused by a leg fracture in December 1964, his fitness suffered, and he was transferred to Sunderland in summer 1965. In two and a half years at Sunderland he played 98 games and scored 12 goals, becoming known for drinking himself unconscious the night before a match and playing well the next day. At the end of 1967 Sunderland transferred him to Nottingham Forest, who gave him a free transfer back to Rangers in 1969 after 50 games. After a further year with Rangers Baxter retired from football in 1970, at the age of 31. Read more
29 Sep 1939: Larry Linville, American actor (died 2000) Lawrence Lavon Linville was an American actor known for his portrayal of the surgeon Major Frank Burns on the television series M*A*S*H. Read more
29 Sep 1939: Rhodri Morgan, Welsh politician, 2nd First Minister of Wales (died 2017) Hywel Rhodri Morgan was a Welsh Labour politician who was the First Minister of Wales and the Leader of Welsh Labour from 2000 to 2009. He was also the Assembly Member for Cardiff West from 1999 to 2011 and the Member of Parliament for Cardiff West from 1987 to 2001. He remains the longest-serving First Minister of Wales, having served in the position for 9 years and 304 days. He was Chancellor of Swansea University from 2011 until his death in 2017. Read more
29 Sep 1938: Wim Kok, Dutch union leader and politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (died 2018) Willem "Wim" Kok was a Dutch politician and trade union leader who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 22 August 1994 until 22 July 2002. He was a member of the Labour Party (PvdA). Read more
29 Sep 1938: Michael Stürmer, German historian Michael Stürmer was a German conservative historian who specialised in the history of the German Empire (1871–1918). He is best known for his role in the Historikerstreit of the 1980s, for his geographical interpretation of German history and for an admiring 2008 biography of Vladimir Putin. Read more
29 Sep 1937: Kōichirō Matsuura, Japanese diplomat Kōichirō Matsuura is a Japanese diplomat. He is the former Director-General of UNESCO. He was first elected in 1999 to a six-year term and reelected on 12 October 2005 for four years, following a reform instituted by the 29th session of the General Conference. In November 2009, he was replaced by Irina Bokova. Read more
29 Sep 1937: Tom McKeown, American poet and educator Thomas Shanks McKeown is an American poet and educator. He published his first poetry chapbooks in the late 1960s and continued to develop his reputation as a poet of surrealist sensibilities throughout the 1970s, publishing in major magazines such as The New Yorker. Read more
29 Sep 1936: Silvio Berlusconi, Italian businessman and politician, Prime Minister of Italy (died 2023) Silvio Berlusconi was an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 2013; a member of the Senate of the Republic from 2022 until his death in 2023, and previously from March to November 2013; and a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2022, and previously from 1999 to 2001. At the time of his death in 2023, he had a net worth of US$6.8 billion according to Forbes, making him the 352nd-richest man in the world and the third-wealthiest person in Italy. Read more
29 Sep 1936: James Fogle, American author (died 2012) James Fogle was the American author of the autobiographical novel Drugstore Cowboy, which became the basis for the film of the same name. He was born in Elcho, Wisconsin. Read more
29 Sep 1936: Hal Trosky, Jr., American baseball player (died 2012) Harold Arthur Trosky Jr. was an American professional baseball player who appeared as a pitcher in Major League Baseball in two games for the Chicago White Sox during the 1958 season. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of Hal Trosky Sr., the Indians' slugging first baseman who played 11 seasons in the major leagues. Hal Jr. threw and batted right-handed, stood 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) tall and weighed 205 pounds (93 kg). Read more
29 Sep 1935: Jerry Lee Lewis, American singer-songwriter and pianist (died 2022) Jerry Lee Lewis was an American country music and rock and roll pianist, singer, and songwriter. Nicknamed "The Killer", he was described as "rock 'n' roll's first great wild man". A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1952 at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, and early recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. He later became known for his chart topping country music recordings from the 1960s and 1970s. "Crazy Arms" sold 300,000 copies in the Southern United States, but his 1957 hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" shot Lewis to worldwide fame. He followed this with the major hits "Great Balls of Fire", "Breathless", and "High School Confidential". Read more
29 Sep 1935: Carmen Delgado Votaw, Puerto Rican civil rights pioneer (died 2017) Carmen Delgado Votaw was a civil rights pioneer, a public servant, an author, and community leader. She earned an associate degree at the University of Puerto Rico and graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a Bachelor of Arts in international studies. She was subsequently awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities by Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. Read more
29 Sep 1934: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Hungarian-American psychologist and academic (died 2021) Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of "flow", a highly focused mental state conducive to creativity. He was the Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. Earlier, he served as the head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College. Read more
29 Sep 1934: Stuart M. Kaminsky, American author and screenwriter (died 2009) Stuart M. Kaminsky was an American mystery writer and film professor. He is known for three long-running series of mystery novels featuring the protagonists Toby Peters, a private detective in 1940s Hollywood (1977–2004); Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, a Moscow police inspector (1981–2010); and veteran Chicago police officer Abe Lieberman (1990–2007). There is also a fourth series featuring a Sarasota, Florida, process server named Lew Fonesca (1999–2009). Read more
29 Sep 1933: Samora Machel, Mozambican commander and politician, 1st President of Mozambique (died 1986) Samora Moisés Machel was a Mozambican politician and revolutionary who served as the first President of Mozambique from the country's independence in 1975 until his death in the 1986 Mozambican Tupolev Tu-134 plane crash which killed 34 people, including several Mozambican ministers and government officials. Machel was a socialist in the tradition of Marxism–Leninism. Read more
29 Sep 1933: Mars Rafikov, Soviet pilot and cosmonaut (died 2000) Mars Zakirovich Rafikov was a Soviet cosmonaut who was dismissed from the Soviet space program for disciplinary reasons. Read more
29 Sep 1932: Robert Benton, American director, producer, and screenwriter (died 2025) Robert Douglas Benton was an American film director and screenwriter. He, along with his co-writer David Newman, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. In 1979, he wrote and directed the film Kramer vs. Kramer, winning the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He won another Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the 1984 film Places in the Heart. Read more
29 Sep 1932: Mehmood, Indian actor, singer, director and producer (died 2004) Mehmood Ali, popularly known simply as Mehmood, was an Indian actor, singer, director and producer, best known for playing comic, serious, emotional and versatile roles in Hindi films. Read more
29 Sep 1931: James Cronin, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2016) James Watson Cronin was an American particle physicist. Read more
29 Sep 1931: Anita Ekberg, Swedish-Italian model and actress (died 2015) Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was a Swedish actress active in American and European films, known for her beauty and curvaceous figure. She became prominent in her iconic role as Sylvia in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita (1960). Ekberg worked primarily in Italy, where she became a permanent resident in 1964. Read more
29 Sep 1931: Joseph M. McDade, American politician (died 2017) Joseph Michael McDade was an American politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives, having represented Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district. Read more
29 Sep 1930: Richard Bonynge, Australian pianist and conductor Richard Alan Bonynge is an Australian conductor and pianist. He is the widower of Australian dramatic coloratura soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. Bonynge conducted virtually all of Sutherland's operatic performances from 1962 until her retirement in 1990. Read more
29 Sep 1930: Colin Dexter, English author and educator (died 2017) Norman Colin Dexter was an English crime writer known for his Inspector Morse series of novels, which were written between 1975 and 1999 and adapted as an ITV television series, Inspector Morse, from 1987 to 2000. His characters spawned a sequel series, Lewis, from 2006 to 2015, and a prequel series, Endeavour, from 2012 to 2023. He also set crosswords for The Oxford Times. Read more
29 Sep 1928: Eric Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury, English lieutenant, engineer, and politician (died 2016) Eric Reginald Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury, was an English politician and human rights campaigner. He served as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Orpington from 1962 to 1970. He then served in the House of Lords, having inherited the title of Baron Avebury in 1971, until his death. In 1999, when most hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords, he was elected by his fellow Liberal Democrats to remain. When he died, he was the longest serving Liberal Democrat peer. Read more
29 Sep 1928: Brajesh Mishra, Indian politician and diplomat, 1st Indian National Security Advisor (died 2012) Brajesh Chandra Mishra was an Indian politician and diplomat from the Indian Foreign Service who is best known for serving as the first National Security Advisor of India from 1998 to 2004. He also served as the principal secretary of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He received the Padma Vibhushan for his contributions. Read more
29 Sep 1928: Jeffrey O'Connell, American legal expert, professor, and attorney (died 2013) Jeffrey Thomas O'Connell was an American legal expert, professor, and attorney. In 1965, O'Connell and Harvard Law School professor Robert Keeton co-authored the book Basic Protection for the Traffic Victim: A Blueprint for Reforming Automobile Insurance, which created the theoretical underpinnings of no-fault law. His specialty was product liability, and he wrote numerous books about this, advocating no-fault insurance for automobiles and other products. Read more
29 Sep 1927: Pete McCloskey, American politician (died 2024) Paul Norton "Pete" McCloskey Jr. was an American politician who represented San Mateo County, California, as a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1983. Read more
29 Sep 1927: Barbara Mertz, American historian and author (died 2013) Barbara Louise Mertz, known professionally as Elizabeth Peters and as Barbara Michaels, was an American author. In 1952, she received a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. She was best known for her mystery and suspense novels, including the Amelia Peabody book series. Read more
29 Sep 1927: Cid Moreira, Brazilian journalist and television anchor (died 2024) Cid Moreira was a Brazilian journalist and television anchor who was active from 1947 onwards. He was born in Taubaté, São Paulo, and was mostly recognized for his work as the main anchor on Rede Globo's primetime news program Jornal Nacional between 1969 and 1996. He became widely known by his grave, resonating voice. Moreira was also a narrator, having recorded several audiobook versions of Biblical works. He died in Petrópolis on 3 October 2024, at the age of 97 due to a multiple organ failure after a nearly one-month hospital stay, initially due to chronic kidney failure. Moreira was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Read more
29 Sep 1926: Chuck Cooper, American basketball player (died 1984) Charles Henry Cooper was an American professional basketball player. Cooper played college basketball for the Duquesne Dukes and was named a consensus second-team All-American in 1950. According to the November 18, 1950 issue of the Afro-American newspaper, he was the first Black "basketer" [sic] to be named an All-American college athlete. Cooper was the first African-American to be drafted by a National Basketball Association (NBA) team; he was chosen by the Boston Celtics with the first pick of the second round of the 1950 NBA Draft. Cooper and two others—Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton and Earl Lloyd—became the first African-American players in the NBA, in 1950. In a six-season NBA career, Cooper played for the Celtics, the Milwaukee/St. Louis Hawks, and the Fort Wayne Pistons, averaging 6.7 points and 5.9 rebounds per game. Read more
29 Sep 1926: Pete Elliott, American football player and coach (died 2013) Peter R. Elliott was an American football player and coach. Elliott served as the head football coach at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (1956), the University of California, Berkeley (1957–1959), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1960–1966), and the University of Miami (1973–1974), compiling a career college football record of 56–72–11. From 1979 to 1996, Elliott served as executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Read more
29 Sep 1925: Steve Forrest, American actor (died 2013) Steve Forrest was an American actor who was well known for his role as Lt. Hondo Harrelson in the hit television series S.W.A.T., which was broadcast on ABC from 1975 to 1976. He was also known for his performance in Mommie Dearest (1981). Read more
29 Sep 1925: Paul MacCready, American engineer, founded AeroVironment (died 2007) Paul Beattie MacCready Jr. was an American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the first Kremer prize. He devoted his life to developing more efficient transportation vehicles that could "do more with less". Read more
29 Sep 1923: Stan Berenstain, American author and illustrator (died 2005) Stanley Melvin Berenstain and Janice Marian Berenstain were American writers and illustrators best known for creating the children's book series The Berenstain Bears. Read more
29 Sep 1923: Bum Phillips, American football player and coach (died 2013) Oail Andrew "Bum" Phillips Jr. was an American football coach at the high school, college and professional levels. He served as head coach in the National Football League (NFL) for the Houston Oilers from 1975 to 1980 and the New Orleans Saints from 1981 to 1985. Read more
29 Sep 1922: Reed Irvine, American economist and activist (died 2004) Reed Irvine was an American economist and activist who founded the conservative media watchdog organization Accuracy in Media, and remained its head for 35 years. Irvine was motivated by his belief that established news media from the dominant television news media to large city newspaper reporting was colored and biased in favor of a liberal perspective. He became concerned that this dominant perspective was shaping the way the dominant media reported foreign news and events. Read more
29 Sep 1922: Lizabeth Scott, American actress (died 2015) Lizabeth Virginia Scott was an American actress, singer, and model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency, known for her "smoky voice". She was called "the most beautiful face of film noir during the 1940s and 1950s". After understudying the role of Sabina in the original Broadway and Boston stage productions of The Skin of Our Teeth, she emerged in films including The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Dead Reckoning (1947), Desert Fury (1947), and Too Late for Tears (1949). Of her 22 films, she was the leading lady in all but three. In addition to stage and radio, she appeared on television from the late 1940s to early 1970s. Read more
29 Sep 1921: James Cross, Irish-British diplomat (died 2021) James Richard Cross was an Irish-born British diplomat who served in India, Malaysia and Canada. While posted in Canada, Cross was kidnapped by members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) during the October Crisis of October 1970. He was ultimately released almost two months later, and subsequently returned to the United Kingdom. Read more
29 Sep 1921: John Ritchie, New Zealand composer and educator (died 2014) John Anthony Ritchie was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at the University of Canterbury. Read more
29 Sep 1920: Peter D. Mitchell, English biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1992) Peter Dennis Mitchell FRS was a British biochemist who was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his theory of the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis. Read more
29 Sep 1919: Bill Proud, English cricketer (died 1961) Roland Barton "Bill" Proud was an English first-class cricketer. Read more
29 Sep 1918: Billy Bevis, English footballer (died 1994) William Ernest Bevis DSM was an English footballer who played for Southampton as an outside right in the years either side of the Second World War. Read more
29 Sep 1916: Carl Giles, English cartoonist (died 1995) Ronald "Carl" Giles OBE, often referred to simply as Giles, was a cartoonist who worked for the British newspaper the Daily Express. Read more
29 Sep 1916: Josef Traxel, German operatic tenor (died 1975) Josef Traxel was a German operatic tenor, particularly associated with Mozart roles and the German repertory. Read more
29 Sep 1915: Vincent DeDomenico, American businessman, founded the Napa Valley Wine Train (died 2007) Vincent Michael "Vince" DeDomenico, Sr. was an American entrepreneur, one of the inventors of Rice-A-Roni, and a founder of the Napa Valley Wine Train. Read more
29 Sep 1915: Oscar Handlin, American historian and academic (died 2011) Oscar Handlin was an American historian. As a professor of history at Harvard University for over 50 years, he directed 80 PhD dissertations and helped promote social and ethnic history, virtually inventing the field of immigration history in the 1950s. Handlin won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Uprooted (1951). Handlin's 1965 testimony before Congress played an important role in passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that abolished the discriminatory immigration quota system. According to historian James Grossman, "He reoriented the whole picture of the American story from the view that America was built on the spirit of the Wild West, to the idea that we are a nation of immigrants." Read more
29 Sep 1915: Brenda Marshall, American actress (died 1992) Brenda Marshall was an American film actress. Read more
29 Sep 1914: Olive Dehn, English author and poet (died 2007) Olive Marie Dehn was an English children's writer, anarchist, farmer and poet who was active from the 1930s to the 2000s. She began her writing career with a satirical poem in German, and wrote stories for the BBC Radio programme Children's Hour. Dehn moved into children's literature and into farming at her home in the Ashdown Forest. In 1960, she became a member of the Committee of 100 to take non-violent direct action against nuclear power, and successfully campaigned with her husband David Markham for the release of the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. The Olive Dehn Papers on her life and career were deposited at the Seven Stories in Newcastle. Read more
29 Sep 1913: Trevor Howard, English actor (died 1988) Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was an English stage and screen actor. After varied work in the theatre, he achieved leading man star status in the film Brief Encounter (1945), followed by The Third Man (1949), portraying what BFI Screenonline called "a new kind of male lead in British films: steady, middle-class, reassuring … but also capable of suggesting neurosis under the tweedy demeanour." Read more
29 Sep 1913: Stanley Kramer, American director and producer (died 2001) Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood's most famous "message films" and a liberal movie icon. As an independent producer and director, he brought attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided. Among the subjects covered in his films were racism, nuclear war, greed, creationism vs. evolution, and the causes and effects of fascism. His other films included High Noon, The Caine Mutiny, and Ship of Fools (1965). Read more
29 Sep 1913: Rutherford Ness Robertson, Australian botanist and biologist (died 2001) Sir Rutherford Ness "Bob" Robertson FRSE was an Australian botanist and biologist, and winner of the Clarke Medal in 1955. Read more
29 Sep 1912: Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian director and screenwriter (died 2007) Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for a trio of films often dubbed the "alienation trilogy": L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962); the English-language film Blowup (1966); and the multilingual The Passenger (1975). His films have been described as "enigmatic and intricate mood pieces" that feature striking visual composition, subdued narratives, and a preoccupation with modern landscapes. His work substantially influenced subsequent world art cinema, including the slow cinema movement. Read more
29 Sep 1911: Charles Court, English-Australian politician, 21st Premier of Western Australia (died 2007) Sir Charles Walter Michael Court was an Australian politician who was the premier of Western Australia from 8 April 1974 to 25 January 1982. A member of the Liberal Party, Court was the member for Nedlands in the Parliament of Western Australia from 1953 to 1982. He held multiple portfolios during this time, including as the minister for industrial development from 1959 to 1971, when he became known for developing Western Australia's mining industry. Read more
29 Sep 1911: Reginald Victor Jones, British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert (died 1997) Reginald Victor Jones was a British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert who played an important role in the defence of Britain in World War II by solving scientific and technical problems, and by the extensive use of deception throughout the war to confuse the Germans. Read more
29 Sep 1910: Bill Boyd, American singer and guitarist (died 1977) William Lemuel Boyd was an American Western-style singer and guitarist. Read more
29 Sep 1910: Diosdado Macapagal, Philippine politician, 9th President of the Philippines (died 1997) Diosdado Pangan Macapagal Sr., also known colloquially as “Apung Dadong”, was the ninth president of the Philippines, serving from 1961 to 1965. He served as the 5th vice president from 1957 to 1961 under Carlos P. Garcia. He also served as a member of the House of Representatives, and headed the Constitutional Convention of 1970. He was the father of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who followed his path as President of the Philippines from 2001 to 2010. Diosdado Macapagal Sr is one of the few presidents with doctoral degrees, earning a Doctors of Civil Law degree and a PHD in Economics degree from University of Santo Tomas. Read more
29 Sep 1909: Virginia Bruce, American actress (died 1982) Virginia Bruce was an American actress and singer. Read more
29 Sep 1908: Eddie Tolan, American sprinter and educator (died 1967) Thomas Edward Tolan, nicknamed the "Midnight Express", was an American track and field athlete who competed in sprints. He set world records in the 100-yard dash and 100 meters event and Olympic records in the 100 meters and 200 meters events. He was the first non-Euro-American to receive the title of the "world's fastest human" after winning gold medals in the 100 and 200 meters events at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In March 1935, Tolan won the 75, 100 and 220-yard events at the World Professional Sprint Championships in Melbourne to become the first man to win both the amateur and professional world sprint championships. In his full career as a sprinter, Tolan won 300 races and lost only 7. Read more
29 Sep 1907: Gene Autry, American singer, actor, and businessman (died 1998) Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry, nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American actor, musician, singer, composer, rodeo performer, and baseball team owner, who largely gained fame by singing in a crooning style on radio, in films, and on television for more than three decades, beginning in the early 1930s. During that time, he personified the straight-shooting hero—honest, brave, and true. Read more
29 Sep 1907: George W. Jenkins, American businessman, founded Publix (died 1996) George Washington Jenkins Jr. was an American businessman who founded Publix Super Markets. As of 2016, the employee-owned, privately held corporation included 1,100 stores in the Southeastern United States with 170,000 employees and sales of $32 billion. Read more
29 Sep 1906: Henry Nash Smith, American academic (died 1986) Henry Nash Smith was a scholar of American culture and literature. He is recognized as one of the founders of the academic discipline American studies. He was also a noted Mark Twain scholar, and the curator of the Mark Twain Papers. The Handbook of Texas reported that an uncle encouraged Smith to read at an early age, and that the boy developed an interest in the works of Rudyard Kipling, Robert L. Stevenson and Mark Twain. Read more
29 Sep 1905: Fidel LaBarba, American boxer and sportswriter (died 1981) Fidel LaBarba was an American boxer and sportswriter. He was born in New York City and grew up in Los Angeles, California. LaBarba began his amateur career at fourteen, eventually winning the flyweight division at the national Amateur Athletic Union tournament in Boston and later qualifying for the United States Olympic team. Read more
29 Sep 1904: Greer Garson, English-American actress (died 1996) Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was a British and American actress and singer. Known for playing graceful, noble, and dignified women in period and war dramas, she quickly rose to popularity during the Golden Age of Hollywood. A top star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM), Garson was among the most popular stars of the 1940s, becoming one of the highest-paid actresses in the United States and Britain. From 1942 to 1946, she was consistently ranked by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top box-office draws. Read more
29 Sep 1904: Michał Waszyński, Polish film director and producer (died 1965) Michał Waszyński was a Polish-born film director and film producer who worked in Poland, Italy, and later on major American film productions based primarily in Spain under the name Michael Waszynski. Renowned for his elegance and refined manners, he was nicknamed “the prince” by acquaintances. Read more
29 Sep 1903: Miguel Alemán Valdés, Mexican lawyer and civilian politician, 46th President of Mexico (died 1983) Miguel Alemán Valdés was a Mexican politician who served a full term as the President of Mexico from 1946 to 1952. He was the first civilian president after a string of revolutionary generals. Read more
29 Sep 1903: Diana Vreeland, American journalist (died 1989) Diana Vreeland was an American fashion columnist and editor. She worked for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar and as editor-in-chief at Vogue, later becoming a special consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was named on the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1964. Vreeland coined the term youthquake in 1965. Read more
29 Sep 1901: Lanza del Vasto, Italian poet, philosopher, and activist (died 1981) Lanza del Vasto was an Italian poet and nonviolent activist. Read more
29 Sep 1901: Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1954) Enrico Fermi was an Italian and naturalized-American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project. He won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons". He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical and experimental physics. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics. Read more
29 Sep 1899: László Bíró, Hungarian-Argentinian journalist and inventor, invented the ballpoint pen (died 1985) László József Bíró, Hispanicized as Ladislao José Biro, was an Argentine, Hungary-born inventor who patented the first commercially successful modern ballpoint pen. The first ballpoint pen had been invented roughly 50 years earlier by John J. Loud, but it was not a commercial success. Read more
29 Sep 1899: Billy Butlin, South African-English businessman, founded Butlins (died 1980) Sir William Heygate Edmund Colborne Butlin was an entrepreneur known for British holiday camps. Although holiday camps such as Warner's existed in one form or another before Butlin opened his first in 1936, it was Butlin who turned holiday camps into a multimillion-pound industry and an important aspect of British culture. Read more
29 Sep 1898: Trofim Lysenko, Ukrainian-Russian biologist and agronomist (died 1976) Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist. He rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific ideas later termed Lysenkoism. Read more
29 Sep 1897: Herbert Agar, American journalist and historian (died 1980) Herbert Sebastian Agar was an American journalist and historian, and an editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Read more
29 Sep 1895: Clarence Ashley, American singer, guitarist, and banjo player (died 1967) Clarence "Tom" Ashley was an American musician and singer, who played the clawhammer banjo and the guitar. He began performing at medicine shows in the Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame during the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various string bands. After his "rediscovery" during the folk revival of the 1960s, Ashley spent the last years of his life playing at folk music concerts, including appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. Read more
29 Sep 1895: Joseph Banks Rhine, American botanist and parapsychologist (died 1980) Joseph Banks Rhine, usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, and the Parapsychological Association. Rhine wrote the books Extrasensory Perception and Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind. Read more
29 Sep 1895: Roscoe Turner, American pilot (died 1970) Roscoe Turner was a record-breaking American aviator who was a three-time winner of the Thompson Trophy air race and widely recognized by his flamboyant style and his pet, Gilmore the Lion. He also founded a US domestic airline, ultimately called Lake Central Airlines, that in 1968 merged into Allegheny Airlines, the predecessor to US Airways. Read more
29 Sep 1891: Ian Fairweather, Scottish-Australian painter (died 1974) Ian Fairweather was a Scottish painter resident in Australia for much of his life. He combined Western and Asian influences in his work. Read more
29 Sep 1882: Lilias Armstrong, English phonetician (died 1937) Lilias Eveline Armstrong was an English phonetician. She worked at University College London, where she attained the rank of reader. Armstrong is most known for her work on English intonation as well as the phonetics and tone of Somali and Kikuyu. Her book on English intonation, written with Ida C. Ward, was in print for 50 years. Armstrong also provided some of the first detailed descriptions of tone in Somali and Kikuyu. Read more
29 Sep 1881: Ludwig von Mises, Austrian-American economist, sociologist, and philosopher (died 1973) Ludwig Heinrich von Mises was an Austrian and American political economist and philosopher of the Austrian school. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the social contributions of classical liberalism and the central role of consumers in a market economy. He is best known for his work in praxeology, particularly for studies comparing communism and capitalism, as well as for being a defender of classical liberalism in the face of rising illiberalism and authoritarianism throughout much of Europe during the 20th century. Read more
29 Sep 1866: Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Ukrainian historian, academic, and politician (died 1934) Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. Hrushevsky is often considered the country's greatest modern historian, the foremost organiser of scholarship, the leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainian national movement, the head of the Central Rada, and a leading cultural figure in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s. Read more
29 Sep 1864: Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and author (died 1936) Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher and academic. His major philosophical essay was Tragic Sense of Life (1913), and his most famous novels were Abel Sánchez: The History of a Passion (1917), a modern exploration of the Cain and Abel story, and Mist (1914), which The Literary Encyclopedia calls "the most acclaimed Spanish Modernist novel". Read more
29 Sep 1863: Ludwig Holborn, German physicist (died 1926) Ludwig Friedrich Christian Holborn was a German physicist known for his work in the measurement of high temperature using optical pyrometry. Read more
29 Sep 1863: Hugo Haase, German lawyer, jurist, and politician (died 1919) Hugo Haase was a German socialist politician, jurist and pacifist. With Friedrich Ebert, he co-chaired the Council of the People's Deputies during the German Revolution of 1918–19. Read more
29 Sep 1853: Luther D. Bradley, American cartoonist (died 1917) Luther Daniels Bradley was an American illustrator and political cartoonist associated with the Chicago Daily News. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale University in 1875. After some years at his father's business, he traveled abroad, and spent over a decade in Melbourne, Australia, drawing for such publications as Melbourne Punch. He returned to Chicago in 1893, working for the Daily Journal and Inter Ocean, before joining the Daily News in 1899, where he spent the remainder of his life and career. He was known for strong anti-war sentiments, opposing U.S. involvement in World War I. Read more
29 Sep 1844: Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman, Argentinian lawyer and politician, 10th President of Argentina (died 1909) Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman was the President of Argentina from 1886 until his resignation in 1890. Read more
29 Sep 1844: Edward Pulsford, English-Australian politician and free-trade campaigner (died 1919) Edward Pulsford was an English-born Australian politician and free-trade campaigner. Read more
29 Sep 1843: Mikhail Skobelev, Russian general (died 1882) Mikhail Dmitriyevich Skobelev was a Russian general who became famous for his conquest of Central Asia and for his heroism during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Dressed in a white uniform and mounted on a white horse, and always in the thickest of the fray, he was known and adored by his soldiers as the "White General", and by the Turks as the "White Pasha". During a campaign in Khiva, his Turkmen opponents called him goz ganly or "Bloody Eyes". Read more
29 Sep 1832: Joachim Oppenheim, Czech rabbi and author (died 1891) Joachim (Ḥayyim) Oppenheim, also known as Joachim Heinrich Oppenheim, was a Czech rabbi and author. Read more
29 Sep 1832: Miguel Miramón, Unconstitutional president of Mexico (died 1867) Miguel Gregorio de la Luz Atenógenes Miramón y Tarelo, known as Miguel Miramón, was a Mexican conservative general who disputed the Mexican presidency with Benito Juárez at the age of 27 during the Reform War, serving between February 1859 and December 1860. He was the first Mexican president to be born after the Mexican War of Independence. Read more
29 Sep 1812: Adolph Göpel, German mathematician (died 1847) Adolph Göpel was a German mathematician who wrote the first paper on hyperelliptic functions and who introduced Göpel tetrads. Read more
29 Sep 1810: Elizabeth Gaskell, English author (died 1865) Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer detailed studies of Victorian society, including the lives of the very poor. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Her only biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was controversial and significant in establishing the Brontë family's lasting fame. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–1855), and Wives and Daughters (1864–1866), all of which have been adapted for television by the BBC. Read more
29 Sep 1808: Henry Bennett, American lawyer and politician (died 1868) Henry Bennett was an American lawyer and politician who served five terms as a United States representative from New York from 1849 to 1859. Read more
29 Sep 1803: Jacques Charles François Sturm, French mathematician and theorist (died 1850) Jacques Charles François Sturm was a French mathematician, who made a significant addition to equation theory with his work, Sturm's theorem. Read more

Notable Deaths on 29 September

29 Sep 2025: Patrick Murray, British actor (born 1956) Patrick Noel Murray was a British actor. He was best known for playing Mickey Pearce in the British sitcom television series Only Fools and Horses from 1983 to 2003. He also had roles in ITV Playhouse (1977), Scum and Quadrophenia (1979), Breaking Glass (1980), Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), Bergerac (1983), Dempsey and Makepeace (1986), and The Firm (1989). Read more
29 Sep 2025: Alan McDonald, Scottish Church Minister (born 1951) Alan Douglas McDonald was a Scottish parish minister who was the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, from the Assembly of May 2006 until May 2007. Read more
29 Sep 2024: Ozzie Virgil Sr., Dominican baseball player and coach (born 1932) Osvaldo José Virgil Pichardo was a Dominican professional baseball player and coach. He was the first person from the Dominican Republic to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) post-integration, appearing in 324 MLB games between 1956 and 1969 as a utility player for the New York / San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Read more
29 Sep 2022: Kathleen Booth, British computer scientist and mathematician (born 1922) Kathleen Hylda Valerie Booth was a British computer scientist and mathematician who co-wrote the first assembly language and co-designed the assembler and autocode for the first computer systems at Birkbeck College, University of London. She helped design three different machines including the ARC, SEC, and APE(X)C. Read more
29 Sep 2022: Akissi Kouamé, Ivorian army officer (born 1955) Brigadier-General Akissi Kouamé was an Ivorian army officer. She joined the army's medical service in 1981, whilst still a medical student. Kouamé became the first woman in the army to qualify as a paratrooper and in 2012 became its first female general. Read more
29 Sep 2020: Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti Emir (born 1929) Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was the Emir of Kuwait from 24 January 2006 until his death in 2020. Read more
29 Sep 2020: Helen Reddy, Australian-American singer, actress, and activist (born 1941) Helen Maxine Reddy was an Australian-American singer, actress, television host, and activist. Born in Melbourne to a show business family, Reddy started her career as an entertainer in vaudeville at age four. She sang on radio and television and won a talent contest on the television program Bandstand in 1966; her prize was a ticket to New York City and a record audition, which was unsuccessful. After a short and unsuccessful singing career in New York, she eventually moved to Chicago, and subsequently, Los Angeles, where she made her debut singles "One Way Ticket" and "I Believe in Music" in 1968 and 1970, respectively. The B-side of the latter single, "I Don't Know How to Love Him", reached number eight on the pop chart of the Canadian magazine RPM. She was signed to Capitol Records a year later. Read more
29 Sep 2019: Martin Bernheimer, German-American music critic (born 1936) Martin Bernheimer was a German and American classical music critic. Described as "a widely respected and influential critic, who [was] particularly knowledgeable about opera and the voice", Bernheimer was the chief classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times from 1965 to 1996. Read more
29 Sep 2018: Otis Rush, American blues guitarist and singer (born 1934) Otis Rush Jr. was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter. His distinctive guitar style featured a slow-burning sound and long bent notes. With qualities similar to the styles of other 1950s artists Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, his sound became known as West Side Chicago blues and was an influence on many musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green and Eric Clapton. Read more
29 Sep 2017: Tom Alter, Indian actor (born 1950) Thomas Beach Alter was an Indian actor of American descent who worked in Indian cinema. He was best known for his works in Hindi cinema, and Indian theatre. In 2008, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. Read more
29 Sep 2016: Miriam Defensor Santiago, Filipina politician (born 1945) Miriam Palma Defensor-Santiago was a Filipino stateswoman and lawyer who served in all three branches of the Philippine government: judicial, executive, and legislative. Defensor Santiago was known for being a long serving senator of the Philippines and an elected judge of the International Criminal Court. She is the sole female recipient of the Philippines' highest national honor, the Quezon Service Cross. Read more
29 Sep 2015: Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Saudi Arabian prince (born 1932) Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was a Saudi Arabian businessman and politician. A member of the House of Saud, he became a close ally of King Abdullah. In different periods Prince Nawwaf held significant government posts, including the director of Saudi intelligence agency. Read more
29 Sep 2015: Hellmuth Karasek, Czech-German journalist, author, and critic (born 1934) Hellmuth Karasek was a German journalist, literary critic, novelist, and the author of many books on literature and film. He was one of Germany's best-known feuilletonists. Read more
29 Sep 2015: Phil Woods, American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader (born 1931) Philip Wells Woods was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, and composer. Read more
29 Sep 2014: Mary Cadogan, English author (born 1928) Mary Cadogan was an English author. She wrote extensively on popular and children's literature, including biographies of the creator of William Brown from Just William (1922), Billy Bunter. Read more
29 Sep 2014: John Ritchie, New Zealand composer and educator (born 1921) John Anthony Ritchie was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at the University of Canterbury. Read more
29 Sep 2013: Harold Agnew, American physicist and engineer (born 1921) Harold Melvin Agnew was an American physicist, best known for having flown as a scientific observer on the Hiroshima bombing mission and, later, as the third director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Read more
29 Sep 2013: S. N. Goenka, Indian teacher of Vipassanā meditation (born 1924) Satya Narayana Goenka was an Indian teacher of vipassanā meditation. Born in Burma to an Indian family, he learnt Vipassana from Sayagyi U Ba Khin, retired from business in 1962 during business nationalization by military government in Burma, and moved to India in 1969 to start teaching Vipassana meditation. His teachings stay away from rites and rituals and emphasize that Buddha's path to liberation was non-sectarian, universal, and scientific in character, leading to Vipassana meditation appealing to people of all religions as well as no religion, from all parts of the world. He became an influential teacher and played an important role in establishing non-commercial Vipassana meditation centers globally where Vipassana Meditation is taught as a 10 Day residential program with no charges for food, stay as well as for teaching meditation, with centers funded by willful donations from past meditators. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2012, an award given for distinguished service of high order. Read more
29 Sep 2013: Marcella Hazan, Italian cooking writer (born 1924) Marcella Hazan was an Italian cooking writer whose books were published in English.
Her cookbooks are credited with introducing the public in the United States and the United Kingdom to the techniques of traditional Italian cooking. She was considered by chefs and fellow food writers to be the doyenne of Italian cuisine. Read more
29 Sep 2012: Neil Smith, Scottish geographer and academic (born 1954) Neil Robert Smith was a Scottish geographer and Marxist academic. He was Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and winner of numerous awards, including the Globe Book Award of the Association of American Geographers. Smith is known for his analysis of gentrification and his influential rent-gap theory. Read more
29 Sep 2012: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, American publisher (born 1926) Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. was an American publisher and a businessman. Born into a prominent media and publishing family, Sulzberger became publisher of The New York Times in 1963 and chairman of the board of The New York Times Company in 1973. Sulzberger relinquished to his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the office of publisher in 1992, and the board chairmanship in 1997. Read more
29 Sep 2012: Malcolm Wicks, English academic and politician (born 1947) Malcolm Hunt Wicks was a British Labour Party politician and academic specialising in social policy. He was a member of parliament (MP) from 1992, first for Croydon North West and then for Croydon North, until his death in 2012. Read more
29 Sep 2011: Sylvia Robinson, American singer-songwriter and producer (born 1936) Sylvia Robinson, known mononymously as Sylvia, was an American singer and record producer. Robinson achieved success as a performer on two R&B chart toppers: as half of Mickey & Sylvia with the 1957 single "Love Is Strange", and her solo record "Pillow Talk" in 1973. She later became known for her work as founder and CEO of the pioneering hip hop label Sugar Hill Records. Read more
29 Sep 2010: Tony Curtis, American actor (born 1925) Tony Curtis was an American actor with a career that spanned six decades, achieving the height of his popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in more than 100 films, in roles covering a wide range of genres. In his later years, Curtis made numerous television appearances. Read more
29 Sep 2010: Greg Giraldo, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter (born 1965) Gregory Carlos Giraldo was an American stand-up comedian, television personality, and lawyer. He is remembered for his appearances on Comedy Central's televised roast specials, and for his work on that network's television shows Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, Lewis Black's Root of All Evil, and the programming block Stand-Up Nation, the last of which he hosted. Read more
29 Sep 2008: Hayden Carruth, American poet and critic (born 1921) Hayden Carruth was an American poet, literary critic and anthologist. He taught at Syracuse University. Read more
29 Sep 2007: Lois Maxwell, Canadian actress (born 1927) Lois Ruth Maxwell was a Canadian actress. She was best known for portraying Miss Moneypenny in the first 14 Eon-produced James Bond films (1962–1985), from Dr. No in 1962 to A View to a Kill in 1985. Read more
29 Sep 2007: Katsuko Saruhashi, Japanese geochemist (born 1920) Katsuko Saruhashi (猿橋勝子, Saruhashi Katsuko; March 22, 1920 – September 29, 2007) was a Japanese geochemist who created tools that let her take some of the first measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in seawater. She later showed evidence of the dangers of radioactive fallout and how far it can travel. Along with this focus on safety, she also researched peaceful uses of nuclear power. Read more
29 Sep 2006: Walter Hadlee, New Zealand cricketer and manager (born 1915) Walter Arnold Hadlee was a New Zealand cricketer and Test match captain. He played domestic first-class cricket for Canterbury and Otago. Three of his five sons, Sir Richard, Dayle and Barry played cricket for New Zealand. The Chappell–Hadlee Trophy, which is competed for by ODI teams from New Zealand and Australia is named in honour of the Hadlee family and the Australian Chappell family. Read more
29 Sep 2006: Michael A. Monsoor, American sailor, Medal of Honor recipient (born 1981) Michael Anthony Monsoor was a United States Navy SEAL who was killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom during the Battle of Ramadi when he dived onto a live grenade to shield his fellow SEALs, sacrificing his own life. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. He enlisted in the United States Navy in 2001 and graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training BUD/S class 250 in 2004. After further training he was assigned to Delta Platoon, SEAL Team 3. Read more
29 Sep 2006: Louis-Albert Vachon, Canadian cardinal (born 1912) Louis-Albert Vachon, was a Canadian educator, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, and Archbishop of Quebec. Read more
29 Sep 2005: Patrick Caulfield, English painter and academic (born 1936) Patrick Joseph Caulfield,, was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of photorealism within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are Pottery and Still Life Ingredients. Read more
29 Sep 2005: Austin Leslie, American chef and author (born 1934) Austin Leslie was a chef from New Orleans, Louisiana, who specialised in Louisiana Creole cuisine. Read more
29 Sep 2004: Richard Sainct, French motorcycle racer (born 1970) Richard Sainct was a French rally raid motorcycle rider, best known for his three victories on The Paris-Dakar rally in 1999, 2000 and 2003. Read more
29 Sep 2004: Patrick Wormald, English historian (born 1947) Charles Patrick Wormald was a British historian born in Neston, Cheshire, son of historian Brian Wormald. Read more
29 Sep 2001: Mabel Fairbanks, American figure skater and coach (born 1915) Mabel Fairbanks was an American figure skater and coach. As an African American and Native American woman she paved the way for other minorities to compete in the sport of figure skating such as Tai Babilonia, Debi Thomas, and Naomi Lang. She was inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame, as the first person of African American and Native American descent, and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. Read more
29 Sep 2001: Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, South Vietnamese military officer and politician, 2nd President of South Vietnam (born 1923) Nguyễn Văn Thiệu was a South Vietnamese military officer and politician who was the president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. He was a general in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF), became head of a military junta in 1965, and then president after winning a rigged election in 1967. He headed the government of South Vietnam until he resigned and left the nation and relocated to Taipei a few days before the fall of Saigon and the ultimate North Vietnamese victory. Read more
29 Sep 2000: John Grant, English journalist and politician (born 1932) John Douglas Grant was a British politician who served as an MP of the United Kingdom parliament from 1970 to 1983. He was as a member of the Labour Party until he left in 1981 to join the new Social Democratic Party (SDP). He represented Islington East from 1970 to 1974 and Islington Central from 1974 to 1983. Read more
29 Sep 1999: Edward William O'Rourke, American bishop (born 1917) Edward William O'Rourke was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Peoria in Illinois from 1971 to 1990. Read more
29 Sep 1998: Tom Bradley, American lieutenant and politician, 38th Mayor of Los Angeles (born 1917) Thomas Bradley was an American politician, athlete, police officer, and lawyer who served as the 38th mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, he was Los Angeles' first black mayor, first liberal mayor, and longest-serving mayor. Read more
29 Sep 1998: C. David Marsden, British neurologist (born 1938) (Charles) David Marsden, FRS was a British neurologist who made a significant contribution to the field of movement disorders. He was described as 'arguably the leading academic neurologist and neuroscientist of his generation in the UK'. Read more
29 Sep 1998: Bruno Munari, Italian artist, designer, and inventor (born 1907) Bruno Munari was "one of the greatest actors of 20th-century art, design and graphics". He was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non-visual arts with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity. On the utility of art, Munari once said, "Art shall not be separated from life: things that are good to look at, and bad to be used, should not exist". Read more
29 Sep 1997: Sven-Eric Johanson, Swedish composer and organist (born 1919) Sven Eric Emanuel Johanson (10 December 1919 – 29 September 1997) was a Swedish composer and organist. Read more
29 Sep 1997: Roy Lichtenstein, American painter and sculptor (born 1923) Roy Fox Lichtenstein was an American artist. A leading figure of the Pop Art movement, he is best known for his large-scale paintings inspired by comic books, advertisements, and mass-produced imagery. Lichtenstein's art is represented in major museum collections worldwide, and he remains one of the most influential and recognizable artists of the 20th century. Read more
29 Sep 1997: Edith Ballinger Price, American writer and illustrator (born 1897) Edith Ballinger Price (1897–1997) was a prolific writer and illustrator of children's books, best known for the imaginative stories and illustrations she created for 37 different books and stories. The granddaughter of landscape painter William Trost Richards, who first inspired her to draw, Price trained at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the New York Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. Oft-published in general-interest magazines like Colliers and those aimed at children, like St. Nicholas Magazine, she was also notable as one of the chief founders of the Brownies, the junior version of the Girl Scouts. Read more
29 Sep 1996: Shūsaku Endō, Japanese author (born 1923) Shūsaku Endō was a Japanese writer who wrote from the perspective of a Japanese Catholic. Internationally, he is known for his 1966 historical fiction novel Silence, adapted into a 2016 film by Martin Scorsese. He was the laureate of several prestigious literary accolades, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Order of Culture, and was inducted into the Roman Catholic Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Paul VI. Read more
29 Sep 1995: Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American atheist and activist (born 1919) Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an American activist who supported atheism, separation of church and state, and feminism. In 1963, she founded American Atheists and served as its president until 1986, after which her son Jon Garth Murray succeeded her. She created the first issues of American Atheist Magazine and identified as a militant feminist. Read more
29 Sep 1993: Gordon Douglas, American actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1907) Gordon Douglas Brickner was an American film director and actor, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures. Read more
29 Sep 1992: Jean Aurenche, French screenwriter (born 1904) Jean Aurenche was a French screenwriter. During his career, he wrote 80 films for directors such as René Clément, Bertrand Tavernier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy and Claude Autant-Lara. He is often associated with the screenwriter Pierre Bost, with whom he had a fertile partnership from 1940 to 1975. Read more
29 Sep 1992: William H. Sebrell Jr., American nutritionist, 7th Director of the National Institutes of Health (born 1901) William H. Sebrell Jr. was an American nutritionist. Read more
29 Sep 1992: Don West, American writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer and civil-rights activist (born 1906) Donald Lee West was an American writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer, civil-rights activist and a co-founder of the Highlander Folk School. Read more
29 Sep 1991: Grace Zaring Stone, American novelist and short-story writer (born 1891) Grace Zaring Stone was an American novelist and short-story writer. She is perhaps best known for having three of her novels made into films: The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Winter Meeting, and Escape. She also used the pseudonym Ethel Vance. Read more
29 Sep 1989: Gussie Busch, American businessman (born 1899) August Anheuser "Gussie" Busch Jr. was an American brewing magnate who built the Anheuser-Busch into the largest brewery in the world by 1957; he served as company chairman from 1946 to 1975. Read more
29 Sep 1989: Georges Ulmer, Danish-French singer-songwriter and actor (born 1919) Georges Ulmer (1919–1989) was a Danish-born composer, librettist, and actor who became a naturalized French citizen. He was born Jørgen Frederik Ulmer on 16 February 1919 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and died on 29 September 1989 at Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was the father of singer Laura Ulmer. Read more
29 Sep 1988: Charles Addams, American cartoonist (born 1912) Charles Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Family, and were popularized through various adaptations. Read more
29 Sep 1987: Henry Ford II, American businessman (born 1917) Henry Ford II, commonly known as "Hank the Deuce," was an American businessman in the automotive industry. He was the oldest son of Edsel Ford and oldest grandson of Henry Ford I. He served as president of the Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1960, chief executive officer (CEO) from 1947 to 1979, and chairman of the board of directors from 1960 to 1980. Under his leadership, Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation in 1956. From 1943 to 1950, he also served as president of the Ford Foundation. Read more
29 Sep 1984: Geater Davis, American singer and songwriter (born 1946) Vernon "Geater" Davis was an American soul singer and songwriter. He has been described as "one of the South's great lost soul singers, an impassioned stylist whose voice was a combination of sweetness and sandpaper grit." Read more
29 Sep 1984: Hal Porter, Australian novelist, playwright and poet (born 1911) Harold Edward "Hal" Porter was an Australian novelist, playwright, poet, and short story writer. He is known for his 1963 memoir, The Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony. The Hal Porter Short Story Competition continues to honour his name, awarding a prize of $1000 to the writer of a short story each year. Read more
29 Sep 1983: Alan Moorehead, Australian war correspondent and author (born 1910) Alan McCrae Moorehead, was an Australian war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962). Read more
29 Sep 1982: A. L. Lloyd, English folk singer (born 1908) Albert Lancaster Lloyd, usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the British folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. While Lloyd is most widely known for his work with British folk music, he had a keen interest in the music of Spain, Latin America, Southeastern Europe and Australia. He recorded at least six discs of Australian Bush ballads and folk music. Read more
29 Sep 1982: Monty Stratton, American baseball player and coach (born 1912) Monty Franklin Pierce Stratton was an American professional baseball pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). He was born in Palacios, Texas and lived in Greenville, Texas, for part of his life. His major league career ended prematurely when a hunting accident in 1938 forced doctors to amputate his right leg. Wearing a prosthetic leg, Stratton played in the minor leagues from 1946 to 1953. His comeback was the subject of the 1949 film The Stratton Story, in which he was portrayed by Jimmy Stewart. Read more
29 Sep 1981: Bill Shankly, Scottish footballer and manager (born 1913) William Shankly was a Scottish football player and manager who is best known for his time as manager of Liverpool. Shankly brought success to Liverpool, gaining promotion to the First Division and winning three League Championships and the UEFA Cup. He laid foundations on which his successors Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan were able to build by winning seven league titles and four European Cups in the ten seasons after Shankly retired in 1974. A charismatic, iconic figure at the club, his oratory stirred the emotions of the fanbase. Ronnie Moran, who was the captain of Liverpool when Shankly arrived in 1959, said "he was the one that resurrected the club." Read more
29 Sep 1981: Frances Yates, English historian (born 1899) Dame Frances Amelia Yates was an English historian of the Renaissance who wrote on the history of esotericism. Read more
29 Sep 1980: Harold Alexander Abramson, American physician (born 1889) Harold Alexander Abramson was an American physician, remembered as a proponent of therapeutic LSD. He played a significant role in the CIA's MKULTRA program to investigate the possible applications for LSD. Read more
29 Sep 1979: Francisco Macías Nguema, Equatoguinean politician, 1st President of Equatorial Guinea (born 1924) Francisco Macías Nguema, often referred to as Macías Nguema or simply Macías, was an Equatoguinean politician who served as the first president of Equatorial Guinea from the country's gaining of independence in 1968, until his overthrow in 1979. He is widely remembered as one of the most brutal dictators in history. As president, he exhibited bizarre and erratic behavior, to the point that many of his contemporaries believed he was insane. Read more
29 Sep 1979: Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Russian composer (born 1893) Ivan Alexandrovich Wyschnegradsky, was a Russian composer primarily known for his microtonal compositions. For most of his life, from 1920 onwards, Wyschnegradsky lived in Paris. Read more
29 Sep 1977: Robert McKimson, American animator and illustrator (born 1910) Robert Porter McKimson Sr. was an American animator and illustrator, best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. Cartoons and later DePatie–Freleng Enterprises. He wrote and directed many animated cartoon shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Hippety Hopper, Speedy Gonzales, and the Tasmanian Devil, among other characters. He also developed Bugs Bunny's design in the 1943 short Tortoise Wins by a Hare. Read more
29 Sep 1977: Alexander Tcherepnin, Russian-American composer and pianist (born 1899) Alexander Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian-born composer and pianist. Read more
29 Sep 1975: Gladys Skelton, Australian-British poet, novelist and playwright (born 1885) Gladys Skelton was an Australian and United Kingdom poet, novelist and playwright who wrote using the pseudonym John Presland. Read more
29 Sep 1975: Casey Stengel, American baseball player and manager (born 1890) Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) right fielder and manager, best known as the manager of the championship New York Yankees of the 1950s and later, the expansion New York Mets. Nicknamed "the Ol' Perfessor", he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. Read more
29 Sep 1973: W. H. Auden, English-American poet, playwright, and critic (born 1907) Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes, such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae". Read more
29 Sep 1972: Kathleen Clarke, Irish politician and activist (born 1878) Kathleen Clarke was a founder member of Cumann na mBan, a women's paramilitary organisation formed in Ireland in 1914, and one of very few people privy to the plans of the Easter Rising in 1916. She was the wife of Tom Clarke and sister of Ned Daly, both of whom were executed for their part in the Rising. She was subsequently a Teachta Dála (TD) and Senator with both Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil, and the first female Lord Mayor of Dublin (1939–1941). Read more
29 Sep 1970: Edward Everett Horton, American actor (born 1886) Edward Everett Horton, Jr. was an American character actor and comedian. He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons. Read more
29 Sep 1970: Gilbert Seldes, American writer and cultural critic (born 1893) Gilbert Vivian Seldes was an American writer and cultural critic. Seldes served as the editor and drama critic of the seminal modernist magazine The Dial and hosted the NBC television program The Subject is Jazz (1958). He also wrote for other magazines and newspapers like Vanity Fair and the Saturday Evening Post. He was most interested in American popular culture and cultural history. He wrote and adapted for Broadway, including Lysistrata and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the 1930s. Later, he made films, wrote radio scripts and became the first director of television for CBS News and the founding dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Read more
29 Sep 1967: Carson McCullers, American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet (born 1917) Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes. Most are set in the Deep South. Read more
29 Sep 1966: Bernard Gimbel, American businessman (born 1885) Bernard Feustman Gimbel was an American businessman and president of the Gimbels department store. Read more
29 Sep 1960: John Baillie, Scottish theologian (born 1886) John Baillie was a Scottish theologian, a Church of Scotland minister and brother of theologian Donald Macpherson Baillie. Read more
29 Sep 1960: Vladimir Dimitrov, Bulgarian artist (born 1882) Vladimir "the Master/Maystora" Dimitrov Poppetrov was a Bulgarian painter, draughtsman and teacher. He is considered one of the most talented 20th century Bulgarian painters and probably the most remarkable stylist in Bulgarian painting in the post-Russo-Turkish War era. Read more
29 Sep 1960: John Goodwin, British soldier and medical practitioner, 14th Governor of Queensland (born 1871) Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Herbert John Chapman Goodwin, was a British soldier and medical practitioner, who served as the Governor of Queensland from 1927 to 1932. Read more
29 Sep 1959: Bruce Bairnsfather, British humorist and cartoonist (born 1887) Captain Charles Bruce Bairnsfather was a prominent British humorist and cartoonist. His best-known cartoon character is Old Bill. Bill and his pals Bert and Alf featured in Bairnsfather's "Fragments from France" cartoons published weekly in The Bystander magazine during the First World War. Read more
29 Sep 1958: Aarre Merikanto, Finnish composer (born 1893) Aarre Merikanto was a Finnish composer. Read more
29 Sep 1956: Anastasio Somoza García, Nicaraguan politician, 21st President of Nicaragua (born 1896) Anastasio Somoza García was the leader of Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956. He was officially the 21st President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 1950 until his assassination on 29 September 1956, ruling for the rest of the time as an unelected military dictator. He was the patriarch of the Somoza family, which ruled Nicaragua as a family dictatorship for 42 years. Read more
29 Sep 1955: Louis Leon Thurstone, American psychologist (born 1887) Louis Leon Thurstone was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his contributions to factor analysis. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Thurstone as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth. Read more
29 Sep 1955: Hubert Maitland Turnbull, British pathologist (born 1875) Hubert Maitland Turnbull FRS was a British pathologist. Read more
29 Sep 1953: Ernst Reuter, German politician (born 1889) Ernst Rudolf Johannes Reuter was a German politician who was the mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the Cold War. He played a significant role in unifying the divided sectors of Berlin and publicly and politically took a stand against the Soviet Union. Read more
29 Sep 1952: John Cobb, English race car driver and pilot (born 1899) John Rhodes Cobb was an early to mid 20th century English racing motorist. He was three times holder of the World Land Speed Record, in 1938, 1939 and 1947, set at Bonneville Speedway in Utah, US. He was awarded the Segrave Trophy in 1947. He was killed in 1952 whilst piloting a jet-powered speedboat attempting to break the World Water Speed Record on Loch Ness in Scotland. Read more
29 Sep 1952: C. H. Douglas, British engineer (born 1879) Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, MIMechE, MIEE, was a British engineer, economist and pioneer of the social credit economic reform movement. Read more
29 Sep 1951: Thomas Cahill, American soccer player and coach (born 1864) Thomas William Cahill was one of the founding fathers of soccer in the United States, and is considered the most important administrator in U.S. Soccer before World War II.
Cahill formed the United States Football Association in 1913, which later became the United States Soccer Federation. In 1916 he became the first coach of the United States men's national soccer team. Cahill was enshrined in the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1950. Read more
29 Sep 1949: Rosa Olitzka, German-American contralto singer (born 1873) Rosa Olitzka was a German-born contralto singer. She sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1895 to 1901, and with the Chicago Opera from 1910 to 1911. Read more
29 Sep 1944: Douglas Crawford McMurtrie, American typeface designer, graphic designer, historian and author (born 1888) Douglas Crawford McMurtrie was an American typeface designer, graphic designer, historian, author and bibliographer of printing. Read more
29 Sep 1937: Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková, Czech botanist and zoologist (born 1877) Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková was the first female Czech botanist and zoologist. Baborová was born in Prague to a school teacher's family and learned many languages at a young age. She studied at the Minerva secondary school before studying natural sciences at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. She studied zoology and wrote her dissertation on fat bodies in arthropods and in 1901 became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate. An older brother Josef Florián Babor was also a physician and zoologist at the University. Josef had inspired her own studies but she worked under Frantisek Vejdovsky (1849–1939). She contributed entries on infusoria and protozoa for Otto's Encyclopedia. Baborová married Stanislav Ćihak in 1903. She cut back on her studies in 1906 after the birth of her daughter. Read more
29 Sep 1937: Ray Ewry, American triple jumper (born 1873) Raymond Clarence Ewry was an American track and field athlete who won eight gold medals at the Olympic Games and two gold medals at the Intercalated Games. This puts him among the most successful Olympians of all time. Read more
29 Sep 1935: Winifred Holtby, English novelist and journalist (born 1898) Winifred Holtby was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novel South Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936. Read more
29 Sep 1933: Jean-François Delmas, French bass-baritone (born 1861) Jean-François Delmas, or Francisque Delmas was a French bass-baritone who created roles in many French operas including Athanaël in Thaïs. Read more
29 Sep 1931: William Orpen, Irish artist (born 1878) Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen was an Irish artist who mainly worked in London. Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful painter of portraits for the well-to-do in Edwardian society, though many of his most striking paintings are self-portraits. Read more
29 Sep 1930: Ilya Repin, Ukrainian-Russian painter and illustrator (born 1844) Ilya Yefimovich Repin was a Ukrainian-born Russian painter. He became one of the most renowned artists in Russia in the 19th century. His major works include Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873), Religious Procession in Kursk Province (1880–1883), Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885), and Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1880–1891). Repin is also known for the revealing portraits he made of the leading Russian literary and artistic figures of his time, including Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Pavel Tretyakov, and especially Leo Tolstoy, with whom he had a long friendship. Read more
29 Sep 1928: John Devoy, Irish-American Fenian rebel leader (born 1842) John Devoy was an Irish republican rebel and journalist who owned and edited The Gaelic American, a New York weekly newspaper, from 1903 to 1928. Read more
29 Sep 1928: Ernst Steinitz, German mathematician (born 1871) Ernst Steinitz was a German mathematician. Read more
29 Sep 1927: Arthur Achleitner, German journalist and author (born 1858) Arthur Achleitner was a German writer. His works are noteworthy because he describes local customs and peculiarities of the people in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, and the Mediterranean regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Read more
29 Sep 1927: Willem Einthoven, Indonesian-Dutch physiologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1860) Willem Einthoven was a Dutch medical doctor and physiologist. He invented the first practical electrocardiograph in 1895 and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 for it. Read more
29 Sep 1925: Léon Bourgeois, French police officer and politician, 64th Prime Minister of France, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1851) Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois was a French statesman. His ideas influenced the Radical Party regarding a wide range of issues. Read more
29 Sep 1925: Runar Schildt, Finnish author (born 1888) Ernst Runar Schildt was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author from Helsinki. His son was art historian and author Göran Schildt. Although Schildt wrote his books in Swedish, they have also been translated into Finnish, English, French and German. Read more
29 Sep 1923: Walther Penck, German geologist and geomorphologist (born 1888) Walther Penck was a geologist and geomorphologist known for his theories on landscape evolution. Penck is noted for criticizing key elements of the Davisian cycle of erosion, concluding that the process of uplift and denudation occur simultaneously, at gradual and continuous rates. Penck's idea of parallel slope retreat led to revisions of Davis's cycle of erosion. Read more
29 Sep 1919: Edward Pulsford, English-Australian politician and free-trade campaigner (born 1844) Edward Pulsford was an English-born Australian politician and free-trade campaigner. Read more
29 Sep 1918: Lawrence Weathers, Australian soldier (born 1890). Lawrence Carthage Weathers, was a New Zealand-born Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in battle that could be awarded to a member of the Australian armed forces at the time. His parents returned to their native South Australia when Weathers was seven, and he completed his schooling before obtaining work as an undertaker in Adelaide. He enlisted as a private in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in early 1916, and joined the 43rd Battalion. His unit deployed to the Western Front in France and Belgium in late December. After a bout of illness, Weathers returned to his battalion in time to take part in the Battle of Messines in June 1917, during which he was wounded. Evacuated to the United Kingdom, he rejoined his unit in early December. Read more
29 Sep 1915: Luther Orlando Emerson, American musician, composer and music publisher (born 1820) Luther Orlando Emerson was an American musician, composer and music publisher. Read more
29 Sep 1915: Rudi Stephan, German composer (born 1887) Rudi Stephan was a German composer of great promise who was considered one of the leading talents of his generation. He was killed in action during World War I. Read more
29 Sep 1913: Rudolf Diesel, German engineer, invented the diesel engine (born 1858) Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German inventor and mechanical engineer. He is best known for inventing the diesel engine, which burns diesel fuel. Both are named for him. Read more
29 Sep 1913: John F. Lacey, American politician (born 1841) John Fletcher Lacey was an eight-term Republican United States congressman from Iowa's 6th congressional district. He was also the author of the Lacey Act of 1900, which made it a crime to ship illegal game across state lines and to import injurious wildlife species, and the Lacey Act of 1907, which further regulated the handling of tribal funds. As the first federal conservation law, the Lacey Act of 1900 remains one of the foundations of conservation law enforcement. Read more
29 Sep 1910: Rebecca Harding Davis, American author and journalist (born 1831) Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis was an American author and journalist. She was a pioneer of literary realism in American literature. She graduated valedictorian from Washington Female Seminary in Pennsylvania. Her most important literary work is the short story "Life in the Iron-Mills," published in the April 1861 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. Throughout her lifetime, Davis sought to effect social change for African Americans, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about the plight of these marginalized groups in the 19th century. Read more
29 Sep 1910: Winslow Homer, American painter, illustrator, and engraver (born 1836) Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters of 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art in general. Read more
29 Sep 1908: Machado de Assis, Brazilian author, poet, and playwright (born 1839) Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, sometimes called Bruxo do Cosme Velho, was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature. In 1897, he founded and became the first President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was multilingual, having taught himself French, English, German and Greek later in life. Read more
29 Sep 1905: Alexander Hay Japp, Scottish author, journalist and publisher (born 1836) Alexander Hay Japp was a Scottish author, journalist and publisher. Read more
29 Sep 1904: Alfred Nehring, German zoologist and paleontologist (born 1845) Alfred Nehring was a German zoologist and paleontologist. He was a founding professor of zoology at the Royal agricultural university in Berlin. Read more
29 Sep 1902: William McGonagall, Scottish poet and actor (born 1825) William McGonagall was a Scottish poet and public performer. He gained notoriety as an exceptionally poor poet who exhibited no recognition of or concern for his peers' opinions of his work. McGonagall wrote about 200 poems, including "The Tay Bridge Disaster" and "The Famous Tay Whale", which are widely regarded as some of the worst in English literature. Groups throughout Scotland engaged him to give recitations from his work, and contemporary descriptions of these performances indicate that many listeners appreciated McGonagall's apparent skill as a comic music hall character. Collections of his verse remain popular, with several volumes available today. Read more
29 Sep 1902: Émile Zola, French journalist, author, and playwright (born 1840) Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in his renowned newspaper opinion headlined J'Accuse…! Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prizes in Literature in 1901 and 1902. Read more
29 Sep 1900: Samuel Fenton Cary, American lawyer and politician (born 1814) Samuel Fenton Cary was an American politician who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio and significant temperance movement leader in the 19th century. Cary became well known nationally as a prohibitionist author and lecturer. Read more
29 Sep 1898: Thomas F. Bayard, American lawyer, politician and diplomat (born 1828) Thomas Francis Bayard Sr. was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat from Wilmington, Delaware. A Democrat, he served three terms as the United States senator from Delaware and made three unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him Secretary of State. After four years in private life, he returned to the diplomatic arena as Ambassador to Great Britain. Read more
29 Sep 1889: Louis Faidherbe, French general and politician (born 1818) Louis Léon César Faidherbe was a French general and colonial administrator. He created the Senegalese Tirailleurs when he was governor of Senegal. Read more
29 Sep 1887: Bernhard von Langenbeck, German surgeon and academic (born 1810) Bernhard Rudolf Konrad von Langenbeck was a German surgeon known as the developer of Langenbeck's amputation and founder of Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery. Read more
29 Sep 1867: Sterling Price, American major general and politician (born 1809) Sterling Price was an American politician and military officer who was a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, fighting in both the Western and Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War. He rose to prominence during the Mexican–American War and served as the 11th governor of Missouri from 1853 to 1857. He is remembered today for his service in Arkansas (1862–1865) and for his defeat at the Battle of Westport on October 23, 1864. Read more
29 Sep 1862: William "Bull" Nelson, American general (born 1824) William "Bull" Nelson was a United States naval officer who became a Union general during the American Civil War. Read more
29 Sep 1861: Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska, Polish composer and pianist (born 1829 or 1834) Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska, also known as Tekla Bądarzewska was a Polish composer and pianist. She composed mainly for the piano and is internationally known for her composition A Maiden's Prayer. Read more
29 Sep 1850: David Keith Ballow, Scottish-Australian doctor (born 1804) David Keith Ballow was the government medical officer in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and the first doctor to establish a private practice in Brisbane. Read more
29 Sep 1833: Ferdinand VII of Spain (born 1784) Ferdinand VII was King of Spain and the Indies during the early 19th century, and king of the Spains during the Spanish liberal period. He reigned as a prisoner of Napoleon, in absentia, or without effective sovereignty during the periods of Spanish liberalism, 1808–1813 and 1820–1823. Before 1813, he was known as el Deseado, and after, as el Rey Felón. Read more
29 Sep 1804: Michael Hillegas, American politician, 1st Treasurer of the United States (born 1728) Michael Hillegas was an American merchant and politician who served as the first Treasurer of the United States from 1775 to 1789. Read more
29 Sep 1800: Michael Denis, Austrian poet and author (born 1729) Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Michael Denis, also: Sined the Bard, was an Austrian Catholic priest and Jesuit, who is best known as a poet, bibliographer, and lepidopterist. Read more

Why is 29 September Important in History?

29 September is important because many political, cultural, scientific, educational and social events took place on this date. These facts are useful for students, exam aspirants and readers interested in daily history and general knowledge.

History of Today 29 September for Competitive Exams

Questions based on today in history, famous personalities, historical events and important dates are often asked in UPSC, SSC, Banking, Railway, Defence and State PSC examinations.

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What happened on 29 September in history?

On 29 September, many important historical events, famous births and notable deaths occurred across the world.

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