Famous Birthdays on September 27

Stephan Douglas Jenkins is an American singer, guitarist, and the frontman of the alternative rock band Third Eye Blind. He began his musical career in 1992 as part of the short-lived rap duo Puck and Natty, alongside Detroit rapper Herman Anthony Chunn. Following the breakup of the duo, Jenkins and guitarist Kevin Cadogan formed Third Eye Blind in 1993. The band released their eponymous debut studio album in 1997, which went multi-platinum in the United States. Since then, they have released nine more albums: Blue (1999), Out of the Vein (2003), Ursa Major (2009), Dopamine (2015), We Are Drugs (2016), Thanks for Everything (2018), Screamer (2019), Our Bande Apart (2021), and Unplugged (2022). As part of Third Eye Blind, Jenkins has received one Billboard Music Award and eight California Music Awards.

Diane Julie Abbott is a British politician who has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987. She was the first black woman elected to the UK Parliament, and in 2024 became its longest-serving female MP, earning the title Mother of the House. A former Shadow Home Secretary and Privy Counsellor, Abbott has been a prominent figure on the Labour left and a vocal campaigner on issues of race and inequality. She was suspended from the Labour Party in 2023 over comments about racism, later apologised, and had the whip restored ahead of the 2024 general election. In July 2025, she was suspended again after reiterating those remarks in a BBC interview, and sat as an independent MP until July 2026, when the whip was restored following the ascension of Andy Burnham as Labour leader.

Michael Jack Schmidt is an American former professional baseball third baseman who spent his entire 18-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career with the Philadelphia Phillies from 1972 to 1989. Schmidt was a 12-time All-Star and a three-time winner of the National League (NL) Most Valuable Player award (MVP), and he was known for his combination of power hitting and strong defense. As a hitter, he compiled 548 home runs and 1,595 runs batted in (RBIs), and led the NL in home runs eight times and in RBIs four times. As a fielder, Schmidt won the National League Gold Glove Award for third basemen ten times. Schmidt was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995 in his first year of eligibility, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest third basemen in baseball history.

John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, KG, was a major magnate in 15th-century England. He was the son of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Alice Chaucer, the daughter of Thomas Chaucer. His youth was blighted, in 1450, by the political fall and subsequent murder of his father, who had been a favourite of king Henry VI but was increasingly distrusted by the rest of the nobility. Although the first duke of Suffolk had made himself rich through trade and – particularly – royal grants, this source of income dried up on his death, so John de la Pole was among the poorest of English dukes on his accession to the title in 1463. This was a circumstance which John felt acutely; on more than one occasion, he refused to come to London due to his impoverishment being such that he could not afford the costs of maintaining a retinue.

Samuel James Ervin Jr. was an American politician who served as a U.S. senator from North Carolina from 1954 to 1974. A Southern Democrat, he liked to call himself a "country lawyer", and often told humorous stories in his Southern drawl. During his Senate career, Ervin was at first a staunch defender of Jim Crow laws and racial segregation, as the South's constitutional expert during the congressional debates on civil rights. However, unexpectedly, he became a liberal hero for his support of civil liberties. He is remembered for his work in the investigation committees that brought down Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 and especially for his leadership of the Senate committee's investigation of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Freddy Quinn is a former Austrian singer and actor whose popularity in the German-speaking world soared in the late 1950s and 1960s. As Hans Albers had done two generations before him, Quinn adopted the persona of the rootless wanderer who goes to sea but longs for a home, family and friends. His father was long believed to be a supposed merchant named Johann Quinn (1912–1943), who was of Irish descent and was said to have been married to Quinn's mother for a few months in 1934. However, in his 2025 autobiography, Freddy Quinn wrote that this man never existed and that he never met his actual father; furthermore, he had adopted his Irish last name from an American soldier he had met in his early twenties. His mother, Edith Henriette Nidl, was an Austrian journalist. He is often associated with the Schlager scene.

Park Tae-hwan is a South Korean retired competitive swimmer who is an Olympic gold medalist and world champion. He has four Olympic medals, five world titles, and 20 Asian Games medals. He won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle and a silver in the 200-meter freestyle events at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He also won two silver medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the 200- and 400-meter freestyle. He is the first Asian swimmer to claim a gold medal in the men's 400-meter freestyle, and the first-ever South Korean swimmer to win any Olympic medal in swimming. He also holds 3 Asian Records, all in Men's Freestyle. He is best known for his impressive range and versatility, as he is able to compete at international level in 100-, 200-, 400- and 1,500-meter freestyle.

Geoffrey Bent was an English footballer who played as a left back for Manchester United from 1948 until 1958. He was one of the Busby Babes, the young team formed under manager Matt Busby in the mid-1950s. Bent only made twelve first-team appearances for Manchester United, who already had an international-quality left back in Roger Byrne. Modern writers speculate that at most other teams Bent would have been a regular starter, and he was the subject of interest from fellow First Division clubs, but Busby refused to let him leave. He was one of eight Manchester United players who died in the Munich air disaster, when their aircraft crashed on its third attempt to take off from a slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem Airport after a European Cup match in Belgrade.

Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe was a German chemist and academic, and a major contributor to the birth of modern organic chemistry. He was a professor at Marburg and Leipzig. Kolbe was the first to apply the term synthesis in a chemical context, and contributed to the philosophical demise of vitalism through synthesis of the organic substance acetic acid from carbon disulfide, and also contributed to the development of structural theory. This was done via modifications to the idea of "radicals" and accurate prediction of the existence of secondary and tertiary alcohols, and to the emerging array of organic reactions through his Kolbe electrolysis of carboxylate salts, the Kolbe-Schmitt reaction in the preparation of aspirin and the Kolbe nitrile synthesis. After studies with Wöhler and Bunsen, Kolbe was involved with the early internationalization of chemistry through work in London. He was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and won the Royal Society of London's Davy Medal in the year of his death. Despite these accomplishments and his training important members of the next generation of chemists, Kolbe is best remembered for editing the Journal für Praktische Chemie for more than a decade, in which his vituperative essays on Kekulé's structure of benzene, van't Hoff's theory on the origin of chirality and Baeyer's reforms of nomenclature were personally critical and linguistically violent. Kolbe died of a heart attack in Leipzig at age 66, six years after the death of his wife, Charlotte.

Sir Martin Ryle was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources. In 1946 Ryle and Derek Vonberg were the first people to publish interferometric astronomical measurements at radio wavelengths. With improved equipment, Ryle observed the most distant known galaxies in the universe at that time. He was the first Professor of Radio Astronomy in the University of Cambridge and founding director of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. He was the twelfth Astronomer Royal from 1972 to 1982. Ryle and Antony Hewish shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974, the first Nobel prize awarded in recognition of astronomical research. In the 1970s, Ryle turned the greater part of his attention from astronomy to social and political issues which he considered to be more urgent. He was also an enthusiastic amateur radio operator.

Allister Wences MacNeil was a Canadian professional ice hockey player, coach and executive. MacNeil played 524 games in the National Hockey League and was a four-time Stanley Cup winner. He was the first native of Atlantic Canada to serve as a head coach in the NHL. He won three Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens, first as the team's rookie head coach in 1971, and then back-to-back championships as Director of Player Personnel in 1978 and 1979. He went back into coaching in 1979, becoming the last head coach of the Atlanta Flames and then the first one for the Calgary Flames in 1980. As an NHL head coach, with the Canadiens and Flames, his career win-loss-tie total was 160–134–55. The final time he won a Stanley Cup was as the assistant general manager of the Calgary Flames in 1989.

Anthony Wilford Brimley was an American actor. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and working odd jobs in the 1950s, Brimley started working as an extra and stuntman in Western films in the late 1960s. He became an established character actor in the 1970s and 1980s in films such as The China Syndrome (1979), The Thing (1982), Tender Mercies (1983), The Natural (1984), Cocoon (1985), and Cocoon: The Return (1988). Brimley was known for playing characters at times much older than his age. He was the long-term face of American television advertisements for the Quaker Oats Company. He also promoted diabetes education and appeared in related television commercials for Liberty Medical, a role for which he became an Internet meme.

Jay Daniel Bouwmeester is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. A defenceman, he played seventeen seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Florida Panthers, Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues. He was a first round selection, third overall, of the Panthers at the 2002 NHL entry draft. He was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team in 2003 and played seven seasons in the Panthers organization before being traded to the Calgary Flames in 2009, with which he played four seasons. Bouwmeester was then traded to the Blues in 2013. He held one of the longest iron man streaks in NHL history as he appeared in 737 consecutive regular season games between 2004 and 2014.

Angélica María Hartman Ortiz is a Mexican singer and actress. Referred to as "La Novia de México", she began her career as a child actress in films of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, such as Pecado (1951), Una mujer decente (1951), and Mi esposa y la otra (1952). During the 1960s, she rose to prominence as a teen idol through her roles in films and telenovelas, concurrently launching a successful music career. Her recordings of compositions by Armando Manzanero established her as a popular singer of rock and roll and pop ballads, with hit songs including the Billboard Hot Latin Tracks top 40-singles "El hombre de mi vida", "Reina y cenicienta", "Prohibido", and "El taconazo".

Brendon Barrie McCullum is a New Zealand cricket coach and former player who is the head coach of the England men's cricket team in T20s and ODIs, and formerly Test matches until his sacking as England Test coach in July 2026. Representing New Zealand, he captained the team in all formats. McCullum was renowned for his quick scoring, notably setting a record for the fastest Test century. He is considered one of New Zealand's most successful batsmen and captained the team to the finals of the 2015 Cricket World Cup and 2009 ICC Champions Trophy. He is also an inductee of the New Zealand Cricket Hall of Fame.

Bruno Junk was an Estonian race walker. He competed for the Soviet Union at the 1952 and 1956 Olympics and won bronze medals on both occasions. He set a world record in the 15 km in 1951 (1:08:08.0), and had world's best times in the 20 km in 1956 (1:30:00.8) and in the 3 km in 1952 (11:51.4). Domestically he won four Soviet titles: in 1951 and 1956 in the 20 km, and in 1952 and 1953 in the 10 km, and eight Estonian titles: in 1949–50 and 1956–59 in the 20 km, in 1958 in the 10 km, and in 1959 in the 30 km.

Denis Stamper Lawson is a Scottish actor. He is known for his roles as Wedge Antilles in the original Star Wars trilogy (1977–1983) and as John Jarndyce in the television miniseries Bleak House (2005), the latter of which earned him BAFTA Award and Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He also appeared in the television series The Kit Curran Radio Show (1984–1986), Holby City, and New Tricks (2012–2015), and reprised the role of Antilles in the film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). On the stage, he is a three-time Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical nominee, winning in 1983 for Mr Cinders.

Michael Lee Aday, known professionally as Meat Loaf, was an American singer and actor. He was known for his powerful, wide-ranging voice and theatrical live shows. His Bat Out of Hell album trilogy—Bat Out of Hell (1977), Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell (1993), and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose (2006)—has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The first album stayed on the charts for over nine years and is one of the best-selling albums in history, still selling an estimated 200,000 copies annually as of 2016.

Alfred Thayer Mahan was a United States Navy (USN) officer and historian whom John Keegan called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." His 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 won immediate recognition, especially in Europe, and with the publication of its 1892 successor, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, he affirmed his status as a globally-known and regarded military strategist, historian, and theorist. Mahan's works encouraged the development of large capital ships—eventually leading to dreadnought battleships—as he was an advocate of the 'decisive battle' and of naval blockades.