Did you know about V
V released his first independent song, the self-composed "Scenery", in 2019.
Famous Birthdays on December 30
December 30 has 229 recorded notable births across history, from 39 to 1995. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1995 — V
South Korean singer
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Famous Birthdays
229 source records
39 – 1995
Capricorn
Today in history
Major events on December 30
See what else happened on this day in history.
- 1641 Reapers' War: Louis XIII of France swears the Catalan constitutions, being appointed Count of Barcelona and thus establishing the personal union of the Principality of Catalonia with the Kingdom of France. Source
- 1987 Stella Sigcau, Prime minister of the South African Bantustan of Transkei, is ousted from power in a bloodless military coup led by General Bantu Holomisa. Source
Did you know about Joe Root
Joe Root was part of the England team that won the 2019 Cricket World Cup, where he top scored for England.
Did you know about Sandy Koufax
Koufax was the first three-time winner of the Cy Young Award, each time winning unanimously and the only pitcher to do so when a single award was given for both leagues; he was also named the National League Most Valuable Player in 1963.
Did you know about Matt Lauer
After serving as a local news personality, in New York City, on WNBC, his first national exposure was as the news anchor for NBC's Today, from 1994 to 1997.
Did you know about John Hartford
John Hartford's most successful song is "Gentle on My Mind", which won three Grammy Awards and was listed in "BMI's Top 100 Songs of the Century".
More major people born on December 30
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1990
Joe Root
English cricketer
Joseph Edward Root is an English international cricketer who plays for England in Tests and ODIs. He is the current captain of the Test team, reappointed in 2026 having previous held the role from 2017 to 2022. He plays for Yorkshire in English domestic cricket. Root is currently the leading run-scorer among active batsmen, the second highest run-scorer of all time in Test cricket and the highest run scorer for England. Root is widely regarded as one of the greatest cricketers of his era and among the finest England has produced. He was part of the England team that won the 2019 Cricket World Cup, where he top scored for England. As of March 2026, he has topped the ICC rankings for Test batsmen on ten occasions.
1935
Sandy Koufax
American baseball player and sportscaster
Sanford Koufax, nicknamed "the Left Arm of God", is an American former professional baseball player. Widely considered one of the greatest pitchers of all time, he played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers from 1955 to 1966. Koufax was the first three-time winner of the Cy Young Award, each time winning unanimously and the only pitcher to do so when a single award was given for both leagues; he was also named the National League Most Valuable Player in 1963. Retiring at age 30 due to chronic pain in his pitching elbow, Koufax was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972 at age 36, the youngest player ever elected.
1957
Matt Lauer
American journalist and television host
Matthew Todd Lauer is a former American television news personality, best known for his work with NBC News. After serving as a local news personality, in New York City, on WNBC, his first national exposure was as the news anchor for NBC's Today, from 1994 to 1997. In 1997, Lauer was moved from the news desk to the host's chair. He was co-anchor of Today, from 1997 to 2017. He was also a frequent contributor to the evening news magazine Dateline NBC. With NBC, Lauer hosted the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and co-hosted the opening ceremonies of several Olympic Games.
1937
John Hartford
American singer-songwriter and fiddler (died 2001)
John Cowan Hartford was an American folk, country, and bluegrass composer and musician known for his mastery of the fiddle and banjo, as well as for his witty lyrics, unique vocal style, and extensive knowledge of Mississippi River lore. His most successful song is "Gentle on My Mind", which won three Grammy Awards and was listed in "BMI's Top 100 Songs of the Century". Hartford performed with a variety of ensembles throughout his career, and is perhaps best known for his solo performances where he would interchange the guitar, banjo, and fiddle from song to song. He also invented his own shuffle tap dance move, and clogged on an amplified piece of plywood while he played and sang.
1967
Carl Ouellet
Canadian wrestler and sportscaster
Carl Ouellet is a Canadian professional wrestler better known by his ring name PCO. He is known for his appearances with the World Wrestling Federation and with World Championship Wrestling during the 1990s. Throughout the 1990s, he regularly teamed with Jacques Rougeau as the Quebecers and the Amazing French Canadians, winning the WWF Tag Team Championship on three occasions. After retiring in 2011, Ouellet returned to the ring in 2016, undergoing a career renaissance with the gimmick of PCO: "part beast-turned-man, part old-time strongman". From 2018 to 2021, Ouellet wrestled for Ring of Honor (ROH), where he was a ROH World Champion, ROH World Tag Team Champion, and ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Champion. He joined TNA in 2022, winning the TNA Digital Media Championship before departing at the end of 2024.
1819
Theodor Fontane
German author and poet (died 1898)
Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet. He has been called “the greatest German realist novelist” and “clearly the greatest German novelist before Thomas Mann.” He published the first of his novels, for which he is best known today, only at age 58 after a career as a journalist. Many of his novels delve into topics that were more or less taboo for discussion in the polite society of Fontane's day, including marital infidelity, class differences, urban vs. rural differences, abandonment of children, and suicide. His novels sold well during his lifetime and several have been adapted for film or audio works.
1938
Ron Wolf
American Football Hall of Fame General Manager
Ronald Wolf is an American former professional football executive who was a general manager (GM) of the National Football League (NFL)'s Green Bay Packers. Wolf is widely credited with bringing success to a Packers franchise that had rarely won during the two decades prior to Wolf joining the organization. He also played a significant role in personnel operations with the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders from 1963 to 1975 and again from 1978 to 1990. He joined Green Bay's front office in November 1991 from a personnel director's job with the New York Jets. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August 2015.
1983
Nick Symmonds
American runner
Nicholas Boone Symmonds is an American YouTube personality and retired middle-distance runner from Boise, Idaho, who specialized in the 800 meters and 1500 meters. At Willamette University, he won seven NCAA Division III titles outdoors. Symmonds is a 6-time US national 800 meters champion. He has competed in the 800m at two Olympic Games, reaching the semi-finals in Beijing 2008, and finishing fifth in the London 2012 final, running a personal best of 1:42.95 behind David Rudisha's world record of 1:40.91. The following year, he won a silver medal in the 800 meters at the 2013 World Championships, having previously finished sixth in the 2009 final and fifth in the 2011 final.
1944
William J. Fallon
American admiral
William Joseph Fallon is a retired United States Navy four-star admiral who retired after serving for over 41 years. His last military assignment was as Commander, U.S. Central Command from March 2007 to March 2008. ADM Fallon was the first Navy officer to hold that position. His other four-star assignments include Commander, U.S. Pacific Command from February 2005 to March 2007, Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command from October 2003 to February 2005, and 31st vice chief of Naval Operations from October 2000 to August 2003. On 11 March 2008, he announced his resignation from CENTCOM and retirement from active duty, citing administrative complications caused in part by an article in Esquire Magazine, which described him as the only thing standing between the Bush Administration and war with Iran.
1899
Helge Ingstad
Norwegian explorer, lawyer, and politician, 2nd Governor of Svalbard (died 2001)
Helge Marcus Ingstad was a Norwegian explorer. In 1960, after mapping some Norse settlements, Ingstad and his wife archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad found remnants of a Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows in the province of Newfoundland in Canada. They were thus the first to prove conclusively that the Icelandic/Greenlandic Norsemen such as Leif Erickson had found a way across the Atlantic Ocean to North America, roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. He also thought that the mysterious disappearance of the Greenland Norse Settlements in the 14th and 15th centuries could be explained by their emigration to North America.
1578
Ulrik of Denmark
Danish prince-bishop (died 1624)
Prince Ulrik John of Denmark, was a son of King Frederick II of Denmark and his consort, Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow. As the second-born son he bore the merely titular rank of Duke of Holstein and Schleswig, Stormarn and Ditmarsh and had no share in the royal-ducal condominial rule of Holstein and Schleswig, wielded by the heads of the houses of Oldenburg (royal) and its cadet branch Holstein-Gottorp (ducal). Since 1602 he held the religiously defunct position of Bishop of Schleswig, enjoying the revenues of the implied estates and manor. The year after he succeeded his grandfather as Administrator of the Prince-Bishopric of Schwerin, holding both posts until his death.
1977
Kenyon Martin
American basketball player
Kenyon Lee Martin Sr. is an American former professional basketball player who played 15 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a power forward, he played for the New Jersey Nets, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA, and the Xinjiang Flying Tigers of China. He played college basketball for the Cincinnati Bearcats and was named the national college player of the year during his senior season. Martin was drafted with the first overall pick in the 2000 NBA draft by the New Jersey Nets. He was an NBA All-Star in 2004.
1950
Martti Vainio
Finnish runner
Martti Olavi Vainio is a Finnish former long-distance runner. In Finland he is recognized as the last of the great runners of the famous "V-line", the previous ones being Juha Väätäinen, Lasse Virén, and Pekka Vasala. Each of them won at least one gold medal either at the Summer Olympics or the European Athletics Championships in the 1970s. Vainio's accomplishments are tarnished though, for testing positive for PEDs on at least two occasions. One of those events was the 1984 Olympic Games where he was disqualified and stripped of his medal and later suspended from sport.
1878
William Aberhart
Canadian evangelist and politician, seventh Premier of Alberta (died 1943)
William Aberhart, also known as "Bible Bill" for his radio sermons about the Bible, was a Canadian politician and the seventh premier of Alberta from 1935 to his death in 1943. He was the founder and first leader of the Alberta Social Credit Party, which believed the Great Depression was caused by ordinary people not having enough to spend. Therefore, Aberhart argued that the government should give each Albertan $25 per month to spend to stimulate the economy, by providing needed purchasing power to allow needy customers to buy from waiting businesses.
1956
Sheryl Lee Ralph
American actress and singer
Sheryl Lee Ralph is an American actress and singer. Known for her performances on stage and screen, she earned acclaim for her role as Deena Jones in the Broadway musical Dreamgirls (1981), for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Since 2021, she has starred as Barbara Howard on the ABC mockumentary sitcom Abbott Elementary, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2022, becoming the first Black woman in 35 years to win the award.
1906
Carol Reed
English director and producer (died 1976)
Sir Carol Reed was an English film director and producer. Considered one of the foremost British filmmakers of the post-World War II era, he achieved prominence in the late 1940s for his film noir thrillers Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949). Odd Man Out was the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The Fallen Idol won the second BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of the 20th century.
1919
David Willcocks
English organist, composer, and conductor (died 2015)
Sir David Valentine Willcocks was a British choral conductor, organist, composer and music administrator. He was particularly well known for his association with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, which he directed from 1957 to 1974, making frequent broadcasts and recordings. Several of the descants and carol arrangements he wrote for the annual service of Nine Lessons and Carols were published in the series of books Carols for Choirs which he edited along with Reginald Jacques and John Rutter. He was also director of the Royal College of Music in London.
1961
Douglas Coupland
German-Canadian author and playwright
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian visual artist and writer. Trained originally as a sculptor, Coupland found unexpected success as a novelist with the publication of his 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, which popularized the terms Generation X and McJob. He has since gone on to publish dozens of books, including novels, short story collections, and essay collections. He has also worked as a columnist and contributor for a number of periodicals, including the New York Times, the Financial Times, The Guardian, and Wired Magazine.
1973
Jason Behr
American actor
Jason Behr is an American film and television actor. He first starred in the American television series Roswell, for which he was twice nominated for a Saturn Award, followed by roles in the films The Shipping News and the American remake of the Japanese horror film The Grudge. Behr has also had a series of guest appearances in various television shows like Step by Step, The Profiler, 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and JAG and had recurring roles in the American television series Dawson's Creek and Breakout Kings.