Famous Birthdays on February 18

Matthew Raymond Dillon is an American actor. He made his feature film debut in Over the Edge (1979) and established himself as a teen idol by starring in the films My Bodyguard (1980), Little Darlings (1980), Liar's Moon (1982), The Flamingo Kid (1984) and three of the four S. E. Hinton book adaptations: Tex (1982), Rumble Fish (1983) and The Outsiders (1983). From the late 1980s onward, Dillon achieved further success, starring in Drugstore Cowboy (1989), Singles (1992), The Saint of Fort Washington (1993), To Die For (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), In & Out (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), and Wild Things (1998). In a 1991 article, movie critic Roger Ebert referred to him as the best actor within his age group, along with Sean Penn.

Jung Ho-seok, known professionally as J-Hope, is a South Korean rapper, singer, songwriter, dancer, and record producer. He made his debut as a member of South Korean boy band BTS in 2013, under Big Hit Entertainment. J-Hope released his first solo mixtape, Hope World, in 2018. It was received positively by critics and peaked at number 38 on the US Billboard 200, the highest-charting album by a Korean solo artist at the time. He became the first member of BTS to enter the Billboard Hot 100 as a soloist in 2019, when his single "Chicken Noodle Soup", featuring singer Becky G, debuted at number 81. In 2022, J-Hope released his debut studio album Jack in the Box. In 2023, he released his single "On the Street" with J. Cole.

Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274), also known as Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī or simply as (al-)Tusi, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a well published author, writing on subjects of math, engineering, prose, and mysticism. Additionally, al-Tusi made several scientific advancements. In astronomy, al-Tusi created very accurate tables of planetary motion, an updated planetary model, and critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. He also made strides in logic, mathematics but especially trigonometry, biology, and chemistry. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi left behind a great legacy as well. Tusi is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of medieval Islam, since he is often considered the creator of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars. There is also reason to believe that he may have influenced Copernican heliocentrism.

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian chemist and physicist who was a pioneer of electricity and power, and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society in London, which was published in 1800. With this invention, Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.

Veronica "Randy" Crawford is an American retired jazz and R&B singer. She has been more successful in Europe than in the United States, where she has not entered the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist. However, she has appeared on the Hot 100 singles chart twice. The first time was in 1979 as a guest vocalist on the Crusaders' top-40 hit "Street Life". She also dueted with Rick Springfield on the song "Taxi Dancing", which hit number 59 as the B-side of Springfield's hit "Bop Til You Drop". She has had five top-20 hits in the UK, including her 1980 number-two hit, "One Day I'll Fly Away", as well as six UK top-10 albums. Despite her American nationality, she won Best British Female Solo Artist in recognition of her popularity in the UK at the 1982 Brit Awards. In the late 2000s, she received her first two Grammy Award nominations.

Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in art glass, especially stained glass and Favrile glass. He is associated with the art nouveau and aesthetic art movements. He was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass such as vases, ceramics, jewelry, enamels, and metalwork. Glass work by Tiffany Studios is known as Tiffany glass. He was the first design director at Tiffany & Co., the family company founded by his father Charles Lewis Tiffany.

Jaime Jaquez Jr. is a Mexican-American professional basketball player for the Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the UCLA Bruins. During his senior season in 2023, he was recognized as a consensus second-team All-American and was named the Pac-12 Player of the Year. Over the course of his collegiate career, Jaquez was selected three times to the All-Pac-12 team, including two first-team honors, and was twice named to the Pac-12 All-Defensive Team. He was selected by the Miami Heat with the 18th overall pick in the first round of the 2023 NBA draft. Jaquez is also known by the nickname "Juan Wick," which reflects his Mexican heritage and a perceived resemblance to the character John Wick.

Fabrizio Cristiano De André was an Italian singer-songwriter and the most-prominent cantautore of his time. He is also known as Faber, a nickname given by the friend Paolo Villaggio, as a reference to his liking towards Faber-Castell's pastels and pencils, aside from the assonance with his own name, and also because he was known as il cantautore degli emarginati or il poeta degli sconfitti. His 40-year career reflects his interests in concept albums, literature, poetry, political protest, and French music. He is considered a prominent member of the Genoese School. He sang in both Italian and in other languages such as Genoese. Because of the success of his music in Italy and its impact on the Italian collective memory, many public places such as roads, squares, and schools in Italy are named after De André.

Constance Wisniewski was a starting pitcher and outfielder who played from 1944 through 1952 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Listed at 5' 8", 147 lb., she batted left-handed and threw right-handed. A player for eight seasons in the league, she made it onto the scene as a dominating pitcher, winning over 100 games in her first five years as an underhanded thrower, which included 32 wins with a 0.81 ERA and a league-record 391 innings in the 1945 season that saw her named the first ever winner of the league Player of the Year Award. She won 33 games the following year to tie Joanne Winter for what stood as a league record for the rest of the league's history. Her 40 complete games that year also stood as a league record. With the change to overhand pitching in 1948, she made her final pitching appearances while shifting to the outfield and became a dependable hitter. She left the team to play in the National Girls Baseball League in 1950 before returning to the Chicks in 1951, playing two further seasons before retiring in 1952.

Claude Ake was a Nigerian political scientist from Omoku, in Rivers State, Nigeria. Ake was considered "one of Africa's foremost political philosophers." He specialized in political economy, political theory, and development studies and is well known for his research on development and democracy in Africa. He was professor of political economy and dean of the University of Port Harcourt's Faculty of Social Sciences for some years in the 1970s and 1980s after having taught at Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1966. He held various academic positions at institutions around the world, including at Yale University, University of Nairobi (Kenya), University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and University of Port Harcourt (Nigeria). He was active in Nigerian politics, a critic of corruption and authoritarian rule in Africa. His permanent home was in Port Harcourt.

Mary Ochsenhirt Amdur was an American toxicologist and public health researcher who worked primarily on pollution. She was charged with studying the effects of the 1948 Donora smog, specifically looking into the effects of inhaling sulfuric acid by experimenting on guinea pigs. Her findings on the respiratory effects related to sulfuric acid led to her being threatened, her funding being pulled, and her losing her job at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1953. Undeterred, she carried on her research in a different role at Harvard, and subsequently at MIT and New York University. Despite the early controversy related to her work, it was used in the creation of standards in air pollution, and towards the end of her life she received numerous awards and accolades.

Sir John O'Shanassy, KCMG, was an Irish-Australian politician who served as the 2nd Premier of Victoria. O'Shanassy was born near Thurles in County Tipperary, Ireland, the son of a surveyor, and came to the Port Phillip District in 1839. He went into business in Melbourne as a draper, and by 1846 he was rich enough to be elected to the Melbourne City Council and to become the founding chairman of the Colonial Bank of Australasia. By the 1850s he was a major landowner and one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He also became a recognised leader of the large Irish Catholic community.

Dennis DeYoung is an American singer, songwriter and keyboardist. He was a founding member of the rock band Styx and served as its primary lead vocalist and keyboardist from 1972 until 1999. DeYoung was the band's most prolific and successful writer, having been credited as the writer of more Styx songs than any other band member. DeYoung penned seven of the band's eight Billboard top 10 singles as well as a solo top 10 single. He has written and sung songs that hit the top 10 in 3 different decades, one of only a handful of artists to accomplish this longevity of success metric.

Nagao Kagetora , later known as Uesugi Kenshin , was a Japanese daimyō (magnate). He was born into the Nagao clan, and after adoption into the Uesugi clan, ruled Echigo Province in the Sengoku period of Japan. He was one of the most powerful daimyō of the Sengoku period. Known as the "Dragon of Echigo", while chiefly remembered for his prowess on the battlefield as a military genius and war hero, Kenshin is also regarded as an extremely skillful administrator who fostered the growth of local industries and trade, as his rule saw a marked rise in the standard of living of Echigo.

Li Linsi, born Li Jiaxiang (厉家祥), was a Chinese educator, diplomat, and scholar who has been recognized as one of the key figures in modern Chinese cultural and diplomatic history. Hailed as China's Mahatma Gandhi, Li was the leader of China's nonviolent resistance against Japanese aggression. His military research contributed to China in the Second Sino-Japanese War. He was known for his efforts to save hundreds of Jews fleeing to Shanghai during World War II. A diplomatic consultant to Chiang Kai-shek, Li was a key facilitator of the China–Germany relationship during the 1930s, and a major proponent of China's League of Nations diplomacy.

Mary I was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain as the wife of King Philip II from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She made vigorous attempts to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, King Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament but, during her five-year reign, more than 280 religious dissenters were burned at the stake, in what became known as the Marian persecutions, leading later commentators to label her "Bloody Mary".

Baha al-Din al-Amili, commonly known as Sheikh Bahāʾī, was a Twelver Shia Muslim scholar and polymath in Safavid Iran, who composed various works in Arabic and Persian. Closely tied to the court of Shah Abbas the Great, he became known for his role in the intellectual sphere of Isfahan and is seen as a leading figure in his field, with seventy-seven scholars counted among his students. An ethnic Arab, he was originally from Jabal Amil in Ottoman Syria. During his childhood, his family moved to Iran, where his father Husayn ibn Abd al-Samad became the shaykh al-Islam in Herat under Tahmasp I.

Vanna Marie White is an American television personality. She is best known as the co-host of the game show Wheel of Fortune, a position she has held since 1982. She began her career as a model while studying fashion, competing in Miss Georgia USA in 1978. In addition to her work on Wheel of Fortune, she has played minor characters or appeared as herself in many films and television series, and is the author of the 1987 autobiography Vanna Speaks. She also participates in real-estate investment, owns the yarn brand Vanna's Choice, and is a patron of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

John Lewis Hart was an American cartoonist noted as the creator of the comic strips B.C. and The Wizard of Id. Brant Parker co-produced and illustrated The Wizard of Id. Hart was recognized with several awards, including the Swedish Adamson Award and five from the National Cartoonists Society. In his later years, he was known for incorporating Christian themes and messages into his strips and seeming to denigrate other religions. Hart was referred to by Chuck Colson in a Breakpoint column as "the most widely read Christian of our time", over C. S. Lewis, Frank E. Peretti, and Billy Graham.