Famous Birthdays on July 23

Josephine Grace Brand is an English comedian, presenter, actress and writer. Starting her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene and early performances on Saturday Live, she went on to appear on The Brain Drain, Channel 4's Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, Getting On and various television appearances including as a regular guest on QI, Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie to You?. She also makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4 in programmes such as The News Quiz and Just a Minute. Since 2014 she has been the presenter of The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice. In 2003, Brand was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

Pedro Aguayo Ramírez was a Mexican professional wrestler and promoter who achieved fame in wrestling as Perro Aguayo Jr. or El Hijo del Perro Aguayo. He was the real-life son of legend Perro Aguayo and not a storyline "Junior". Aguayo was best known as the leader of the Los Perros del Mal stable, which he started in Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) in mid-2004. The stable became a significant draw in Mexican professional wrestling, peaking during Aguayo's storyline rivalries with Místico and Héctor Garza. In October 2008, Aguayo left CMLL to start his own independent professional wrestling promotion Perros del Mal Producciones, built around members of his Los Perros del Mal stable. In June 2010, Aguayo returned to AAA after a seven-year absence to start an invasion storyline involving his stable.

Graham Alan Gooch, is a former English first-class cricketer who captained Essex and England. He was one of the most successful international batsmen of his generation, and through a career spanning from 1973 until 1997, he became the most prolific run scorer of all time, with 67,057 runs across first-class and limited-overs games. His List A cricket tally of 22,211 runs is also a record. In 1992, he became the first cricketer to lose 3 finals of the Cricket World Cup and is currently the only such player. He is one of only twenty-five players to have scored over 100 first-class centuries. He was a part of the English squads which finished as runners-up at the 1979 Cricket World Cup, as runners-up at the 1987 Cricket World Cup and as runners-up at the 1992 Cricket World Cup.

Nikolaos Georgalis, commonly known as either Nikos Galis or Nick Galis, is a Greek former professional basketball player. Galis, who during his playing days was nicknamed "Nick The Greek", "The Gangster", and "The Iron Man", is widely regarded as Europe 's greatest scorer to ever play the game, and as one of the all-time greatest players in FIBA international basketball history. In 1991, Galis was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players. In 2007, he became an inaugural member of the FIBA Hall of Fame. In 2008, he was chosen as one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors. In 2017, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2018, he was named one of the 101 Greats of European Basketball. In 2022, he was inducted in to the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame.

Donald Oliver Young Jr. is an American professional pickleball player with the American PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball, and also a former professional tennis player. Young had a tennis career-high ATP singles ranking of No. 38, achieved on 27 February 2012, and doubles ranking of world No. 43, achieved on 14 August 2017. As a junior he was ranked No. 1 in the world in 2005. His best singles performance was reaching the fourth round of the 2011 US Open, as well as the 2015 US Open. In doubles, he reached the final of the 2017 French Open, partnering Santiago González. In mixed doubles, he reached the final of the 2024 US Open, partnering Taylor Townsend.

Philipp Otto Runge was a German artist, draftsman, painter, and color theorist. Runge and Caspar David Friedrich are often regarded as the leading painters of the German Romantic movement. He is frequently compared with William Blake by art historians, although Runge's short ten-year career is not easy to equate to Blake's career. By all accounts he had a brilliant mind and was well versed in the literature and philosophy of his time. He was a prolific letter writer and maintained correspondences and friendships with contemporaries such as Carl Ludwig Heinrich Berger, Caspar David Friedrich, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Henrik Steffens, and Ludwig Tieck. His paintings are often filled with symbolism and allegories. For eight years he planned and refined his seminal project, Tageszeiten, four monumental paintings 50 square meters each, which in turn were only part of a larger collaborative Gesamtkunstwerk that was to include poetry, music, and architecture, but remained unrealized at the time of his death. With it he aspired to abandon the traditional iconography of Christianity in European art and find a new expression for spiritual values through symbolism in landscapes. One historian stated "In Runge's painting we are clearly dealing with the attempt to present contemporary philosophy in art." He wrote an influential volume on color theory in 1808, Sphere of Colors, that was published the same year he died.

James Ellis Hall is a retired American racing driver, race car constructor, and team owner. While he is best known as a car constructor, he was one of the greatest American racing drivers of his generation, capturing consecutive United States Road Racing Championships, two Road America 500s, two Watkins Glen Grands Prix for sports cars, the 1965 Canadian Grand Prix for sports cars, the 1965 Pacific Northwest Grand Prix, and scoring a massive upset at the 1965 12 Hours of Sebring over a contingent of factory-backed Ford GTs, Shelby Daytona Coupes, and Ferrari entries. If anything Hall's accomplishments behind the wheel have been overshadowed by his pivotal contributions to race car design through his series of Chaparral sports racing and Indy cars. Hall's cars won in every series in which they competed: USRRC, Can-Am, Trans-Am, Formula 5000, World Sportscar Championship, Autoweek Championship, Canadian Sports Car Championship, and the Indianapolis 500.

Susan Graham is an American mezzo-soprano. She has had an international career in operas and concerts since her stage debut in 1985 at the Eugene Opera. In her early career she came to prominence on the international stage in several trouser roles; among them Annio in La clemenza di Tito, Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, The Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos, and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier. She has premièred several roles in contemporary operas, including John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, and Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy. Graham is a noted champion of the French song repertoire and of songs by contemporary American composers, including Ned Rorem and Lowell Liebermann. She has sung leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, La Scala, the Paris Opera, and the Vienna State Opera among other theaters. In 2004 she won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance.

Adam Dollard des Ormeaux is an iconic figure in the history of New France. Arriving in the colony in 1658, Dollard was appointed the position of garrison commander of Fort Ville-Marie. In the spring of 1660, Dollard led an expedition up the Ottawa River to wage war on the Iroquois. Accompanied by seventeen other Frenchmen, Dollard arrived at the foot of Long Sault on May 1 and settled his troops at an abandoned Algonquin fort. He was then joined by forty Huron and four Algonquin allies. Vastly outnumbered by the Iroquois, Dollard and his companions died at the Battle of Long Sault somewhere between May 9 and May 12. The exact nature or purpose of Dollard's 1660 expedition is uncertain; however, most historians agree that Dollard set out to conduct a "petite guerre" (ambush) against the Iroquois, in order to delay their imminent attack on Ville-Marie. For these reasons, Dollard is regarded as one of the saviours of New France.

Rev. Francis Blomefield, FSA, Rector of Fersfield in Norfolk, was an English antiquarian who wrote a county history of Norfolk: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk. It includes detailed accounts of the City of Norwich, the Borough of Thetford and all parishes in the southernmost Hundreds of Norfolk, but he died before completing it. This was done by a friend, Rev. Charles Parkin. The Norfolk historian Walter Rye related that although no portrait of him was known to exist, Blomefield closely resembled the astronomer John Flamsteed, whose portrait was used to depict Blomefield on the frontispiece of one of his volumes. His history of Norfolk was reissued in London in 11 volumes by William Miller in 1805–1810, the last seven being by Parkin.

Manuel Apolinario Josef María Ignacio Antonio Lombardini de la Torre (1802–1853) was a Mexican soldier who served as president briefly for about three months in 1853. He rose to power in the wake of a revolution against the government of President Mariano Arista. After Arista and his successor Juan Bautista Ceballos resigned, the insurgents elevated Lombardini to the presidency as a matter of convenience, and he was only ever meant to serve as a placeholder while the true aim of the insurgents, the restoration of Santa Anna, was carried out. Lombardini would resign accordingly on 20 April, and he died of pneumonia in December of the same year.

Gary Dwayne Payton Sr. is an American former professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 17 seasons. Nicknamed "the Glove" for his defensive abilities, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest point guards of all time. He spent the majority of his career with the Seattle SuperSonics, where he holds franchise records in assists and steals, and later played short stints for the Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, and Miami Heat. He made three NBA Finals appearances: with the Sonics in 1996, the Lakers in 2004, and the Heat in 2006, winning in the last.

Chandra Shekhar Sitaram Tiwari, popularly known as Chandra Shekhar Azad, was an Indian revolutionary who reorganised the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) under its new name of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) after the deaths of its founder, Ram Prasad Bismil, and three other prominent party leaders, Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaqulla Khan. He hailed from Bardarka village in Unnao district of United Provinces and his parents were Sitaram Tiwari and Jagrani Devi. He often used the pseudonym "Balraj" while signing pamphlets issued as commander-in-chief of the HSRA. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru worked closely with him as his pupil.

Lauren Stephanie Mitchell is an Australian former artistic gymnast. She is the 2010 World champion on the floor exercise and the 2009 World Championships silver medalist on the balance beam and floor exercise. Mitchell is only the second Australian female gymnast to win a medal at the World Championships, and she is the first to win a gold medal. She is the 2010 Commonwealth Games champion in the all-around, uneven bars, and balance beam, and with the Australian team, and she is the 2008 World Cup Final balance beam champion. She also represented Australia at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games.

Elden Jerome Campbell was an American professional basketball player who was a power forward and center in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1990 to 2005, primarily with the Los Angeles Lakers. He played college basketball for the Clemson Tigers, earning honorable mention All-American honors as a senior in 1990. Campbell was selected by the Lakers in the first round of the 1990 NBA draft with the 27th overall pick. He spent his first nine years in the NBA with the Lakers and the rest with various other teams. He won an NBA championship with the Detroit Pistons in 2004.

Aaron Wells Peirsol is an American former competition swimmer and backstroke specialist who swam for the University of Texas and is a former world champion and world record-holder. He is a three-time Olympian and seven-time Olympic medalist with five gold, and two silver medals. Individually, he has held the world record in the 100-meter backstroke event and is the current record holder in the 200-meter backstroke. In his long career, Peirsol captured a total of thirty-six medals in major international competition: twenty-nine gold, six silver, and one bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, Pan American, and the Pan Pacific Championships.

Arthur Veary Treacher, Jr. was an English film and stage actor active from the 1920s to the 1960s, and known for playing English types, especially butler and manservant roles, such as the P. G. Wodehouse valet character Jeeves and the kind butlers opposite Shirley Temple in Curly Top (1935) and Heidi (1937). In the 1960s, he became well known on American television as an announcer and sidekick to talk show host Merv Griffin, and as the support character Constable Jones in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964). He lent his name to the Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips chain of restaurants.

Virgil Finlay was an American pulp fantasy, science fiction and horror illustrator. He has been called "part of the pulp magazine history ... one of the foremost contributors of original and imaginative art work for the most memorable science fiction and fantasy publications of our time." While he worked in a range of media, from gouache to oils, Finlay specialized in, and became famous for, detailed pen-and-ink drawings accomplished with abundant stippling, cross-hatching, and scratchboard techniques. Despite the very labor-intensive and time-consuming nature of his specialty, Finlay created more than 2600 works of graphic art in his 35-year career.

Judit Polgár is a Hungarian chess grandmaster, widely regarded as the strongest female chess player of all time. She is the only woman to be ranked in the world top 10, the only woman to achieve a rating over 2700, reaching a peak rating of 2735, and the only woman to compete in the final stage of a World Chess Championship. She was the top-rated woman in the world from January 1989 until her retirement from competitive chess in 2014, remaining No. 1 until the March 2015 rating list, a record of 26 consecutive years as woman's No. 1.