Famous Birthdays on April 17

Claire Jayne Sweeney is an English actress, singer, and television personality. Known for her portrayal of Lindsey Corkhill on Channel 4's Brookside, she also played Roxie Hart in Chicago and starred in touring productions of Guys and Dolls (2006), Tell Me on a Sunday (2011), Legally Blonde (2011), and Educating Rita (2012). She was a panellist on ITV's Loose Women between 2003 and 2005, and presented 60 Minute Makeover from 2004 to 2006. Her debut album, Claire, reached number 15 on the UK Albums Chart in 2002. Sweeney has also portrayed Cassie Plummer on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street from 2023 to 2026. Her other credits include Candy Cabs (2011), Scarborough (2019), and The Good Ship Murder (2023–2024).

Nicholas Peter John Hornby is an English writer. He is best known for his memoir Fever Pitch (1992) and novels High Fidelity (1995) and About a Boy (1998), all of which were adapted into feature films. Hornby's work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists. His books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide as of 2018. In a 2004 poll for the BBC, Hornby was named the 29th most influential person in British culture. He has received two Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nominations for An Education (2009), and Brooklyn (2015).

Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan stateswoman who thrice served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1960 to 1965, from 1970 to 1977, and from 1994 to 2000. She was the first woman in the world to be democratically elected prime minister in 1960. A chairperson of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) from 1960 to 1994, she pursued socialist economic policies and promoted Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism. Bandaranaike was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and later served as chairperson of the organisation from 1976 to 1977, becoming the first woman to lead the organisation. Her combined tenure of 17 years and 211 days in office, spanning three non-consecutive terms, makes her the longest-serving prime minister in Sri Lankan history.

Joseph Francis Alaskey III was an American actor and comedian. He was one of Mel Blanc's successors at the Warner Bros. Animation studio until his death. He alternated with Jeff Bergman, Greg Burson, Jim Cummings, Bob Bergen, Maurice LaMarche and Billy West in voicing Warner Bros. cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Speedy Gonzales, Taz, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, among many others. He also voiced Plucky Duck on Tiny Toon Adventures from 1990 to 1995. Alaskey was the second actor to voice Grandpa Lou Pickles on Nickelodeon's Rugrats. He would later reprise his role in the spin-off series All Grown Up!. In 2004, he won a Daytime Emmy Award for voicing the title role in the animated series Duck Dodgers.

Adrian Constantine Anson, nicknamed "Cap", "Pop", and, early in his career, "Baby" and "The Marshalltown Infant", was an American professional baseball player who played a record 27 consecutive major-league seasons. Anson was regarded as one of the greatest players of his era and one of the first superstars of the game. He spent most of his career with the National League's Chicago franchise, serving as the club's manager, first baseman and, later in his tenure, minority owner. He led the team to six pennants from 1876 to 1886. Anson was one of baseball's first great hitters, and probably the first to tally over 3,000 career hits. In addition to being a star player, he innovated managerial tactics such as signals between players and the rotation of pitchers.

Donald Christopher Barber was an English jazz musician, best known as a bandleader and trombonist. He helped many musicians with their careers and had a UK top twenty trad jazz hit with "Petite Fleur" in 1959. These musicians included the blues singer Ottilie Patterson, who was at one time his wife, and Lonnie Donegan, whose appearances with Barber triggered the skiffle craze of the mid-1950s and who had his first transatlantic hit, "Rock Island Line", while with Barber's band. He provided an audience for Donegan and, later, Alexis Korner, and sponsored African-American blues musicians to visit Britain, making Barber a significant figure in launching the British rhythm and blues and "beat boom" of the 1960s.

Zdeňka Wiedermannová-Motyčková was a Moravian teacher, journal editor, and women's rights activist. Born into a family of progressive educators, she studied to become a teacher, graduating in 1886. Her Catholic education led her to more conservative values than her family's, but after teaching for several years, she began to recognize the disparities between women and men teachers, as well as those of their students. By 1898, she was publicly calling for equal pay for equal work and campaigning for equal education for boys and girls. In 1902, Wiedermannová founded and became chair of the Moravian Teachers Union, whose focus was to professionalize teaching standards. The following year, she opened a Girls' Academy in Brno, hoping later to include secondary education there. As the Austro-Hungarian Empire provided little funding for girls' education, she held lectures to provide for the operating costs of the academy. Finally in 1908, she successfully established the first girls' secondary school in Moravia.

Andrea Gritti was the Doge of the Venetian Republic from 1523 to 1538, following a distinguished diplomatic and military career. He started out as a successful merchant in Constantinople and transitioned into the position of Bailo, a diplomatic role. Gritti was arrested for espionage but was spared execution thanks to his good relationship with the Ottoman vizier. After being freed from imprisonment, he returned to Venice and began his political career. When the War of the League of Cambrai broke out, despite his lack of experience, Gritti was given a leadership role in the Venetian military, where he excelled. After the war, he was elected doge, and he held that post until his death.

Ian Donald Jones is a former New Zealand rugby union player. He played 79 tests for the All Blacks. He is one of New Zealand's most capped locks and formed one of the most famous lock pairings in international rugby, often partnered with Robin Brooke in the All Blacks from 1992 to 1998. What Jones lacked in size he more than made up for in skill, Jones was picked over physically intimidating locks such as Mark Cooksley who was the tallest All Black ever. Jones made his All Black debut Saturday, 16 June 1990 v Scotland at Dunedin. At the time he was 23 years, 60 days old.

Augustus Edward Hough Love FRS, often known as A. E. H. Love, was an English mathematical physicist famous for research on elasticity. He also studied wave propagation. He won the Adams Prize in 1911 for his work on the structure of the Earth in Some Problems of Geodynamics, in which he developed a mathematical model of surface waves known as Love waves. Love also contributed to the theory of tidal locking and introduced the parameters known as Love numbers, used in problems related to Earth tides, the tidal deformation of the solid Earth due to the gravitational attraction of the Moon and Sun.

Major Warren Frederick Martin Clemens was a British-Australian colonial administrator and military officer. In late 1941 and early 1942, while serving as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands, he helped prepare the area for eventual resistance to Japanese occupation. His additional duties as a coastwatcher alerted the Allies to Japanese plans to build an airstrip on Guadalcanal. This resulted in Allied carrier raids and eventually a landing by United States forces and the beginning of the epic struggle in the Solomons. Clemens then directly served the U.S. Marines in coordinating intelligence on Japanese activities.

Eliza Acton was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. It also contains the first recipe for what Acton called "Christmas pudding"; the dish was normally called plum pudding, recipes for which had appeared previously, although Acton was the first to put the name and recipe together.

William McCreery Ramsey was an American-German jazz and pop singer, journalist and actor famous for his German-language hits. He returned to Germany a year after he had served compulsory military service with the U.S. Air Force there. Active as a singer of jazz and pop already as a soldier, he made a career in different fields of musical entertainment. He sang and recorded German schlager, also German-language cover versions of English hits, jazz and swing. He appeared in films and television series, and ran popular series on radio and television as presenter.

Jennifer Brenda Meadows is a retired English athlete and current coach. Her main event was the 800 metres although earlier in her career she also competed for Great Britain over the 400 metres. In the 800 m she won a bronze medal at the 2009 World Championships and a silver at the 2010 World Indoor Championships. At the European Athletics Championships, Meadows took silver outdoors in 2010 and gold indoors in 2011. She also had international success as part of the Great Britain women's 4 × 400 metres relay squad.

Ronald H. Miller was professor of the Religion Department at Lake Forest College in Illinois. Miller earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Religions from Northwestern University, and a B.S and M.A from St. Louis University. He was a co-founder and co-director of Common Ground, an active adult education group for interfaith study and dialogue founded in 1975. Miller was vice-president of the Interreligious Engagement Project 21 and board member at Hands-of-Peace, an organization that brings American, and Palestinian and Israeli teenagers from the Middle East together for a two-week program in the United States. Miller lectured at countless churches, temples, mosques and centers across the country and wrote books aimed at a popular audience that convey contemporary issues in New Testament studies as well as in spirituality and philosophy.

Giovanni Battista Riccioli was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star. He argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself because on a rotating Earth, the ground moves at different speeds at different latitudes.

Richard Allen Epstein is an American legal scholar known for his writings on torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University and the director of its Classical Liberal Institute. He is also a senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a senior lecturer and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Chicago.

Paraskevi "Voula" Papachristou is a Greek triple jumper and long jumper. She won two gold medals at the European Athletics U23 Championships and took the third place at the 2016 World indoor Championships. She was removed from the Greek team for the 2012 London Olympics by the Greek Olympic Committee after making a racist comment online. At the 2016 Summer Olympics' final in Rio de Janeiro, she took the 8th place. In 2018 she was the European Champion in Berlin with a jump of 14,60 metres.

Kerry Wendell Thornley was an American author. He is known as the co-founder of Discordianism, in which context he is usually known as Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst or simply Lord Omar. He and Hill authored the religion's text Principia Discordia, Or, How I Found Goddess, and What I Did to Her When I Found Her. Thornley also was known for his 1962 manuscript The Idle Warriors, which was inspired by the activities of his acquaintance Lee Harvey Oswald before the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.