Famous Birthdays on April 24

Carlos Iván Beltrán Valdés is a Puerto Rican former outfielder in Major League Baseball (MLB) who played for seven teams from 1998 to 2017. A nine-time All-Star, he hit 20 home runs twelve times and 30 doubles eleven times, with eight seasons of 100 runs batted in (RBI) and seven seasons of 100 runs scored. He was named the American League (AL) Rookie of the Year in 1999 with the Kansas City Royals after batting .293 with 112 runs and 108 RBI, and leading the league's center fielders in putouts and assists. He led the Royals in runs, RBI, triples and stolen bases every year from 2001 to 2003, always with over 20 home runs and twice batting over .300. In June 2004, he was traded to the Houston Astros in the National League (NL), and became the first player in major league history to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases after changing leagues midseason. After joining the New York Mets as a free agent, he led the team to a tie for the best record in the major leagues in 2006, posting career highs in home runs (41), runs (127), RBI (116), walks (95), and slugging percentage (.594).

Lee John Westwood is an English professional golfer. He is one of the few golfers who has won tournaments on five continents – Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania – including victories on the European Tour and the PGA Tour. He has also won tournaments in four decades, the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. He was named European Tour Golfer of the Year for the 1998, 2000, 2009 and 2020 seasons. He has won the 2000 European Tour Order of Merit, and the renamed 2009 and 2020 Race to Dubai. He has frequently been mentioned as one of the best golfers without a major championship victory, and he holds the record of playing in the most majors without winning one.

David Harold Blackwell was an American statistician and mathematician who made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and statistics. He is one of the eponyms of the Rao–Blackwell theorem, and is also known for the Blackwell channel, Blackwell's contraction mapping theorem, Blackwell's approachability theorem, and the Blackwell order. He wrote one of the first Bayesian statistics textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics. He was the first African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, the first African American full professor with tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, and the seventh African American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. By the time he retired, he had published more than 90 papers and books on dynamic programming, game theory, and mathematical statistics. In 2012, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Blackwell the National Medal of Science.

Kristopher Joseph Pierre Irwin Letang is a Canadian professional ice hockey player who is a defenceman and alternate captain for the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League (NHL). He played juniors in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) with Val-d'Or Foreurs for three seasons, during which time he was selected 62nd overall by the Penguins in the 2005 NHL entry draft. In his second full NHL season, Letang won the 2009 Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh. He became a two-time Stanley Cup champion when the Penguins defeated the San Jose Sharks in 2016, and a three-time Stanley Cup champion when the Penguins defeated the Nashville Predators in 2017. Internationally, he has competed for Canada at the under-18 and under-20 levels, winning back-to-back gold medals at the World Junior Championships in 2006 and 2007.

Dino Rađa is a Croatian former professional basketball player. He was a member of the Jugoplastika team of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which he helped to win two FIBA European Champions Cup championships. He spent three and a half seasons with the Boston Celtics, being one of the European pioneers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Rađa was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991, and one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, as a member of the 2018 class. He was inducted into the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame, in 2022.

Manuel Ávila Camacho was a Mexican politician and military leader who served as the president of Mexico from 1940 to 1946. Having participated in the Mexican Revolution and achieving a high rank, he came to the presidency of Mexico because of his direct connection to General Lázaro Cárdenas and served him as the Chief of his General Staff during the Mexican Revolution and afterwards. He was called affectionately by Mexicans "The Gentleman President". As president, he pursued "national policies of unity, adjustment, and moderation". His administration completed the transition from military to civilian leadership, ended confrontational anticlericalism, reversed the push for socialist education, and restored a working relationship with the US during World War II.

John Arnold Griffin III was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Nicknamed "the Little Giant" for his short stature and forceful playing, Griffin began his career in the mid-1940s and continued until the month of his death. A pioneering figure in hard bop, Griffin recorded prolifically as a bandleader in addition to stints with the pianist Thelonious Monk and the drummer Art Blakey, in partnership with his fellow tenor Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, and as a member of the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band after he moved to Europe in the 1960s. In 1995, Griffin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.

Xu Guangqi or Hsü Kuang-ch'i, also known by his baptismal name Paul or Paul Siu, was a Chinese agronomist, astronomer, mathematician, politician, and writer during the late Ming dynasty. Xu was appointed by the Chinese Emperor in 1629 to be the leader of the Shixian calendar reform, which he embarked on with the assistance of Jesuits. Xu was a colleague and collaborator of the Italian Jesuits Matteo Ricci and Sabatino de Ursis and assisted their translation of several classic Western texts into Chinese, including part of Euclid's Elements. He was also the author of the Nong Zheng Quan Shu, a treatise on agriculture.

Luisa Kapp-Young, was an Austrian dramatic operatic soprano, musical educator, and essayist who used the principle of the Aeolian harp emission of tone, which excluded all effort in the throat, and preserved the voice. Kapp-Young made her debut after the death of her husband, Gisbert Kapp, in 1859. In 1861, she sang Wagner roles in Rotterdam. In the United States, she appeared in 1867 as Mme. Kapp-Young. After several seasons in Italy, she came back to the United States, and established herself under the name of Cappiani as a teacher in Boston and New York City. In 1884, she was one of the original founders of the American Federation of Musicians, and the only woman initially elected. After 1899, she lived permanently in Milan, and died in Zürich in 1919. Her essays on the voice were reproduced in many musical papers in the U.S. and other countries. She died in 1919.

Dieter Grau was a German-born American aerospace engineer and member of the "von Braun rocket group", at Peenemünde (1939–1945) working on the V-2 rockets in World War II. He was among the engineers who surrendered to the United States and traveled there, providing rocketry expertise via Operation Paperclip, which took them first to Fort Bliss, Texas. Grau was sent by the U.S. Army to White Sands in 1946 to work on the assemblage and testing of the V-2. His wife joined him there in 1947. While von Braun was on standby at Fort Bliss, Grau and other German aerospace engineers busily launched V-2s for U.S. scientists to analyze. A total of 67 V-2s were launched at White Sands.

Eamon Gilmore is an Irish diplomat and former Labour Party politician. He has served as European Union Special Representative for Human Rights since February 2019. He has also been the European Union Special Envoy for the Colombian Peace Process since 2015. He was Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade from 2011 to 2014, Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2014, Chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe from 2012 to 2013, Minister of State at the Department of the Marine from 1994 to 1997. He was a Teachta Dála for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 1989 to 2016.

Veronika Eduardovna Kudermetova is a Russian professional tennis player. She has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 9, achieved on 24 October 2022, and a best WTA doubles ranking of No. 2, reached on 6 June 2022. She is a doubles major champion at the 2025 Wimbledon Championships with Elise Mertens. She has won an additional nine WTA Tour doubles titles including three WTA 1000 and being crowned champion at the 2022 and 2025 WTA Finals editions. In addition, she reached the doubles final of Wimbledon in 2021, with Elena Vesnina. She has also won two WTA Tour singles titles.

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. Yale awarded Warren an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1973.

Enda Kenny is an Irish former Fine Gael politician who served as Taoiseach from 2011 to 2017, Leader of Fine Gael from 2002 to 2017, Minister for Defence from May to July 2014 and 2016 to 2017, Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2011, Minister for Tourism and Trade from 1994 to 1997 and Minister of State at the Department of Labour and Department of Education with responsibility for Youth Affairs from 1986 to 1987. He served as Teachta Dála (TD) for Mayo West from 1975 to 1997 and for Mayo from 1997 to 2020.

Larry Wayne "Chipper" Jones Jr. is an American former professional baseball third baseman who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Atlanta Braves from 1993 to 2012. The Braves chose Jones with the first overall pick in the 1990 MLB draft. He was also a member of their 1995 World Series championship team that beat the Cleveland Indians. An eight-time All-Star, Jones won the 1999 National League (NL) Most Valuable Player Award and the 1999 and 2000 NL Silver Slugger Award for third basemen. He was the MLB batting champion in 2008 after hitting .364.

Hedda Berntsen is a Norwegian sportsperson who has competed internationally in telemark skiing, alpine skiing, freestyle skiing and skicross. She is the world champion in Telemark classic from 1997. She later concentrated on the alpine slalom, her career peaking in the 2000–01 season with consistent performances in the World Cup as well as a bronze medal at the 2001 World Championships. She later switched to skicross, receiving a silver medal at the 2008 Winter X Games. In the Vancouver Winter Olympics on 23 February 2010, she won the silver medal in the women's skicross competition.

Kehlani Ashley Parrish is an American singer, songwriter and dancer. They initially started as a member of the teen pop group PopLyfe in 2011 as a contestant on America's Got Talent. After leaving the group, Parrish self-released the mixtapes Cloud 19 (2014) and You Should Be Here (2015), both of which were critically acclaimed and received gold certifications by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), while the latter marked their first entry on the US Billboard 200 and was nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.

Shirley MacLaine is an American actress and author. With a career spanning over 70 years, she has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, two BAFTA Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Volpi Cups, and two Silver Bears. She has been honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Tribute in 1995, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1998, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2012, and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014. MacLaine is one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

William the Silent or William the Taciturn, more commonly known in the Netherlands as William of Orange and in the Dutch national anthem as William of Nassau, was the leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs that set off the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648. Born into the House of Nassau, he became Prince of Orange in 1544 and is thereby the founder of the Orange-Nassau branch and the ancestor of the monarchy of the Netherlands.