Famous People Born On January 1st

Lorenzo de' Medici was an Italian statesman. Nicknamed Lorenzo the Magnificent, de' Medici was the most enthusiastic and powerful patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. He is credited with providing sponsorships to artists like Michelangelo and Botticelli, thereby contributing indirectly to the development of art in the Republic of Florence. His life and work inspired a couple of TV series.

Actor Morris Chestnut is best known for his role in the film Boyz n the Hood. Beginning his career as a young man, he appeared in a few TV shows before venturing into films. He steadily evolved as an actor and went on to co-star alongside major actors in big-budget films. He has co-authored a book on health and fitness.

Dana Andrews was an American actor who achieved popularity during the 1940s. His film career declined in the 1950s, partly due to alcoholism, which he eventually overcame by working with the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. Later in his life, he started focusing on his real estate business. He died of pneumonia and congestive heart failure in 1992.

Eiichiro Oda is a Japanese manga artist best known as the creator of the series One Piece. The series is both the best-selling manga and the best-selling comic series of all time. He decided to become a manga artist as a child and began working as an assistant manga artist as a teenager, quickly gaining fame and fortune. 

Best known for his iconic novels Howard’s End and A Passage to India, British author E. M. Forster dealt with themes such as class division and gender. Born in England and educated at Cambridge, he had also spent some time as a secretary to Maharaja Tukojirao III of India.

Jerry Yan is a Taiwanese actor and model best known for playing Dao Ming Si in the popular Taiwanese drama Meteor Garden and its sequel Meteor Garden II. Also renowned for his singing skills, Jerry is a former member of a boy band named F4. Over the years, Jerry Yan has won several awards, such as Mnet Asian Music Award.

Charlie Munger is an American businessman, investor, architectural designer, and former real estate attorney. Over the years, he has played an important role as the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. A well-known philanthropist, Charlie Munger has donated millions of dollars to universities and schools.

Noor Inayat Khan was a British spy who served in a secret British World War II organization called Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the war. She was also the first female radio operator to be sent into occupied France from the UK to aid the French Resistance. She was subsequently caught and executed at a Nazi concentration camp.

Anand Kumar is an Indian educator who teaches mathematics. He is renowned for his educational program called Super 30, which selects 30 economically underprivileged candidates and trains them for IIT-JEE, potentially giving them an opportunity to get into the Indian Institutes of Technology. His life and career inspired the film Super 30, in which Anand Kumar's character was played by Hrithik Roshan.

Frank Langella is an actor most revered in the American theatre industry where he has won four Tony Awards. He then replicated his success in the film and TV industry, appearing in popular movies and TV series. His memoir, Dropped Names, attracted critical appreciation, with some even calling it a celebration of sluttiness as a noble way of life.

French former footballer Lilian Thuram, who is now a renowned author, with books on racism such as White Thinking to his credit. His 142 appearances for the French national team made him the most capped player of his country, while he was part of the 1998 FIFA World Cup-winning squad.

Legendary Croatian former footballer Davor Šuker has also headed the Croatian Football Federation as its president. His illustrious career saw him spend successful stints at both Real Madrid and Arsenal. He was also part of the 1998 FIFA World Cup third place-winning Croatian squad and remains Croatia’s all-time top goal-scorer.

Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat best remembered for helping thousands of Jews flee Europe during the Second World War. He did so by issuing transit visas to the Jews, enabling them to travel through Japanese territory. Sugihara helped the Jews despite knowing that he was risking the lives of his family and his job. 

While Wilhelm Canaris became one of Hitler’s most trusted secret agents, he was actually supplying information to Britain all along. He went down in history as a man who was hanged twice for treason, first as part of torture for a few moments, and then for good.

Best known for working with Albert Einstein to form Bose–Einstein statistics, Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose was a master of quantum mechanics. He played the esraj, loved poetry, and had mastered quite a few languages. The Padma Vibhushan winner was also made a Fellow of The Royal Society.

Pierre de Coubertin was a French historian and educator. Credited with founding the International Olympic Committee, Coubertin is often referred to as the father of the modern Olympic Games. Also an important contributor to the sport of rugby union, Coubertin was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2007. 

Huldrych Zwingli was a Swiss pastor who played an important role in the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland. Also a well-known scholar and humanist, Zwingli was popular with the masses. Although he is remembered as a stern reformer, he had a great sense of humor; he often used puns, satiric fables, and spoofing in his writings.

Sergei Korolev was a Soviet spacecraft designer and rocket engineer who played an important role during the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States of America in the 1950s and 1960s. He was largely responsible for developing the R-7 Rocket and launching Yuri Gagarin into space. Sergei Korolev also launched Belka, Strelka, and Laika into space.

Born in El Salvador, Alicia Nash later moved to the U.S., where she became one of the first women to join MIT as a student. The physicist met her husband, renowned mathematician John Nash at MIT. Both Alicia and John were killed in car crash while returning home from Norway.

Xavier Cugat was a Spanish musician and bandleader. He studied classical violin as a child and began working in silent films to support his family. He grew up to become a successful musician and played a leading role in the spread of Latin music. Besides music, he was also a cartoonist and a restaurateur. He was married five times. 

The son of Brazilian footballer Marcos Pereira, Andreas Pereira is a fine midfielder in his own right and plays for Fulham. The Belgian-born footballer started his senior career with the club Manchester United. While he initially represented the youth teams of both Belgium and Brazil, he later joined the Brazilian senior national team.

Manuel Roxas was a Filipino politician who served as the president of the Philippines from 1946 to 1948. He also served as the first president of the Third Philippine Republic after the USA relinquished its supremacy over the Philippines. Regarded as an important politician in the history of the Philippines, Roxas is depicted on the 100 Peso banknote. 

Known to his fans as The Mouth of the South, Jimmy Hart is a popular wrestling manage who works for WWE. As a teenager, he had joined the 60s’ band The Gentrys, which released the Billboard-charting track Keep on Dancing. He has also been the man behind many wrestlers’ entrance themes.