Famous Birthdays on October 12

Scott Francis O'Grady is a former United States Air Force (USAF) fighter pilot. On June 2, 1995, he was shot down over Bosnia and Herzegovina by a 2K12 Kub mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) and forced to eject from his F-16C into hostile territory. US Marines from heavy-helicopter squadron HMH-464 and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit eventually rescued O'Grady after six days of evading the Bosnian Serbs. In February 1994 he had unsuccessfully engaged Serb ground attack aircraft that had violated the NATO-enforced Operation Deny Flight no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina. The 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines is loosely based on his experience of being shot down and rescued.

Arthur Charles Clokey was an American animator, director, producer, screenwriter and voice actor. He was a pioneer in the popularization of stop-motion clay animation, best known as the creator of the character Gumby and the original voice of Gumby's sidekick, Pokey. Clokey's career began in 1953 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, which was influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California. Clokey and his wife Ruth subsequently came up with the clay character Gumby and his horse Pokey, who first appeared in the Howdy Doody Show and later got their own series The Adventures of Gumby, from which they became a familiar presence on American television. The characters enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1980s when American actor and comedian Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on Saturday Night Live.

Samuel Bode Miller is an American former World Cup alpine ski racer. He is an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist, a two-time overall World Cup champion in 2005 and 2008, and the most successful male American alpine ski racer of all time. He is also considered one of the greatest World Cup racers of all time with 33 race victories and being one of five men to win World Cup events in all five disciplines. He is the only skier with five or more victories in each discipline. In 2008, Miller and Lindsey Vonn won the overall World Cup titles for the first U.S. sweep in 25 years.

Lieutenant-General William Joseph Hardee was an American military officer. He served in the United States Army in both the Second Seminole War and in the Mexican–American War. He was later commissioned as a general in the Confederate States Army in 1861. Hardee saw combat in the Western Theater of the American Civil War and was known to quarrel sharply with two of his commanding officers, Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood. He later served in the Atlanta campaign of 1864 and the Carolinas campaign of 1865, where he surrendered with Joseph E. Johnston to the Union side led by William Tecumseh Sherman in April. Hardee's writings about military tactics were widely used on both sides in the conflict.

Jonathan Trumbull Sr. was an American politician who served as the governor of Connecticut during the American Revolution. Trumbull and Nicholas Cooke of Rhode Island were the only men to serve as governor of both a British colony and a U.S. state, and he was the only governor to take up the Patriot cause at the start of the Revolutionary War. Trumbull College at Yale University, the town of Trumbull, Connecticut, Trumbull County, Ohio, and Jonathan the Husky the UConn mascot are all named for him. Trumbull was the father of John Trumbull, the noted artist, and Jonathan Trumbull Jr., Governor of Connecticut and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

Anna Escobedo Cabral is a Mexican-American politician who served as the Unit Chief for Strategic Communications in the External Relations Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) from 2009 to 2018. Today, she and her husband serve as partners of the Cabral Group, a consulting and public policy firm. She also serves as an independent director for Navient, a member of the Comcast NBCU diversity council, and as an advisor to the Libra Group, and Valaurum. Her current nonprofit commitments include serving as chair of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation, chair of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, Treasurer of Lideramos, a national Latino organization focused on providing leadership training to grassroots community advocates, and member of the board of governors of Orange County Community Foundation. Prior to joining the IDB, Cabral served as the 42nd Treasurer of the United States from January 19, 2005, to January 20, 2009. She became the highest-ranking Latina in the George W. Bush administration after the resignation of Rosario Marin.

Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby was the son of Katherine Willoughby, 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, and Richard Bertie. Richard Bertie was Lady Willoughby de Eresby's second husband, the first being Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Peregrine Bertie's half-brothers, Henry and Charles Brandon, died as teenagers four years before his birth. His sister Susan married the Earl of Kent and then the nephew of Bess of Hardwick. Owing to religious politics, his parents had to move outside England and the boy was born at Wesel on the River Rhine. His first marriage was to Mary de Vere, daughter of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford.

Mariano Trías y Closas is considered to be the first de facto Philippine Vice President of that revolutionary government established at the Tejeros Convention - an assembly of Philippine revolutionary leaders that elected officials of the revolutionary movement against the colonial government of Spain. When that assembly broke into factions, a truce known as the Pact of Biak-na-Bato was signed by the group and also recognized the elected officials and Trias as the vice president of Emilio Aguinaldo, who is also considered to be the first President of the Philippines. With the promulgation of the Malolos Constitution by the Malolos Convention, the First Philippine Republic was born. Under the Aguinaldo administration, Trias served in the cabinet initially as Secretary of Finance and, later, as Secretary of War.

Richard Benjamin Ferrell was an American professional baseball player, coach, scout, and executive. He played for 18 seasons as a catcher in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1929 through 1947 for the St. Louis Browns, Boston Red Sox, and Washington Senators. His brother, Wes Ferrell, was a major league pitcher for 15 seasons, and they were teammates from 1933 through part of 1938 on the Red Sox and Senators. Following his three seasons in minor league baseball, he appealed to the Commissioner of Baseball to become a free agent, claiming that he was being held in the minors though he deserved promotion. The Commissioner agreed, and he was granted free agency; he signed with the St. Louis Browns.

Olivia Smoliga is a two-time Olympian and American competitive swimmer who specializes in backstroke and freestyle events. She won a record eight gold medals at the 2018 World Championships, becoming the first swimmer, male or female, to win eight or more gold medals in a single FINA World Swimming Championships or FINA World Aquatics Championships. She is the current Guinness World Record holder for "most gold medals won at a single FINA World Championships" by an individual swimmer. At the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro, she won a gold medal for swimming the backstroke leg in the preliminary heat of the 4x100-meter medley relay.

Al Held was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings. As an artist, multiple stylistic changes occurred throughout his career, however, none of these occurred at the same time as any popular emerging style or acted against a particular art form. In the 1950s his style reflected the abstract expressionist tone and then transitioned to a geometric style in the 1960s. During the 1980s, there was a shift into painting that emphasized bright geometric space the deepness of which reflected infinity. From 1963 to 1980 he was a professor of art at Yale University.

Ante Gotovina is a Croatian retired lieutenant general and former French senior corporal who served in the Croatian War for Independence. He is noted for his primary role in the 1995 Operation Storm. In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted him on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges in connection with that operation and its aftermath. After spending four years in hiding, he was captured in the Canary Islands in December 2005. After the 2011 sentence, following an appeal Gotovina was subsequently acquitted and freed of all charges against him in a controversial retrial in November 2012.

Anna Ohmiya is a Japanese curler from Sapporo, Hokkaido. She is the lead on the FORTIUS curling team, which won the Japan Curling Championships in 2015, 2021 and 2025. She also won the national championship in 2008, 2009 and 2010 as a member of Team Aomori. She competed for Japan at two Olympics; the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, and the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Also at the international level, she has represented Japan at five World Women's Curling Championship and six Pacific-Asia Curling Championships in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014 and 2021, winning the gold medal in 2021.

Alice Childress was an American novelist, playwright, and actress, acknowledged as "the only African-American woman to have written, produced, and published plays for four decades." Childress described her work as trying to portray the have-nots in a have society, saying: "My writing attempts to interpret the 'ordinary' because they are not ordinary. Each human is uniquely different. Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvellously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne." Childress became involved in social causes, and formed an off-Broadway union for actors.

Jaroslav Drobný was a world No. 1 amateur tennis and ice hockey champion. He left Czechoslovakia in 1949 and travelled as an Egyptian citizen before becoming a citizen of the United Kingdom in 1959, where he died in 2001. In 1951, he became the first and, to date, only Egyptian to win the French Open, while doing likewise at the Wimbledon Championships in 1954. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1983. He played internationally for the Czechoslovakia men's national ice hockey team, and was inducted in the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame.

Vijay Singh Madhavji Merchant, was an Indian cricketer. A right-hand batsman and occasional right-arm medium pace bowler, Merchant played first-class cricket for Bombay cricket team as well as 10 Test matches for India between 1929 and 1951. Behind his limited Test appearances, he dominated Indian domestic cricket – his batting average of 71.64 is the second highest first-class average in history, behind only that of Don Bradman. He is regarded as the founder of the Bombay School of Batsmanship, that placed more importance on right technique, steely temperament, and conservative approach rather than free flow of the bat.

Hiroyuki Sanada is a Japanese actor and martial artist. He has received numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Television Award, a Japan Academy Film Prize, two Hochi Film Awards, a Mainichi Film Award, three Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Actor, four Kinema Junpo Awards, and honors from the Yokohama Film Festival. In 2018, he received the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from the Japanese government for his "artistic developments, improvements, and accomplishments", and in 2025, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal or simply Carlos, is a Venezuelan convict who conducted a series of assassinations and terrorist bombings from 1973 to 1985. A committed Marxist–Leninist, he was one of the most notorious political terrorists of his era, protected and supported by the Stasi and the KGB. After several bungled bombings, Carlos led the 1975 raid on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) headquarters in Vienna, during which three people were killed. He and five others demanded a plane and flew with a number of hostages to Libya.

Martin Edward Corry MBE is a retired English rugby union player who represented and captained England and Leicester Tigers in a career spanning 14 seasons. Corry played 64 times for England between 1997 and 2007, played 7 tests for the British & Irish Lions on tours in 2001 & 2005, and played 290 times for Leicester between 1997 and 2009. Earlier in his career he played top division rugby for Newcastle Gosforth and Bristol. A versatile player his principal positions were number eight and blindside flanker, he also played lock more as his career progressed.