Famous birthdays by month
Famous Birthdays in October
Who was born in October? Browse the best-known birthdays for every day of the month, then tap any date to see everyone famous born on that day.
The most famous October birthdays842
b. 1952Vladimir Putin
Former KGB officer who has dominated Russian politics since 2000 as president and prime minister, and launched the 2022 invasion of Ukraine
PoliticsAge 74
View profile Photo: Пресс-служба Президента России · CC BY 4.0
1869–1948Mahatma Gandhi
Leader of India's independence movement whose non-violent civil disobedience, including the 1930 Salt March, inspired civil rights campaigns worldwide
PoliticsDied aged 78
View profile Photo: Elliott & Fry · Public domain
1940–1980John Lennon
Singer-songwriter who co-founded the Beatles with Paul McCartney and later wrote the peace anthem Imagine
MusicWould be 86
View profile Photo: Bob Gruen / Capitol Records · Public domain
1881–1973Pablo Picasso
Spanish artist who co-founded Cubism and painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century
ArtWould be 144
View profile Photo: Condor Films · CC BY-SA 3.0
1844–1900Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher who declared that God is dead and wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, developing ideas of the Übermensch and will to power
PhilosophyDied aged 55
View profile Photo: Friedrich Hermann Hartmann · Public domain
b. 1955Bill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft who made Windows the world's dominant software, and later a leading global philanthropist
BusinessAge 70
View profile Photo: Bogdan Hoyaux / European Union · CC BY 4.0
1925–2013Margaret Thatcher
Britain's first female prime minister, who served from 1979 to 1990 and became known as the Iron Lady for her free-market reforms
PoliticsWould be 101
View profile Photo: Rob Bogaerts · CC0
1924–2024100 ClubJimmy Carter
39th US President who brokered the Camp David Accords and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of humanitarian work
PoliticsWould be 102
View profile Photo: Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center · Public domain
October birthdays, day by day
- October 1
- Jimmy Carter (1924) · 39th US President who brokered the Camp David Accords and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of humanitarian work
- Theresa May (1956) · Conservative politician who served as British Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019, trying to deliver Brexit after six years as Home Secretary
- El Greco (1541) · Cretan-born painter who settled in Toledo and painted elongated, visionary works such as The Burial of the Count of Orgaz
- October 2
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869) · Leader of India's independence movement whose non-violent civil disobedience, including the 1930 Salt March, inspired civil rights campaigns worldwide
- Graham Greene (1904) · English novelist of Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American, and writer of The Third Man
- Paul von Hindenburg (1847) · German military leader and President during the Weimar Republic
- October 3
- Zlatan Ibrahimović (1981) · Swedish striker famous for acrobatic goals and swagger who won league titles in four countries and is Sweden's record scorer
- Sergei Yesenin (1895) · Russian lyric poet of the village and countryside, briefly married to Isadora Duncan, who died at 30
- Louis Aragon (1897) · French poet and novelist who helped found the Surrealist movement
- October 4
- Rutherford B. Hayes (1822) · 19th US President who won the disputed 1876 election and ended Reconstruction by withdrawing federal troops from the South
- Susan Sarandon (1946) · Oscar-winning actress known for Thelma & Louise and Dead Man Walking
- Buster Keaton (1895) · Silent film star known for his deadpan expression and physical stunts
- October 5
- Denis Diderot (1713) · French Enlightenment philosopher who co-founded and edited the Encyclopédie, a landmark attempt to gather all human knowledge
- Václav Havel (1936) · Dissident playwright who led the Velvet Revolution and became the last president of Czechoslovakia and first of the Czech Republic
- Chester A. Arthur (1829) · 21st US President who took office after James Garfield's assassination and backed reform of the civil service
- October 6
- Le Corbusier (1887) · Swiss-French architect who pioneered modernist design and urban planning, from the Villa Savoye to the city of Chandigarh
- Hafez al-Assad (1930)
- Thor Heyerdahl (1914) · Norwegian adventurer who led the Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific
- October 7
- Vladimir Putin (1952) · Former KGB officer who has dominated Russian politics since 2000 as president and prime minister, and launched the 2022 invasion of Ukraine
- Niels Bohr (1885) · Danish physicist who developed the Bohr model of the atom, won the Nobel Prize and helped found quantum mechanics
- Desmond Tutu (1931) · South African Anglican archbishop who campaigned against apartheid, won the Nobel Peace Prize and chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- October 8
- Sigourney Weaver (1949) · American actress who played Ellen Ripley in the Alien films and starred in Ghostbusters and Avatar
- Ursula von der Leyen (1958) · German politician and former defence minister who became the first female President of the European Commission in 2019
- Matt Damon (1970) · American actor who won an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting and starred as Jason Bourne and in The Martian
- October 9
- John Lennon (1940) · Singer-songwriter who co-founded the Beatles with Paul McCartney and later wrote the peace anthem Imagine
- David Cameron (1966)
- Ivo Andrić (1892) · Yugoslav novelist of The Bridge on the Drina, a sweeping history of Bosnia, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
- October 10
- Fridtjof Nansen (1861) · Norwegian explorer who crossed Greenland and drifted in the Arctic ice, then won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping refugees
- Harold Pinter (1930) · English playwright of The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, famous for menacing pauses, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
- Claude Simon (1913) · Nobel Prize-winning French novelist associated with the Nouveau Roman movement
- October 11
- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884) · Longest-serving US First Lady who championed civil rights and chaired the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- Amitabh Bachchan (1942) · Indian film star of Sholay and Deewaar, known as Bollywood's Angry Young Man and host of Kaun Banega Crorepati
- François Mauriac (1885) · French Catholic novelist of Thérèse Desqueyroux and The Viper's Tangle who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
- October 12
- Luciano Pavarotti (1935)
- Hugh Jackman (1968) · Australian actor who played Wolverine for over two decades while winning Tony Awards and acclaim for musical theatre
- Edward VI of England (1537) · Son of Henry VIII who became King of England aged nine
- October 13
- Margaret Thatcher (1925) · Britain's first female prime minister, who served from 1979 to 1990 and became known as the Iron Lady for her free-market reforms
- Alexander Borodin (1833) · Russian Romantic composer and professional chemist
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) · American politician and youngest woman ever to serve in the US Congress
- October 14
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890) · Supreme Allied Commander who planned the D-Day landings and later served two terms as the 34th US President
- Hannah Arendt (1906) · German-American political theorist of The Origins of Totalitarianism who coined the phrase the banality of evil
- Mohammad Khatami (1943) · Reformist cleric who served as President of Iran from 1997 to 2005 and called for a dialogue among civilisations
- October 15
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844) · German philosopher who declared that God is dead and wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, developing ideas of the Übermensch and will to power
- Akbar (1542) · Mughal emperor who expanded his empire across most of northern India and was known for his religious tolerance and patronage of the arts
- Michel Foucault (1926) · French philosopher of Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality who analysed how power and knowledge shape society
- October 16
- Günter Grass (1927) · German novelist of The Tin Drum, a confronting look at the Nazi era, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
- David Ben-Gurion (1886) · Zionist leader who proclaimed the State of Israel in 1948 and became its first prime minister
- Eugene O'Neill (1888) · American playwright of Long Day's Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh, winner of four Pulitzers and the Nobel Prize
- October 17
- Eminem (1972) · American rapper from Detroit behind The Marshall Mathers LP and the Oscar-winning song Lose Yourself, among the best-selling artists of all time
- John Paul I (1912) · Italian pope known as the Smiling Pope, whose reign in 1978 lasted only 33 days, one of the shortest in history
- Arthur Miller (1915) · American playwright of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible who was married to Marilyn Monroe
- October 18
- Henri Bergson (1859) · French philosopher of Creative Evolution, known for his ideas on time, memory and the vital impulse, and a Nobel laureate
- Zhu Xi (1130) · Song dynasty philosopher whose commentaries on the Four Books shaped Neo-Confucianism and China's civil service exams for centuries
- Chuck Berry (1926) · Pioneering guitarist often called the Father of Rock and Roll
- October 19
- Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899) · Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan author and diplomat
- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910) · Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who studied the evolution of stars
- John le Carré (1931) · British author of espionage thrillers including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- October 20
- Kamala Harris (1964) · lawyer and politician who broke barriers as the first female vice president and ran innovative prosecution programmes in San Francisco and California
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854) · French poet who wrote A Season in Hell and Illuminations before he was 21, then gave up poetry to trade in Africa
- Elfriede Jelinek (1946) · Austrian novelist and playwright of The Piano Teacher who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her musical, unsparing work
- October 21
- Alfred Nobel (1833) · Swedish chemist and industrialist who invented dynamite and left his fortune to create the Nobel Prizes
- Benjamin Netanyahu (1949) · Israeli politician and the country's longest-serving prime minister, leader of the right-wing Likud party for decades
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772) · English Romantic poet of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan who co-wrote Lyrical Ballads with Wordsworth
- October 22
- Sarah Bernhardt (1844) · French stage actress nicknamed the Divine Sarah, who became the first international star of the theatre and early cinema
- Doris Lessing (1919) · British novelist raised in Southern Rhodesia who wrote The Golden Notebook and won the Nobel Prize in Literature at 88
- Franz Liszt (1811) · Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer of the Hungarian Rhapsodies who invented the solo recital and the symphonic poem
- October 23
- Pelé (1940) · Brazilian footballer who won three World Cups and scored more than 1,000 goals, widely hailed as one of the greatest players ever
- Ignatius of Loyola (1491) · Basque soldier turned priest who founded the Jesuit order and wrote the Spiritual Exercises, later declared a saint
- "Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) · Musician famous for his parodies of popular songs and pop culture
- October 24
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632) · Dutch cloth merchant whose home-made microscopes made him the first person to see bacteria, the father of microbiology
- Domitian (AD 51) · Roman emperor and the last ruler of the Flavian dynasty
- Wayne Rooney (1985) · English footballer who is Manchester United's all-time leading goalscorer
- October 25
- Pablo Picasso (1881) · Spanish artist who co-founded Cubism and painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century
- Katy Perry (1984) · American pop singer of I Kissed a Girl, Firework and Roar who travelled to space on a Blue Origin flight in 2025
- Georges Bizet (1838) · French composer best known for his opera Carmen
- October 26
- Hillary Clinton (1947) · American politician who served as Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and became the first woman nominated for president by a major party
- François Mitterrand (1916) · Socialist politician who served as President of France for 14 years, the longest in the Fifth Republic, from 1981 to 1995
- Evo Morales (1959) · Coca growers' union leader who became Bolivia's first Indigenous president, serving from 2006 to 2019
- October 27
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858) · 26th US President, Rough Rider and conservationist who created national parks and won the Nobel Peace Prize
- Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945) · Former metalworker and union leader who has served three terms as President of Brazil, leading the Workers' Party
- Abu Bakr (AD 573) · Close companion and father-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad who became the first caliph and united Arabia after his death
- October 28
- Bill Gates (1955) · Co-founder of Microsoft who made Windows the world's dominant software, and later a leading global philanthropist
- Erasmus (1466) · Dutch Renaissance humanist and scholar who wrote The Praise of Folly and published a new Greek edition of the New Testament
- Ivan Turgenev (1818) · Russian novelist of Fathers and Sons and A Sportsman's Sketches whose portraits of serfdom influenced its abolition
- October 29
- Joseph Goebbels (1897) · Nazi propaganda minister who controlled German media and culture, spread antisemitic hatred and killed himself in Hitler's bunker
- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (1938) · Harvard-trained economist who became President of Liberia, Africa's first elected female head of state, and a Nobel Peace laureate
- Abdullah Gül (1950) · Co-founder of Turkey's AKP who served as prime minister and foreign minister and was President of Turkey from 2007 to 2014
- October 30
- John Adams (1735) · Founding Father who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and became the second President of the United States
- Diego Maradona (1960) · Argentine footballer who led his country to the 1986 World Cup, scoring the Hand of God goal and the Goal of the Century
- Ezra Pound (1885) · American modernist poet of The Cantos who championed Eliot and Joyce but was charged with treason for wartime broadcasts
- October 31
- Katsushika Hokusai (1760) · Japanese ukiyo-e artist whose woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa became one of the most recognised images in the world
- John Keats (1795) · English Romantic poet of Ode to a Nightingale and To Autumn who died of tuberculosis in Rome at only 25
- Chiang Kai-shek (1887) · Nationalist leader who ruled the Republic of China, fought Japan and the Communists, and retreated to Taiwan in 1949