Famous Birthdays on December 5

Kwon Yu-ri, known mononymously as Yuri, is a South Korean singer, actress, and songwriter. She debuted as a member of girl group Girls' Generation in August 2007, which went on to become one of the best-selling artists in South Korea and one of South Korea's most widely known girl groups worldwide. Apart from her group's activities, she has acted in several television dramas such as Fashion King (2012), Local Hero (2016), Innocent Defendant (2017), Dae Jang Geum Is Watching (2018), Bossam: Steal the Fate (2021), Good Job (2022) and Parole Examiner Lee (2024). In 2013, she made her film debut in No Breathing. In 2018, she made her debut as a soloist with her first extended play The First Scene.

Morgan Brittany is an American actress. She began her career as a child appearing in the film Gypsy (1962), in a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone entitled "Nightmare as a Child" and another in 1963 entitled "Valley of the Shadow". She went on to appear in Stage to Thunder Rock (1964) and Yours, Mine and Ours. In the 1970s, Brittany began work as a model joining Ford Models. She played Vivien Leigh in films The Day of the Locust (1975), Gable and Lombard (1976) and The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980). Brittany is best-known for portraying Katherine Wentworth, the scheming younger half-sister of Pamela Ewing and Cliff Barnes, on the primetime soap opera Dallas.

Gary Allan Herzberg is an American country music singer. Signed to Decca Records in 1996, he made his country music debut with the release of his single "Her Man", the lead-off to his gold-certified debut album Used Heart for Sale, which was released in 1996 on Decca. His second album, It Would Be You, followed in 1998. His third album, Smoke Rings in the Dark, was his first one for MCA Nashville and his first platinum album. His next albums, Alright Guy (2001) and See If I Care (2003), both were also certified platinum while Tough All Over (2005) and Greatest Hits (2007) and Living Hard (2007) were all certified gold.

Eddy Anthony Curry Jr. is an American former professional basketball player. A 7 ft 0 in center, he came directly out of Thornwood High School in South Holland, Illinois, and was selected fourth overall in the 2001 NBA draft by the Chicago Bulls. Curry played for the Bulls until 2005, then played for the New York Knicks from 2005 to 2010. He played for the Miami Heat in the 2011–12 season and was part of the Heat's 2012 championship team. He played for the Dallas Mavericks for the early part of the 2012–13 season before playing out the season for the Zhejiang Golden Bulls of the Chinese Basketball Association.

Admiral of the Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe was a Royal Navy officer. He fought in the Anglo-Egyptian War and the Boxer Rebellion and commanded the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 during the First World War. His handling of the fleet at that battle was controversial. Jellicoe made no serious mistakes and the German High Seas Fleet retreated to port, at a time when defeat would have been catastrophic for Britain, but the public was disappointed that the Royal Navy had not won a more dramatic victory given that they outnumbered the enemy. Jellicoe later served as First Sea Lord, overseeing the expansion of the Naval Staff at the Admiralty and the introduction of convoys, but was relieved at the end of 1917. He also served as the governor-general of New Zealand in the early 1920s.

Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American screenwriter, film director, producer and playwright. As a filmmaker, he wrote the screenplays to more than fifty films in a career that spanned from 1927 to 1967. He also produced more than half of the films he wrote scripts for and directed eight of those movies. In 1940 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Grapes of Wrath and in 1956, he was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Some of his other notable films include Tobacco Road (1941), The Moon Is Down (1943), Casanova Brown (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), The Mudlark (1950), The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951), My Cousin Rachel (1952), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), and The Dirty Dozen (1967). As a playwright he wrote the books for several Broadway musicals, including the musical revue Shoot the Works (1931), Arthur Schwartz's Park Avenue (1946), Bob Merrill's Henry, Sweet Henry (1967), and Jule Styne's Darling of the Day (1968). He also wrote the 1943 Broadway play The World's Full of Girls.

Johan Marius Nicolaas Heesters, known professionally as Johannes Heesters, was a Dutch-German actor of stage, television and film, as well as a vocalist of numerous recordings and performer on the concert stage with a career dating back to the 1920s. He worked as an actor until his death and is one of the oldest performing entertainers in history, performing shortly before his death at the age of 108. Heesters was almost exclusively active in the German-speaking world from the mid-1930s and became a film star in Nazi Germany, which later led to controversy in his native country. He was able to maintain his popularity in Germany in the decades until his death.

Hilary Koprowski was a Polish virologist and immunologist. He was the first scientist to produce attenuated poliovirus and to conduct large-scale clinical research studies of an oral polio vaccine. His vaccine was used to immunize millions of children during trials in the Belgian Congo and Poland. He was the director of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology from 1957 to 1991 where he developed an improved rabies vaccine and pioneered the usage of monoclonal antibodies for cancer diagnosis and treatment. He was a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Center of Neurovirology and Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University. He co-founded the biotechnology firm Centocor in 1979.

Olli Veli Pekka Jokinen is a Finnish former professional ice hockey player. He was selected by the Los Angeles Kings third overall in the 1997 NHL entry draft, with whom he made his NHL debut. He has also played for the New York Islanders, Florida Panthers, Phoenix Coyotes, Calgary Flames, New York Rangers, Winnipeg Jets, Nashville Predators, Toronto Maple Leafs, and St. Louis Blues. He began his professional career with KalPa and then HIFK of the Finnish SM-liiga. Additionally, he played for EHC Kloten of Switzerland's National League A and Södertälje SK of Sweden's Elitserien. He previously held the franchise records for most goals, assists, and points for the Florida Panthers.

Francisco Javier Arana Castro was a Guatemalan military leader and one of the three members of the revolutionary junta that ruled Guatemala from 20 October 1944 to 15 March 1945 during the early part of the Guatemalan Revolution. A major in the Guatemalan army under the dictator Jorge Ubico, he allied with a progressive faction of the army to topple Ubico's successor Federico Ponce Vaides. He led the three-man junta that oversaw the transition to a democratic government, although he was personally reluctant to allow the elected President Juan José Arévalo to take office in 1945. He served as the Chief of the Armed Forces in the new government until 1949. On 18 July 1949 he was killed in a shootout with supporters of the Arévalo government after he threatened to launch a coup.

Yury Petrovich Vlasov was a Soviet and Russian heavyweight weightlifter, writer and politician. He competed at the 1960 and 1964 Olympics and won a gold medal in 1960 and a silver in 1964; at both games, he was the Olympic flag bearer for the Soviet Union. During his career, Vlasov won four world titles and set 31 ratified world records. He retired in 1968 and became a prominent writer and later a politician. He was a member of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union (1989) and then of the Russian State Duma (1993) and took part in the 1996 Russian presidential election.

General Sir Arthur William Currie was a senior officer of the Canadian Army who fought during World War I. He had the unique distinction of starting his military career on the very bottom rung as a pre-war militia gunner before rising through the ranks to become the first Canadian commander of the Canadian Corps. Currie's success was based on his ability to rapidly adapt brigade tactics to the exigencies of trench warfare, using set piece operations and bite-and-hold tactics. He is generally considered to be among the most capable commanders of the Western Front, and one of the finest commanders in Canadian military history.

John Weldon "JJ" Cale was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Though he avoided the limelight, his influence as a musical artist has been acknowledged by figures such as Neil Young, Mark Knopfler, Waylon Jennings, and Eric Clapton, who described him as one of the most important artists in rock history. He is one of the originators of the Tulsa sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz. According to AllMusic, he was known for his "laconic delivery and shuffling boogie rhythm," as well as for his "laid-back rootsy style". He rarely diverted from this style throughout his career.

Walter James McPherson was an American basketball coach and was regarded as one of the best at San Jose State University, and former West Coast Athletic Conference commissioner. McPherson graduated from San Jose State in 1939 and played as a fullback through 1936 and 1938 trained by Dudley DeGroot. He became a basketball coach and assistant football coach, he also managed to get his basketball team in the NCAA Tournament which was the team's first time in the tournament. He also taught Carroll Williams and Billy Wilson who also started their own sport careers. McPherson retired from coaching in 1960.

Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards won (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute.

Natalio Alberto Nisman was an Argentine lawyer who worked as a federal prosecutor, noted for being the chief investigator of the 1994 car bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people, the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina's history. On 18 January 2015, Nisman was found dead at his home in Buenos Aires, one day before he was scheduled to report on his findings before a Congress inquiry, with supposedly incriminating evidence against high-ranking officials of the then-current Argentinian government, including former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, regarding the Memorandum of Understanding between Argentina and Iran.

Tina Alexandria Charles is an American former professional basketball player. Originally from Jamaica, Queens, New York City, Charles was drafted first overall in the 2010 WNBA draft by the Connecticut Sun. In 2009 and 2010, she and teammate Maya Moore led the Connecticut Huskies to two undefeated national championships. She has won three Olympic gold medals with Team USA and was inducted into the NYC Basketball Hall of Fame at the head of the Class of 2024 - the first female to head a class at any major basketball hall of fame and the first active player ever inducted.

Jack Alvin "Alvy" Moore was an American actor best known for his role as scatterbrained county agricultural agent Hank Kimball on the CBS television series Green Acres. His character would often make a statement, only to immediately negate the statement himself and then negate the corrected statement until his stream of statements was interrupted by a frustrated Oliver Wendell Douglas portrayed by Eddie Albert. One such statement was, "Good morning, Mr. Douglas! Well, it's not a good morning ... but it's not a bad morning either!" Moore appeared in 142 of the 170 total Green Acres episodes.

Jeroen Aart Krabbé is a Dutch actor, film director and painter with a successful career in both Dutch- and English-language films. He is best known to international audiences for his leading roles in the Paul Verhoeven films Soldier of Orange (1977) and The Fourth Man (1983), for playing the villain General Georgi Koskov in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987) and his parts in The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), and Immortal Beloved (1994). His 1998 directorial debut, Left Luggage, was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival.