Famous April Birthdays a to z

Frank Abagnale became notorious for impersonating a pilot, a doctor, and a laywer. He was hired by the FBI to teach them his fradulent tricks.

Hall of Fame basketball center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA's all-time leading scorer. He won six NBA titles, five with the Los Angeles Lakers, over 20 years.

American actor and comedian Don Adams is best known for his role as secret agent Maxwell Smart on NBC's hit 1960s sitcom Get Smart.

Robert Adamson was a Scottish chemist and photographer who is best known for producing 2500 Calotype photographic prints with painter David Octavius Hill.

Andre Agassi is best known for his strong, smart playing style, which helped him win tennis championships throughout the 1990s.

Frank Gotti Agnello is best known as the grandson of mafia boss John Gotti, and for his reality TV show.

Dianna Agron is an actress and dancer who is best known for her role as high school cheerleader Quinn Fabray, in the FOX musical hit, Glee.

Anouk Aimée is an acclaimed French actress known for her roles in works like The Lovers of Verona, 8½, La Dolce Vita and A Man and a Woman.

Actor Eddie Albert starred in films like The Sun Also Rises and Roman Holiday as well as the TV show Green Acres.

Archibald Alexander was a Protestant clergyman and educator whose teachings, reviews and sermons gave him wide influence during his day.

Flex Alexander is an American actor, dancer and choreographer best known for his roles in the films Juice and Snakes on a Plane.

Maya Angelou is a poet and prize-winning memoirist. She is the author of the critically acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Kofi Annan is best known for his role as secretary-general of the United Nations.

British photographer Patrick Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield achieved success in personal royal portraits, and created the well-known Unipart calendar.

Scottish mathematician, physician and satirist John Arbuthnot is known for his satirical writings, which include a political allegory, The History of John Bull.

American actress Patricia Arquette has had a long career in film and television, continually showing her great range as a performer across genres.

Sprinter Evelyn Ashford is a five-time Olympian who became the first woman to run 100 meters in under 11 seconds and the oldest American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field in 1992.

John James Audubon was an American ornithologist, artist and naturalist known for his studies, drawings and paintings of North American birds.

As Emperor of Rome from 161-180, Marcus Aurelius kept the empire safe from the Parthians and Germans, but is best known for his intellectual pursuits.

Michele Bachmann is a congresswoman best known for her conservative Tea Party politics, and her candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

American movie, television and theater actor Alec Baldwin is the star of the sitcom 30 Rock, for which he received Golden Globes and an Emmy.

Sirimavo R.D. Bandaranaike was a Sri Lankan political leader, becoming the world’s first woman prime minister in 1960.

Head of the famous Barrymore acting family, Lionel Barrymore was one of the most important character actors of the early 29th century.

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi designed and executed New York City’s Statue of Liberty to mark the Franco-American alliance of 1778.

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet best known for his controversial volume of poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).

Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner made a record-breaking, supersonic skydive from 24 miles above the earth in October 2012.

Actor Sean Bean played the villains in Patriot Games and GoldenEye. More recently, he played Boromir in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Odysseus in Troy.

20th century Irish novelist, playwright and poet Samuel Beckett penned the play Waiting for Godot. In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Victoria Beckham is a fashion designer and singer chiefly known for her work with the Spice Girls and for being the wife of soccer star David Beckham.

Arnold Beckman was an American chemist who founded Beckman Instruments and funded the first silicon transistor company, giving rise to Silicon Valley.

Bill Belichick is head coach of the NFL's New England Patriots and widely considered one of the best coaches in football history.

Andy Bell is an English musician best known as the lead singer of the pop duo Erasure. 

Jean-Paul Belmondo is a French actor best known for starring in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

Benedict XVI served as pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 to 2013. He is best known for his rigid views on Catholicism and topics such as birth control and homosexuality.

Thomas Hart Benton was an esteemed 20th century painter and muralist renowned for works like “America Today” and “Persephone.”

Amanda Berry is a Cleveland, Ohio, woman who was held captive for ten years by reported kidnapper Ariel Castro. Berry escaped in 2013.

Valerie Bertinelli is an actress and spokesperson known for her roles in the TV sitcom One Day at a Time and Hot in Cleveland.

David Blaine is a street magician who has become known for endurance stunts, such as living in a glass box for days.

Alfred Blalock was a surgeon who pioneered corrective heart surgery in newborns and did groudbreaking work related to blood loss and shock.

Army nurse Florence Blanchfield is best known for her struggle to attain full military rank, and for equal rights in the military.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker is best known for his unorthodox approach to politics, for his revolutionizing reforms to Newark's crime rate and education, and for his personal willingness to help his constituents.

Lucrezia Borgia was an Italian noblewoman and daughter of Pope Alexander VI. A notorious reputation precedes her, and she is inextricably, and perhaps unfairly, linked to the crimes and debauchery of her family.

Fernando Botero is a Colombian artist known for creating bloated, oversized depictions of people, animals and elements of the natural world.

Plucked from obscurity when she stunned the judges on the UK TV show Britain's Got Talent, Susan Boyle has gone on to great singing success.

Zach Braff is an American actor known chiefly for his role on TV's Scrubs and in the big-screen film Oz the Great and Powerful.

Legendary screen presence Marlon Brando performed for more than 50 years and is famous for such films as A Streetcar Named Desire and The Godfather.

Abigail Breslin is one of the youngest actresses to receive an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film Little Miss Sunshine.

Con artist Sandra Bridewell, known as the "Black Widow," collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from lovers and friends, and was suspected of being connected to several mysterious deaths.

At age 29, Adrien Brody became the youngest person to win the Academy Award for best actor in 2003, for his role in Roman Polanski's The Pianist.

Charlotte Brontë was an English 19th century writer whose novel Jane Eyre is considered a classic of Western literature.

Michael S. Brown is a molecular geneticist who was co-awarded a 1985 Nobel Prize for his work on the metabolism of cholesterol in the human body.

James Buchanan was the 15th president of the United States. He served from 1857 to 1861, during the build-up to the Civil War.

Carol Burnett is a comedian and actress who had a long-running sketch and variety show, The Carol Burnett Show, in the 1960s and '70s.

African-American jockey Isaac Burns Murphy repeatedly won the Kentucky Derby and was posthumously inducted into the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame.

Amanda Bynes is a well-known TV and film actress who got her start as a child. She has starred in hits like The Amanda Show, What a Girl Wants and Hairspray.

Bruce Cabot built a sizeable career out of supporting roles, often playing villainous characters over a four-decade span.

Samantha Cameron is best known for being the wife of British Prime Minister David Cameron, and for her role as an executive for a well-known English stationery company.

Glen Campbell is best known for his country music career, and his later crossover success as an actor in films such as 1969's True Grit.

Jane Campion is a New Zealand film director and writer who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for The Piano in 1993. She also directed Bright Star.

Reeve Carney is a singer-songwriter and actor known for his work in the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and the Jeff Buckley biopic Mystery White Boy.

A chemist, W.H. Carothers worked for DuPont and with his research laid the foundation for the synthetic fiber industry.

Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, an 18th Century figure, is known for his archetypal reputation as a seducer of women.

David Cassidy is a singer and actor, most notably appearing as one of the stars of the musical television series The Partridge Family in the 1970s.

Artist Elizabeth Catlett celebrates African-American workers in sculptures and prints. She's known for works like "Negro Woman," "Sharecropper" and "Survivor."

Actor/director/producer Jackie Chan's unique blend of impressive martial arts and screwball physical comedy has helped make him an international film star.

Lon Chaney was an actor known for his use of makeup to great effect in such films as The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Costa Rican-born Franklin Chang-Díaz was the first Hispanic-American astronaut. He made several trips to space for NASA and developed plasma propulsion.

Charlie Chaplin was a comedic British actor who became one of the biggest stars of the 20th century's silent-film era.

Samuel Chase was an associate Supreme Court justice until he was impeached. His political views gradually turned from support of states’ rights to Federalism.

British serial killer John Christie murdered at least six women, including his wife, before being arrested and hanged in 1953.

Actress Julie Christie won an Academy Award for her role in Darling, and earned a second nomination for her performance in McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Tom Clancy is a New York Times Best Selling American author, best known for his thrillers that include themes of espionage, military, science, politics and technology.

Anthony Clark is an American actor and comedian known for playing Greg Warner on the CBS series Yes, Dear.

Kelly Clarkson is an American Idol winner who went on to record several top ten hits including "Breakaway," "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "Because of You."

Henry Clay was an American statesman. He promoted several major governmental compromises to balance the rights of free and slave states.

Jamaican musician Jimmy Cliff is best known for introducing reggae to an international audience.

British actress Jenna-Louise Coleman is best known for playing the Doctor's companion, Oswin, on the popular sci-fi BBC program Doctor Who, and for playing bad girl Jasmine Thomas on the British soap Emmerdale.

Gary Condit served in the U.S. House of Representatives and is considered a conservative Democrat. He was inconclusively linked to the disappearance of federal intern Chandra Levy.

Director, producer and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola is best known for creating The Godfather film series starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino.

Roger Corman is a film director and producer who helmed B-Movie classics and helped launch the careers of James Cameron, John Sayles, Ron Howard and others.

Lucy Craft Laney was a school teacher and educator who opened a school for African-American students in the South in the late 1800s.

David Cross is a comedian and actor who has appeared on TV's Mr. Show, The Ben Stiller Show and Arrested Development.