Biographies on This Day in History: December 25
Born On
Justin Trudeau
Canadian politician
December 25, 1971 -
Justin Trudeau is a Canadian politician, prime minister of Canada (2015–25), leader of the Liberal Party (2013–25), and son of four-term prime minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau. Justin Trudeau’s Christmas-night...
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Taishō
emperor of Japan
August 31, 1879 - December 25, 1926
Taishō was the 123rd ruling descendant of the Japanese imperial family, the emperor who reigned from 1912 to 1926 during a period in which Japan continued the modernization of its economy. Yoshihito was...
Born On
Karl Rove
American political consultant
December 25, 1950 -
Karl Rove is an American political consultant and principal architect of United States President George W. Bush’s two presidential election campaigns (2000, 2004). Rove was political even as a young child....
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W.C. Fields
American actor
January 29, 1880 - December 25, 1946
W.C. Fields was an actor whose flawless timing and humorous cantankerousness made him one of America’s greatest comedians. His real-life and screen personalities were often indistinguishable, and he is...
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Wayne Thiebaud
American painter and printmaker
November 15, 1920 - December 25, 2021
Wayne Thiebaud was an American painter and printmaker who was perhaps best known for his thickly painted American still lifes of such items as foods and cosmetics. He is often incorrectly associated with...
Born On
Louise Bourgeois
French-born American sculptor
December 25, 1911 - May 31, 2010
Louise Bourgeois was a French-born sculptor known for her monumental abstract and often biomorphic works that deal with the relationships of men and women. Born to a family of tapestry weavers, Bourgeois...
Born On
Larry Csonka
American football player
December 25, 1946 -
Larry Csonka is an American gridiron football player who won two Super Bowls (1973, 1974) playing for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (NFL) and was named Most Valuable Player of Super...
Born On
Rickey Henderson
American baseball player
December 25, 1958 - December 20, 2024
Rickey Henderson was a professional baseball player who in 1991 set a record for the most stolen bases in major league baseball and in 2001 set a record for the most career runs scored. One of the game’s...
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Emmanuel Lévinas
French philosopher
December 30, 1905 or January 12, 1906 - December 25, 1995
Emmanuel Lévinas was a Lithuanian-born French philosopher renowned for his powerful critique of the preeminence of ontology (the philosophical study of being) in the history of Western philosophy, particularly...
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Billy Martin
American baseball player and manager
May 16, 1928 - December 25, 1989
Billy Martin was an American professional baseball player and manager whose leadership transformed teams on the field, but whose outspokenness and pugnacity made him the centre of controversy. At the age...
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Karel Čapek
Czech writer
January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938
Karel Čapek was a Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and essayist. The son of a country doctor, Čapek suffered all his life from a spinal disease, and writing seemed a compensation. He studied...
Born On
Michael Curtiz
Hungarian-American director, actor, and writer
December 25, 1886 - April 10, 1962
Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian-born American motion-picture director whose prolific output as a contract director for Warner Brothers consisted of numerous genre films along with a string of motion picture...
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Zail Singh
president of India
May 5, 1916 - December 25, 1994
Zail Singh was an Indian politician who was the first Sikh to serve as president of India (1982–87). The Operation Blue Star—an Indian military operation to root out a group of militant Sikh separatists...
Born On
Louis Chevrolet
American automobile designer and race–car driver
December 25, 1878 - June 6, 1941
Louis Chevrolet was an automobile designer and racer whose name is borne by the Chevrolet Division of General Motors, an enterprise from which he derived little profit and of which he was a minor employee...
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İsmet İnönü
president of Turkey
September 24, 1884 - December 25, 1973
İsmet İnönü was a Turkish army officer, statesman, and collaborator with and successor to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as president of the Turkish Republic (Türkiye). Identified with one-party rule between 1939...
Born On
Cosima Wagner
German art director
December 25, 1837 - April 1, 1930
Cosima Wagner was the wife of the composer Richard Wagner and director of the Bayreuth Festivals from his death in 1883 to 1908. Cosima was the illegitimate daughter of the composer-pianist Franz Liszt...
Born On
Helena Rubinstein
American businesswoman
December 25, 1870 - April 1, 1965
Helena Rubinstein was a cosmetician, business executive, and philanthropist. She founded Helena Rubinstein, Inc., a leading manufacturer and distributor of women’s cosmetics. Rubinstein was one of eight...
Born On
Claude Chappe
French engineer and clergyman
December 25, 1763 - January 23, 1805
Claude Chappe was a French engineer and cleric who converted an old idea into a reality by inventing the semaphore visual telegraph. His brother Ignace Chappe (1760–1829), a member of the Legislative Assembly...
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Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa
Ottoman vizier
1634 - December 25, 1683
Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa was an Ottoman grand vizier (chief minister) in 1676–83, who in 1683 led an unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Vienna. During the grand vizierate (1661–76) of his brother-in-law...
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Joseph Fouché, duc d’Otrante
French statesman
May 21, 1759? - December 25, 1820
Joseph Fouché, duc d’Otrante was a French statesman and organizer of the police, whose efficiency and opportunism enabled him to serve every government from 1792 to 1815. Fouché was educated by the Oratorians...
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Eugen Goldstein
German physicist
September 5, 1850 - December 25, 1930
Eugen Goldstein was a German physicist known for his work on electrical phenomena in gases and on cathode rays; he is also credited with discovering canal rays. Goldstein studied at the University of Breslau...
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Carlos Andrés Pérez
president of Venezuela
October 27, 1922 - December 25, 2010
Carlos Andrés Pérez was the president of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1993. Pérez began his political life as a member of the liberal political party Democratic Action, led by Rómulo Betancourt....
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Birgit Nilsson
Swedish singer
May 17, 1918 - December 25, 2005
Birgit Nilsson was a Swedish operatic soprano, celebrated as a Wagnerian interpreter and known for her powerful, rich voice. On the advice of a local choirmaster, she went to study with Joseph Hislop in...
Born On
Ernst Ruska
German engineer
December 25, 1906 - May 27, 1988
Ernst Ruska was a German electrical engineer who invented the electron microscope. He was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986 (the other half was divided between Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd...
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Adrian I
pope
- December 25, 795
Adrian I was the pope from 772 to 795 whose close relationship with the emperor Charlemagne symbolized the medieval ideal of union of church and state in a united Christendom. Having been born an aristocrat...
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Barry Lopez
American author
January 6, 1945 - December 25, 2020
Barry Lopez was an American writer best known for his books on natural history and the environment. In such works as Of Wolves and Men (1978) and Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape...
Born On
Kid Ory
American musician
December 25, 1886 - January 23, 1973
Kid Ory was an American trombonist and composer who was perhaps the first musician to codify, purely by precept, the role of the trombone in classic three-part contrapuntal jazz improvisation. Ory is often...
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Otto Loewi
German-American pharmacologist
June 3, 1873 - December 25, 1961
Otto Loewi was a German-born American physician and pharmacologist who, with Sir Henry Dale, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1936 for their discoveries relating to the chemical transmission...
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Leo V
Byzantine emperor
- December 25, 820
Leo V was a Byzantine emperor responsible for inaugurating the second Iconoclastic period in the Byzantine Empire. When Bardanes Turcus and Nicephorus I were fighting over the Byzantine throne in 803,...
Born On
Julien Offroy de La Mettrie
French physician and philosopher
December 25, 1709 - November 11, 1751
Julien Offroy de La Mettrie was a French physician and philosopher whose Materialistic interpretation of psychic phenomena laid the groundwork for future developments of behaviourism and played an important...
Born On
Franz Rosenzweig
German philosopher
December 25, 1886 - December 10, 1929
Franz Rosenzweig was a German-Jewish religious Existentialist who, through his fresh handling of traditional religious themes, became one of the most influential modern Jewish theologians. In 1913, although...
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Sir John Greer Dill
British field marshal
December 25, 1881 - November 4, 1944
Sir John Greer Dill was a British field marshal who became the British chief of staff during the early part of World War II and, from 1941 to 1944, headed the British joint staff mission to the United...
Born On
John IV Lascaris
emperor of Nicaea
December 25, 1250 - c.1305
John IV Lascaris was the emperor of Nicaea whose brief reign as a minor was filled with intrigue and conspiracies that culminated in the seizure of power by Michael Palaeologus, the future Byzantine emperor...
Born On
Mani Kaul
Indian filmmaker
December 25, 1944 - July 6, 2011
Bollywood: Parallel cinema: …led by directors such as Mani Kaul (Uski Roti [1969; “Another’s Bread”], Duvidha [1973; “Dilemma”]), Shyam Benegal (Ankur [1974; “Seedling”], Nishant [1975; “Night’s End”],...
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Lila Bell Acheson
American publisher and philanthropist
December 25, 1889 - May 8, 1984
Lila Bell Acheson was an American publisher and philanthropist who, with her husband, DeWitt Wallace, created and published Reader’s Digest, one of the most widely circulated magazines in the world. Acheson,...
Born On
Gerhard Herzberg
Canadian physicist
December 25, 1904 - March 3, 1999
Gerhard Herzberg was a Canadian physicist and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in determining the electronic structure and geometry of molecules, especially free radicals—groups...
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Newton D. Baker
American politician
December 3, 1871 - December 25, 1937
Newton D. Baker was a lawyer, political leader, and U.S. secretary of war during World War I. In 1897 Baker began to practice law in his hometown, moving later to Cleveland, where he served two terms (1912–16)...
Born On
Anne Roiphe
American feminist and author
December 25, 1935 -
Anne Roiphe is an American feminist and author whose novels and nonfiction explore the conflicts between women’s traditional family roles and the desire for an independent identity. Anne Roth graduated...
Born On
Lew Grade, Baron Grade of Elstree
British theatrical producer
December 25, 1906 - December 13, 1998
Lew Grade, Baron Grade of Elstree was a Russian-born British motion picture, television, and theatrical producer whose company, Associated Television, developed many hit TV series beginning in the 1950s,...
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Nicolas Slonimsky
American musicologist, conductor, and composer
April 27, 1894 - December 25, 1995
Nicolas Slonimsky was a Russian-born U.S. musicologist, conductor, and composer. He left the Soviet Union after studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and settled in the U.S. in 1923. In the 1930s...
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Sergey Dmitriyevich Sazonov
Russian statesman
August 10, 1860 - December 25, 1927
Sergey Dmitriyevich Sazonov was a statesman and diplomat, Russia’s minister of foreign affairs (1910–16) during the period immediately preceding and following the outbreak of World War I. Having entered...
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Gabriel Abraham Almond
American political scientist
January 12, 1911 - December 25, 2002
Gabriel Abraham Almond was an American political scientist noted for his comparative studies of political systems and his analysis of political development. Almond received a Ph.D. from the University...
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William Cavendish, 1st duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
English commander
c.1593 - December 25, 1676
William Cavendish, 1st duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was a Royalist commander during the English Civil Wars and a noted patron of poets, dramatists, and other writers. The son of Sir Charles Cavendish, he...
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W.A. Dwiggins
American artist
June 19, 1880 - December 25, 1956
W.A. Dwiggins was an American typographer, book designer, puppeteer, illustrator, and calligrapher, who designed four of the most widely used Linotype faces in the United States and Great Britain: Caledonia,...
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Sir Matthew Hale
English legal scholar
November 1, 1609 - December 25, 1676
Sir Matthew Hale was one of the greatest scholars on the history of English common law, well known for his judicial impartiality during England’s Civil War (1642–51). He also played a major role in the...
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Peter the Venerable
French abbot
c.1092 - December 25, 1156
Peter the Venerable was an outstanding French abbot of Cluny whose spiritual, intellectual, and financial reforms restored Cluny to its high place among the religious establishments of Europe. Peter joined...
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Jacopone Da Todi
Italian poet
c.1230 - December 25, 1306
Jacopone Da Todi was an Italian religious poet, author of more than 100 mystical poems of great power and originality, and probable author of the Latin poem Stabat mater dolorosa. Born of a noble family...
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Arthur Brisbane
American editor
December 12, 1864 - December 25, 1936
Arthur Brisbane was a U.S. newspaper editor and writer, known as the master of the big, blaring headline and of the atrocity story. He was the son of Albert Brisbane (1809–90), a social reformer whose...
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Jean Chardin
French explorer
November 16, 1643 - December 25, 1713
Jean Chardin was a French traveler to the Middle East and India. A jeweler’s son with an excellent education, Chardin traveled with a Lyon merchant to Persia and India in 1665. At Eṣfahān, Persia, he enjoyed...
Born On
Patrick Gilmore
American bandleader
December 25, 1829 - September 24, 1892
Patrick Gilmore was a leading American bandmaster and a virtuoso cornetist, noted for his flamboyant showmanship, innovations in instrumentation, and the excellence of his bands. Gilmore immigrated to...