Born on January 29?

Adam Lambert

American singer who performs as lead vocalist for Queen

Did you know? He rose to fame as the runner-up on the eighth season of the reality television show American Idol.

Adam Mitchel Lambert (born January 29, 1982) is an American singer, songwriter and actor. He is known for his dynamic vocal performances that combine his theatrical training with modern and classic genres.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: marcen27 from Glasgow, UK · CC BY 2.0

Heather Graham

American actress known for Boogie Nights and Austin Powers

Did you know? She was voted "Most Talented" by her high school peers but was later discouraged from acting by her very religious parents.

Heather Joan Graham (born January 29, 1970) is an American actress. The accolades she has received include nominations for two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and an Independent Spirit Award.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Dimitri Sarantis · CC BY-SA 3.0

Paul Ryan

American politician who served as Speaker of the House

Did you know? He is a dedicated fitness enthusiast and famously led intense early-morning workout sessions for his fellow members of Congress.

Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is an American former politician who served as the 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. He represented Wisconsin's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2019.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: US House Office of Photography · Public domain

Romário

Brazilian football striker who won the 1994 World Cup

Did you know? After his sporting career ended, he moved into politics and was elected to the Brazilian Senate.

Romário de Souza Faria (born 29 January 1966), known simply as Romário (Brazilian Portuguese:), is a Brazilian politician and former professional footballer who is currently the Senior Senator for Rio de Janeiro and is the president of football club America-RJ.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Agência Senado from Brasilia, Brazil · CC BY 2.0

Olga Tokarczuk

Nobel Prize-winning Polish author known for The Books of Jacob

Did you know? Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as a psychologist and practised as a therapist at an addiction clinic.

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk (born 29 January 1962) is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. Tokarczuk is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful Polish authors of her generation.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Harald Krichel · CC BY-SA 4.0

Ismail Haniyeh

Former senior political leader of the Palestinian group Hamas

Did you know? He was a keen footballer in his younger years and played as a midfielder for a team in Gaza.

Ismail Haniyeh (Arabic: إسماعيل هنية, romanized: Ismāʿīl Haniyyah,; 29 January 1962 – 31 July 2024) was a Palestinian politician who served as third chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from May 2017 until his assassination in July 2024.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Mehmettorun · CC BY-SA 3.0

Gauri Lankesh

Gauri Lankesh (29 January 1962 – 5 September 2017) was an Indian activist and journalist from Bangalore, Karnataka. She worked as an editor in Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly started by her father P. Lankesh, and ran her own weekly called Gauri Lankesh Patrike.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Hari Prasad Nadig · CC BY-SA 2.0

Mulatu Teshome

Ethiopian politician who served as the country's president

Did you know? He is fluent in Mandarin and spent several years as the Ethiopian ambassador to China before being elected president.

Mulatu Teshome Wirtu (Oromo: Mulaatuu Tashoome Wirtuu; Amharic: ሙላቱ ተሾመ ውርቱ; born 1957) is an Ethiopian politician who was president of Ethiopia from 2013 to 2018.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Kancelaria Premiera from Poland · Public domain

Oprah Winfrey

American talk show host whose Oprah Winfrey Show ran for 25 years and made her one of the richest self-made women

Did you know? Her birth certificate originally stated her name was Orpah, but the misspelling on her birth announcement became her permanent name.

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media mogul, actress, executive producer, author, and television personality. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: US Embassy South Africa · Public domain

Teresa Teng

Taiwanese singer celebrated for her popularity across East Asia

Did you know? Her music was so popular in mainland China that she was often referred to as "the eternal queen of Asian pop".

Deng Li Jun (simplified Chinese: 邓丽君; traditional Chinese: 鄧麗君; pinyin: Dèng Lìjūn; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), also known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, television personality, musician, and philanthropist.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: unknown author · Public domain

Linda B. Buck

Nobel Prize winner who discovered how our sense of smell works

Did you know? Her research identified a large family of genes that allow the brain to distinguish between thousands of different odours.

Linda Brown Buck (born January 29, 1947) is an American biologist best known for her work on the olfactory system. She was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Royal Society uploader · CC BY-SA 4.0

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta

Former President of Mali who previously served as Prime Minister

Did you know? Often referred to by his initials IBK, he spent many years living and studying in Paris before returning to lead his country.

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (French:; 29 January 1945 – 16 January 2022), often known by his initials IBK, was a Malian politician who served as the president of Mali from September 2013 to August 2020, when he was forced to resign in the 2020 Malian coup d'état.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC · CC BY-SA 3.0

Tom Selleck

American actor best known for the television series Magnum, P.I

Did you know? He was the original choice to play Indiana Jones but had to turn it down due to his existing television contract.

Thomas William Selleck (born January 29, 1945) is an American actor. His breakout role was playing private investigator Thomas Magnum in the television series Magnum, P.I. (1980–1988), for which he received five Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning in 1984.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Luis Ochea · CC BY-SA 4.0

Germaine Greer

Feminist author best known for writing the 1970 book The Female Eunuch

Did you know? Before becoming a prominent intellectual, she worked as an actress and once appeared in a comedy sketch with several future members of Monty Python.

Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminism movement in the latter half of the 20th century.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Helen Morgan · CC BY 2.0

Abdus Salam

Nobel Prize-winning physicist who developed the electroweak theory

Did you know? He was the first Pakistani and the first person from an Islamic country to receive a Nobel Prize in science.

Mohammad Abdus Salam (29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Molendijk, Bart / Anefo · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Dorothy Malone

Oscar-winning actress of the 1950s and star of TV's Peyton Place

Did you know? She famously dyed her hair platinum blonde for her role in Written on the Wind, which helped her win an Academy Award.

Dorothy Malone (born Mary Dorothy Maloney; January 29, 1924 – January 19, 2018) was an American actress. Her film career began in 1943, and in her early years, she played small roles, mainly in B-movies, with the exception of a supporting role in The Big Sleep (1946).

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Trailer screenshot · Public domain

Ernst Lubitsch

Sophisticated Hollywood film director known for his witty comedies

Did you know? His distinctive directing style was so widely admired that it became known in the industry as the 'Lubitsch touch'.

Ernst Lubitsch (January 29, 1892 – November 30, 1947) was a German and American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch".

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Unknown (George Grantham Bain collection) · Public domain

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Spanish novelist whose books were adapted into major Hollywood films

Did you know? Outside of his writing, he was a political activist who founded a colony in Argentina called Cervantes for Spanish immigrants.

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (Spanish pronunciation:, 29 January 1867 – 28 January 1928) was a journalist, politician, and a bestselling Spanish novelist in various genres whose most widespread and lasting fame in the English-speaking world is from Hollywood films that were adapted from his works.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

Romain Rolland

French novelist of Jean-Christophe and biographer of Beethoven, a committed pacifist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Did you know? He was a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi and wrote a biography of the Indian leader.

Romain Rolland (French:; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described…

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

Anton Chekhov

Russian playwright and short-story master who wrote The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard

Did you know? He spent much of his life working as a doctor and famously claimed that medicine was his lawful wife and literature his mistress.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright, short story writer, and physician.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

William McKinley

25th US President who led the country through the Spanish-American War and was assassinated in 1901

Did you know? He was the last American president to have served in the Civil War.

William McKinley (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: photographer · Public domain

Vasily Zhukovsky

Influential Romantic poet and tutor to the Russian imperial family

Did you know? He is credited with introducing the Romantic movement to Russian literature and translated many major European works into his native tongue.

Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (Russian: Василий Андреевич Жуковский; 9 February 1783 – 24 April 1852) was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Karl Bryullov · Public domain

Christian VII of Denmark

Danish king known for his mental illness and nominal reign

Did you know? His personal physician, Johann Friedrich Struensee, effectively ruled the country for several years while the king’s mental health deteriorated.

Christian VII (29 January 1749 – 13 March 1808) was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1766 until his death in 1808. He was affected by mental illness and was only nominally king for most of his reign.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Jens Juel · Public domain

Daniel Bernoulli

Swiss mathematician known for his work in fluid mechanics

Did you know? His most famous principle explains how the movement of air creates the lift necessary for modern aeroplanes to fly.

Daniel Bernoulli (8 February 1700 – 27 March 1782) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family from Basel.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo: Johann Nikolaus Grooth · Public domain