30 April: today's birthdays

  • Akon - Senegalese-born American singer and songwriter
  • Jacques Audiard -  French film director and screenwriter. He directed A Prophet, Rust and Bone and Dheepan 
  • Eugen Bleuler - Swiss psychiatrist
  • Jaume Cabré - Catalan philologist, novelist and screenwriter
  • Jane Campion - New Zealand film director and screenwriter. She won an Oscar for Writing Original Screenplay 
  • Ana de Armas - Cuban and Spanish actress. She became internationally known, portraying Marilyn Monroe in the film Blonde (2022). Anas de Armas is pronounced AH-nahs deh AHR-mahs.
  • Kirsten Dunst - American actress, singer and model
  • Gal Gadot - Gal Gadot is an Israeli actress and model who is one of the highest-paid actors in the world. She began her career as a model, when she won Miss Israel at the age of 18. She subsequently served in the Israeli military for two years.
    Gal Gadot began her international movie career with the film Fast & Furious, but gained international recognition when she starred as Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman and Justice League.
    The correct pronunciation of Gal Gadot is Gal Gah-doht. Sometimes Gadot is mispronounced because, upon seeing the end of her name, -dot, people assume that it is pronounced with a silent "t" like in French. However, Gal Gadot is from Israel and her name is Hebrew, so the "t" in Gadot is pronounced.
  • Johnny Galecki - American actor born in Belgium of Irish, Italian, and Polish descent. He is best known for his role as David Healy in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory
  • Carl Friedrich Gauss - Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician and physicist and is often considered as one of the greatest and most influential mathematicians since antiquity.
    Amongst the many fields that Gauss influenced are Algebra, Geometry, Astronomy and magnetism. He is commonly known for his work in probability theory and statistics for the Gaussian or normal distribution, also known as the bell-curve.
    The correct pronunciation of Carl Friedrich Gauss is Kah(r)l Free-dreeh Gah-ooss.
    First of all, Carl is pronounced like you would in English but wuth the difference that the "ah" is an open "ah" sound and the "r", as often is the case in German, is barely pronounced.
    Gauss, second name, Friedrich, is pronounced as Free-dreeh, with two "weak" "r"s and a final "h" that is pronounced while exhaling.
    Lastly, Gauss is pronounced as Gah-ooss. Gauss has been subdivided into two distinct syllables for simplicity's sake. The first part of Gauss is pronounced with an open "ah" sound. It is then followed by a double "o" and then a double "s" sound. It is important to pronounce the two syllables distinctly, without uniting them into a single sound that would end up being pronounced as "gaws".
  • Pierre-Felix Guattari - French philosopher and psychoanalyst
  • Jaroslav Hašek - Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech anarchist, writer and satirist who is best known for his novel The Good Soldier Švejk, a satirical dark comedy set during the World War I. It is considered one of the first anti-war novels and had enormous influence on the genre, including on the famed novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
    The correct pronunciation of Jaroslav Hašek in Czech is Yah-roh-slaf Hah-shek.
  • Sam Heughan - Scottish actor. He is best known for his role as Jamie Fraser in TV series Outlander
  • James Hewitt - Former lover of Lady Diana Spencer
  • Nicolas Hulot - French journalist, environmental activist, and politician
  • Cloris Leachman - American actress and comedian. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1972.
  • Ferenc Lehár - Austro-Hungarian composer, also known as Franz Lehár
  • Don Schollander - American former swimmer
  • Antonio Tejero - Spanish politician
  • ​Marc-André ter Stegen - German professional footballer 
  • Elio Toaff - Italian rabbi
  • Joachim von Ribbentrop - German politician during Nazi Germany
  • Lars von Trier - Danish film director. He directed Dogville, Melancholia, and Nymphomaniac 
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