Famous Birthdays on December 1

Hasan ibn Ali was the eldest son of Ali and Fatima, the elder brother of Husayn, and the eldest grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He briefly ruled as caliph from January to August 661 and is the second Imam in Shia Islam, succeeding his father Ali and preceding his brother Husayn. Hasan is a prominent member of the Ahl al-Bayt and the Ahl al-Kisa, and a participant in the Event of the Mubahala. Muhammad described Hasan and Husayn as the leaders of the youth of paradise. Hasan is traditionally described as having had the closest resemblance to the Prophet Muhammad.

DeSean William Jackson is an American college football coach and former player who is the head football coach at Delaware State University. Known for his speed, he is recognized as one of the best deep threats in NFL history. He played college football as a wide receiver for the California Golden Bears, where he was recognized as a two-time, first-team All-American in 2006 and 2007. He was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the second round of the 2008 NFL draft, and also played for the Washington Redskins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Los Angeles Rams, and Baltimore Ravens. Jackson was selected to the Pro Bowl three times, and was the first player selected to the Pro Bowl at two different positions in the same year when he was named to the 2010 Pro Bowl as a wide receiver and return specialist. After retiring as a player, Jackson pursued a coaching career. Near the end of the 2024 season, Jackson was named the head football coach at Delaware State.

Larry Kenneth Robert Walker is a Canadian former professional baseball right fielder. During his 17-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career, he played with the Montreal Expos, Colorado Rockies, and St. Louis Cardinals. In 1997, he became the only player in major league history to register both a .700 slugging percentage (SLG) and 30 stolen bases in the same season, on his way to winning the National League (NL) Most Valuable Player Award (MVP). The first player in more than 60 years to record a batting average of .360 in three consecutive seasons from 1997 to 1999, Walker also won three NL batting championships. He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in the Class of 2009, and was named the 13th-greatest sporting figure from Canada by Sports Illustrated in 1999. In 2020, Walker was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Lee Buck Trevino is an American retired professional golfer who is regarded as one of the greatest players in golf history. He was inducted to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1981. Trevino won six major championships and 29 PGA Tour events over the course of his career. He is one of only four players to twice win the U.S. Open, The Open Championship and the PGA Championship. The Masters Tournament was the only major that eluded him. He is an icon for Mexican Americans, and is often referred to as "the Merry Mex" and "Supermex", both affectionate nicknames given to him by other golfers.

Louis VI, called the Fat or the Fighter, reigned as King of the Franks from 1108 to 1137. Like his father Philip I, Louis made a lasting contribution to centralizing the institutions of royal power. He spent much of his twenty-nine-year reign fighting – either against the "robber barons" who plagued the Île-de-France, or against Henry I of England for the English continental possessions in Normandy. Nonetheless, Louis VI managed to reinforce his influence considerably, often resorting to force to bring lawless knights to justice, and was the first member of the House of Capet to issue ordonnances applying to the whole of the kingdom of France.

Andrew Ralph Adamson is a New Zealand film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator. He is best known for directing the DreamWorks animated film Shrek (2001), which is based on the children's picture book of the same name by American author William Steig and won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 74th Academy Awards ceremony, and directing and co-writing Shrek 2 (2004), which was nominated for Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He also directed and co-wrote the first two live-action film adaptations of C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia novels: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) and Prince Caspian (2008).

Anna Komnene, commonly Latinized as Anna Comnena, was a Byzantine Greek princess and historian. She is the author of the Alexiad, an account of the reign of her father, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Her work constitutes the most important primary source of Byzantine history of the late 11th and early 12th centuries, as well as of the early Crusades. Although she is best known as the author of the Alexiad, Anna played an important part in the politics of the time and attempted to depose her brother John II Komnenos as emperor in favour of her husband, Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger.

Alain Bashung was a French singer, songwriter and actor. Credited with reviving the French chanson in "a time of French musical turmoil", he is often regarded as the most important French rock musician after Serge Gainsbourg. He rose to prominence in the early 1980s with hit songs such as "Gaby oh Gaby" and "Vertige de l'amour", and later had a string of hit records from the 1990s onward, such as "Osez Joséphine", "Ma petite entreprise" and "La nuit je mens". He has had an influence on many later French artists, and is the most awarded artist in the Victoires de la Musique history with 12 victories obtained throughout his career.

Archibald Campbell MacLaren was an English cricketer who captained the England cricket team at various times between 1898 and 1909. A right-handed batsman, he played 35 Test matches for England, as captain in 22 of those games, and led the team to defeat in four Ashes series against Australia. An amateur, MacLaren played first-class cricket for Lancashire, captaining that county for most of his career. As a batsman, MacLaren was one of the leading cricketers of his time and had a reputation as a fast-scoring stylist. In 1895, he scored 424 runs in an innings against Somerset which was the highest individual score in first-class cricket until 1923 and remained a record in English cricket until 1994. Opinions were divided over his captaincy. He was a deep thinker on the game and critics believed him to be tactically advanced, but his pessimism, clashes with the selectors and inability to get the best out of his players led most commentators to rate him a poor leader.

Dame Alicia Markova DBE was a British ballerina and a choreographer, director and teacher of classical ballet. Most noted for her career with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and touring internationally, she was widely considered to be one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of the twentieth century. She was the first British dancer to become the principal dancer of a ballet company and, with Dame Margot Fonteyn, is one of only two English dancers to be recognised as a prima ballerina assoluta. Markova was a founder dancer of the Rambert Dance Company, The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and was co-founder and director of the English National Ballet.

Martin Whiteford Marion, nicknamed "Slats", "the Octopus", and "Mr. Shortstop", was an American professional baseball shortstop and manager. He played 13 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns from 1940 to 1953. He was a defensive stalwart of the Cardinals' dynasty in the 1940s, which saw them win three World Series in a five year span, and was named the National League MVP in 1944, the first shortstop in the history of the National League to win the award. Marion managed the Cardinals in 1951, the Browns from 1952 to 1953, and the Chicago White Sox from 1954 to 1956.

Keith Joseph Michell was an Australian actor who worked primarily in the United Kingdom, and was best known for his television and film portrayals of King Henry VIII. He appeared extensively in Shakespeare and other classics and musicals in Britain, and was also in several Broadway productions. He was an artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre in the 1970s and later had a recurring role on Murder, She Wrote as the charming thief Dennis Stanton. He was also known for illustrating a collection of Jeremy Lloyd's poems Captain Beaky, and singing the title song from the associated album.

Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the fantasy novel Among Others, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and Tooth and Claw, a Victorian-era novel with dragons which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Other works by Walton include the Small Change series, in which she blends alternate history with the cozy mystery genre, comprising Farthing, Ha'penny and Half a Crown. Her fantasy novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award, and her alternate history My Real Children received the 2015 Tiptree Award.

Violette Verdy was a French ballerina, choreographer, teacher, and writer who worked as a dance company director with the Paris Opera Ballet in France and the Boston Ballet in the United States. From 1958 to 1977 she was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet where she performed in the world premieres of several works created specifically for her by choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. She was Distinguished Professor of Music (Ballet) at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, in Bloomington, and the recipient of two medals from the French government.

Safra Ada Catz is an Israeli-American business executive. She is the executive vice chair and former CEO of Oracle Corporation. She has been an executive at Oracle since April 1999, and a board member since 2001. In April 2011, she was named co-president and chief financial officer (CFO), reporting to founder Larry Ellison. In September 2014, Oracle announced that Ellison would step down as CEO and that Mark Hurd and Catz had been named as joint CEOs. In September 2019, Catz became the sole CEO after Hurd resigned due to health issues.

Calvin Robertson Griffith, born Calvin Griffith Robertson, was a Canadian-born American Major League Baseball team owner. As president, majority owner and de facto general manager of the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins franchise of the American League from 1955 through 1984, he orchestrated the transfer of the Senators after 60 years in Washington, D.C., to Minneapolis–Saint Paul in the autumn of 1960 to create the Twins. He was famous for his devotion to the game and for his sayings. He was the last MLB owner who had no income apart from his franchise.

Tomasz "Tomek" Adamek is a Polish former professional boxer who competed from 1999 to 2018. He held world championships in two weight classes, including the WBC light heavyweight title from 2005 to 2007, and the IBF and The Ring magazine cruiserweight titles from 2008 to 2009. He also held the IBO cruiserweight title in 2007, and challenged once for the WBC heavyweight title in 2011. BoxRec ranks Adamek as the third greatest Polish boxer of all time, pound for pound. He is the first Polish boxer to win The Ring title.

Sophie Guillemin is a French actress. She has appeared in such films as L'Ennui, Harry, He's Here to Help, Un chat un chat, and A la folie, pas du tout. In 2017, whilst on the set of the TV movie Remember Us, she met the actor Thierry Godard. The couple were married in August 2018. Guillemin met Godard on the set of the TV series Souviens-toi de Nous. At the time, he was mourning the loss of his partner, actress and drama teacher Blanche Veisberg, who died of cancer in 2017.

Richard Cevantis Carrier is an American historian, author, and Christ myth theorist. A longtime contributor to skeptical outlets including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs, Carrier writes about philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, examining the development of early Christianity from a skeptical perspective and addressing modern debates about religion and morality. He frequently debates the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity and promotes the view that Jesus did not exist in his publications. Carrier's mythicist views have been rejected by academic scholarship, and are considered fringe.