Famous People Born On July 16th

The charismatic Welsh footballer player, Gareth Frank Bale played for Southampton football club and Tottenham Hotspur extensively before joining Real Madrid in 2013 for a fees that exceeded Christiano Ronaldo’s earlier record fee. Known for his speed and accuracy, Gareth Bales is also the captain of Wales national team and plays for Tottenham Hotspur, on loan from Real Madrid.

Will Ferrell rose to fame in the mid-1990s when he acted in a comedy show Saturday Night Live. He then went on to act in a series of comedy films such as Talladega Nights, Step Brothers and The Other Guys.  He’s considered part of the ‘Frat Pack’, essentially meaning Hollywood comic actors who emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Barry Sanders is a former professional American footballer who spent all his playing years with the Detroit Lions of NFL. Widely considered one of the greatest running backs in the history of National Football League, Barry Sanders has been made an inductee to Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.

Barbara Stanwyck went on to become one of the greatest actresses of Classical Hollywood cinema after being orphaned at age four. One of the favorite actresses of directors like Cecil B. DeMille, Barbara had become the highest-paid actress in America by 1944. Known for her realistic screen presence, Barbara won several prestigious honorary lifetime awards for her contribution to cinema.

Ginger Rogers was an American actress, singer, and dancer. Often regarded as an American icon, Rogers played an important role in popularizing the Golden Age of Hollywood. After winning the Academy Award for portraying the title character in Kitty Foyle, Rogers became one of the highest-paid actresses during the 1940s. Her life inspired a musical titled Backwards in High Heels.

MLB player Joseph Jefferson Jackson, or Shoeless Joe, was associated with the Philadelphia Athletics, the Cleveland Naps/Indians, and the Chicago White Sox. He was dragged into the Black Sox Scandal, through which the 1919 Chicago White Sox team members conspired to fix the World Series, leading him to be banned.

Roald Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer. Specialized in exploring the polar regions, Amundsen was an important figure of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, an era in the exploration of Antarctica. He disappeared in 1928 when he was involved in a rescue mission in the Arctic. Owing to his significant achievements in polar exploration, several places are named after him.

One half of the popular actor duo The Two Coreys, Corey Feldman started out as a child actor before establishing himself as a popular star in the American film industry. An ardent advocate against child molestation, Feldman was summoned to testify against Michael Jackson in the latter's child molestation trial; being Jackson's close friend, he did not testify against Jackson.

South Korean model and actor, Kim Woo-bin, has appeared in many hit TV shows and films. Interested in modeling from the time he has in high school, he started working as a runway model when he was 20. He is a cancer survivor and a role model for young people struggling with the disease.

Nigerian singer Wizkid soared to fame with chart-busting tracks such as Holla at Your Boy. A performer who has revolutionized the Afrobeats genre, Wizkid supported Nigeria’s End SARS protests against police brutality, on social media. In 2011, he was part of a paternity scandal but denied having fathered a child.

Chris Pontius is an American actor and stunt performer. After appearing in the popular reality slapstick comedy TV series Jackass, Pontius went on to contribute as a writer for the comedy film Jackass: The Movie, a continuation of the series. He then went on to contribute as a writer for the subsequent Jackass movies, including Jackass 3D and Jackass Forever.

With 10 Grammy Awards, Panamanian musician, singer, and composer Rubén Blades didn’t just soar to international fame but also redefined the Latin jazz and salsa genres. A qualified lawyer from Harvard, he came to be known as the Latin Bruce Springsteen for his music that mirrored social issues.

Swedish singer Maher Zain had moved to Sweden from Lebanon with his family at 8. A qualified aeronautical engineer, he is now known for his fusion of Eastern and Western music and for the religious overtones in his songs. He has also worked with UNHCR to support Syrian refugees.

Born in Chicago, Irish-origin entertainer Michael Flatley took to dancing inspired by his step dancer mother and music-loving father. Initially a gambler and stockbroker, he later performed with The Chieftains and then choreographed the globally renowned show Riverdance. He later launched shows such as Lord of the Dance and Celtic Tiger.

Luke Hemmings, the youngest member of the phenomenally successful Australian pop-rock band 5 Seconds of Summer, had started his career with YouTube covers. A promising model, he has graced the cover of Glass Man magazine. He was part of a highly publicized and controversial relationship with social-media star Arzaylea Rodriguez.

Born into a family of renowned cricketers, Shaun Pollock was the son of Peter Pollock and the nephew of Graeme Pollock. One of the best medium pace bowlers of South Africa, he was pushed into captaincy when Hansie Cronje got entangled in a match-fixing scandal in 2000.

French painter Camille Corot is remembered for his landscape paintings that paved the path for the Impressionist movement. Born into a milliner’s family, Corot was a poor student and shunned his family business to learn painting at 25. His works, however, were easy to replicate and led to many forgeries.

Desmond Dekker was a Jamaican musician and singer-songwriter best remembered for his 1968 hit song Israelites, which was one of the earliest reggae songs to achieve international attention. Desmond Dekker often performed alongside his famous backing group The Aces and achieved immense popularity during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright. As a young man, he supported revolutionary Fidel Castro but later became a local critic of Castro’s ideology. He was openly gay and often wrote about his life as a homosexual man. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987 and died by suicide in 1990. 

Alexander Gilkes is a British businessman. He is credited with co-founding an online auction house called Paddle8, for which he also served as the president from 2011 to 2018. He is also credited with co-founding Squared Circles. In 2017, Alexander Gilkes was named among the Most Creative Entrepreneurs by Fast Company magazine.