Famous Birthdays on February 19

Skillet is an American Christian rock band formed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1996. The band currently consists of husband and wife John Cooper and Korey Cooper along with Jen Ledger and Seth Morrison. The band has released twelve studio albums, two of which, Collide and Comatose, received Grammy nominations. Two of their albums, Comatose and Awake, are certified Platinum and Double Platinum respectively by the RIAA, while Rise and Unleashed are certified Gold as of June 29, 2020. Four of their songs, "Monster", "Hero", "Awake and Alive", and "Feel Invincible", are certified Multi-Platinum, while another three, "Whispers in the Dark", "Comatose", and "The Resistance" are certified Platinum, and another five, "Rebirthing", "Not Gonna Die", "The Last Night", "Legendary", and "Stars" are certified Gold.

Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, simply known as Sócrates, was a Brazilian footballer who played as a midfielder. His medical degree and his political awareness, combined with style and quality of his play, earned him the nickname "Doctor Socrates". Famous for his beard and the headband he wore during the 1986 World Cup in solidarity with victims of the Mexico City earthquake, Sócrates became the "symbol of cool for a whole generation of football supporters". In 1983, he was named South American Footballer of the Year. In 2004, he was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest midfielders of all time.

Reynhard "Rey" Tambos Maruli Tua Sinaga is an Indonesian serial rapist. He was convicted of 159 sex offences, including 136 rapes of young men, committed in Manchester, England, between 2015 and 2017, where he was living as a student. Sinaga was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting 48 men during this period, 44 of whom he raped, some repeatedly, although police believe he was offending for years beforehand. Sinaga was prosecuted in four trials between 2018 and 2020 and was given concurrent life sentences with a minimum term of 30 years, raised to 40 years in December 2020 by the Court of Appeal. The Crown Prosecution Service described Sinaga as being the most prolific rapist in British legal history.

Clark Knobel Hunt is an American billionaire, businessman and scion of the Hunt family. He currently serves as chairman and CEO of the National Football League (NFL)'s Kansas City Chiefs, Major League Soccer (MLS)‘s FC Dallas and a founding investor-owner in MLS. He is also chairman of Hunt Sports Group, where he oversees the operations of the Chiefs, FC Dallas and, formerly, the Columbus Crew of MLS. The group is estimated to have a total net worth of $24.8 billion as of 2024. He is the son of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt and his second wife Norma Hunt, and is the grandson of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt. As of 2025, he had an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion.

Homer Hadley Hickam Jr. is an American author, Vietnam War veteran, and a former NASA engineer who trained the first Japanese astronauts. His 1998 memoir Rocket Boys was a New York Times Best Seller and was the basis for the 1999 film October Sky. Hickam's body of written work also includes several additional best-selling memoirs and novels, including the "Josh Thurlow" historical fiction novels, his 2015 best-selling Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, his Wife, and her Alligator and in 2021 the sequel to Rocket Boys titled Don't Blow Yourself Up: The Further Adventures and Travails of the Rocket Boy of October Sky. His books have been translated into many languages.

Constantin Brâncuși was a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century and a pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture. As a child, he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1905 to 1907. His art emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Brâncuși's practice drew from Romanian folk art, and sought a great deal of inspiration in non-European cultures as a source of primitive exoticism, as did Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, and others.

Trevor Mitchell Bayne is an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver, dirt racing driver, team owner, and businessman. He last competed part-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, competing in the No. 24 Toyota GR Supra for Sam Hunt Racing, and part-time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, driving the No. 1 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro for Tricon Garage. He is also a pit reporter for NASCAR on Prime Video. He is the youngest person to ever win the Daytona 500, the largest event in NASCAR, doing so a day after his twentieth birthday in 2011. The win came in only his second race in NASCAR's top series, and was his only victory in 187 total Cup Series starts.

Hana Mandlíková is a Czech–Australian former professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 3 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) in the mid-1980s. Mandlíková won 27 WTA Tour-level singles titles, including four majors: the 1980 Australian Open, 1981 French Open, 1985 US Open and 1987 Australian Open. She was the runner-up at a further four singles majors – twice at Wimbledon and twice at the US Open. She also won 19 career doubles titles, including a major in women's doubles at the 1989 US Open partnering Martina Navratilova. Competing for Czechoslovakia and later Australia, Mandlíková was one of the brightest stars of her generation and is considered one of the greatest female players of the Open Era. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1994.

Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol, Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.

George Edward Arcaro was an American Thoroughbred horse racing Hall of Fame jockey who won more American classic races than any other jockey in history and is the only rider to have won the U.S. Triple Crown twice. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest jockeys in the history of American Thoroughbred horse racing. Arcaro was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of an impoverished taxi driver. His parents, Pasquale and Josephine, were Italian immigrants and his father held a number of jobs, including taxi driver and operator of an illegal liquor enterprise during Prohibition. Arcaro was born prematurely, and weighed just three pounds at birth; because of this, he was smaller than his classmates and was rejected when he tried out for a spot on a baseball team. His full height would reach just five-foot, two inches. Eventually nicknamed "Banana Nose" by his confreres, Arcaro won his first race in 1932 at the Agua Caliente racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico; he was 16 years old. In 1934, the inaugural year of Narragansett Park, Arcaro was a comparative unknown who rode many of his early career races at 'Gansett.

Norman Clifford Louis O'Neill was a cricketer who played for New South Wales and Australia. A right-handed batsman known for his back foot strokeplay, O'Neill made his state debut aged 18, before progressing to Test selection aged 21 in late 1958. Early in his career, O'Neill was one of the foremost batsmen in the Australian team, scoring three Test centuries and topping the run-scoring aggregates on a 1959–60 tour of the Indian subcontinent which helped Australia win its last Test and series on Pakistani soil for 39 years, as well as another series in India. His career peaked in 1960–61 when he scored 181 in the tied Test against the West Indies, and at the end of the series, had a career average of 58.25.

Dwight Jason Freeney is an American former professional football player who currently serves as the Director of player development for Syracuse University. Freeney played as a defensive end and linebacker for 16 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), most notably as a member of the Indianapolis Colts. He played college football for the Syracuse Orange, earning unanimous All-American honors. He was selected by the Colts in the first round of the 2002 NFL draft. With the Colts, Freeney won Super Bowl XLI over the Chicago Bears, and made seven Pro Bowls. He also played for the San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions.

Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College. In 2025, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, a prestigious honor recognizing exceptional artists and scholars in the arts and humanities.

Kasinadhuni Viswanath was an Indian film director, screenwriter, lyricist and actor who predominantly worked in Telugu cinema. One of the greatest auteurs of Indian cinema, he received international recognition for his works, and is known for blending parallel cinema with mainstream cinema. He was honoured with the "Prize of the Public" at the "Besançon Film Festival of France" in 1981. In 1992, he received the Andhra Pradesh state Raghupathi Venkaiah Award, and the civilian honour Padma Shri for his contribution to the field of arts. In 2016, he was conferred with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest award in Indian cinema. He is popularly known as "Kalatapasvi."

Karoyan Andō, known professionally as Kotoōshū Katsunori and in his coaching career as Naruto Katsunori, is a Bulgarian-Japanese former sumo wrestler. He made his debut in 2002, reaching the top division just two years later. In 2005, he was the first European sumo wrestler to reach the rank of ōzeki or 'champion', the second-highest level in the sumo ranking system behind only yokozuna. On May 24, 2008, Kotoōshū made history by becoming the first European sumo wrestler to win an Emperor's Cup. He was one of the longest serving ōzeki in sumo history, holding the rank for 47 consecutive tournaments until November 2013.

Paul James Krause is an American former professional football player who was a safety in the National Football League (NFL) for the Minnesota Vikings and the Washington Redskins. Krause established himself as a proficient defensive force against opposing wide receivers. He led the league with 12 interceptions as a rookie before going on to set the NFL career interceptions record with 81 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1998. Krause was selected eight times to the Pro Bowl during his 16 seasons in the NFL and is considered to be among the greatest safeties in NFL history.

Cristina Elísabet Fernández de Kirchner is an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as the 55th President of Argentina from 2007 to 2015, and later as the 37th Vice President of Argentina under President Alberto Fernández from 2019 to 2023. The widow of Néstor Kirchner, she was also First Lady during his presidency from 2003 to 2007. She was the second female president of Argentina after Isabel Perón and the first to be directly elected to office. Ideologically self-identified as a Peronist and a progressive, her political approach is called Kirchnerism. Since 2024, she has been the president of the Justicialist Party.

Justine Bateman is an American filmmaker, author and actress. Her acting work has included Family Ties, Satisfaction, Men Behaving Badly, The TV Set, Desperate Housewives, and Californication. Her feature film directorial debut, Violet, starring Olivia Munn, Luke Bracey, and Justin Theroux, premiered at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival. Bateman also wrote, directed and produced the film short Five Minutes, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. She regularly makes guest appearances on USA television including Fox News and Today and is the author of the books Fame: The Hijacking of Reality (2018) and Face: One Square Foot of Skin (2021).

Ridolfo Luigi Boccherini was an Italian composer and cellist of the Classical era whose music retained a courtly and galante style even while he matured somewhat apart from the major classical musical centers. He is best known for the minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No. 5, and the Cello Concerto in B♭ major . The latter work was long known in the heavily altered version by German cellist and prolific arranger Friedrich Grützmacher, but has recently been restored to its original version. He is also particularly well known for his Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid.