Famous Birthdays on October 23

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known by his nickname Pelé, was a Brazilian professional footballer who played as a forward. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history, he was among the most successful and popular sports figures of the 20th century. His 1,279 goals in 1,363 games, which includes exhibition games, is recognised as a Guinness World Record. In 1999, he was named Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee and was included in the Time list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. In 2000, Pelé was voted World Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) and was one of the two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the Century, alongside Diego Maradona.

Roberto Agustín Miguel Santiago Samuel Trujillo Veracruz is an American musician, best known as the fourth and current bassist for heavy metal band Metallica. He first rose to prominence as the bassist of crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies from 1989 to 1995, while also collaborating with Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir for funk metal supergroup Infectious Grooves. After leaving Suicidal Tendencies, he performed with Ozzy Osbourne, Jerry Cantrell, and heavy metal band Black Label Society. Trujillo joined Metallica in 2003, replacing the band's longtime third bassist, Jason Newsted. Trujillo is the band's longest-serving bassist. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Metallica in 2009.

John Derran Lackey is an American former professional baseball starting pitcher who played in Major League Baseball from 2002 through 2017 for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs. A three-time World Series champion with three different teams, Lackey is regarded as a key figure in his clubs' postseason success, winning the title-clinching games of two out of the three Series. Selected to the MLB All-Star Game in 2007, he won that year's American League (AL) earned run average (ERA) title. After missing the 2012 season due to ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction surgery in his pitching elbow, and helping the Red Sox win the 2013 World Series, Lackey was named the winner of the Tony Conigliaro Award.

Mirwais Ahmadzaï, known mononymously as Mirwais, is a French electronic dance music record producer and songwriter, born in Lausanne, Switzerland to an Afghan father and an Italian mother. A former member of the now-defunct 1980s group Taxi Girl, he is perhaps best-known for his work with American artist Madonna, whom he first met in the late 1990s. After submitting a demo of his work to her label, Maverick Records, Mirwais eventually teamed-up with the singer in 1999 to create Music (2000), a global smash record for Madonna; the album, as well as its title track single, peaked at No. 1 or within the Top 10 on the charts of several countries and territories, including the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

Carlos Alberto García Moreno, better known by his stage name Charly García, is an Argentine singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and record producer, considered one of the most important rock musicians in Argentine and Latin American music. Named "the father of rock nacional", García is widely acclaimed for his recording work, both in his multiple groups and as a soloist, and for the complexity of his music compositions, covering genres like folk rock, progressive rock, symphonic rock, jazz, new wave, pop rock, funk rock, and synth-pop. His lyrics are known for being transgressive and critical towards modern Argentine society, especially during the era of the military dictatorship, and for his rebellious and extravagant personality, which has drawn significant media attention over the years.

Douglas Robert Jardine was a cricketer who played 22 Test matches for England, captaining the side in 15 of those matches between 1931 and 1934. A right-handed batsman, he is best known for captaining the English team during their successful 1932–33 Ashes tour of Australia. During that series, England employed "Bodyline" tactics against the Australian batsmen, headed by Donald Bradman, wherein bowlers pitched the ball short on the line of leg stump to rise towards the bodies of the batsmen in a manner that some contemporary players and critics viewed as intimidatory and physically dangerous. As captain, Jardine was the person responsible for the implementation of Bodyline.

Frederick Alexander Shero was a Canadian professional ice hockey player, coach, and general manager. Nicknamed "The Fog", he played for the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League (NHL), but spent most of his playing career in the minor leagues. Following his playing career, Shero spent 13 years coaching in the minor leagues before making it to the NHL. As the head coach of the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers, Shero won the Stanley Cup in 1974 and 1975 and reached the Stanley Cup Final a third time, in 1976. He also had four consecutive seasons of having a 0.700 or better winning percentage and remains the Flyers all-time leader in coaching victories. Shero controversially left the Flyers following the 1977–78 season to become the head coach of the New York Rangers, whom he led to the Stanley Cup Final in his first season. He resigned from the Rangers after coaching for less than three seasons. Shero had a unique style of coaching that led to several innovations that are still used today. He was the first coach to hire a full-time assistant coach, employ systems, have his players use in season strength training, study film, and he was one of the first coaches to utilize a morning skate. In 2013 Shero was recognized for his contributions when he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder.

Zellig Sabbettai Harris was an American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science widely considered to have been influential in his fields. Originally a Semiticist, he is best known for his work in structural linguistics and discourse analysis and for the discovery of transformational structure in language. These developments from the first 10 years of his career were published within the first 25. His contributions in the subsequent 35 years of his career include transfer grammar, string analysis, elementary sentence-differences, algebraic structures in language, operator grammar, sublanguage grammar, a theory of linguistic information, and a principled account of the nature and origin of language.

Alicia Borinsky, is a US-based Argentine novelist, poet and literary critic. Alicia Borinsky is professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature and Director of the Writing in the Americas Program at Boston University. Her critical work has helped frame the discussion about the writers of the Latin American Boom or Boom latinoamericano, an important movement in Latin American literature. Among her other scholarly achievements is the introduction of the figure of Macedonio Fernández—Borges’s master—to a wider reading public, the exploration of the intersection between literary theory, cultural and gender studies and numerous works about poetry, Latino writers and World literature. Borinsky was named to the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (ANLE) and awarded the "Enrique Anderson Imbert Prize" in recognition of her lifelong dedication to Arts and Literature."

Joaquín José Lavín Infante is a Chilean politician of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) party and former mayor of Las Condes, in the northeastern zone of Santiago. Formerly Lavín has also been mayor of Santiago, Minister of Education and Minister of Social Development. He ran for president twice in 1999 and 2005, losing both times. In 2021 he tried to run again, but this time he was defeated in a primary election by Sebastián Sichel. Besides his political involvement Lavín has been active in education in the University for Development, of which he was one of the founders and original owners, and as editor of the economics section in El Mercurio.

Tiffeny Carleen Milbrett is an American former professional soccer forward who was a longtime member of the United States women's national team. In May 2018, the National Soccer Hall of Fame announced Milbrett will be enshrined in the Hall. A native of Oregon, she starred at the University of Portland where she scored a then school record 103 goals during her career. She won an Olympic gold medal in 1996 in Atlanta and a silver medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She also played in three World Cups, winning in 1999. She is in the top five all-time in the United States national soccer team in three offensive categories.

Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp was Queen of Sweden from 1654 until 1660 as the wife of King Charles X Gustav. She served as regent during the minority of her son, King Charles XI, from 1660 until 1672, and during the minority of her grandson, King Charles XII, in 1697. She also represented Charles XII during his absence in the Great Northern War from 1700 until the regency of her granddaughter Ulrika Eleonora in 1713. Hedwig Eleonora was described as a dominant personality, and was regarded as the de facto first lady of the royal court for 61 years, from 1654 until her death.

Gilbert Newton Lewis was an American physical chemist and a dean of the college of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. Lewis was best known for his discovery of the covalent bond and his concept of electron pairs; his Lewis dot structures and other contributions to valence bond theory have shaped modern theories of chemical bonding. Lewis successfully contributed to chemical thermodynamics, photochemistry, and isotope separation, and is also known for his concept of acids and bases. Lewis also researched on relativity and quantum physics, and in 1926 he coined the term "photon" for the smallest unit of radiant energy.

Vernon Decatur Stephens was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a shortstop from 1941 through 1955. An eight-time All-Star, Stephens was notable for being the 1945 American League home run champion and was a three-time American League RBI champion. He was the cleanup hitter for the only St. Louis Browns team to win an American League pennant in 1944, and was a top power hitter for the Boston Red Sox. Nicknamed "Little Slug", "Junior", and "Buster", Stephens batted and threw right-handed. He was inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2006.

John Hiromu Kitagawa, known professionally as Johnny Kitagawa, was a Japanese business magnate, promoter, and record producer. He was best known as the founder of Johnny & Associates, a talent agency for numerous popular boy bands in Japan. In 2023, after his death, a BBC documentary, Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop, reignited discussion of allegations that he had taken advantage of his position to engage in improper sexual relationships with boys under contract to his talent agency. This led to an independent probe which concluded that Kitagawa had "repeated and widely" abused boys in his organizations since the 1970s.

John Michael Crichton was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature technology and are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres. Crichton's novels often explore human technological advancement and attempted dominance over nature, both with frequently catastrophic results; many of his works are cautionary tales, especially regarding themes of biotechnology. Several of his stories center on themes of genetic modification, hybridization, paleontology and/or zoology. Many feature medical or scientific underpinnings, reflective of his own medical background.

Raymond Bloom "Rube" Bressler was an American left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1914 to 1916 and Cincinnati Reds from 1917 to 1920, before being converted to an outfielder and first baseman for Cincinnati from 1918 to 1927, the Brooklyn Robins from 1928 to 1931 and the Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals in his final year of 1932. The first two teams he played for made it to a World Series, the 1914 Philadelphia Athletics lost to the miracle Boston Braves, while the 1919 Cincinnati Reds won against the scandal-tainted Chicago White Sox.

Matthew Winthrop Barzun is an American businessman, diplomat and political fundraiser who served as United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2009 to 2011, and the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2017. He is a business executive who is known for his work with CNET Networks and for his fundraising work on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. He was selected by President Barack Obama as National Finance Chair for the president's 2012 re-election campaign. He is author of The Power of Giving Away Power from Optimism Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Amandla Stenberg is an American actress and musician. She began her career as a child actor and received recognition for playing Rue in the action film The Hunger Games (2012). As she grew older, she appeared in the supernatural series Sleepy Hollow (2013–2014) and the romance film Everything, Everything (2017). She received praise for her performance as a teenager witnessing a police shooting in the drama film The Hate U Give (2018). She has since starred in the comedy horror film Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) and the Star Wars series The Acolyte (2024) in a dual role.