29 November: today's birthdays

• Louisa May Alcott - American novelist. She wrote Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys
• Busby Berkeley - American film director and choreographer. Best-known for his kaleidoscopic choreographies
• Jean-Martin Charcot - French neurologist. He is considered the founder of modern neurology
• Don Cheadle - American actor and producer, born Donald Frank Cheadle Jr.. He starred in the film Hotel Rwanda, in 2004, directed by Irish director Terry George
• Jacques Chirac - French politician. He served as 22nd President of France
• Joel Coen - American film director and screenwriter, brother of Ethan Coen. They are known as the Coen brothers
• Gaetano Donizetti - Italian composer. He wrote about seventy operas (L'elisir d'amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale)

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• Theodor Escherich - German-Austrian bacteriologist and pediatrician. He discovered the bacterium Escherichia coli
• Jeff Fahey - American actor. He was Captain Frank Lapidus on TV series Lost 
• Robert Hale - American politician
• Niccolò Paganini - Italian composer, violinist and guitarist, one of the most prominent of his time

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  Classical music: learn to pronounce all the Italian terms
• David Rintoul - Pseudonym of David Wilson, stage and television actor 
• James Rosenquist - American artist, one of the major artists in the pop-art movement
• Jean-Philippe Toussaint - Belgian actor, film director and screenwriter