Famous Birthdays on January 23

January 23 has 208 recorded notable births across history, from 1350 to 2004. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

XXXTentacion

1998 — XXXTentacion

American rapper (died 2018)

By · Wikipedia

Famous Birthdays 208 source records 1350 – 2004 Aquarius

Major events on January 23

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1899 The Malolos Constitution is inaugurated, establishing the First Philippine Republic. Emilio Aguinaldo is sworn in as its first president. Source
  2. 1846 Slavery in Tunisia is abolished. Source

Did you know about XXXTentacion

Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy, professionally known as XXXTentacion, was an American rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer.

Did you know about Chesley Sullenberger

After the Hudson landing, Sullenberger became an outspoken advocate for aviation safety and helped develop new protocols for flight safety.

Did you know about Giant Baba

For the first 10 years of its existence, Baba was the top star of All Japan, while also serving as the booker, promoter, head trainer and president of the promotion from its inception in 1972 till his death in 1999.

Did you know about Doutzen Kroes

In 2013, she became the first model to land four different solo international covers of Vogue's September issue in a single year.

Did you know about David Arnold

Arnold scored the BBC / Amazon Prime series Good Omens (2019) adapted by Neil Gaiman from his book Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett.


More major people born on January 23

Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.

1951 Chesley Sullenberger

Chesley Sullenberger

American airline pilot and safety expert
Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III is an American retired aircraft pilot, diplomat and aviation safety expert, who is best known for his actions as captain of US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15, 2009, when he ditched the plane on the Hudson River after both engines were disabled by a bird strike; all 155 people aboard survived. After the Hudson landing, Sullenberger became an outspoken advocate for aviation safety and helped develop new protocols for flight safety. He served as the co-chairman, along with his co-pilot on Flight 1549, Jeffrey Skiles, of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)'s Young Eagles youth introduction-to-aviation program from 2009 to 2013.
1938 Giant Baba

Giant Baba

Japanese wrestler and promoter, founded All Japan Pro Wrestling (died 1999)
Shohei Baba , best known by his ring name Giant Baba , was a Japanese professional wrestler, promoter, and professional baseball player. He is best known as a co-founder of All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), a promotion he founded in 1972 along with Mitsuo Momota and Yoshihiro Momota, the sons of his mentor Rikidōzan. For the first 10 years of its existence, Baba was the top star of All Japan, while also serving as the booker, promoter, head trainer and president of the promotion from its inception in 1972 till his death in 1999. Baba was also responsible for recruiting much of the talent for All Japan, and was the public face of the promotion for much of his lifetime.
1985 Doutzen Kroes

Doutzen Kroes

Dutch model and actress
Doutzen Kroes is a Dutch fashion model. She began her modelling career in 2003, in the Netherlands and was quickly sent by her agency to New York where she was cast by lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret. She was a Victoria's Secret Angel from 2008 until 2014, making her the second Dutch to earn the coveted title after Karen Mulder. She has been a brand ambassador for L'Oréal Paris since 2006. Kroes has been one of the highest-paid models, with an estimated income of more than $5 million per year, since 2008. In 2014, she came in second on the Forbes top-earning models list, estimated to have earned $8 million in one year. In 2013, she became the first model to land four different solo international covers of Vogue's September issue in a single year.
1962 David Arnold

David Arnold

English composer
David Arnold is an English film composer whose credits include scoring five James Bond films (1997–2008), as well as Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), Shaft (2000), 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), Four Brothers (2005), Hot Fuzz (2007), and the television series Little Britain and Sherlock. For Independence Day, he received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television, and for Sherlock, he and co-composer Michael Price won a Creative Arts Emmy for the score of "His Last Vow", the final episode in the third series. Arnold scored the BBC / Amazon Prime series Good Omens (2019) adapted by Neil Gaiman from his book Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett. Arnold is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.
1985 Jeff Samardzija

Jeff Samardzija

American baseball and football player
Jeffrey Alan Samardzija, nicknamed "Shark", is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played college baseball and football for the University of Notre Dame, and was recognized as a two-time football All-American playing wide receiver and a two-time Baseball All-American as a pitcher. He was selected by the Chicago Cubs in the fifth round of the 2006 Major League Baseball draft, and made his major-league (MLB) debut in 2008. He played in MLB for the Chicago Cubs from 2008 to 2014, the Oakland Athletics in 2014, the Chicago White Sox in 2015, and the San Francisco Giants from 2016 to 2020. He was an All-Star in 2014.
1971 Kevin Mawae

Kevin Mawae

American football player and coach
Kevin James Mawae is an American former professional football player who was a center in the National Football League (NFL) for 16 seasons. Mawae played college football for the LSU Tigers, earning first-team All-SEC honors. He was selected by the Seattle Seahawks in the second round of the 1994 NFL draft. After joining the New York Jets in 1998, he received six consecutive Pro Bowl selections and five-first All-Pro honors during his eight seasons with the team. Mawae spent his final four seasons as a member of the Tennessee Titans, extending his Pro Bowl selections to eight and his first-team All-Pro honors to seven. Near the end of his career, he also served two terms as NFLPA president from 2008 to 2012.
1918 Gertrude B. Elion

Gertrude B. Elion

American biochemist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1999)
Gertrude "Trudy" Belle Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black for their use of innovative methods of rational drug design for the development of new drugs. This new method focused on understanding the target of the drug rather than simply using trial-and-error. Her work led to the creation of the anti-retroviral drug AZT, which was the first drug widely used against AIDS. Her well known works also include the development of the first immunosuppressive drug, azathioprine, used to fight rejection in organ transplants, and the first successful antiviral drug, acyclovir (ACV), used in the treatment of herpes infection.
1930 Tanya Savicheva

Tanya Savicheva

Russian child diarist (died 1944)
Tatyana Nikolayevna Savicheva, commonly referred to as Tanya Savicheva, was a Soviet Russian teenage diarist who wrote a diary for several months, whilst enduring the siege of Leningrad during World War II. During the siege, Savicheva wrote the successive and unfortunate deaths of each member of her family from starvation and diseases such as dysentery and dystrophy over four and a half months in her diary, with the last family member to die being her mother, Mariya, on 13 May 1942. After her mother died, Tanya Savicheva wrote her final diary entry: The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left. Savicheva was evacuated from the besieged Leningrad and sent to live in an orphanage, she eventually died from tuberculosis on 1 July 1944, at the age of 14, in Gorky Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
1975 Phil Dawson

Phil Dawson

American football player
Philip Drury Dawson is an American former professional football player who was a placekicker in the National Football League (NFL) for 20 years. Before that he was an All-American college football player for the Texas Longhorns. He signed with the Oakland Raiders as an undrafted free agent in 1998 and spent a season on the Patriots practice squad. He played most of his career with the Cleveland Browns from 1999 to 2012 where he was a Pro Bowler, and has the record for most field goals made for the franchise, passing Hall of Famer Lou Groza in 2010. He also played for the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals.
1932 Larri Thomas

Larri Thomas

American actress and dancer (died 2013)
Larri Thomas was an American actress and dancer. She began her career by participating in a string of television commercials and eventually signed a contract with NBC. The network put on Thomas' shows, including Peter Gunn and The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. She became one of the six Goldwyn Girls selected by Samuel Goldwyn to go on tour for the movie Guys and Dolls, in which she makes a brief appearance. Thomas was also in the movies Mary Poppins and Island of Love. She was the stand-in for Julie Andrews in some flying sequences in Mary Poppins and her stand-in in The Sound of Music. Thomas also appeared in movies and television with Dean Martin. In her later years, she appeared in Dynasty, Cheers, and Coach.
1900 William Ifor Jones

William Ifor Jones

Welsh organist and conductor (died 1988)
William Ifor Jones was a Welsh conductor and organist. Born into a large coal-mining family and raised in Merthyr Tydfil, Jones studied at the Royal Academy of Music as a scholarship student in London from 1920 to 1925. He studied the organ with Sir Stanley Marchant at St. Paul's Cathedral, London; orchestral conducting with Ernest Read and with Sir Henry Wood, ; and harmony with Benjamin Dale. He was for a time organist at the Welsh Baptist Church in Castle Street, London, worked at the Royal Opera House, as a vocal coach at Covent Garden, assisted with the British National Opera Company in the role of prompter, and was the Assistant Choir Master at St. Paul's Cathedral, London.
1925 Marty Paich

Marty Paich

American pianist, composer, producer, and conductor (died 1995)
Martin Louis Paich was an American pianist, composer, arranger, record producer, music director, and conductor. As a musician and arranger he worked with jazz musicians Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Kenton, Al Hirt, Art Pepper, Buddy Rich, Ray Brown, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand, and Mel Tormé. His long association with Tormé included one of the singer's earliest albums, Mel Tormé with the Marty Paich Dek-Tette. Over the next three decades he worked with pop singers such as Andy Williams and Jack Jones and for film and television. He is the father of David Paich, a founding member of the rock band Toto.
1737 John Hancock

John Hancock

American general and politician, first Governor of Massachusetts (died 1793)
John Hancock was an American Founding Father, merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He was the longest-serving president of the Continental Congress, having served as the second president of the Second Continental Congress and the seventh president of the Congress of the Confederation. He was the first and third governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. His large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence led to John Hancock or Hancock becoming a colloquialism for a person's signature. He also signed the Articles of Confederation, and used his influence to ensure that Massachusetts ratified the United States Constitution in 1788.
1953 Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath

Irish priest, historian, and theologian
Alister Edgar McGrath is an Irish theologian, Anglican priest, intellectual historian, scientist, Christian apologist, and public intellectual. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and is a fellow of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford. He held the position of Professor of Divinity at Gresham College between 2015 and 2018. He was previously professor of theology, ministry, and education at King's College London and head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, professor of historical theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, until 2005.
1919 Bob Paisley

Bob Paisley

English footballer and manager (died 1996)
Robert Paisley was an English professional football manager and player who played as a wing-half. He spent almost 50 years with Liverpool and is regarded as one of the greatest managers of all time. Reluctantly taking the job in 1974, he built on the foundations laid by his predecessor Bill Shankly and went on to become the most successful English manager in history. Paisley is the first of five managers to have won the European Cup three times. He is also one of five managers to have won the English top-flight championship as both a player and manager at the same club.
1975 Tito Ortiz

Tito Ortiz

American mixed martial artist
Jacob Christopher "Tito" Ortiz is an American former mixed martial artist, politician, and professional boxer, of Mexican descent. He is best known for his career with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), where he is a former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, having held the title from April 2000 to September 2003. Along with fighters like Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell, he was one of the sport's early stars. Ortiz ultimately became the biggest pay-per-view draw of 2006 for his fights with Liddell, Forrest Griffin, and Ken Shamrock. On July 7, 2012, Ortiz became the ninth inductee into the UFC Hall of Fame.
1876 Otto Diels

Otto Diels

German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1954)
Otto Paul Hermann Diels was a German chemist. His most notable work was done with Kurt Alder on the Diels–Alder reaction, a method for cyclohexene synthesis. The pair was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1950 for their work. Their method of synthesizing cyclic organic compounds proved valuable for the manufacture of synthetic rubber and plastic. He completed his education at the University of Berlin, where he later worked. Diels was employed at the University of Kiel when he completed his Nobel Prize-winning work, and remained there until he retired in 1945. Diels was married, with five children.
1838 Marianne Cope

Marianne Cope

German-American nun and saint (died 1918)
Marianne Cope, OSF, also known as Marianne of Molokaʻi, was a German-born American member of the Sisters of St. Francis of Syracuse. She was founding director of St. Joseph's Hospital in the city, among the first general hospitals in the country. In 1883, she led a group of six other sisters to the Kingdom of Hawaii to care for lepers in Molokaʻi and aid in developing the kingdom's medical infrastructure. Despite direct contact with patients over many years, Cope did not contract the disease. In 2005, she was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI. She was canonized in 2012.
1920 Henry Eriksson

Henry Eriksson

Swedish runner (died 2000)
Knut Henry "Krylbo" Eriksson was a Swedish middle-distance runner who specialized in the 1500 m event. In 1946 he finished second behind Lennart Strand, both at the national and European Championships. On 15 July 1947, at the national championships at Malmö, Eriksson and Strand had a very close 1500 m race. Strand won, equaling the world record at 3:43.0, and Eriksson finished second, setting his all-time personal best at 3:44.4. Eriksson beat Strand at the 1948 Swedish Championships and at the 1948 Summer Olympics. He retired the same year and returned to his work as a fireman.

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