Famous Birthdays on February 23

Matthias Corvinus was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490, as Matthias I. He is often given the epithet "the Just". After conducting several military campaigns, he was elected King of Bohemia in 1469 and adopted the title Duke of Austria in 1487. He was the son of John Hunyadi, Regent of Hungary, who died in 1456. In 1457, Matthias was imprisoned along with his older brother, Ladislaus Hunyadi, on the orders of King Ladislaus the Posthumous. Ladislaus Hunyadi was executed, causing a rebellion that forced King Ladislaus to flee Hungary. After the King died unexpectedly, Matthias's uncle Michael Szilágyi persuaded the Estates to unanimously proclaim the 14-year-old Matthias as king on 24 January 1458. He began his rule under his uncle's guardianship, but he took effective control of government within two weeks.

Radosław Tomasz "Radek" Sikorski is a Polish politician, journalist and statesman who is the longest-serving Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2023, previously holding the office between 2007 and 2014, since 2025 also serving as Deputy Prime Minister. He was a Member of the European Parliament between 2019 and 2023. Earlier he was Marshal of the Sejm from 2014 to 2015. He previously served as Deputy Minister of National Defence in 1992 in Jan Olszewski's cabinet, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1998 and 2001 in Jerzy Buzek's cabinet and Minister of National Defence between 2005 and 2007 in the cabinets of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jarosław Kaczyński.

Steven Charles Stricker is an American professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour Champions. He has twelve victories on the PGA Tour, including the WGC-Match Play title in 2001 and two FedEx Cup playoff events. His most successful season on tour came at age 42 in 2009, with three victories and a runner-up finish on the money list. Stricker spent over 250 weeks in the top-10 of the Official World Golf Ranking, reaching a career-high world ranking of No. 2 in September 2009. Stricker served as U.S. Ryder Cup captain for the 2021 matches, winning at Whistling Straits in his home state of Wisconsin.

Evan Bates is an American ice dancer. With his wife and skating partner, Madison Chock, he is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the team event, the 2026 Winter Olympics silver medalist, a three-time World champion, three-time Grand Prix Final champion, a three-time Four Continents champion, a twenty-two-time ISU Grand Prix medalist, ten-time ISU Challenger Series medalist, and a seven-time U.S. national champion. The two represented the United States at the 2014, 2018, 2022, and 2026 Winter Olympics. He served as flag bearer for the United States during the closing ceremony for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Joseph Jean-Pierre Marc Garneau was a Canadian Armed Forces officer, astronaut and politician. Garneau served as a naval officer before being selected as an astronaut as part of the 1983 NRC Group. He became the first Canadian in space on October 5, 1984, and flew on three Space Shuttle missions. From 2001 to 2005, Garneau was president of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Garneau entered politics and was elected to the House of Commons in 2008, serving as a Montreal-area member of Parliament (MP) until 2023. A member of the Liberal Party, Garneau served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from January to October in 2021 and as Minister of Transport from 2015 to 2021.

Norman Rae Taurog was an American film director and screenwriter. From 1920 to 1968, Taurog directed 180 films. At the age of 32, he received the Academy Award for Best Director for Skippy (1931), becoming the youngest person to win the award for eight and a half decades. He was later nominated for Best Director for the film Boys Town (1938). He directed some of the best-known actors of the twentieth century, including his nephew Jackie Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Deanna Durbin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley and Vincent Price. Taurog directed six Martin and Lewis films, and nine Elvis Presley films, more than any other director.

Casimir Funk was a Polish biochemist who formulated the definitive concept of vitamins and was the first to isolate a vitamin from rice bran in 1911. He coined the term "vitamines" in his landmark 1912 medical writing, establishing a major shift in scientific thinking by proving that specific nutritional deficiencies cause diseases such as beriberi, pellagra, and rickets. While the English chemist Frederick Gowland Hopkins had earlier hypothesized the existence of "accessory food factors," it was Funk who provided the definitive functional theory and nomenclature. His scientific work involved research in interwar Poland, France, and the United Kingdom. In 1920, he became a citizen of the United States where he continued his work.

Dante Bert Joseph Lavelli, nicknamed "Gluefingers", was an American professional football player. An end, he played for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and the National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1956. Starring alongside quarterback Otto Graham, fullback Marion Motley, kicker Lou Groza and fellow receiver Mac Speedie, Lavelli was an integral part of a Browns team that won seven championships during his 11-season career. Lavelli was known for his sure hands and improvisations on the field. He was also renowned for making catches in critical situations, earning the nickname "Mr. Clutch". Browns head coach Paul Brown once said of him: "Lavelli had one of the strongest pairs of hands I've ever seen, when he went up for a pass with a defender, you could almost always count on him coming back down with the ball."

Ola Nils Håkan Svensson is a Swedish artist and songwriter, known professionally by the mononym Ola until 2014, and as Brother Leo from 2018 to present. Born in Lund, Skåne, his career began in 2005, when he finished eighth on season two of Swedish Idol. Since then, Ola has released four studio albums. Eleven of his singles have reached the top five on the Swedish singles chart, with six achieving number one, and nine attaining gold and platinum certifications. After being signed to Universal Music for many years, Ola founded his own record label Oliniho Records for the Swedish market, keeping distribution arrangements with Sony Music in Europe and internationally. Following a four-year break, he returned in 2018, recording under the stage name Brother Leo for Columbia Records.

Régine Crespin was a French soprano who had a major international career in opera and on the concert stage between 1950 and 1989. She started her career singing roles in the dramatic soprano and spinto soprano repertoire, drawing particular acclaim singing Wagner and Strauss heroines. She went on to sing a wider repertoire that embraced Italian, French, German, and Russian opera from a variety of musical periods. In the early 1970s Crespin began experiencing vocal difficulties for the first time and ultimately began performing roles from the mezzo-soprano repertoire. Throughout her career she was widely admired for the elegance, warmth and subtlety of her singing, especially in the French and German operatic repertories.

Anton Mosimann is a Swiss chef and restaurateur who was Maitre Chef des Cuisines at the Dorchester Hotel for thirteen years, during which time its restaurant achieved a rating of two stars in the Michelin Guide. After leaving The Dorchester Mosimann took over a private dining club called The Belfrey and created Mosimann's, a cookery school, and other enterprises in the hospitality industry. He has also presented television programmes in the UK and Switzerland. In 2016 a museum dedicated to his life and culinary arts was opened in the campus of Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland, located on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the town of Le Bouveret.

Rosa María Juana Martínez Suárez, known by her stage name Mirtha Legrand, is an Argentine actress and television presenter. With an 80-year career, Legrand is one of the most recognized entertainment figures in Argentina. Legrand made her leading role debut in Los martes, orquídeas (1941) at only age 14, during the Golden Age of Argentine cinema, with starring roles in the 1940s and 1950s. Legrand appeared in the interview television programme Almorzando con las estrellas, which first aired in 1968 on Alejandro Romay's Channel 9. The show was later renamed Almorzando con Mirtha Legrand.

John Dawson Winter III was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums, live performances, and slide guitar playing from the late 1960s into the early 2000s. He also produced three Grammy Award–winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Konstantin Päts was an Estonian statesman and the country's president from 1938 to 1940. Päts was one of the most influential politicians of the independent democratic Republic of Estonia, and during the two decades prior to World War II he also served five times as the country's State Elder. After the 16–17 June 1940 Soviet invasion and occupation of Estonia, Päts remained formally in office for over a month, until he was forced to resign, imprisoned by the new Stalinist regime, and deported to the USSR, where he died in 1956.

Jon Hall was an American film actor known for playing a variety of adventurous roles, as in 1937's The Hurricane, and later when contracted to Universal Pictures, including Invisible Agent, The Invisible Man's Revenge, and six films with Maria Montez. He was also the creator and star of the Ramar of the Jungle television series that ran from 1952 to 1954. Hall directed and starred in two 1960s science fiction films in his later years, The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966).

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. He completed graduate work at Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. He was a professor at Atlanta University and over the course of his life wrote many books and articles. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.

Sandra Currie Osborne is a Scottish Labour politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock from the 2005 to 2015 general elections. She was first elected as MP for the Ayr constituency in 1997, and resigned from a government job in 2003 over the Iraq War. She was a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee from 2005 to 2010 and again from 2013. She was a member of the Defence Select Committee 2010-13 and was a member of the Council of Europe.

Jamal Murray is a Canadian professional basketball player for the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played one season of college basketball for the Kentucky Wildcats. Murray was selected by the Nuggets as the seventh overall pick in the 2016 NBA draft and was a key contributor to the team's first NBA championship run in 2023, becoming the ninth Canadian to win an NBA title. In 2026, Murray was named an NBA All-Star. He is also a member of the Canadian national team.

John Gilbert Winant was an American diplomat and politician with the Republican party after a brief career as a teacher in Concord, New Hampshire. John Winant held positions in New Hampshire, national, and international politics. He was the 60th governor of New Hampshire from 1925 to 1927 and 1931 to 1935. Winant also served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom during most of World War II. Depressed by career disappointments, a failed marriage and heavy debt, he killed himself in 1947.