Famous June Birthdays a to z

The most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II, Audie Murphy returned home a hero and became an actor, starring in his own story, To Hell and Back.

Elon Musk is an entrepreneur known for co-founding Tesla Motors, X.com—which later became PayPal—and SpaceX, the last of which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft on May 22, 2012.

Actor and singer Jim Nabors came to fame playing the lovable and bumbling Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show and later on the spinoff sitcom Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

Spanish-born Rafael Nadal is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional tennis players of all time, completing the career Grand Slam by age 24, the youngest in history to achieve the feat.

Prime Minister of Hungary Imre Nagy withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact and led Hungarians against the Soviets in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

Dave Navarro is a guitar player and TV personality known for his years with the band Jane's Addiction.

Liam Neeson is an Irish actor known for his strong leading-man roles and for his role as Qui-Gon Jinn in the three prequels to Star Wars.

Anastasia was the daughter of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II. After she and her family were executed, rumors claimed that she might have survived.

Civil rights activist and ACLU alum Eleanor Holmes Norton serves as a non-voting delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.

Actor Chris O'Donnell co-starred with Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, played Robin in two Batman flicks and now stars on the television series NCIS: Los Angeles.

Milo O'Shea was an Irish actor known for starring on the BBC sitcom Me Mammy and in Staircase, Broadway's first serious depiction of homosexual men.

St. John of the Cross was a Spanish poet whose work is considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature. He was glorified as a saint in 1726 by Pope Bendict XIII.

Ashley Olsen, along with her twin sister Mary-Kate, came to stardom as a baby on TV's Full House, then built a vast media and fashion empire by the age of 21.

George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, and critic most famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949).

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities.

Les Paul was a musician who designed a solid-body guitar in 1941, which then was a new type of instrument.

American businessman Ross Perot ran for the U.S. presidency as an independent candidate twice, in 1992 and 1996. He is one of the most successful third-party candidates in American history.

Peter the Great was a Russian czar in the late 17th century, who is best known for his extensive reforms in an attempt to establish Russia as a great nation.

Swimmer Michael Phelps has set the record for winning the most medals, 22, of any Olympic athlete in history.

Singer Kellie Pickler appeared on American Idol in 2006 and has since released several hit country albums, including Small Town Girl and 100 Proof.

Comedian Joe Piscopo joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1980 where he was known for his impressions of celebrities like Frank Sinatra.

Actress Natalie Portman won the 2010 Academy Award for her role as a dancer in Black Swan.

Grace Potter is a singer and musician who fronts the band the Nocturnals. She also sang on the hit duet "You and Tequila" with country singer Kenny Chesney.

Sharon Preston is a media planner and author who has said that she is the daughter of legendary jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.

American musician Prince achieved wide fame in the 1980s with 1999 and Purple Rain, the latter album sharing a title with a film starring the musician.

Prince William is the eldest son of Princess Diana and Prince Charles of Wales and is next in line for the British throne after his father.

Zachary Quinto starred as the main villain on the popular supernatural television show Heroes, and has played Spock in J.J. Abrams's rebooted Star Trek film series.

Gilda Radner was an award-winning actress and comedian known for her work on Saturday Night Live. She was married to fellow comedian Gene Wilder.

Sri Lankan billionaire Raj Rajaratnam was arrested for insider trading in 2009 as part of the largest ever SEC case against a hedge fund.

Jeannette Rankin was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress. She helped pass the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and was a committed pacifist.

Jerry John Rawlings ruled Ghana twice, first in 1979 after a military coup, and then again from 1981 until 2001, as the result of free elections.

Elizabeth Reaser is an American actress best known for her roles on the show Grey's Anatomy and in the Twilight film series.

L.A. Reid is an American music executive and producer. He's also starred as a judge on the music competition show The X Factor.

Nick Rhodes is the keyboardist for Duran Duran, one of the biggest bands of the 1980s.

Comedian Joan Rivers created a Grammy nominated comedy album, launched a syndicated daytime talk show, and went on to win a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos received the Premio Cervantes prize in 1989 for books like I, the Supreme (1947).

David Rockefeller is an American banker and philanthropist, the youngest of the five sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr.

From The Sound of Music to Oklahoma! to South Pacific, Richard Rodgers helped change the face of Broadway musicals, giving them stories and making them both memorable and "hum-able."

Pop singer Draco Rosa was a member of Menudo and has released a number of successful solo albums in a variety of different languages.

April Ross is a beach volleyball player who, along with teammate Jennifer Kessy, is a dominant figure on the international circuit. Ross and Kessy took the silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

The daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini, Isabella Rossellini is an Italian-born actress known for such films as Blue Velvet, Cousins, and Immortal Beloved.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is best known as an influential 18th-century philosopher who wrote the acclaimed work A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.

Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter who is best known for his religious and mythological compositions, with an emphasis on sensuality.

In 1960, Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympic Games.

Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist best known for the novels Midnight's Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1988), for which he was accused of blasphemy against Islam.

Theater and film actress Rosalind Russell costarred in His Girl Friday with Cary Grant, and played Auntie Mame in both the Broadway play and the movie version.

Daryl Sabara is an American actor best known for his role in the movie franchise Spy Kids.

Zoe Saldana is a trained dancer who's become a leading actress in Hollywood, having starred in blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Trek and Avatar.

Composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic won a Grammy Award in 1986 for their recording of Witold Lutoslawski's "Symphony No. 3".

Aung San Suu Kyi is an opposition leader in her home country of Myanmar and the winner of the  1991 Nobel Prize for Peace.

A film and TV actress Mia Sara is best known for her role as Sloan Peterson, the girlfriend of Ferris Bueller in John Hughes's 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Jean-Paul Sartre was a 20th century intellectual, writer and activist who put forth pioneering ideas on existentialism.

Singer Nicole Scherzinger is the former lead singer of the successful all-girl band the Pussycat Dolls.

Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was part of the Viennese Sezession movement with works like "The Self Seer" (1911) and "Embrace" (1917).

American swimmer Allison Schmitt is best known for her medal-earning performances at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where she won three gold medals, one silver and one bronze.

Maurice Sendak is a Caldecott award-winning children's book author and illustrator best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are.

Faisal Shahzad made headlines May 1, 2010, when he attempted to detonate a homemade car bomb in New York City's Times Square.

A hip-hop legend, with explicit and controversial lyrics, Tupac Shakur was embroiled in a feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers.

Serial killer Arthur Shawcross murdered 11 women from 1988 to 1990 in upstate New York, earning the nickname "The Genessee River Killer."

Ally Sheedy is a film actress who became famous in the early 1980s for her roles in films such as War Games, The Breakfast Club, and St. Elmo's Fire.

Blake Shelton is a chart-topping country music star also known for appearing on TV’s The Voice.

Born in 1957, Mona Simpson spent her early years in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She moved with her mother to Los Angeles as a teenager. While earning her M.F.A. degree at Columbia, Simpson became an editor at the Paris Review. She won accolades for her first novel Anywhere But Here (1986). After that initial success, Simpson has continued to produce well-regarded literary works, including My Hollywood (2010).

American socialite Wallis Simpson became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. Edward abdicated the throne to marry her, a period known as the Abdication Crisis.

Nancy Sinatra is an American singer best known as the daughter of Frank Sinatra and for her 1966 hit single These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.