Famous Birthdays on February 2

Yasuko Namba was the second Japanese woman to climb the Seven Summits. Namba worked as a businesswoman for FedEx in Japan, but her hobby of mountaineering took her all over the world. She first summited Kilimanjaro on New Year's Day in 1982, and summited Aconcagua exactly two years later. She reached the summit of Denali on July 1, 1985, and the summit of Mount Elbrus on August 1, 1992. After summiting Vinson Massif on December 29, 1993, and Carstensz Pyramid on November 12, 1994, Namba's final summit to reach was Mount Everest. She signed on with Rob Hall's guiding company, Adventure Consultants, and reached the summit in May 1996, but died during her descent in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.

Edward Ellsworth Annis is a Canadian-American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Teddy Hart. He currently works on the independent circuit. He is one-half of the RCW Tag Team Champions with Steven Styles. He is best known for his tenure with Major League Wrestling (MLW) as the leader of The Hart Foundation, where he held the MLW World Middleweight and MLW Tag Team championships. He has also wrestled known as a tenures for his time AAA, the short-lived Wrestling Society X, Jersey All Pro Wrestling, and Dragon Gate USA. He operates a wrestling school in Edmonton. He is the son of Georgia Hart of the Hart wrestling family and wrestler B. J. Annis. He is also the nephew of former professional wrestlers Bret Hart and Owen Hart. Hart achieved an early degree of fame when he became the youngest wrestler to be signed to the World Wrestling Federation. His subsequent release, controversial actions while wrestling on the independent circuit and various legal problems have earned him a measure of infamy.

Donald Jerome Driver is an American former professional football wide receiver who played for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). After playing college football for Alcorn State University, Driver was picked by Green Bay in the seventh round of the 1999 NFL draft. He spent his entire 14-season NFL career with the Packers and holds the franchise's all-time records for most career receptions and receiving yards. Driver was a member of the Packers team that won Super Bowl XLV. Every year in Cleveland, Driver holds the Donald Driver Football Camp for local kids which is held at the Cleveland High School Football field. Upon retirement, he won season 14 of Dancing with the Stars.

Michael Eugene Misick is a Turks and Caicos Islander politician who was the 7th Chief Minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands from 15 August 2003 to 9 August 2006 and was the 1st Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands from 9 August 2006 to 23 March 2009. Misick is a member of the Progressive National Party (PNP) and became chief minister when his party, after eight years as the opposition party, gained two parliamentary seats in by-elections. In addition to being premier, he was also the minister for Civil Aviation, Commerce and Development, Planning, District Administration, Broadcasting Commission, Tourist Board, Turks and Caicos Investment Agency, and Tourism. Several other members of Misick's family have been politicians in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and important leaders in the PNP. Washington Misick, his brother, is the current Premier, former Chief Minister and former Minister of Finance.

Albert Fred "Red" Schoendienst was an American professional baseball second baseman and manager. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, and Milwaukee Braves from 1945 to 1963, and was named to 10 All-Star teams. He then managed the Cardinals from 1965 to 1976 – the second-longest managerial tenure in the team's history. Under his direction, St. Louis won the 1967 and 1968 National League pennants and the 1967 World Series, and he was named National League Manager of the Year in 1967 and 1968. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989. At the time of his death, he had worn a Major League uniform for 74 consecutive years as a player, coach, or manager, and had served 67 of his 76 years in baseball with the Cardinals.

Arfa Abdul Karim Randhawa (Urdu: ارفع عبد الکریم رندھاوا‎, Punjabi: ارفع عبد الکریم رندھاوا‎; 2 February 1995 – 14 January 2012) was a Pakistani student and computer prodigy who became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in 2004. She was submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records for her achievement. Arfa kept the title until 2008 and went on to represent Pakistan on various international forums, including the TechEd Developers Conference. She received Pakistan's highest literary award, the Presidential Pride of Performance from General Pervez Musharraf in 2005. A science park in Lahore, the Arfa Software Technology Park, is named in her honour. At the age of 10, Arfa was invited by Bill Gates to visit Microsoft's headquarters in the United States. She died in 2012, aged 16, from a cardiac arrest.

Genichiro Shimada , better known as Genichiro Tenryu is a Japanese retired professional wrestler and professional wrestling promoter. At age 13, he entered sumo wrestling and stayed there for 13 years, after which he turned to Western-style professional wrestling. "Tenryu" was his shikona. He had two stints with All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), where he spent the majority of his career while also promoting Super World of Sports (SWS), Wrestle Association R (WAR) and Tenryu Project. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. At the time of his retirement, professional wrestling journalist and historian Dave Meltzer wrote that "one could make a strong case [that Tenryu was] between the fourth and sixth biggest native star" in the history of Japanese professional wrestling.

Bozorg Alavi was an influential Iranian writer, novelist, and political intellectual. He was a founding member of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran in the 1940s and – following the 1953 coup against Premier Mohammad Mossadegh – spent the rest of his life in exile in East Germany, first during the Pahlavi regime, then returning to Germany once more following the 1979 revolution. Cheshm'hā'yash, which was published in Iran in 1952 and was subsequently banned, is considered his finest novel. Alavi was also a very close friend of Iran's famous writer Sadegh Hedayat; these two created a literary group when they were residing in Paris called "sab'e group". Although Her Eyes is considered his masterpiece, Alavi also wrote many other books, such as the novel "Chamedan" (suitcase) which was written under the influence of Freudian psychology. His other novels "Mirza", "Fifty Three Persons" and "Gilemard" are mentioned in Iranian high-school textbooks. He did return to Tehran after the revolution but did not stay too long and decided to head back to Germany. Bozorg Alavi's contribution to Iranian Literature is profound due to the modernization movement in which he was a key member.

Louis Marchand was a French organist, harpsichordist and composer. Born into an organist's family, Marchand was a child prodigy and quickly established himself as one of the best known French virtuosos of his time. He worked as organist of numerous churches and, for a few years, as one of the four organistes du roy. Marchand had a violent temperament and an arrogant personality, and his life was filled with scandals, publicized and widely discussed both during his lifetime and after his death. Despite his fame, few of his works survive to this day, and those that do almost all date from his early years. Nevertheless, a few pieces of his, such as the organ pieces Grand dialogue and Fond d'orgue have been lauded as classic works of the French organ school.

Artūrs Irbe is a Latvian professional ice hockey coach and former goaltender. Born during the Soviet era, Irbe played for various Soviet league teams and the Soviet Union national team before moving to North America in 1991. Irbe played in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the San Jose Sharks, Dallas Stars, Vancouver Canucks, and Carolina Hurricanes. In 2004 Irbe returned to Europe to play until he retired in 2007. He has served as a goaltending coach with Dinamo Riga, the Washington Capitals, and the Buffalo Sabres, as well as internationally with the Latvia men's national ice hockey team. He was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2010. Irbe was rated number 93 on The Hockey News list of the Top 100 Goalies of All-Time in 2018.

Prince Ulrik of Denmark was a son of King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway and his consort Queen Anne Catherine of Brandenburg. As the fourth-born son, he bore the merely titular rank of Duke of Holstein and Schleswig, Stormarn and Ditmarsh; however, he 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). In 1624 Ulrik was appointed administrator of the Prince-Bishopric of Schwerin as Ulrich III. However, in 1628 Wallenstein's conquest of the prince-bishopric de facto deposed him. His father had to renounce all his family claims to prince-bishoprics in 1629. When in 1631 Swedish forces reconquered the prince-bishopric Ulrik failed to reascend as administrator.

Jacques Philippe Marie Binet was a French mathematician, physicist and astronomer born in Rennes; he died in Paris, France, in 1856. He made significant contributions to number theory, and the mathematical foundations of matrix algebra which would later lead to important contributions by Cayley and others. In his memoir on the theory of the conjugate axis and of the moment of inertia of bodies he enumerated the principle now known as Binet's theorem. He is also recognized as the first to describe the rule for multiplying matrices in 1812, and Binet's formula expressing Fibonacci numbers in closed form is named in his honour, although the same result was known to Abraham de Moivre a century earlier.

Faye Deborah White, is an English former footballer who captained Arsenal Women in the FA Women's Super League and is the longest-serving female captain of England to date. Her Lionesses career spanned 15 years and five major tournament finals - a record four as captain. A UEFA Women's Champions League winner, she won both League titles and the FA Cup across three different decades with Arsenal. White was recognised for services to Sport in the Queen's New Year's Honours List 2007, being appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire In recognition of her achievements she was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2015.

Richard Sommer is an American actor, known for his portrayal of Harry Crane on the AMC drama series Mad Men (2007–2015) for which he earned two Screen Actors Guild Awards along with the ensemble cast. He is also known for his roles in the comedy-drama films The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012), The Giant Mechanical Man (2012), Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015), and BlackBerry (2023) as well as voicing Henry in the 2016 video game Firewatch. He guest starred in a number of Elementary episodes. More recently, he portrayed Detective Dean Riley in The CW crime drama television series In the Dark (2019).

Brent Jay Spiner is an American actor best known for his role as the android Data on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), four subsequent films (1994–2002), and Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023). In 1997, he won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Data in Star Trek: First Contact, and was nominated in the same category for portraying Dr. Brackish Okun in Independence Day, a role he reprised in Independence Day: Resurgence. Spiner has also enjoyed a career in the theater and as a musician. He is also known for voicing the Joker in the animated series Young Justice (2011–2022).

Donald Alvin Buford is an American former professional baseball player scout, coach and manager. He played in Major League Baseball as an outfielder from 1963 through 1972, most notably as the leadoff hitter for the Baltimore Orioles dynasty that won three consecutive American League pennants from 1969 to 1971 and won the 1970 World Series over the Cincinnati Reds. He also played for the Chicago White Sox and played in the Nippon Professional Baseball league from 1973 to 1976. Buford also played as an infielder and was a switch hitter who threw right-handed. In 1993, Buford was inducted into the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame.

Libor Sionko is a Czech former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. At club level he started in his home town of Ostrava, playing for the youth teams of TJ Vítkovice and Baník Ostrava. Professionally, he played in his native country until 2004, featuring for clubs including Ostrava and Sparta Prague. He then went abroad, playing in Austria for Grazer AK and Austria Wien before heading to Scotland where he played for Rangers. He subsequently had a spell in Denmark with F.C. Copenhagen before returning to the Czech Republic to finish his career with Sparta, where he last played before retiring in 2012.

Mary Elizabeth Smith was an American gossip columnist. She was known as "The Grand Dame of Dish". Beginning her career in radio in the 1950s, for a time she also anonymously wrote the "Cholly Knickerbocker" gossip column for the Hearst newspapers. In the 1960s and early 1970s, she was the entertainment editor for the magazines Cosmopolitan and Sports Illustrated. Between 1976 and 2009, she wrote a self-titled gossip column for newspapers including New York Newsday, the New York Daily News and the New York Post that was syndicated in 60 to 70 other newspapers. On television, she appeared on Fox, E!, and WNBC.

Joseph Ruvimovich Heifetz, commonly known as Jascha Heifetz, was a Russian and American violinist, widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time. Born in Vilna, he was soon recognized as a child prodigy and was trained in the Russian violin school in Saint Petersburg. Accompanying his parents to escape the violence of the Russian Revolution, he moved to the United States as a teenager, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. Fritz Kreisler, another leading violinist of the twentieth century, said after hearing Heifetz's debut, "We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees."