12 August: today's birthdays

  • Casey Affleck - American actor, born Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt. He won an Oscar for Best Actor in 2017 for his role as Lee Chandler in Manchester by the Sea, directed by Kenneth Lonergan. He is the brother of Ben Affleck
  • Jacinto Benavente - Spanish dramatist, born Jacinto Benavente y Martínez, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1922
  • John Cadbury - English founder of chocolate company Cadbury
  • John Cazale - American actor. He was Fredo Corleone in The Godfather saga, directed by Francis Ford Coppola
  • Chen Kaige - Chinese film director. He directed Farewell My Concubine
  • ​Matthijs de Ligt - Dutch professional footballer 
  • Cara Delevingne - English fashion model and actress, born Cara Jocelyn Delevingne 
  • Cecil B. DeMille - American film director, born Cecil Blount DeMille. He directed The Greatest Show on Earth and Union Pacific
  • Laurent Fignon - French racing cyclist
  • François Hollande - French politician and 24th President of France, born François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande
  • Klaas Jan Huntelaar - Dutch soccer player
  • Mark Knopfler - Scottish guitarist and singer-songwriter, born Mark Freuder Knopfler. He is the brother of David Knopfler and co-founder of Dire Straits
  • Peter Krause - American actor and producer, known for his role as Nate Fisher in the TV series Six Feet Under
  • Percy Mayfield - American singer-songwriter. He composed the famous song Hit the Road Jack
  • Pat Metheny - American jazz guitarist
  • Khris Middleton - American basketball player who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA.
  • Ralph Nelson - American film director, screenwriter and producer
  • John Poindexter - American politician
  • Pete Sampras - Former American tennis player
  • Erwin Schrödinger - Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and mathematician who is considered one of the fathers of quantum mechanics. In particular, he is known for his elaboration of the Schrödinger equation, for which Schrödinger won the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933. Popularly, he is also known for his thought experiment known as Schrödinger's cat. Schrödinger also made a number of contributions to the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, color theory and general relativity.
    The correct pronunciation of Erwin Schrödinger is EHR-veen SHROE-deeng-uhr.
    In Erwin, the first syllable, -EHR is stressed. The "E" at the beginning of Erwin is pronounced with an open "eh" sound. In the second syllable, the "w" is pronounced like a "v" and the "i" is pronounced with a long "e" or "ee" sound.
    In Schrödinger, the stress is pronounced on the first syllable, -SHROE. The "sch" is pronounced simply as an "sh" sound. The "ö", which has been transcribed as "oe" is pronounced roughly like the "ear" in the word "heard", but with a much subtler pronunciation of the "r". The "i" in the second syllable is also pronounced like a long "e", and in the last syllable, the "er" is pronounced with a "uhr" sound.
  • George Soros - Hungarian-born American entrepreneur, politician and philanthropist, born György Schwartz
  • Robert Southey - English poet and writer. He was a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. His surname has two different pronunciations 
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