Famous Birthdays on April 9

Keshia Knight Pulliam is an American actress. She began her career as a child actress. She landed her breakthrough role as Rudy Huxtable, on the NBC sitcom The Cosby Show (1984–1992), and became the youngest person to be nominated for an Emmy Award, when she earned a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in A Comedy Series at the 38th Primetime Emmy Awards. She later reprised the character on the spin-off series A Different World (1987–88). Knight Pulliam is also known for her portrayal of Miranda Lucas-Payne on the TBS comedy drama series Tyler Perry's House of Payne (2007–present) and films such as Polly (1989), Beauty Shop (2005) and Madea Goes to Jail (2009).

Gian Maria Volonté was an Italian actor and activist. He is known for his roles in Italian Western films: Ramón Rojo in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), El Indio in Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965), El Chuncho Munoz in Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General (1966) and Professor Brad Fletcher in Sergio Sollima's Face to Face (1967) as well as high-profile social dramas depicting the political and social stirrings of Italian and European society in the 1960s and 1970s, including four films directed by Elio Petri – We Still Kill the Old Way (1967), Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971), and Todo modo (1976). He is also recognized for his performances in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Giuliano Montaldo's Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) and Giordano Bruno (1973), and Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979).

Charles Joseph Scarborough is an American television host and former politician who is the co-host of Morning Joe on MS NOW, alongside his wife Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. He previously hosted Scarborough Country on the same network. A former member of the Republican Party, Scarborough represented Florida's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House from 1995 to 2001. He was appointed to the President's Council on the 21st Century Workforce in 2002, and was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He was named in the 2011 Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world.

Hal Michael Ketchum was an American country music singer and songwriter. Born in Greenwich, New York, he began his professional music career in Texas. After an independent release in the late 1980s, he signed with Curb Records in 1990, for which he would record until 2008. Ketchum recorded nine albums and one greatest-hits package for Curb, and a final album for Music Road in 2014. The 1991 release Past the Point of Rescue was his most commercially successful, having been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. Between 1991 and 2006, Ketchum had 17 entries on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including three that reached the number two position: his debut single "Small Town Saturday Night", as well as a cover of Mick Hanly's "Past the Point of Rescue", and "Hearts Are Gonna Roll". Ketchum's music is defined by his songwriting, tenor singing voice, and minimalist production, with generally favorable reception for his influences of folk music and country musicians from Texas. Ketchum retired from the music business in 2019 following a diagnosis of dementia.

Nicoletta Strambelli, known professionally as Patty Pravo, is an Italian singer. She debuted in 1966 and remained most successful commercially for the rest of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Having suffered a decline in popularity in the following decade, she experienced a career revival in mid-late 1990s and reinstated her position on Italian music charts. Her most popular songs include "La bambola" (1968), "Pazza idea" (1973), "Pensiero stupendo" (1978), and "...E dimmi che non vuoi morire" (1997). Pravo has sold over 110 million records worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling Italian music artists. She scored fourteen top 10 albums and twelve top 10 singles in her native Italy. Pravo participated at the Sanremo Music Festival eleven times, most recently in 2026, and has won three critics' awards. She also performed twelve times at the Festivalbar.

Harris Llewellyn Wofford Jr. was an American attorney, civil rights activist, and Democratic Party politician who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1991 to 1995. A noted advocate of national service and volunteering, Wofford was also the fifth president of Bryn Mawr College from 1970 to 1978, served as chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in 1986, served as Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor and Industry in the cabinet of Governor Bob Casey Sr. from 1987 to 1991, and was a surrogate for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. He introduced Obama in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center before Obama's speech on race in America, "A More Perfect Union."

Alexandre Magno Abrão, known professionally as Chorão, was a Brazilian singer-songwriter, skateboarder, filmmaker, screenwriter and businessman. Best known for being a founding member and the vocalist/main lyricist of the influential rock band Charlie Brown Jr., Folha de S.Paulo critic André Barcinski considered him "the nearest thing to a punk hero Brazilian mainstream music ever had", and Eduardo Tristão Girão of Portal Uai called him "the bad boy of Brazilian rock" and "the spokesman of the youth of the 1990s". Having been born and raised for most of his childhood in São Paulo, Chorão was the only Charlie Brown Jr. member not to be a Santos native, and its only founding member to remain consistently in all of the group's line-ups.

John Howard is an English singer-songwriter, pianist and recording artist and published author. With his February 1975 debut album Kid in a Big World, Howard emerged as a late voice of the glam-pop wave of the early 1970s. Across a musical career that has included two main periods of recording activity – 1974-84 and 2004–present – Howard has released 21 studio albums and 12 studio EPs. In March 2018, he became a published author, his first autobiography, Incidents Crowded With Life, covering his childhood up to 1976, was published by Fisher King Publishing. In August 2020, the second volume of his autobiography, Illusions of Happiness, covering the years 1976 - 1986, was published by Fisher King Publishing. In February 2022, the third volume of his autobiography, In The Eyeline of Furtherance, covering 1986 to 2001, was published by Fisher King Publishing. In September 2023, Howard's first novel, Across My Dreams With Nets of Wonder, was published by Fisher King Publishing.

Giovanni Andrea Cornia was an Italian development economist. He was professor of economics, department of economics and management, at the University of Florence. He had previously been the director of the Regional Institute of Economic Planning of Tuscany, the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), in Helsinki, and the Economic and Policy Research Program, UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, in Florence. He was formerly also chief economist, UNICEF, New York. His main areas of professional interest were income and asset inequality, poverty, growth, child well-being, human development and mortality crises, transition economics, and institutional economics. He was author of over a dozen books and dozens of articles, reports and working papers on practical development economics issues in individual countries, regions and globally. Born on 9 April 1947, he died in July 2024, at the age of 77.

Dennis Scott Sarfate is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played for the Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, and Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Saitama Seibu Lions, and Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). While an average reliever in MLB, Sarfate became one of the greatest closers in NPB history after moving his career overseas. Sarfate holds several NPB records, including most saves in a season and most by a foreign-born pitcher. As of 2020, his 234 career saves rank fifth-most in NPB history. He is a 3× NPB All-Star, a 3× Pacific League saves leader, a 5× Japan Series Champion, won the Japan Series Most Valuable Player Award, won the Pacific League MVP Award, and won the Matsutaro Shoriki Award.

The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its variants were the highest awards in the military and paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was awarded for a wide range of reasons and across all ranks, from a senior commander for skilled leadership of his troops in battle to a low-ranking soldier for a single act of extreme gallantry. A total of 7,321 awards were made between its first presentation on 30 September 1939 and its last bestowal on 17 June 1945. This number is based on the analysis and acceptance of the order commission of the Association of Knight's Cross Recipients (AKCR). Presentations were made to members of the three military branches of the Wehrmacht—the Heer (Army), Kriegsmarine (Navy) and Luftwaffe —as well as the Waffen-SS, the Reichsarbeitsdienst and the Volkssturm. There were also 43 recipients in the military forces of allies of the Third Reich.

Sir Nigel Richard Shadbolt is Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. He is chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Tim Berners-Lee. He is also a visiting professor in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Shadbolt is an interdisciplinary researcher, policy expert and commentator. His research focuses on understanding how intelligent behaviour is embodied and emerges in humans, machines and, most recently, on the Web, and has made contributions to the fields of psychology, cognitive science, computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, computer science and the emerging field of web science.

Leighton Marissa Meester is an American actress, singer, and model. She is known for her starring role as Blair Waldorf on The CW television series Gossip Girl (2007–2012). She has also appeared in films such as Killer Movie (2008), Country Strong (2010), The Roommate (2011), Monte Carlo (2011), The Oranges (2011), The Judge (2014), The Weekend Away (2022), and EXmas (2023). She portrayed Angie D'Amato on the ABC sitcom Single Parents (2018–2020). Meester made her Broadway debut in Of Mice and Men (2014). For her leading role in The CW/Stan comedy drama series Good Cop/Bad Cop (2025), Meester was nominated for the Australian Logie Award for Best Actress.

Rachel Lauren Stevens is an English singer and actress. She has been a member of the pop group S Club, which was active from 1998 to 2003, and has reformed once again since 2023. She released her solo debut studio album Funky Dory in September 2003. The album reached number nine on the UK album chart and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) awarded it with a gold certification in October 2003. Two singles, "Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex" and "Funky Dory", were initially released from the album: "Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex" peaked at number two in the UK and received a silver certification from the BPI.

Nika Mühl is a Croatian professional basketball player for the Portland Fire of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and for Sopron Basket of the Nemzeti Bajnokság I/A. She played college basketball as a point guard for the UConn Huskies. Twice named Big East Conference Defensive Player of the Year while in college, Mühl is UConn's all-time leader in career assists, with 686, and also holds the program records for most assists in a single season and in a single game. She was selected 14th overall by Seattle in the 2024 WNBA draft and also plays for Beşiktaş JK of the Women's Basketball Super League in Turkey.

Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell was a British politician who was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955 until his death in 1963. An economics lecturer and wartime civil servant, he was elected to Parliament in 1945 and held office in Clement Attlee's governments, notably as Minister of Fuel and Power following the bitter winter of 1946–47, and eventually joining the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Facing the need to increase military spending in 1951 due to the Korean War, he imposed National Health Service charges on dentures and spectacles, prompting the leading left-winger Aneurin Bevan to resign from the Cabinet.

Severiano Ballesteros Sota was a Spanish professional golfer, a World No. 1 who was one of the sport's leading figures from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. A member of a gifted golfing family, he won 90 international tournaments in his career, including five major championships between 1979 and 1988; The Open Championship three times and the Masters Tournament twice. He gained attention in the golfing world in 1976, when at the age of 19, he finished second at The Open. He played a leading role in the re-emergence of European golf, helping the European Ryder Cup team to five wins both as a player and captain.

Stephen Kendall Gadd is an American drummer and session musician. Gadd is one of the best-known and most highly regarded session and studio drummers in the industry, recognized by his induction into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1984. Gadd's performances on Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" (1976) and "Late in the Evening" (1980), Herbie Mann's "Hi-jack" (1975) and Steely Dan's "Aja" (1977) are examples of his style. He has worked with other popular musicians from many genres including Van McCoy, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, Chick Corea, Chuck Mangione, Randy Crawford, Eric Clapton, Michel Petrucciani, Paul McCartney, and David Gilmour.

Jesse McCartney is an American actor, singer, and songwriter. He achieved fame in the late 1990s on the daytime drama All My Children as JR Chandler. He later joined the boy band Dream Street, and eventually branched out into a solo musical career. Additionally, McCartney has appeared on shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Summerland, and Greek. McCartney has voiced characters such as Theodore in the live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks film series, JoJo McDodd in Horton Hears a Who!, Terence in the Tinker Bell series, Dick Grayson in Young Justice, and Roxas and Ventus in the Kingdom Hearts video game series.