Famous Birthdays on April 18

April 18 has 137 recorded notable births across history, from 359 to 1996. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

Conan O'Brien

1963 — Conan O'Brien

American television host, comedian, and writer

By · Wikipedia

Famous Birthdays 137 source records 359 – 1996 Aries

Major events on April 18

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1783 Three-Fifths Compromise: The first instance of black slaves in the United States of America being counted as three-fifths of persons (for the purpose of taxation), in a resolution of the Congress of the Confederation. This was later adopted in the 1787 Constitution. Source
  2. 1797 War of the First Coalition: The Peace of Leoben is signed by Napoleon Bonaparte and Maximilian, Count of Merveldt, creating an armistice between France and Austria, setting the stage for the Treaty of Campo Formio and ending the War of the First Coalition.[citation needed] Source

Did you know about Conan O'Brien

Conan O'Brien hosted several late-night talk shows, beginning with Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993–2009) and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009–2010) on the NBC television network, and Conan (2010–2021) on the cable channel TBS.

Did you know about Edgar Wright

Edgar Wright first made independent short films before making his first feature film A Fistful of Fingers in 1995.

Did you know about Jeff Dunham

Jeff Dunham has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and holds the Guinness Book of World Records record for "Most tickets sold for a stand-up comedy tour" for his Spark of Insanity tour.

Did you know about Miguel Cabrera

José Miguel Cabrera Torres, nicknamed Miggy, is a Venezuelan former professional baseball first baseman, third baseman, and designated hitter who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Florida Marlins and Detroit Tigers.

Did you know about Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson was a visiting lecturer at the London School of Economics for the 2023/2024 academic year and at Tsinghua University in China from 2019 to 2020.


More major people born on April 18

Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.

1974 Edgar Wright

Edgar Wright

English filmmaker
Edgar Howard Wright is an English filmmaker. He is known for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical genre films, which feature extensive use of expressive popular music, Steadicam tracking shots, dolly zooms and a signature editing style that includes transitions, whip pans and wipes. He first made independent short films before making his first feature film A Fistful of Fingers in 1995. Wright created and directed the comedy series Asylum in 1996, written with David Walliams. After directing several other television shows, Wright directed the sitcom Spaced (1999–2001), which aired for two series and starred frequent collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
1962 Jeff Dunham

Jeff Dunham

American ventriloquist and comedian
Jeffrey Douglas Dunham is an American ventriloquist, stand-up comedian and actor who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show, and Sonny with a Chance. He has seven specials that run on Comedy Central as well as two Netflix specials among others. He also starred in The Jeff Dunham Show, a series that ran in 2009. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and holds the Guinness Book of World Records record for "Most tickets sold for a stand-up comedy tour" for his Spark of Insanity tour.
1983 Miguel Cabrera

Miguel Cabrera

Venezuelan baseball player
José Miguel Cabrera Torres, nicknamed Miggy, is a Venezuelan former professional baseball first baseman, third baseman, and designated hitter who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Florida Marlins and Detroit Tigers. Debuting in 2003, he was a two-time American League (AL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) award winner, a four-time AL batting champion, and a 12-time MLB All-Star. Although he primarily played in left and right field before 2006, he spent the majority of his major league career at first and third base. He claimed the 17th MLB Triple Crown in 2012, the first to do so in 45 seasons, and remains the only player since 1968. Cabrera is one of three players in MLB history to have a career batting average above .300, 500 home runs, and 3,000 hits, joining Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. Cabrera is regarded as one of the greatest hitters of all time.
1964 Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson

Scottish historian and academic
Sir Niall Campbell Ferguson is a British and American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, New York University, a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He was a visiting lecturer at the London School of Economics for the 2023/2024 academic year and at Tsinghua University in China from 2019 to 2020.
1942 Robert Christgau

Robert Christgau

American journalist and critic
Robert Thomas Christgau is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. He was the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice for 37 years, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music; he was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world—when he talks, people listen."
1973 Derrick Brooks

Derrick Brooks

American football player
Derrick Dewan Brooks is an American former professional football player who was a linebacker for his entire 14-year career in the National Football League (NFL) with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brooks played college football for the Florida State Seminoles, earning consensus All-American honors twice. He was selected by the Buccaneers in the first round of the 1995 NFL draft. An 11-time Pro Bowl selection and five-time first-team All-Pro, Brooks was the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 2002 en route to winning the franchise's first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XXXVII. He was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2016.
1858 Dhondo Keshav Karve

Dhondo Keshav Karve

Indian educator and activist, Bharat Ratna Awardee (died 1962)
Dhondo Keshav Karve, popularly known as Maharshi Karve, was a social reformer in India in the field of women's welfare. He advocated widow remarriage, and he himself remarried a widow as a widower. Karve was a pioneer in promoting widows' education. He founded the first women's university in India, the SNDT Women's University in 1916. The Government of India awarded him with the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, in 1958, the year of his 100th birthday. He organized a conference against the practice of devdasi. He started 'Anath balikashram' an orphanage for girls. His intention was to give education to all women and make them stand on their own feet. Through his efforts, the first women university was set up in 20th century. In addition to his work in women's education, he actively campaigned against the caste system and played a key role in founding societies aimed at advancing primary education in rural areas.
1981 Audrey Tang

Audrey Tang

Taiwanese Minister of Digital Affairs and programmer
Tang Feng, also known by her English name Audrey, is a Taiwanese politician and free software programmer who served as the first Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan from August 2022 to May 2024. She has been described as one of the "ten greatest Taiwanese computing personalities". In August 2016, Tang was invited to join Taiwan's Executive Yuan as a minister without portfolio, making her the first transgender person and the first non-binary gender official in the top executive cabinet. Tang has identified as "post-gender" and accepts "whatever pronoun people want to describe me with online." Tang is a leader of the Haskell and Perl programming language communities, and is the core member of g0v.
1771 Karl Philipp

Karl Philipp

Prince of Schwarzenberg (died 1820)
Karl Philipp, Fürst zu Schwarzenberg was an Austrian Generalissimo and former Field Marshal. He first entered military service in 1788 and fought against the Turks. During the French Revolutionary War, he fought on the allied side against France and in that period rose through the ranks of the Imperial Army. During the Napoleonic Wars, he fought in the Battle of Wagram (1809), which the Austrians lost decisively against Napoleon. He had to fight for Napoleon in the battles of Gorodechno and Wolkowisk (1812) against the Russians and won. During the War of the Sixth Coalition, he was in command of the allied army that decisively defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig (1813). He participated in the Battle of Paris (1814), which forced Napoleon to abdicate.
1819 Franz von Suppé

Franz von Suppé

Austrian composer and conductor (died 1895)
Franz von Suppé, born Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé Demelli was an Austrian composer of light operas and other theatre music. He came from the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Austro-Hungarian Empire. A composer and conductor of the Romantic period, he is notable for his four dozen operettas, including the first operetta to a German libretto. Some of them remain in the repertory, particularly in German-speaking countries, and he composed a substantial quantity of church music, but he is now chiefly known for his overtures, which remain popular in the concert hall and on record. Among the best-known are Poet and Peasant, Light Cavalry, Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna and Pique Dame.
1914 Claire Martin

Claire Martin

Canadian author (died 2014)
Claire Martin, was the pseudonym of the Canadian writer Claire Montreuil. She wrote mainly in French. Her novels often have themes of women's liberation and erotic relationships. Martin frequently revealed her devotions toward the "Frenchness" and Quebec nationalism as saying "I prefer to be of Quebec." or "I feel closer to love as a French-Canadian." In her works, Quebec and French-Canadian are portrayed as well-educated and living well. Martin focused her writing style on risks and illnesses of love, and wrote with prejudice and social conventions. Her works are characterized by purity and crafty use of language.
1993 Mika Zibanejad

Mika Zibanejad

Swedish ice hockey player
Mika Zibanejad is a Swedish professional ice hockey player who is a centre and alternate captain for the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the Swedish national team. Zibanejad was selected sixth overall in the 2011 NHL entry draft by the Ottawa Senators. He made the Senators lineup out of training camp to start the 2011–12 season, but was returned to Djurgårdens IF in Sweden after scoring one point in nine NHL games with Ottawa. On 18 July 2016, after five seasons within the Senators organization, Zibanejad was traded to the Rangers.
1970 Willie Roaf

Willie Roaf

American football player
William Layton Roaf, nicknamed "Nasty", is an American former professional football player who was an offensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons. He played college football for Louisiana Tech Bulldogs, where he earned consensus All-American honors. He was a first-round pick in the 1993 NFL draft, and played professionally for the New Orleans Saints and Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL. An 11-time Pro Bowl selection and nine-time All-Pro, he was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2012 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2014.
1996 Ski Mask the Slump God

Ski Mask the Slump God

American rapper
Stokeley Clevon Goulbourne, known professionally as Ski Mask the Slump God, is an American rapper. He is best known for his association with XXXTentacion, with whom he formed the hip hop collective Members Only in 2014. He is notable for his nostalgic-themed musical production and public image, often clad with multi-colored durags. He signed with Victor Victor Worldwide, an imprint of Republic Records to release his debut commercial mixtape You Will Regret (2017), which entered the Billboard 200 and spawned the platinum-certified singles "BabyWipe", "Take a Step Back", and "Catch Me Outside".
1941 Michael D. Higgins

Michael D. Higgins

Irish sociologist and politician, 9th President of Ireland
Michael Daniel Higgins is an Irish politician, poet and broadcaster who served as the president of Ireland from November 2011 to November 2025. Entering national politics through the Labour Party, he served as a senator from 1973 to 1977 and a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1981 to 1982, returning to the Seanad from 1983 to 1987 and the Dáil from 1987 to 2011. He served as minister for arts, culture and the Gaeltacht from 1993 to 1997 and as mayor of Galway from 1981 to 1982 and 1990 to 1991.
1989 Alia Shawkat

Alia Shawkat

American actress
Alia Martine Shawkat is an American actress. She is known for her performances as Maeby Fünke in the Fox/Netflix television sitcom Arrested Development, Dory Sief in the TBS and HBO Max dark comedy series Search Party (2016–2022), and Gertie Michaels in the 2015 horror-comedy film The Final Girls, as well as her roles in State of Grace (2001–2002) and The Old Man starring Jeff Bridges (2022–2024). She has also guest starred as historical figures Frances Cleveland, Virginia Hall, and Alexander Hamilton on Comedy Central's Drunk History (2014–2016).
1940 Joseph L. Goldstein

Joseph L. Goldstein

American biochemist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate
Joseph Leonard Goldstein ForMemRS is an American biochemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1985, along with fellow University of Texas Southwestern researcher, Michael Brown, for their studies regarding cholesterol. They discovered that human cells have low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors that remove cholesterol from the blood and that when LDL receptors are not present in sufficient numbers, individuals develop hypercholesterolemia and become at risk for cholesterol related diseases, notably coronary heart disease. Their studies led to the development of statin drugs.
1864 Richard Harding Davis

Richard Harding Davis

American journalist and author (died 1916)
Richard Harding Davis was an American journalist and writer of fiction and drama, known foremost as the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish–American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I. His writing greatly assisted the political career of Theodore Roosevelt. He also played a major role in the evolution of the American magazine. His influence extended to the world of fashion, and he is credited with making the clean-shaven look popular among men at the turn of the 20th century.
1947 James Woods

James Woods

American actor and producer
James Howard Woods is an American actor. Known for fast-talking, intense roles on screen and stage, he has received numerous accolades, including three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and three Actor Awards. Woods made his Broadway debut in the Elliott Baker play The Penny Wars (1969). His early films roles include The Visitors (1972), The Way We Were (1973) and The Gambler (1974), before starring with Meryl Streep in the NBC miniseries Holocaust (1978).

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