Famous Birthdays on December 25

Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson, nicknamed "Man of Steal", was an American professional baseball left fielder who played 25 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for nine teams from 1979 to 2003, including four separate tenures with his original team, the Oakland Athletics. He is widely regarded as the greatest leadoff hitter and baserunner in the history of baseball. He holds MLB records for career stolen bases, runs, unintentional walks, and leadoff home runs. At the time of his last major league game in 2003, the 10-time American League (AL) All-Star ranked among the sport's top 100 all-time home run hitters and was its all-time leader in walks. In 2009, he was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Carlos Castaneda was a Peruvian-American writer, trained as an anthropologist. Starting in 1968, Castaneda published a series of books that describe alleged training in shamanism that he received under the tutelage of a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named Don Juan Matus. While Castaneda's work was accepted as factual by many when the books were first published, the character of Don Juan and the training he described is now generally considered to be fabricated and to have little relation to the actual cultural practices of the Yaqui. Castaneda's early writings featuring Don Juan were bestsellers with the general public, and are considered to be a significant influence on neoshamanism and the New Age movement more broadly.

Sir Alastair Nathan Cook is an English commentator and a former cricketer and captain of the England Test and One-Day International (ODI) cricket teams. Known for his compact technique and ability to bat for long periods, Cook is widely regarded as one of the greatest batters of his era and one of the greatest opening batsman of all time. He is the sixth-highest Test run scorer of all time and second-highest run scorer for England. He is England's second most-capped Test batsman and captained the England team in 59 Tests, as well as in 69 ODIs. He was also the youngest player to score 12,000 test runs. Cook retired from Test cricket in September 2018 and played for Essex in English domestic cricket until 2023, while also working for the BBC radio programme Test Match Special.

Ramdas Bandu Athawale is an Indian politician, social activist and trade unionist from Maharashtra. Since 1999, he is the president of the Republican Party of India (A), a splinter group of the Republican Party of India, which has its roots in the Scheduled Castes Federation led by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Since 2016, he has served as the Minister of State in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India and represented Maharashtra in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India's Parliament since 2014. Previously, he was Lok Sabha MP from Pandharpur from 1999 to 2009 and from Mumbai North Central Lok Sabha constituency from 1998 to 1999. He was also Cabinet minister of Maharashtra from 1990 to 1995 and a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council from 1990 to 1996.

Bob Stanley is a British musician, journalist, author, and film producer. He is a member of the indie pop group Saint Etienne and has had a parallel career as a music journalist and author, writing for NME, Melody Maker, Mojo, The Guardian and The Times, as well as writing several books on music and football. His second book, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Modern Pop, was published by Faber & Faber in 2013. His third book Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop Music: A History was published by Pegasus in 2022. He also has a career as a DJ and as a producer of record labels, and has collaborated on a series of films about London.

Maung Aye is a retired Burmese army general who played a significant role in Myanmar's military government. He served as Vice Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the ruling military junta of Myanmar, from July 1993 to March 2011, holding the second highest-ranking position in the regime. He graduated from the Defence Services Academy in Pyin Oo Lwin and began his military career by commanding the Northeast Region in 1968, followed by the Eastern Region in 1988. His career progression included promotions to major-general in 1990 and Army Chief in 1992. In 1993, he was appointed as Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, and the following year, he assumed the role of Deputy Chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which later evolved into the SPDC. Despite rumours of resignation in August 2010, Maung Aye remained deputy head of state until the SPDC was dissolved on 30 March 2011 by Senior General Than Shwe, marking a significant transition in Myanmar's governance.

Philip Villamin Vera Cruz was a Filipino American labor leader and farmworker. He helped found the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), which later merged with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) in 1966. In 1971, he was appointed as the organization’s second vice president, the highest-ranking Filipino American in the union. He wanted his work to cross both ethnic and generational lines. Thus, it included Filipino, Mexican, and Black workers, and he advocated for retirees he found were neglected in the broader movement for racial equality in America. Some of his major projects included chairing efforts to build the Paulo Agbayani Retirement Village, opened in 1974, which housed Filipino farmworkers who had aged out of the labor force and helping organize the Delano Grape Strike. In 1977, Vera Cruz resigned from the UFW. He had grown apart from the president, Cesar Chavez, due to disagreements over the Union's mission and actions.

Rev Prof Thomas Halyburton was a Scottish divine. Thomas was educated there at Erasmus's school, in Rotterdam, where his mother had taken him to avoid persecution. He returned to Scotland in 1682, graduated at the university of St. Andrews on 24 July 1696 and, after serving as a private chaplain, was licensed by the presbytery of Kirkaldy on 22 June 1699. He was ordained to the parish of Ceres, Fifeshire, 1 May 1700, but he injured his health by excessive labour. On 1 April 1710 he was appointed by Queen Anne, at the instance of the synod of Fife, professor of divinity at St. Mary's. He devoted his inaugural lecture to an attempt to confute the deistical views lately promulgated by Dr. Archibald Pitcairn in 1688. He died at St. Andrews on 23 September 1712, aged only 38.

Otto Frederick Hunziker was a pioneer in the American and international dairy industry, as both an educator and a technical innovator. Hunziker was born and raised in Switzerland, emigrated to the U.S., and studied at Cornell University. He started and developed the dairy program at Purdue University when such programs were at their infancy. At this same time, Hunziker was heavily involved with the development of the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) and the standardization and improvement of many dairy tests and processes. Hunziker wrote several of the leading dairy processing texts, which continue to be cited. After leaving Purdue University, Hunziker managed research and operations at a large, national condensary, continued to drive ADSA's standardization and publishing efforts, represented the U.S. at international dairy congresses, and facilitated dairy industry improvements across the globe.

Archibald Pitcairne or Pitcairn was a Scottish physician. He was a physician and poet who first studied law at Edinburgh and Paris graduating with an M.A. from Edinburgh in 1671. He turned his attention to medicine, and commenced to practise in Edinburgh, around 1681. He was appointed professor of physic at Leyden, in 1692, resigning his chair. On returning to Edinburgh, however, around 1693, he was suspected of being at heart an atheist, chiefly on account of his mockery of the puritanical strictness of the Presbyterian church. He was the reputed author of two satirical works, 'The Assembly, or Scotch Reformation: a Comedy,' 1692, and Habel, a Satirical Poem,' 1692. He wrote also a number of Latin verses. He was one of the most celebrated physicians of his time.

Enrique Morente Cotelo, known as Enrique Morente, was a Spanish flamenco singer and a celebrated figure within the world of contemporary flamenco. After his orthodox beginnings, he plunged into experimentalism, writing new melodies for cante and jamming with musicians of all styles, without renouncing his roots in traditional flamenco singing, which he kept on cultivating despite criticism."It hasn't been easy. First came the accusations of corruption of the music, of treachery in his struggle to disfigure what was already perfectly coded. When some albums and some categorical evidence of his knowledge of the classical approach laid these malicious comments bare, then came the most twisted condemnations. That the pace of the compás waned, that he didn't really make you feel and that kind of thing."

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian statesman and a poet who served as the prime minister of India, from 1998 to 2004, and previously for two weeks in 1996. He was the first non-Congress prime minister to serve a full term in the office. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was a volunteer and full-time functionary (pracharak) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindutva paramilitary volunteer organisation. Vajpayee combined cultural nationalism with political moderation, shaping a distinctive strand of post-Independence Indian conservatism rooted in civilisational identity. Vajpayee represented a current in Hindu nationalism that sought to harmonise cultural identity with democratic pluralism.

Mitakeumi Hisashi is a Japanese professional sumo wrestler from Agematsu, Nagano. He is in the Dewanoumi stable. He is a pusher thruster-type wrestler. A former amateur champion at Toyo University, he made his professional debut in March 2015, reaching the top makuuchi division in November of the same year. He has ten special prizes for Fighting Spirit, Technique and Outstanding Performance, as well two gold stars for defeating a yokozuna while ranked as a maegashira. His highest rank has been ōzeki. He won his first top division championship (yūshō) in July 2018, his second in September 2019, and his third in January 2022. All three yūshō were won at the rank of sekiwake.

Oscar Lewis, born Lefkowitz was an American anthropologist. He is best known for his vivid depictions of the lives of slum dwellers and his argument that a cross-generational culture of poverty transcends national boundaries. Lewis contended that the cultural similarities occurred because they were "common adaptations to common problems" and that "the culture of poverty is both an adaptation and a reaction of the poor classes to their marginal position in a class-stratified, highly individualistic, capitalistic society." He won the 1967 U.S. National Book Award in Science, Philosophy and Religion for La vida: a Puerto Rican family in the culture of poverty--San Juan and New York.

Conrad Nicholson Hilton was an American hotel magnate and politician who founded the Hilton Hotels chain. From 1912 to 1916, Hilton was a Republican representative in the first New Mexico Legislature, but became disillusioned with the "inside deals" of politics. In 1919, he purchased his first hotel, the Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas, for US$40,000 and subsequently capitalized on the oil boom. The rooms were rented out in eight-hour shifts. He continued to purchase and sell hotels, and eventually established the world's first international hotel chain. When he died in 1979, he left the bulk of his estate to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

Ismail Merchant was an Indian film producer. He worked for many years in collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions which included film director James Ivory as well as screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Together they made film adaptations from the novels of E.M. Forster and Henry James. Merchant received the BAFTA Award for Best Film for A Room with a View (1985), and Howards End (1992). He received Academy Award nominations for Best Live Action Short Film for The Creation of a Woman (1959) and for Best Picture for A Room with a View (1985), Howards End (1992), and The Remains of the Day (1993).

Orlando Gibbons was an English composer and keyboard player who was one of the last masters of the English Virginalist School and English Madrigal School. The best known member of a musical family dynasty, by the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England, with a career cut short by his untimely death in 1625. As a result, Gibbons's oeuvre was not as large as that of his contemporaries, like the elder William Byrd, but he made considerable contributions to many genres of his time. Musicologists characterize his music as exemplifying the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods.

Sir Isaac Newton was an English polymath who was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author and inventor. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, although he developed calculus years before Leibniz. Newton contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science.

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious. These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the abstract expressionists and her work has a lot in common with Surrealism and feminist art, she was not formally affiliated with a particular artistic movement.