Famous Birthdays on April 11

Mark Charles Teixeira, nicknamed "Tex", is an American politician and former professional baseball first baseman who played 14 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and New York Yankees. Before his professional career, he played college baseball at Georgia Tech, where in 2000 he won the Dick Howser Trophy as the national collegiate baseball player of the year. One of the most prolific switch hitters in MLB history, Teixeira was a member of the Yankees' 27th World Series championship team in 2009, leading the American League (AL) in home runs and runs batted in (RBI) while finishing second in the Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) balloting. Teixeira was a three-time All-Star, won five Gold Glove Awards and three Silver Slugger Awards, and holds the major-league record for most games with a home run from both sides of the plate, with 14. He was the fifth switch hitter in MLB history to reach 400 home runs.

Lights Valerie Anne Poxleitner-Bokan known professionally as Lights is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Her debut album, The Listening (2009), reached the top 10 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart and was certified platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) for selling over 80,000 copies as of 2017. The album included the singles "Drive My Soul" and "February Air" which were featured in a series of Old Navy television ads. Her second album, Siberia, which featured the single "Toes", was released in 2011. A more dubstep influenced record, Siberia has received generally positive reviews from music critics and achieved moderate success, entering the top 50 on the Billboard 200 and selling more than 10,000 units in its first week.

Kundan Lal Saigal, often abbreviated as K. L. Saigal, was an Indian singer and actor who worked in Hindi cinema, which was centred in Calcutta (Kolkata) during his time, but is currently based in Bombay (Mumbai). Saigal's unique voice, a blend of baritone and soft tenor, set the benchmark for many singers who followed him. Even today, it remains the gold standard, shining through despite the limitations of early and relatively primitive recording technology. Unlike other singers, he did not record songs for actors to lip-sync on screen. It was only in the final years of his career, from 1945 to 1947, that he recorded songs for studio release; these recordings were for his own performances as an on-screen actor. Thus, while most singers in Hindi cinema became playback singers, Saigal was not.

Jason Andrew Varitek, nicknamed "Tek", is an American professional baseball coach and former catcher. He was most recently the game planning coordinator, a uniformed coaching position, for the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball (MLB). After being traded as a minor league prospect by the Seattle Mariners, Varitek played his entire 15-year career for the Red Sox. A three-time All-Star and Gold Glove Award winner at catcher, as well as a Silver Slugger Award winner, Varitek was part of the 2004 World Series and 2007 World Series Championship teams, and widely viewed as one of the team's leaders. In December 2004 he was named the captain of the Red Sox, only their fourth captain since 1923. He was a switch-hitter.

Roger de Mortimer, 4th Earl of March, 6th Earl of Ulster was a great-grandson of King Edward III, descended from his second surviving son Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, and was considered the heir presumptive to the childless King Richard II, his mother's first cousin. However, he predeceased Richard II by two years, albeit leaving issue, in whose line the claim to the crown continued. Although two years after Mortimer's death the crown was seized from King Richard II by the House of Lancaster, descended from the third son of King Edward III, the Mortimer claim to the throne was realised eventually by the House of York, descended in the male line from the fourth and most junior son of King Edward III, on the basis that they had married Anne Mortimer, the daughter and eventual sole heiress of Roger de Mortimer, 4th Earl of March. This claim to the crown by the House of York on the basis of their descent via a female line from the second son of King Edward III was the substance of the Wars of the Roses, as the ruling House of Lancaster was descended only from the third son of King Edward III, albeit in a direct male line.

Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours was born a Princess of Savoy and became the Duchess of Savoy by marriage. First married by proxy to Charles of Lorraine in 1662, Lorraine soon refused to recognise the union and it was annulled. She married her kinsman Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, in 1665. The mother of the future Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia who saw the elevation of the House of Savoy to kings, she styled herself as Madama Reale or Madame Royale. She acted as Regent of Savoy from 1675 in the name of her son Victor Amadeus II, who was her husband's successor. Her regency officially ended in 1680, but she maintained power until her son banished her from further influence in the state in 1684. She left a considerable architectural legacy in Turin, and was responsible for the remodelling of the Palazzo Madama, which was her private residence. At the time of her death, she was the mother of the King of Sardinia as well as great-grandmother of two other kings, Louis I of Spain and Louis XV of France.

Kotomitsuki Keiji is a Japanese former professional sumo wrestler from Okazaki City. A former amateur champion, he turned professional in 1999. He reached the top makuuchi division in November 2000 and won one yūshō or tournament championship, in September 2001. He was a runner-up in eight other tournaments, and earned thirteen sanshō or special prizes. He is one of six wrestlers in the history of sumo to receive all three sanshō in the same tournament, accomplishing the feat in the November 2000 honbasho. After a record 22 tournaments at sekiwake, he achieved promotion to sumo's second highest rank of ōzeki in July 2007 upon winning 35 out of 45 bouts in three consecutive tournaments. This made him at 31 the oldest man to reach ōzeki in the modern era. He wrestled for Sadogatake stable. On July 4, 2010, he was expelled from professional sumo by the Japan Sumo Association for his involvement in an illegal gambling ring.

Jennifer Heil is a Canadian freestyle skier from Spruce Grove, Alberta. Heil started skiing at age two. Jennifer Heil won the first gold medal for Canada in the 2006 Winter Olympics games in Turin, Italy and a silver medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which was also Canada's first medal in those games. Jennifer held the Guinness World Record for most gold medals won at a World Championship. She has four world championship titles in total and two silver medals from the Worlds as well. Over her career, Heil became the first mogul skier to complete the "Grand Slam" winning all major titles in the sport including a record-tying five overall FIS World Cup Crystal Globe titles. Jennifer is a member of the Canadian Order of Sport, Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Pantheon des Sports du Québec, inducted as the winningest female skier in Canadian history.

Johanna Elberskirchen was a German feminist writer and activist for the rights of women, gays and lesbians as well as blue-collar workers. She published books on women's sexuality and health among other topics. Her last known public appearance was in 1930 in Vienna, where she gave a talk at a conference organised by the World League for Sexual Reform. She was open about her own homosexuality which made her a somewhat exceptional figure in the feminist movement of her time. Her career as an activist was ended in 1933, when the Nazi Party rose to power. There is no public record of a funeral but witnesses report that Elberskirchen's urn was secretly put into the grave of Hildegard Moniac, who had been her life partner.

Percy Lane Oliver was a British civil servant, who is credited with founding the first volunteer blood donation service. A layman, Oliver was working for the Camberwell division of the Red Cross in 1921 when he responded to a call from a local hospital requesting an urgent blood donation. This experience led him to organise a panel of donors whose blood types were known and who were available to donate on request. The donors, unusually for the time, were not paid. Oliver's blood donation service, which he ran out of his London home, would grow from 20 volunteers at its inception to approximately 2700 in 1938. His model of voluntary blood donation was adopted throughout Britain and in other countries.

Arthur Shrewsbury was an English cricketer and rugby football administrator. He was widely rated as competing with W. G. Grace for the accolade of best batsman of the 1880s; Grace himself, when asked whom he would most like in his side, replied simply, "Give me Arthur". An opening batsman, Shrewsbury played his cricket for Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and played 23 Test matches for England, captaining them in 7 games, with a record of won 5, lost 2. He was the last professional to be England captain until Len Hutton was chosen in 1952. He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1890. He also organised the first British Isles rugby tour to Australasia in 1888.

Àlex Corretja Verdegay is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 2 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in 1999. Corretja won 17 ATP Tour singles titles, including the 1998 ATP World Tour Championships, and Masters titles at the 1997 Italian Open and 2000 Indian Wells Masters. He was twice a major runner-up at the French Open, in 1998 and 2001. Corretja played a key role in helping Spain win its first Davis Cup title in 2000. Corretja is one of only two players who are undefeated against Rafael Nadal after playing more than one match against him, holding a 2–0 head-to-head record.

Summer Marjani Walker is an American singer and songwriter. She signed with the Atlanta-based record label Love Renaissance, an imprint of Interscope Records, in late 2017 to release her debut commercial mixtape, Last Day of Summer (2018). Its lead single, "Girls Need Love", spawned a remix featuring Canadian rapper Drake, which became her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100. Her debut studio album, Over It (2019), was met with critical praise, peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart—briefly breaking the record for the biggest debut streaming week for a female R&B artist—and received triple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Trevor John Linden is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former president of hockey operations and alternate governor of the Vancouver Canucks. He spent 19 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL), playing centre and right wing with four teams: the Vancouver Canucks, New York Islanders, Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals. Before joining the NHL in 1988, Linden helped the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League (WHL) win consecutive Memorial Cup championships. In addition to appearing in two NHL All-Star Games, Linden was a member of the 1998 Canadian Olympic team and participated in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey.

Stephen Thomas Azar is an American country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and philanthropist. Active since 1996, he has released a total of seven studio albums: one on the former River North Records, one on Mercury Nashville, and five independently. Azar has charted nine times on Billboard Hot Country Songs, most successfully with his late 2001-early 2002 hit "I Don't Have to Be Me ", which reached the number two position there. After leaving Mercury in 2005, Azar began recording independently; Slide On Over Here, his second independently-released album, charted the top-40 country singles "Moo La Moo" and "Sunshine " in 2009.

Jennifer Esposito is an American actress and director. She is known for her roles in the feature films Summer of Sam (1999), Don't Say a Word (2001), The Master of Disguise (2002), Welcome to Collinwood (2002), Crash (2004), Taxi (2004), and Mob Town (2019). She has also appeared in several television series, most notably The Looney Tunes Show, Spin City, Related, Samantha Who?, Blue Bloods, and Mistresses. From 2016 to 2017, she played Special Agent Alexandra Quinn on the CBS series NCIS, while from 2019 to 2020, she played CIA Deputy Director Susan Raynor in the Amazon series The Boys.

Christopher Trotman "Trot" Nixon, nicknamed "Dirt Dog", is an American former professional baseball right fielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1996 through 2008, primarily with the Boston Red Sox from 1996 through 2006, where he was a fan favorite for his scrappy play. With the Red Sox, he won the 2004 World Series. His career wound down with limited appearances for the Cleveland Indians in 2007 and the New York Mets in 2008. He currently serves as co-host/analyst for "The 5th Quarter," a high school football highlight show on WWAY-TV in his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina.

António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola was a Portuguese military officer, author and conservative politician. During the Estado Novo regime he became one of Portugal's most senior military commanders, leading military operations against independence movements. After the Carnation Revolution, partially organised by under-ranked military captains, he was invited to be the president of Portugal. His role in Portugal's transition to democracy remains highly controversial, particularly regarding his role in leading the 11 March 1975 attempted coup as well as the anticommunist terrorist organisation Movimento Democrático de Libertação de Portugal. He was noted for wearing a monocle on his right eye.

William Mills Irwin is an American actor, choreographer, clown, and comedian. He began as a vaudeville-style stage performer and has been noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He won a Tony Award for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He also worked as a choreographer on Broadway and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 1989 for Largely New York. He is also known as Mr. Noodle on the Sesame Street segment Elmo's World, and he appeared in the Sesame Street film short Does Air Move Things?