Famous October Birthdays a to z

Bud Abbott was a comedian best known for playing the "straight man" of the Abbott and Costello comedy duo.

Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich is a Russian business tycoon, one of the richest men in the world and owner of the Chelsea Football Club.

Gerry Adams is president of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

John Adams was a Founding Father, the first vice president of the United States and the second president. His son, John Quincy Adams, was the sixth president.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is best known as the controversial sixth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Syed Ahmed Khan was an Indian educator, politician and Islamic reformer whose work inspired a new generation of Muslims and pioneered the revival of Indian Islam in the late 19th century.

Akbar the Great, Muslim emperor of India, established a sprawling kingdom through military conquests, but is known for his policy of religious tolerance.

Hafez al-Assad served as president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He is widely criticized for his brutal tactics but also praised for stabilizing the country.

Egyptian Hassan al-Banna was the founder the Muslim Brotherhood, with goals of expelling the British from Egypt and re-establishing the Caliphate.

Actress Jane Alexander won Emmy Awards for her roles in Playing for Time and Warm Springs. In 1992, she became chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Rodolfo Anaya is a Mexican-American writer best known for his Chicano-themed books such as Bless Me, Ultima, Heart of Aztlán and Tortuga.

Julie Andrews is an Oscar and Tony Award-winning actress and singer famous for her roles in The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins.

Hannah Arendt gained much attention for her writings on totalitarianism and Jewish affairs after World War II.

Chester A. Arthur was 21st president of the United States. Arthur was vice president at the time President Garfield was assassinated, and acceded to the presidency thereafter.

Jean Arthur was an American actress best known for her roles in films such as Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and The More The Merrier.

Ashanti is best known for adding her R&B vocals to hit songs by popular rappers, including Fat Joe's "What's Luv" and Ja Rule's "Down 4 U."

Jeff Ashton is a Florida state attorney who was the head prosecutor in the 2011 Casey Anthony trial.

Italian-American bodybuilder Charles Atlas founded a highly successful mail-order business from his patented "Dynamic-Tension" exercise program.

Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan is known for his roles in action movies like Zanjeer, and for hosting the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

George Bancroft was known as the "father of U.S. history." His work, History of the United States, was the first comprehensive study of U.S. History.

Imamu Amiri Baraka is an African-American poet and scholar. He has served as professor emeritus of Africana Studies at the State Unversity of New York at Stony Brook.

Nazi leader Klaus Barbie was head of the Gestapo in Lyon from 1942 to 1944, and was held responsible for the death and deportation thousands.

Writer and filmmaker Clive Barker is largely considered a master of the horror genre. His Books of Blood and Hellraiser films are among his best-known works.

Ma Barker is best known for supposedly leading the criminal behavior of her four sons.

Sometimes called Mr. Untouchable, Leroy 'Nicky' Barnes became one of the biggest drug dealers in New York City during the 1970s.

Edith Ewing Beale, also known as "Big Edie," was aunt to Jackie Kennedy, and resident of the decrepit mansion called Grey Gardens.

Swimmer Amanda Beard competed in four Olympic Games, the first in 1996 when she was just 14 years old. She appeared on the cover of Playboy in 2007.

Roberto Benigni is an Italian actor, director and producer best known for his 1997 Oscar winning film La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful).

Perhaps the most famous actress of all time, Sarah Bernhardt is regarded as one of the finest actors of the 19th century, appearing on the stage and in some of the earliest films ever produced.

Chuck Berry was one of the most popular and influential performers of rhythm-and-blues and rock 'n' roll music during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. He's known for songs like "Johnny B. Goode" and "My Ding-a-Ling."

A two-time French prime minister, Georges Bidault was active in the French Resistance during World War II but later fled France after a dispute with de Gaulle.

French composer Georges Bizet is best known for the realistic opera Carmen, a work that established itself as the model of opéra comique.

Art Blakey was an influential jazz drummer associated with the modern bebop style. He played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious monk and countless other jazz greats.

Lorena Bobbitt is best known for severing her husband's penis while he slept, in retaliation for his sexual assaults against her.

Niels Bohr was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and humanitarian whose revolutionary theories on atomic structures helped shape research worldwide.

Arna Bontemps was an African-American author best known for his novels, children’s books and poems written during the 1930s-1970s.

Tom Bosley was an award-winning American actor best known for playing Howard Cunningham in the 1970s hit TV sitcom Happy Days.

Danny Boyle is a British film director whose films include Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, and 127 Hours.

American actor Peter Boyle is best known as the grumpy dad on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, a role he held for eleven years.

Self-described ‘street reporter’ Jimmy Breslin wrote columns for a sequence of New York papers. Also a novelist, he won a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Dr. Joyce Brothers was a famous psychologist and multimedia personality known for dispensing frank advice on relationships, intimacy, sexuality and self-worth.

Jackson Browne is a folk singer-songwriter who released numerous hit records in the 1970s and '80s, including Late for the Sky. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

Lenny Bruce was an American stand-up comic and satirist who became a target for prosecutors and a poster boy for freedom of speech.

James M. Buchanan is an American economist best known for his work on public choice theory, for which he receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986.

Art Buchwald is known for writing humor columns for Paris newspaper The Herald Tribune, and for winning a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in 1982.

Angelo Buono was a serial killer known as the “Hillside Strangler,” who was convicted of murdering nine women in the late 1970s.

David Cameron is best known for being a revolutionary leader of Britain's Conservative Party, a quality that eventually won him the election as prime minister in 2010.

Helen Churchill Candee was a writer and a survivor of the RMS Titanic disaster.

Comedian John Candy was a regular performer for the Second City comedy troupe’s TV show, SCTV, and co-starred with Tom Hanks in the movie Splash.

Rod Carew is a former Major League Baseball first baseman, second baseman and coach who played for the Minnesota Twins and the California Angels. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.

Scientist George Carruthers created inventions, such as the ultraviolet camera, or spectograph, which was used by NASA in the 1972 Apollo 16 flight, revealing the mysteries of space and the Earth's atmosphere.

One of television's best known personalities, Johnny Carson hosted "The Tonight Show" for 30 years. His farewell show in 1992 drew 50 million viewers.

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States (1977-81) and later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary was an active abolitionist and the first female African-American newspaper editor in North America.

French jurist and lawyer René Cassin is best known for his involvement in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Cassie Chadwick was best known for posing as the illegitimate daughter of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, subsequently convincing banks to loan her millions of dollars.

Bobby Charlton is best known for being one of England's most accomplished soccer player of all time.

Chevy Chase is a comedic actor who is best know for his appearances on Saturday Night Live and his starring roles in the films Caddyshack and Fletch.

Chubby Checker was an early rock 'n' roller who had a hit with the song and dance sensation, "The Twist."

Andrei Chikatilo was a former school teacher who murdered more than 50 young people in the Soviet Union.

Alice Childress is an African-American playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She is also the author of several young adult novels.

Comedian John Cleese is most famous for his work with the comedy group Monty Python, and for the popular British television series Fawlty Towers.

Actor Montgomery Clift starred in films like Red River (1948), A Place in the Sun (1951), and From Here To Eternity (1953).

When Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2001, she became the only American first lady to hold national office. She became the 67th U.S. secretary of state in 2009, serving until 2013.

Levi Coffin was an American abolitionist who assisted thousands of runaway slaves on their flight to freedom.

Sacha Baron Cohen is a British comedian and actor who is widely known for his portrayal of three unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat and Brüno.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet of the Romantic Movement, best known for his allegorical sea-faring poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Michael Collins is a former astronaut who was part of the Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 missions, the latter of which included the first lunar landing in history.

Michael Collins was a hero of the Irish struggle for independence, who directed guerrilla warfare during the intensification of the Anglo-Irish War.

Famed Italian explorer Christopher Columbus discovered the "New World" of the Americas on an expedition sponsored by King Ferdinand of Spain in 1492.

Actor Jackie Coogan played Charlie Chaplin's sidekick in the silent film The Kid and Uncle Fester on the TV sitcom The Addams Family.

British navigator James Cook discovered and charted New Zealand and Australia's Great Barrier Reef on his ship Endeavor, and later disproved the existence of the fabled southern continent Terra Australis. His voyages provided the first accurate map of the Pacific.

As head principal of the Institute for Colored Youth, Fanny Coppin innovated a practice-teaching system and an elaborate industrial-training department.