Famous Birthdays on September 12

Benjamin Scott Folds is an American singer-songwriter. After playing in several small independent bands from the late 1980s through the early '90s, Folds came to prominence as the frontman and pianist of the alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five from 1993 to 2000, and again during their reunion from 2011 to 2013. Folds has recorded a number of solo albums, most recently Sleigher (2024). He has also collaborated with musicians such as Regina Spektor, "Weird Al" Yankovic and yMusic, and undertaken experimental songwriting projects with actor William Shatner and authors such as Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman. Folds was the artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. from 2017 until 2025.

Heinrich Hoffmann was a German Nazi politician and publisher who was Adolf Hitler's official photographer and a member of his inner circle. Hoffmann's photographs were a significant part of Hitler's propaganda campaign to present himself and the Nazi Party as a significant mass phenomenon. He received royalties from all uses of Hitler's image, which made him a millionaire over the course of Hitler's rule. After the Second World War he was tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison for war profiteering. He was classified by the Allies' Art Looting Investigators to be a "major offender" in Nazi art plundering of Jews, as both art dealer and collector. His art collection, which contained many artworks looted from Jews, was subsequently confiscated by the Allies.

Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, also known by his initials JK, was a Brazilian politician who served as the 21st president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. Kubitschek's government plan, dubbed "50 years in 5", was centered on economic and social development. During his term the country experienced a period of notable economic growth and relative political stability. However, there was also a significant increase in external debt, inflation, income concentration and wage erosion. At the time, there was no re-election and, on 31 January 1961, he was succeeded by Jânio Quadros, supported by the UDN. Kubitschek is best known for the construction of Brazil's new capital, Brasília, which was inaugurated on 21 April 1960, replacing Rio de Janeiro.

Max A. Boot is a Russian-born naturalized American author, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He worked as a writer and editor for The Christian Science Monitor and then for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s. Since then, he has been the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributor to The Washington Post. He has written for such publications as The Weekly Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and he has authored books of military history. In 2018, Boot published The Road Not Taken, a biography of Edward Lansdale, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for biography, and The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, which details Boot's "ideological journey from a 'movement' conservative to a man without a party", in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. His biography of Ronald Reagan, Reagan: His Life and Legend, was a New York Times Bestseller and named one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2024, as well as one of the year's best books by The Washington Post and The New Yorker.

Nathan Wade Bracken is a former Australian cricketer. A tall left-arm fast-medium bowler, Bracken is capable of swinging the ball both ways. He has represented Australia in all forms of the game. Bracken represented New South Wales in Australian domestic cricket, Eastern Suburbs in Sydney Grade Cricket and also appeared for English County team Gloucestershire in 2004. On 28 January 2011 he announced his retirement from the game due to a chronic knee injury. On 9 February 2012 it was reported that he sued Cricket Australia over the latter's alleged incompetency in managing his knee injury. With his time representing Australia, Bracken won multiple ICC titles with the team: the 2003 Cricket World Cup, the 2007 Cricket World Cup, and the 2006 ICC Champions Trophy.

John Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk,, Earl Marshal was a fifteenth-century English magnate who, despite having a relatively short political career, played a significant role in the early years of the Wars of the Roses. Mowbray was born in 1415, the only son and heir of John de Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and Katherine Neville. He inherited his titles upon his father's death in 1432. As a minor he became a ward of King Henry VI and was placed under the protection of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, alongside whom Mowbray would later campaign in France. He seems to have had an unruly and rebellious youth. Although the details of his misconduct are unknown, they were severe enough for the King to place strictures upon him and separate him from his followers. Mowbray's early career was spent in the military, where he held the wartime office of Earl Marshal. Later he led the defence of England's possessions in Normandy during the Hundred Years' War. He fought in Calais in 1436, and during 1437–38 served as Warden of the Eastern March on the Anglo-Scottish border, before returning to Calais.

Carly Sarah Smithson is an Irish soul and pop rock singer who was the sixth place finalist on the seventh season of American Idol in 2008. In 2001, Smithson had released her first studio album for MCA Records called Ultimate High. Smithson was dropped from the record label in 2002. After being introduced to former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody in early 2009, plans for Smithson's post-Idol solo album were scrapped and instead she became the lead singer of the rock band We Are the Fallen. She also sings in The Tribe, a revolving group of Los Angeles musicians and singers that includes Stephen John Kalinich, Freebo, Fuzzbee Morse, Gary Stockdale, Grant Geissman, Rosemary Butler, Marc Mann, Gary Griffin, The Honeys, and Band Manager Lauri Reimer.

John Francis Mauceri is an American conductor, composer, author, and educator whose work has focused on orchestral music, opera, Broadway, and film-related repertoire. A graduate of Yale University, where he later taught music for more than a decade, he has conducted the major orchestras and opera companies in the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Royal Opera House, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Cleveland Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Symphony (Washington), Philadelphia Orchestra, Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien (Vienna), San Francisco Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He has won a Tony, Grammy, and three Emmy awards, as well as an Olivier Award. Further, he conducted the Oscar–winning music for the soundtrack of the film version of Evita. As a founder and educator, he created and directed the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and was founding chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He is the author of several books on conducting and the history of 20th-century music.

Ion Agârbiceanu was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian writer, journalist, politician, theologian and Greek-Catholic priest. Born among the Romanian peasant class of Transylvania, he was originally an Orthodox, but chose to embrace Eastern Catholicism. Assisted by the Catholic congregation of Blaj, he graduated from Budapest University, after which he was ordained. Agârbiceanu was initially assigned to a parish in the Apuseni Mountains, which form the backdrop to much of his fiction. Before 1910, Agârbiceanu had achieved literary fame in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Romania, affiliating with ASTRA cultural society in 1912; his work was disputed between the rival schools of Sămănătorul and Poporanism. After a debut in poetry, he became a highly prolific author of novels, novellas, and other forms of prose, being rated as "Chekhovian" or "Tolstoyan" for his talents in describing the discreet suffering of common folk.

Deron Leigh Cherry is an American former professional football player who was a safety for the Kansas City Chiefs in the National Football League (NFL) from 1981 to 1991. Cherry was a free safety and punter at Rutgers University, intercepting a total of 9 passes over his three seasons, which he returned for 126 yards and two touchdowns. In 1979, he was named the team's MVP. In 1979 and 1980, Cherry earned AP All-East honors. In 1981, he was signed by the Kansas City Chiefs as a free agent but was released in the final teams cuts. Cherry rejoined the club as a safety, and made his first career interception against division rivals the Oakland Raiders.

Alma Mary Templeton Moodie was an Australian violinist who established an excellent reputation in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. She was regarded as being among the foremost female violinists during the inter-war years, along with such players as Erica Morini, Jelly d'Arányi and Kathleen Parlow; and she premiered violin concertos by Kurt Atterberg, Hans Pfitzner and Ernst Krenek. She and Max Rostal were considered the best pre-war proponents of the Carl Flesch tradition. She became a teacher at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. However, Alma Moodie made no recordings, and she appears in very few reference sources. Despite her former renown, her name became virtually unknown for many years. She appeared in earlier editions of Grove's and Baker's Dictionaries, but does not appear in the more recent editions.

Sergio Francesco Parisse is an Italian-Argentine former rugby union player. He is currently the lineout coach for French club Toulon. He played for the Italy national team from 2002 until the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Parisse is Italy's most-capped player, and currently the seventh most-capped player of all time. He was the first Italian rugby union player to be nominated for the IRB International Player of the Year, in 2008 and again in 2013. Parisse is widely considered one of the greatest number eights of the modern era, and among the greatest Italian rugby player of all time. He also holds the joint record of playing in five Rugby World Cups.

Carl Eytel was a German American artist who built his reputation for paintings and drawings of desert subjects in the American Southwest. Immigrating to the United States in 1885, he settled in Palm Springs, California in 1903. With an extensive knowledge of the Sonoran Desert, Eytel traveled with the author George Wharton James as he wrote the successful Wonders of the Colorado Desert, and contributed over 300 drawings to the 1908 work. While he enjoyed success as an artist, he lived as an ascetic and would die in poverty. Eytel's most important work, Desert Near Palm Springs, hangs in the History Room of the California State Library.

Steven Gardiner is a Bahamian track and field sprinter competing in the 400 metres and 200 metres. He is the 2020 Olympic and 2019 world champion in the 400 m, and also won the silver medal at the 2017 World Championships in that event. His winning time of 43.48 s from the 2019 World Championships is the Bahamian record and makes him the eighth‑fastest man in the history of the event. Gardiner also owns the Bahamian records in the outdoor 300 m and 200 m, with times of 31.83 s and 19.75 s respectively, and the world best in the indoor 300 m at 31.56 s.

Mary Bosanquet Fletcher was an English preacher credited with persuading John Wesley, a founder of Methodism, to allow women to preach in public. She was born into an affluent family, but after converting to Methodism, rejected its luxurious life. She was involved in charity work throughout her life, operating a school and orphanage until her marriage to John Fletcher. She and a friend, Sarah Crosby, began preaching and leading meetings at her orphanage and became the most popular female preachers of their time. Fletcher was known as a "Mother in Israel", a Methodist term of honour, for her work in spreading the denomination across England.

Martin Klein was an Estonian wrestler who competed for the Russian Empire at the 1912 Summer Olympics. He won the silver medal in the middleweight class, becoming the first Olympic medalist born in the territory of modern Estonia. In the semi-final against the reigning world champion Alfred Asikainen, the two grappled for 11 hours and 40 minutes on a sunny day outdoors, until Klein managed to pin Asikainen. Klein was so exhausted from the bout – the longest wrestling match ever recorded – that he was unable to wrestle for the gold the next day, leaving Swedish wrestler Claes Johansson with the gold medal.

Marie Josephine Marguerite Blais is a Canadian politician, journalist, radio host and television host from Quebec. She was a Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) member of the National Assembly of Quebec (MNA) and a previous Minister Responsible for Seniors and Informal Caregivers and a member of the Comité ministériel des services aux citoyens. She was a Liberal MNA for the electoral division of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne in Montreal from 2007 to 2015, and served as the Minister Responsible for Seniors, vice-chair of the Comité ministériel du développement social, éducatif et culturel, and a member of the Conseil du trésor.

Richard Howard Hunt was an American artist and sculptor. In the second half of the 20th century, he became "the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture." A Chicago native, Hunt studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s. While there he received multiple prizes for his work. In 1971, he was the first African-American sculptor to have a retrospective at Museum of Modern Art. Hunt has created over 160 public sculpture commissions, more than any other sculptor in prominent locations in 24 states across the United States.

Michael John Murphy is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played in the National Hockey League for 13 years for the St. Louis Blues, New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings and has been assistant and head coach in the NHL for the Los Angeles Kings, Ottawa Senators, Vancouver Canucks, Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers. Murphy also played for Team Canada, winning a bronze medal in 1978, and coached Team Canada, International Hockey League (IHL). Murphy also worked as the Senior Vice President of the NHL's hockey operations.