May

Mother (Mary)

Jones (1830) labor leader of Appalachian coal miners

M. Scott Carpenter (1925) American astronaut and oceanographer

Who shares my birthday?

Is your birthday in May? The names of some of the famous people born in
May are shown on the calendar on this page and the next. What do you
know about the person who shares your birthday?

Catherine the

Great (1729) German princess who became empress of Russia

Bing Crosby

(1904) American singer

Golda Meir (1898) prime minister of Israel

Pete Seeger (1919) American folk singer and composer

Horace Mann

(1796) American educator

Thomas Huxley

(1825) English biologist

Karl Marx (1818)

German philosopher, revolutionary, and writer

Nellie Bly (1867?) American newspaper reporter (real name Elizabeth
Cochrane)

Robert E. Peary (1856) American who discovered the North Pole

Willie Mays (1931)

American baseball player; third greatest home run hitter

Robert Browning (1812) English poet

John Unitas (1933) American who became one of the greatest football
quarterbacks

Harry S. Truman (1884) 33rd President of the United States

Fulton J. Sheen

(1895) American religious leader

John Brown (1800) American antislavery reformer

Sir James Barrie

(1860) Scottish author who wrote Peter Pan

Fred Astaire (1899) American entertainer

Ella Tambussi

Grasso (1919) first woman governor of Connecticut

Ottmar

Mergenthaler

(1854) German- American inventor of Linotype (a machine that sets
metal type)

Irving Berlin (1888) American songwriter

Florence Nightingale (1820) English nurse; founded modern
professional nursing

Yogi Berra (1925) American baseball player and manager

Maria Theresa (1717) Austrian empress

Joe Louis (1914) the “Brown Bomber,” American boxing champion

Gabriel Fahrenheit

(1686) German scientist; developed the Fahrenheit temperature scale

L. Frank Baum (1856) American author of Oz books

Pierre Curie (1859)

French scientist who, with his wife, Marie, discovered radium

William Seward (1801) American statesman who purchased Alaska from
Russia

Olga Korbut (1955) Soviet Olympic gold medal gymnast

Edward Jenner

(1749) English

doctor; discovered > vaccination against n smallpox

Alfonso XIII (1886) king of Spain

Bertrand Russell

(1872) British philosopher and mathematician

Dame Margot Fonteyn (1919) British ballerina

Dame Nellie Melba (1861) Australian opera singer

Lorraine

Hansberry (1930)

American playwright who wrote A Raisin in the Sun

Antoinette Blackwell (1825) first ordained woman minister in U.S.

Sigrid Undset (1882) Norwegian author who won a

Nobel Prize

Elisha Root (1808) American mechanic and inventor

Glenn Hammond

Curtiss (1879) American aviator and aeronautical inventor

Richard Wagner

(1813) German musical composer

Arthur Conan

Doyle (1859) British author of the Sherlock Holmes stories

Carolus Linnaeus

(1707) Swedish botanist

Mary Cassatt (1845)

American painter best known for pictures of mothers and children

Victoria (1819) British queen who ruled for 63 years

Jane Byrne (1934) American politician; first woman mayor of Chicago

Ralph Waldo

Emerson (1803)

American writer

Beverly Sills (1929)

American singer

Sally Ride (1951) American astronaut; first American woman in space

John Wayne (1907) American movie actor

Julia Ward Howe

(1819) American poet;

wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

Rachel Carson

(1907) American biologist who wrote The Sea Around Us

Jim Thorpe (1888) American Indian who was a great athlete

Patrick White (1912) Australian author who won a Nobel Prize

Patrick Henry

(1736) American patriot

John F. Kennedy

(1917) 35th President of the United States

Rosa Raisa (1893) Polish-born opera singer

Benny Goodman

(1909) American clarinetist and bandleader

Walt Whitman (1819) American poet; wrote Leaves of Grass

Elizabeth

Coatsworth (1893) American author of books for children