Born on August 8?

Alysa Liu

Youngest woman to win the United States Figure Skating Championships

Did you know? She became the first American woman to successfully land two triple Axel jumps during a single competitive programme.

Alysa Liu ( ə-LISS-ə LEE-oo; born August 8, 2005) is an American figure skater.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: YantsImages · CC BY-SA 4.0

Shawn Mendes

Canadian singer-songwriter who rose to fame on social media

Did you know? He taught himself to play the guitar by watching tutorial videos on the internet when he was a teenager.

Shawn Peter Raul Mendes ( MEN-dez, European Portuguese:; born August 8, 1998) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and musician. Mendes gained early recognition for posting popular song covers on the social media platforms YouTube and Vine.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Cosmopolitan UK · CC BY 3.0

Joël Matip

Champions League winning centre-back for Liverpool and Cameroon

Did you know? He was born and raised in Germany and stayed with his first professional club, Schalke, for sixteen years before moving to England.

Joël André Matip Job (born 8 August 1991) is a former professional footballer who played as a centre back. Matip began his professional career with Schalke 04 in 2009, and was part of their teams that won the DFB-Pokal and DFL-Supercup in 2011.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Steffen Prößdorf · CC BY-SA 4.0

Princess Beatrice of York

Member of the British royal family and daughter of Prince Andrew

Did you know? She made history as the first member of the royal family to complete the London Marathon.

Princess Beatrice, Mrs Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi (Beatrice Elizabeth Mary; born 8 August 1988), is a member of the British royal family. She is the elder daughter of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson, and a niece of King Charles III.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: TheMatthewSlack · CC BY 2.5

Roger Federer

Swiss tennis champion who won 20 major singles titles and held world No. 1 for a record 237 consecutive weeks

Roger Federer ( FED-ər-ər; Swiss Standard German:; born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the world No.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: si.robi · CC BY-SA 2.0

Louis Saha

French striker who won titles with Manchester United

Did you know? He scored just twenty seconds into the 2009 FA Cup Final, setting a record for the fastest goal in the match's history.

Louis Laurent Saha (born 8 August 1978) is a French former professional footballer who played as a striker. Saha was capped 20 times for the France national team and scored four goals.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Web Summit · CC BY 2.0

Makoto Tanaka

Japanese defender who spent most of his career with Júbilo Iwata

Did you know? He was selected for Japan’s 2006 World Cup squad but was forced to withdraw just before the tournament began due to injury.

Makoto Tanaka (田中 誠, Tanaka Makoto; born August 8, 1975) is a Japanese professional football manager and former player.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Giuseppe Conte

Italian law professor who served as the Prime Minister of Italy

Did you know? He was the first person in the history of the Italian Republic to lead a government without prior political experience.

Giuseppe Conte (Italian pronunciation:; born 8 August 1964) is an Italian jurist, academic, and politician who served as prime minister of Italy from June 2018 to February 2021. He has been the president of the Five Star Movement (M5S) since August 2021.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: European Union · Attribution

Klaus Ebner

Austrian writer and poet who writes in German and Catalan

Did you know? He is a rare example of a Central European author who has won literary prizes for writing in the Catalan language.

Klaus Ebner (born 8 August 1964) is an Austrian writer, essayist, poet, and translator. Born and raised in Vienna, he began writing at an early age.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Karl Grabherr · CC BY-SA 3.0

Lloyd J. Austin III

First African American to serve as US Secretary of Defense

Did you know? Before entering politics, he spent decades in the military and was the first Black general to command a US Army division.

Lloyd James Austin III (born August 8, 1953) is a retired United States Army general who served as the 28th United States secretary of defense from 2021 to 2025 under the Biden administration.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Chad J. McNeeley, U.S. Department of Defense · Public domain

Nigel Mansell

British racing driver who won the Formula One World Championship

Did you know? He famously held both the Formula One and IndyCar titles simultaneously for a short period.

Nigel Ernest James Mansell (born 8 August 1953) is a British former racing driver who competed in Formula One from 1980 to 1995. Mansell won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1992 with Williams, and won 31 Grands Prix across 15 seasons.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Stuart Seeger · CC BY 2.0

Jostein Gaarder

Author of the best-selling philosophical novel Sophie's World

Did you know? He established a prize for environmental and development work using the royalties earned from his most famous book.

Jostein Gaarder (Norwegian:; born 8 August 1952) is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories, and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Heike Huslage-Koch · CC BY-SA 4.0

Mohamed Morsi

Muslim Brotherhood leader who became Egypt's first democratically elected president in 2012 and was ousted by the army in 2013

Did you know? He held a doctorate in engineering and worked as a professor at California State University earlier in his career.

Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa Al-Ayyat (Arabic: مُحَمَّد مُحَمَّد مُرْسِي عِيسَى العَيَّاط, romanized: Muḥammad Muḥammad Mursī ʿĪsā al-ʿAyyāṭ, IPA:; 8 August 1951 – 17 June 2019) was an Egyptian politician, engineer, and professor who served as the fifth president of Egypt from 2012 to 2013, when General Abdel Fattah…

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Wilson Dias/ABr · CC BY 3.0 br

Louis van Gaal

Successful Dutch football manager for clubs including Ajax and Barcelona

Did you know? He originally worked as a physical education teacher while playing football at a semi-professional level.

Aloysius Paulus Maria "Louis" van Gaal (Dutch pronunciation:; born 8 August 1951) is a Dutch former football player and manager. At club level, he served as manager of Ajax, Barcelona, AZ, Bayern Munich and Manchester United, as well as having three spells in charge of the Netherlands national team.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Congres in Beeld from Eindhoven, The Netherlands · CC BY-SA 2.0

Svetlana Savitskaya

Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman to perform a spacewalk

Did you know? Before becoming a cosmonaut, she was a world-champion aerobatic pilot and set several world records for parachute jumping.

Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya (Russian: Светла́на Евге́ньевна Сави́цкая; born 8 August 1948) is a Russian former aviator and Soviet cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982, becoming the second woman in space.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev / Russian Presidential Press and Information Office · CC BY 4.0

Akira Matsunaga

Japanese footballer who played for the national team

Did you know? He was a prolific scorer in the Japan Soccer League during the 1970s while playing for Hitachi.

Akira Matsunaga (松永 章, Matsunaga Akira; born August 8, 1948) is a former Japanese football player. He played for Japan national team.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Dennis Tito

American businessman who became the first self-funded space tourist

Did you know? He spent nearly eight days in orbit after paying millions of dollars to fly on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Dennis Anthony Tito (born August 8, 1940) is an American engineer and entrepreneur. During mid-2001, he became the first space tourist to fund his own visit to space, when he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visiting mission to the International Space Station.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: NASA · Public domain

Dustin Hoffman

versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters that helped define New Hollywood, winning Oscars for diverse roles spanning divorce drama to autism

Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker. As one of the key leading man actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Sara Komatsu · CC BY-SA 4.0

Roger Penrose

Nobel Prize-winning physicist known for his work on black holes

Did you know? He designed the Penrose stairs, an impossible geometrical loop that served as a major inspiration for the surrealist artist M.C. Escher.

Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, and philosopher of science.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Biswarup Ganguly · CC BY 3.0

Alija Izetbegović

First president of the independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Did you know? He was a lawyer and philosopher who spent several years in prison for his political and religious writings before the fall of communism.

Alija Izetbegović (8 August 1925 – 19 October 2003) was a Bosnian politician, Islamic philosopher and author who served as the president of the presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1990 to 1996.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Helene C. Stikkel · Public domain

Esther Williams

American swimmer and actress known for her elaborate aquamusical films

Did you know? She was expected to compete in the 1940 Olympics, but the games were cancelled following the outbreak of war.

Esther Jane Williams (August 8, 1921 – June 6, 2013) was an American competitive swimmer and actress. She set regional and national records in her late teens on the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Trailer screenshot · Public domain

Paul Dirac

English physicist who predicted antimatter, wrote the Dirac equation and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics at 31

Did you know? He was famously taciturn and used such few words that his colleagues at Cambridge jokingly defined a unit of speech called a 'dirac'.

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac ( dih-RAK; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Dirac laid the foundations for both quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, coining the former term.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Nobel Foundation · Public domain

Ernest Lawrence

Nobel Prize-winning physicist who invented the cyclotron particle accelerator

Did you know? Element number 103, lawrencium, was named in his honour following its discovery at the laboratory he founded in California.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Nobel foundation · Public domain

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Nobel Prize-winning author and central figure in modern Hebrew literature

Did you know? His house in Jerusalem was looted during riots, leading him to move and rebuild his extensive library twice.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון \ שְׁמוּאֵל יוֹסֵף עַגְנוֹן shmuél yoséf agnón; August 8, 1887 – February 17, 1970) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Israeli GPO photographer · Public domain