Famous September Birthdays a to z

Mickey Cohen became the West Coast racket boss in 1947, after his mentor and predecessor, Bugsy Siegel, was assassinated.

Actress and singer Zendaya Coleman first came to fame in 2010 as one of the stars of the television comedy Shake It Up.

John Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer, and is an iconic figure of 20th century jazz.

Claudette Colvin was a civil rights activist in Alabama during the 1950s. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest.

Confucius was an influential Chinese philosopher, teacher and political figure known for his popular aphorisms and for his models of social interaction.

Charitable New Orleans heartthrob Harry Connick, Jr. is popularly known as both a jazz musician and an actor.

Child actor Jackie Cooper was in the Our Gang short film series and the Little Rascals television show. He also starred in the 1931 film The Champ.

James Fenimore Cooper was a 19th-century American novelist, best known for his Leatherstocking Tales, which included The Last of the Mohicans.

David Copperfield is a world-famous magician whose tricks include making the Statue of Liberty disappear and walking through the Great Wall of China.

American television icon Don Cornelius created and hosted Soul Train, which spent more than 30 years on the air.

John Warcup Cornforth is an Australian scientist who won the 1975 Nobel Prize for his research in stereochemistry and enzyme-based synthesis.

French actress Marion Cotillard won an Academy Award for her performance as Edith Piaf in the film La Vie En Rose. She also starred in the acclaimed films Inception and The Dark Knight Rises.

Dave Coulier is a comedic actor who played Joey Gladstone on the long-running TV sitcom Full House.

David Coverdale founded Whitesnake, a rock band that achieved wide fame in the late 1980s, with the No. 1 song "Here I Go Again."

Hawley Crippen became the first criminal to be caught with the aid of wireless communication when police arrested him in 1910 for murdering his wife.

American actress Jane Curtin rose to fame in 1975 as one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live. She went on to star in the popular sitcoms Kate & Allie (1984) and 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996). 

Children's author Roald Dahl wrote the kids' classics Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, among other famous works. He was married to actress Patricia Neal.

Chemist John Dalton is credited with pioneering modern atomic theory. He was also the first to study color blindness.

One of Spain's most famous writers, Miguel de Cervantes created one of the world's greatest literary masterpieces, Don Quixote, in the early 1600s.

Charles Coulomb was a French engineer and physicist who made pioneering discoveries in his field and came up with the theory called Coulomb’s Law.

Soccer player Ronaldo starred for the Brazilian national team and several European clubs over the course of a career that spanned nearly two decades.

Brian De Palma is a writer-director whose career has been marked by both hits and misses, with such films as Carrie and Bonfire of the Vanities.

Cosimo de' Medici was the "Elder" and start of the Medici dynasty that ruled Florence (Italy) from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance, and after.

Michael DeBakey was an American cardiovascular surgeon and surgical pioneer.

Actress Yvonne De Carlo was Moses' wife in DeMille's The Ten Commandments, but is better known for playing the matriarch on TV's The Munsters.

In 1974, Ronald DeFeo killed his entire family, including his parents, brothers and sisters, while they were sleeping in their beds.

American dancer and choreographer Agnes DeMille further developed the narrative aspect of dance in her choreography of musical plays and ballets.

Alberto DeSalvo is best known for confessing to be the Boston Strangler.

Angie Dickinson is an American actress on film and television best known for her roles in Dressed to Kill, Ocean's Eleven and on the hit 1970s television series Police Woman.

Howard Dietz was a songwriter and the creator of the famous MGM lion mascot.

Grammy Award-winning folk singer and songwriter Ani DiFranco's eclectic musical style and politically charged lyrics have made her both a feminist and rock icon.

Hilda Doolittle (or H.D.) was a poet of the avant-garde Imagist movement and was openly bisexual.

Michael Douglas is an American actor best known for his roles on TV's Streets of San Francisco and in the films Wall Street, Fatal Attraction and Wonder Boys.

Actress Hilary Duff came to fame as the title character on the Disney Channel series Lizzie McGuire. Her debut pop record, Metamorphosis, went triple-platinum.

Kevin Durant is a top-scoring American professional basketball player, who plays for the National Basketball Association's Oklahoma City Thunder franchise.

Andrea Dworkin was an American feminist and author, an outspoken critic of sexual politics, particularly of the victimizing effects of pornography on women.

Golden-Globe winning film and television actress Jenna Elfman played the free-spirited wife Dharma opposite Thomas Gibson on the popular sitcom Dharma and Greg.

T.S. Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.

Cass "Mama Cass" Elliot was known for her heavyset figure, and was one of four members of the late 1960s pop sensation The Mamas and the Papas.

Alton Ellis was a Jamaican singer and songwriter with a smooth vocal style, known widely as the "Godfather of Rocksteady," a slow, soulful Jamaican music genre.

American actor Peter Falk is best known for his role as the television detective Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo.

Comedian Jimmy Fallon first rose to fame on Saturday Night Live and now hosts Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist of the American South, who wrote challenging prose and created the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. He is known for novels like Sartoris.

Christopher Ferguson became famous when NASA selected him to fly aboard Atlantis on the last ever space shuttle launch.

Physicist Enrico Fermi built the prototype of a nuclear reactor and worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb.

When Carly Fiorina was hired as Hewlett-Packard's CEO, she was the first woman to take control of a Fortune 100 company.

American short-story writer and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his turbulent personal life and his famous novel The Great Gatsby.

June Foray is an American actress best known for her voice work on classic Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera television shows.

Lita Ford is a British-born, American musician, who was the lead guitarist in the all-girl hard rock band The Runaways.

Rube Foster was a baseball player and manager who organized the Negro National League, the first long-lasting professional league for African American players.

Jean Foucault was a French physicist and inventor best known for inventing the Foucault pendulum.

American comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who hails from the South, is known for spoofing "rednecks." He starred in the situation comedy The Jeff Foxworthy Show.

Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier blazed a trail in the 1940s and 50s for African American academics who studied black culture.

Lyricist and movie producer Arthur Freed brought us Singin' in the Rain (1952), An American in Paris (1952) and Gigi (1958).

Martin Freeman is known for his role on the British television series The Office, and for his performance in 2012's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Writer James Frey wrote the book, A Million Little Pieces. When The Smoking Gun discredited the book as a memoir, he had to apologize on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Dallas Friday is a champion professional wakeboarder. She won silver and gold medals at the X-Games and an ESPY Award for Best Female Sport Athlete.

J.F.C. Fuller was a 20th century British military officer, author, advocate of tank warfare and supporter of fascist movements.

James Gandolfini is an American actor best known for his role as a mobster in the hit 1999 HBO television series The Sopranos.

Greta Garbo is best known for her acting career, in both silent and talking films before World War II.

Janeane Garofalo is an Emmy Award-nominated TV and film actress, comedian and political activist known for work like Reality Bites and The Truth About Cats & Dogs.

Robert Gates served as director of the CIA under George H.W. Bush before serving as secretary of defense under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Maximillian Alberto George, commonly known as Max George, is a British singer best known as a member of the successful boy band the Wanted.

George Gershwin was one of the most significant American composers of the 20th century, known for popular stage and screen numbers as well as classical compositions.

A successful singer and songwriter, Barry Gibb has sold millions of records as a member of the Bee Gees.

British novelist William Golding wrote the critically acclaimed classic Lord of the Flies, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.

Sidney Leslie Goodwin died as a small child in the sinking of the Titanic, with his identity being discovered almost a century later via DNA analysis.