25 April: today's birthdays

  • Grant Achatz - American chef
  • Clarissa Burt - American model and actress
  • Oliver Cromwell - English military commander and politician
  • Johan Cruijff - Dutch soccer coach and former player
  • Tim Duncan - American basketball player
  • First lady of song - Nickname given to Ella Fitzgerald, American singer
  • Ella Fitzgerald - American jazz singer
  • Guglielmo Marconi - Italian physicist and inventor
  • Felipe Massa - Brazilian racing driver
  • Al Pacino - American actor, born Alfredo James Pacino. He won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1993, for his role in the film Scent of a Woman
  • Dominique Strauss-Kahn - French economist and politician
  • Bertrand Tavernier - French film director, screenwriter and producer
  • Cy Twombly - American artist, born Edwin Parker Twombly Jr.
  • Albert Uderzo - Albert Uderzo was a French comic book artist, who was the illustrator, and creator, alongside René Goscinny, of the widely popular comic book series, Astérix. Uderzo was born from Italian parents and his birth name was Alberto Aleandro Uderzo. 
    The story behind Alberto Uderzo's name is that his father, Silvio, had wanted to name him Albert, however, when registering his name, the government official could not understand Silvio's thick Italian accent, who pronounced Albert the Italian way, as Alberto. Because of this, Albert's name was registered as Alberto. Uderzo successively officially changed his name to Albert. So there's a small story on the importance of pronunciation. On that note, the pronunciation of Albert's last name changed as well, from an Italian pronunciation of oo-dehr-tso to a French oo-dehr-zoh, as if there were an accent on the end.
    So the correct pronunciation of Albert Uderzo in French is Ahl-bear Oo-dehr-zoh. The "t" at the end of Albert in French is not pronounced, and the -zoh sound at the end of Uderzo must be pronounced as if there were an accent at the end of the name.
  • Renée Zellweger - American actress, born Renée Kathleen Zellweger. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2003 for her role in the film Cold Mountain 
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