Did you know about Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball was recognized by Time in 2020 as one of the most influential women of the 20th century for her work in all four of these areas.
Famous Birthdays on August 6
August 6 has 172 recorded notable births across history, from 1180 to 2004. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1911 — Lucille Ball
American actress, television producer and businesswoman (died 1989)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Famous Birthdays
172 source records
1180 – 2004
Leo
Today in history
Major events on August 6
See what else happened on this day in history.
Did you know about Michelle Yeoh
Credited as Michelle Khan in her early films, she rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s after starring in Hong Kong action and martial arts films where she performed her own stunts.
Did you know about Alfred
In 1829 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu".
Did you know about Nessa Barrett
In 2021, she released her debut EP, Pretty Poison, which combined elements of alternative pop and pop-rock.
Did you know about Samuel Bowers
Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard.
More major people born on August 6
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1962
Michelle Yeoh
Malaysian-Hong Kong actress and producer
Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng is a Malaysian actress. In a career spanning over four decades, she has acted in film and television productions covering a wide range of genres and received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, along with nominations for two British Academy Film Awards. Credited as Michelle Khan in her early films, she rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s after starring in Hong Kong action and martial arts films where she performed her own stunts. These roles included Yes, Madam (1985), Magnificent Warriors (1987), Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992), The Heroic Trio and Tai Chi Master, and Wing Chun (1994).
1809
Alfred
Lord Tennyson, English poet (died 1892)
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was an English poet. He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Some critics described Tennyson as overly sentimental. However, his poems proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
2002
Nessa Barrett
American singer-songwriter
Janesa Jaida "Nessa" Barrett is an American singer-songwriter and social media personality. She rose to prominence on TikTok and began uploading song covers as a teenager, which led her to sign a recording contract with Warner Records. She released her debut single, "Pain", in 2020. In 2021, she released her debut EP, Pretty Poison, which combined elements of alternative pop and pop-rock. She then released her debut album, Young Forever, the following year. In 2023, she released another EP, Hell Is a Teenage Girl, and in 2024, she released her second studio album,Aftercare, which incorporated electropop and synthpop. In 2026, Barrett released her EP, Jesus Loves a Primadonna. In July of that same year, she announced her third studio album Tough Love, set for release on September 25, 2026.
1924
Samuel Bowers
American white supremacist, co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (died 2006)
Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Previously, he was a Grand dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Bowers was responsible for instigating and planning the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by members of his Klan chapter near Philadelphia, Mississippi, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, 32 years after the crime. He also was accused of being involved in the 1967–1968 bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian. He died in prison at the age of 82.
1937
Baden Powell de Aquino
Brazilian guitarist and composer (died 2000)
Baden Powell de Aquino, known professionally as Baden Powell, was a Brazilian virtuoso guitarist and composer. He combined classical techniques with popular harmony and swing. He performed in many styles, including bossa nova, samba, Brazilian jazz, Latin jazz and MPB. He performed on stage during most of his lifetime. Powell composed many pieces for guitar, some of them now considered guitar standards, such as Abração em Madrid, Braziliense, Canto de Ossanha, Casa Velha, Consolação, Horizon, Imagem, Lotus, Samba, Samba em Prelúdio, Samba Triste, Simplesmente, Tristeza e Solidão, and Samba da Benção. He released Os Afro-sambas, a watershed album in MPB, with Vinicius de Moraes in 1966. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Brazilian guitar players of all time.
1883
Scott Nearing
American economist and educator (died 1983)
Scott Nearing was an American radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, pacifist, vegetarian and advocate of simple living. In 1915, he was dismissed from a teaching position at the Wharton School on account of his left-wing politics, becoming a cause célèbre of the American Left. His opposition to American entry into World War I led to his prosecution under the Espionage Act, for which he was found not guilty. After the war, he became a leading leftist intellectual associated with the Socialist Party of America, and later with the Communist Party USA. From the Great Depression until the end of his life, Nearing and his wife Helen lived a self-sufficient homesteading lifestyle. Together, they published Living the Good Life: How to Live Simply and Sanely in a Troubled World in 1954.
1923
Paul Hellyer
Canadian engineer and politician, 16th Canadian Minister of Defence (died 2021)
Paul Theodore Hellyer was a Canadian engineer, politician, writer, and commentator. A prominent Liberal figure in the 1960s, he served as a Member of Parliament for over twenty years and a minister in the government of three Liberal Prime Ministers. In 1968 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau designated Hellyer as Senior Minister, the first instance for a Prime Minister of Canada to confer a formal title to a cabinet member to signal precedent ahead of all cabinet colleagues. He was the longest serving member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada at the time of his death. He contested the national leadership of both major parties in parliament, and found another political party but was unable to turn it into political force of significance.
1848
Susie Taylor
American writer and first black Army nurse (died 1912)
Susie King Taylor was an American nurse, educator, and memoirist. Born into slavery in coastal Georgia, she is known for being the first African-American nurse during the American Civil War. Beyond her aptitude in nursing the wounded of the 1st South Carolina Colored Infantry Regiment, Taylor was the first Black woman to self-publish her memoirs. She was the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers (1902). She was also an educator to formerly bonded Black people in the Reconstruction-era South when she opened various Freedmen's schools for them in and near the city of Savannah, Georgia. In her later years as a resident of Boston, Taylor became a main organizer of Corps 67 of the Massachusetts Woman's Relief Corps (1886).
1956
Bill Emmott
English journalist and author
William John Emmott is an English journalist, author, and consultant best known as the editor-in-chief of The Economist newspaper from 1993 to 2006. Emmott has written fourteen books and worked on two documentary feature films. He was chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 2019-2025 and of the Japan Society of the UK in London from 2019-2024. He is now Senior Adviser, Geopolitics, for Montrose Associates, a strategic intelligence consultancy, a non-executive director of The Irish Times, a trustee of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, and an Ushioda Fellow at Tokyo College, University of Tokyo. He writes regular columns for La Stampa in Italy, and the Mainichi Shimbun and Nikkei Business in Japan, and republishes the English originals of those articles on his Substack, Global View.
1883
Constance Georgina Adams
South African botanist (died 1968)
Constance Georgina Adams, also known as Constance Georgina Tardrew, was a South African housewife and collector of botanical specimens. Known by the nicknames Connie and Daisy, Adams was born in Cape Town and spent her early childhood on a farm in Tulbagh before moving to Warrenton. She subsequently lived in Kimberley before getting married, settling in Johannesburg where she became active in the Housewives League of South Africa. Inspired by her parents' interest in botany, she became a successful collector for both the Albany Museum in Grahamstown and McGregor Museum in Kimberley. She also cultivated a friendship with the Director of the latter, Maria Wilman. She collected over 240 specimens, which were presented to the Albany Museum, McGregor Museum and the National Herbarium in Pretoria.
1886
Florence Goodenough
American child psychologist (died 1959)
Florence Laura Goodenough was an American psychologist and professor at the University of Minnesota who studied child intelligence and various problems in the field of child development. She was president of the Society for Research in Child Development from 1946 to 1947. She is best known for publishing the book Measurement Of Intelligence By Drawings, where she introduced the Goodenough Draw-A-Man test to assess intelligence in young children through nonverbal measurement. She is noted for developing the Minnesota Preschool Scale. In 1931, she published two books, titled Experimental Child Study and Anger in Young Children, which analyzed the methods used in evaluating children. She wrote the Handbook of Child Psychology in 1933, becoming the first known psychologist to critique ratio IQ.
1916
Richard Hofstadter
American historian and academic (died 1970)
Richard Hofstadter was an American historian and public intellectual. Hofstadter was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Rejecting his earlier historical materialist approach to history, in the 1950s he came closer to the concept of "consensus history", and was epitomized by some of his admirers as the "iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus." Others see in his work an early critique of the one-dimensional society, since he was equally critical of socialist and capitalist models of society, and bemoaned the "consensus" within the society as "bounded by the horizons of property and entrepreneurship", criticizing the "hegemonic liberal capitalist culture running throughout the course of American history".
1959
Rajendra Singh
Indian environmentalist
Rajendra Singh is an Indian water conservationist and environmentalist from Alwar district, Rajasthan in India. Also known as the "Waterman of India", he won the Magsaysay Award in 2001 and Stockholm Water Prize in 2015. He runs an NGO called 'Tarun Bharat Sangh' (TBS), which was founded in 1975. The NGO based in village hori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil, near Sariska Tiger Reserve, has been instrumental in fighting the slow bureaucracy, mining lobby and has helped villagers take charge of water management in their semi-arid area as it lies close to Thar Desert, through the use of johad, rainwater storage tanks, check dams and other time-tested as well as path-breaking techniques.
1963
Kevin Mitnick
American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker (died 2023)
Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. In 1995, he was arrested for various computer and communications-related crimes, and spent five years in prison after being convicted of fraud and illegally intercepting communications. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial and sentence were all controversial, as were the associated media coverage, books, and films, with his supporters arguing that his punishment was excessive and that many of the charges against him were fraudulent, and not based on actual losses. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.
1572
Fakhr-al-Din II
Druze emir (died 1635)
Fakhr al-Din Ma'n, commonly known as Fakhr al-Din II or Fakhreddine II, was the paramount Druze emir of Mount Lebanon from the Ma'n dynasty, an Ottoman governor of Sidon-Beirut and Safed, and ruler over much of the Levant from the 1620s to 1633. For uniting modern Lebanon's constituent parts and communities, especially the Druze and the Maronites, under a single authority for the first time in history, he is generally regarded as the country's founder. Although he ruled in the name of the Ottomans, he acted with considerable autonomy and developed close ties with European powers in defiance of the Ottoman imperial government.
1976
Soleil Moon Frye
American actress
Soleil Moon Frye is an American actress. She began her career as a child actress at the age of two. When she was seven, Frye won the role of Penelope "Punky" Brewster in the NBC sitcom Punky Brewster. The series debuted in September 1984 and earned consistently low ratings, but the Punky character was a hit with young children. After NBC canceled the series, it was picked up for the syndication market where it aired for an additional two seasons before ending in 1988. Frye reprised the role in a 2021 revival of the series, which was canceled after one season.
1973
Vera Farmiga
American actress
Vera Ann Farmiga is an American actress and singer. She began her professional acting career on stage in the original Broadway production of Taking Sides (1996). After expanding to television and film, her breakthrough came with her starring role as a drug addict in the drama Down to the Bone (2004). She then had roles in the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (2004), the crime drama The Departed (2006), and the historical drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008). She was also established as a scream queen for her performances in the horror films Joshua (2007) and Orphan (2009).
1969
Simon Doull
New Zealand cricketer and sportscaster
Simon Blair Doull is a New Zealand radio personality, commentator, and former international cricketer. He was a right-arm medium pacer who was capable of swing bowling. He was plagued by injuries as a result of which his international career was cut short. Playing for the New Zealand national cricket team, he figured in just 32 Tests and 42 ODIs, taking 98 and 36 wickets respectively. Doull's finest hour arrived when he took 7–65 against India in the Boxing Day Wellington Test in 1998. He played his last Test, against Australia, in March 2000, before turning to commentary and broadcasting.
1903
Virginia Foster Durr
American civil rights activist (died 1999)
Virginia Foster Durr was an American civil rights activist and lobbyist. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1903 to Dr. Sterling Foster, an Alabama Presbyterian minister, and Ann Patterson Foster. At 22 she married lawyer Clifford Durr, with whom she had 5 children, one of whom died in infancy. Durr was a close friend of Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt, and was sister-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who sat on many crucial civil rights cases. Her circle of friends extended to Alger Hiss. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2006.