Famous Birthdays on August 25

China Anne McClain is an American actress and singer. McClain's career began when she was seven years old, portraying Alexis in the film The Gospel (2005), and then China James in Daddy's Little Girls (2007). She then received recognition for starring as Jazmine Payne in the television sitcom Tyler Perry's House of Payne and as Charlotte McKenzie in the comedy film Grown Ups (2010) and its sequel Grown Ups 2 (2013). She became globally known for starring as Chyna Parks in the Disney Channel television series A.N.T. Farm (2011–2014), and achieved further breakthrough success as Uma in the channel's musical film franchise Descendants (2017-2024). She had previously voiced Freddie in Wicked World as well. In 2018, McClain began starring in The CW superhero series Black Lightning (2018–2021) as Jennifer Pierce / Lightning before leaving the show in 2020. She also reprised her character Jazmine Payne on OWN's revival of The Paynes (2018).

Roland Glen Fingers is an American former right handed relief pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for three teams between 1968 and 1985. His effectiveness helped to redefine the value of relievers within baseball and to usher in the modern closer role. A seven-time All-Star, he led the major leagues in saves three times, and was named Rolaids Relief Man of the Year four times. He first gained prominence as a member of the Oakland Athletics championship teams of the early 1970s, when his flamboyant handlebar mustache made him perhaps the most identifiable member of The Mustache Gang, which led Oakland to become the only non-New York Yankees team ever to win three consecutive World Series titles. Fingers was named the Most Valuable Player of the 1974 World Series after earning a win in the opener and saves in the last three games to secure the title.

Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam event. The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals, then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam titles: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived," said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. "Martina [Navratilova] couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters." Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971 and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980. In the early 1960s, she also became the first Black player to compete in the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

Ludwig I or Louis I was King of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states. When he was crown prince, he was involved in the Napoleonic Wars. As king, he encouraged Bavaria's industrialization, initiating the Ludwig Canal between the rivers Main and the Danube. In 1835, the first German railway was constructed in his domain, between Fürth and Nuremberg, with his Bavaria joining the Zollverein economic union in 1834. After the July Revolution of 1830 in France, Ludwig's previous liberal policy became increasingly repressive; in 1844, he was confronted during the Beer riots in Bavaria. During the revolutions of 1848, he faced increasing protests and demonstrations by students and the middle classes. On 20 March 1848, he abdicated in favour of his eldest son, Maximilian.

Mohamed Azmin bin Ali is a Malaysian politician who has served as the State Leader of the Opposition of Selangor and Member of the Selangor State Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Hulu Kelang since August 2023. Formerly a member of the Malaysian Parliament for Gombak from 2008 to 2022, Azmin served in the cabinets of Muhyiddin Yassin and Ismail Sabri Yaakob as Senior Minister of the Economic Cluster and Minister of International Trade and Industry from 2020 to 2022. A member of Malaysian United Indigenous Party (BERSATU), which is a component party of Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition. He also served as MLA for Bukit Antarabangsa from 2008 to 2023 and for Hulu Kelang from 1999 to 2004. He has also served as the 4th Secretary-General of BERSATU since November 2024. He served as the 2nd Secretary-General of PN from December 2024 to his resignation in January 2026, Information Chief of PN and Member of the Supreme Council of BERSATU. He is also widely regarded as a key figure in the 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis, playing an important role in the fall of the PH federal government in February 2020.

Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, FRS was a German-British biologist, physician and biochemist. He was a pioneer scientist in the study of cellular respiration, a biochemical process in living cells that extracts energy from food and oxygen and makes it available to drive the processes of life. He is best known for his discoveries of two important sequences of chemical reactions that take place in the cells of nearly all organisms, including humans, other than anaerobic microorganisms, namely the citric acid cycle and the urea cycle. The former, often eponymously known as the "Krebs cycle", is the sequence of metabolic reactions that allows cells of oxygen-respiring organisms to obtain far more ATP from the food they consume than anaerobic processes such as glycolysis can supply; and its discovery earned Krebs a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953. With Hans Kornberg, he also discovered the glyoxylate cycle, a slight variation of the citric acid cycle found in plants, bacteria, protists, and fungi.

Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias, nicknamed "o Pacificador" and "o Duque de Ferro", was an army officer, politician and monarchist of the Empire of Brazil. Like his father and uncles, Caxias pursued a military career. In 1823 he fought as a young officer in the Brazilian War of Independence against Portugal, then spent three years in Brazil's southernmost province, Cisplatina, as the government unsuccessfully resisted that province's secession in the Cisplatine War. Though his own father and uncles renounced Emperor Dom Pedro I during the protests of 1831, Caxias remained loyal. Pedro I abdicated in favor of his young son Dom Pedro II, whom Caxias instructed in swordsmanship and horsemanship and eventually befriended.

Jacques Demers is a former Canadian Senator, former broadcaster and former professional ice hockey head coach. Demers had started out as a chief scout for the Chicago Cougars of the World Hockey Association before rising to director of player personnel. When the team folded in 1975, he joined the Indianapolis Racers. Five games into the 1975-76 season, he was named interim coach of the team and led them to a division championship. After a second season saw him reach the postseason again, he left the team to coach the Cincinnati Stingers for 1977, but he did not elect to stay with the team after just one season. He was soon hired to coach the Quebec Nordiques in 1978 and coached them to a 2nd place finish in the final season of the WHA. He coached the first season of the Nordiques in the National Hockey League before he was fired in 1980. Three years later, he returned to the NHL with the St. Louis Blues, where he led them to the postseason in each of his three seasons that included a trip to the Conference Finals in 1986 before he left to coach the Detroit Red Wings in 1986. He led the Red Wings to the Conference Finals twice and won two division titles but was let go after the team missed the playoffs in 1990. He was hired to coach the Montreal Canadiens in 1992 and in his first season, he led the team to the Stanley Cup Final, which they won in five games for what is currently the last victory by a Canadian team. The Canadiens sputtered in 1994 and Demers was fired five games into the 1995 season. He closed his career out with the Tampa Bay Lightning, coaching from 1997 to 1999. In total, he went to the postseason eleven times in eighteen seasons as a coach.

Stefan Wolpe was a German-born American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz movement to the Eighth Street Artists' Club, Black Mountain College, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. He lived and worked in Berlin (1902–1933) until the Nazi seizure of power forced him to move first to Vienna (1933–34) and Jerusalem (1934–38) before settling in New York City (1938–72). In works such as Battle Piece (1942/1947) and "In a State of Flight" in Enactments for Three Pianos (1953), he responded self-consciously to the circumstances of his uprooted life, a theme he also explored extensively in voluminous diaries, correspondence, and lectures. His densely eclectic music absorbed ideas and idioms from diverse artistic milieus, including post-tonality, bebop, and Arab classical musics.

Peter David Stemkowski is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. Playing as a centre, he spent 15 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL), and played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, New York Rangers, and Los Angeles Kings. Nicknamed "Stemmer", Stemkowski is best remembered for his heroics in the semifinal series of the 1971 Stanley Cup playoffs when he scored two overtime goals for the New York Rangers in an eventual series loss to the Chicago Black Hawks. He won the Stanley Cup in 1967 with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Considered a textbook "two-way" centre, able to kill penalties and play defence as well as scoring goals, Stemkowski is also remembered as one of the top faceoff takers of the NHL.

William Patrick Foster, also known as The Law and The Maestro, was the director of the noted Florida A&M University Marching "100". He served as the band's director from 1946 to his retirement in 1998. His innovations revolutionized college marching band technique and the perceptions of the collegiate band. Foster was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, the National Association for Distinguished Band Conductors Hall of Fame, the Florida Music Educators Association Hall of Fame and the Afro-American Hall of Fame among others. He also served as the president of the American Bandmasters Association and was appointed to the National Council on the Arts by President Bill Clinton. Foster wrote the book titled The Man Behind the Baton.

Allan Pinkerton was a Scottish-American detective, spy, abolitionist, and cooper best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in the United States and his claim to have obstructed the Baltimore Plot in 1861, preventing the assassination of then president-elect Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, he provided the Union Army – specifically General George B. McClellan of the Army of the Potomac – with military intelligence, including extremely inaccurate enemy troop strength numbers. After the war, his agents played a significant role as strikebreakers – in particular during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 – a role that Pinkerton men would continue to play after the death of their founder.

Sanjeev Sharma is a former Indian cricketer, entrepreneur and cricket coach who played in two Test matches and 23 One Day Internationals from 1988 to 1997. As right arm medium pace bowler, he was one of several bowlers tried out as Kapil Dev's opening partners in the 80's. He made an impressive start by polishing off the tail on his Test debut against New Zealand in 1988–89 to finish with three for 37. He toured West Indies in 1989. After a career that spanned nearly 20 years, he announced his retirement from competitive cricket in November 2004. He was a part of the Indian squad which won the 1988 Asia Cup.

Alexander Mair was an Australian politician who served as Premier of New South Wales from 5 August 1939 to 16 May 1941. Born in Melbourne, Mair worked in various businesses there before moving to Albury, New South Wales where he went on to be a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for fourteen years. In 1932, Mair was elected to the seat of Albury and was re-elected a further four times. He rose quickly through the cabinet of Bertram Stevens' United Australia Party government, becoming an Assistant Minister in April 1938, Minister for Labour and Industry in June and Colonial Treasurer in October.

Charles Robert Richet was a French physiologist at the Collège de France and immunology pioneer. In 1913, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "in recognition of his work on anaphylaxis". Richet devoted many years to the study of paranormal and spiritualist phenomena, coining the term "ectoplasm". He believed in the inferiority of black people, was a proponent of eugenics, and presided over the French Eugenics Society towards the end of his life. The Richet line of professorships of medical science continued through his son Charles and his grandson Gabriel. Gabriel Richet was also one of the pioneers of European nephrology.

Declan Patrick MacManus, known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, author, and television host. According to Rolling Stone, Costello "reinvigorated the literate, lyrical traditions of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with the raw energy and sass that were principal ethics of punk", noting the "construction of his songs, which set densely layered wordplay in an ever-expanding repertoire of styles". He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Grammy Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 and into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016.

Gene Simmons, also known by his stage persona "the Demon", is an Israeli and American musician and songwriter. He was the bassist and co-lead singer of the hard rock band Kiss, which he co-founded with Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss in 1973. Simmons, alongside Stanley, remained a constant member of the band until their dissolution in 2023. Simmons is also known for his long tongue and for his reality television show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, which aired from 2006 to 2012. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 as a member of Kiss.

Erich Ernst Paul Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As the leader of East Germany, Honecker was viewed as a dictator. During his leadership, the country had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.

George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses. Self-trained, Stubbs learnt his skills independently from other great artists of the 18th century such as Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Stubbs' output includes history paintings, but his greatest skill was in painting animals, perhaps influenced by his love and study of anatomy. His series of paintings on the theme of a lion attacking a horse are early and significant examples of the Romantic movement that emerged in the late 18th century. He enjoyed royal patronage. His painting Whistlejacket hangs in the National Gallery, London.