Honorable Mention: January 6, 1913: Loretta Young. A star actress of the 1930s and '40s, she was an early TV star hosting The Loretta Young Show in the 1950s.
Honorable Mention: January 6, 1939: Valeriy Lobanovskyi. He's a sports legend that most Americans have never heard of. But he was one of the most innovative managers soccer has ever had, creating a form of "Total Football" at the same time that Rinus Michels was doing it at Ajax Amsterdam.
Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, he led Dynamo Kyiv to win the Soviet Top League 8 times; after it, he led them to the title of the Ukrainian National League 5 times. That's 13 league titles, the 1st in 1974, the last in 2001. He also won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986.
Honorable Mention: January 6, 1940: Van McCoy. One of the top music producers of the 1970s, he wrote and recorded "The Hustle," which hit Number 1 in 1975 and helped turn disco from a fad into a craze. He died of a heart attack just 4 years later.
Honorable Mention: January 6, 1944: Bonnie Franklin. Starred in the CBS sitcom One Day at a Time from 1975 to 1984. Also an occasional panelist on Match Game.
Honorable Mention: January 6, 1957: Nancy Lopez. One of the best female golfers ever. However, as I've told you before, golf is not a sport.
Honorable Mention: January 6, 1960: Nigella Lawson. She prefers to be called a cook rather than a chef, due to her training level. Nevertheless, a "celebrity chef" is how she's thought of. She's one of a few such people who have been credited with making cooking shows "sexy." Certainly, even at her age, she has the looks for it. 'Tis pity she's a Chelsea fan.
Honorable Mention: January 6, 1968: John Singleton. By the time he was 33, he had already directed Boyz n the Hood, Poetic Justice, Higher Learning, Rosewood and Baby Boy. He kept directing until his sudden death at age 51.
Honorable Mention: January 6, 1984: Kate McKinnon. She's done so many impersonations on Saturday Night Live, of any gender, if it wasn't live, she could do the whole show by herself. Of course, she's best known for playing Hillary Clinton.
Somewhat Honorable Mention: January 6, 1937: Lou Holtz. He coached William & Mary, North Carolina State and Arkansas to Conference Championships, and Notre Dame to the 1988 National Championship. On the other hand, in his only pro head coaching job, with the New York Jets in 1976, he was a complete disaster, going 3-10 before being fired with 1 week to go.
Also, first as Notre Dame coach and since as a TV studio pundit, he's been so annoying. How annoying is he? Let me put it this way: He seems to be the embodiment of Notre Dame, as those who love the school love him, and everybody else who watches him wants him to just shut up.
Speaking of which...
Somewhat Honorable Mention: January 6, 1955: Rowan Atkinson. This English comedian, star of Mr. Bean and the various Blackadder series, among others, just doesn't make me laugh, and I don't get it. The one thing he's done that I like was his role as the malaprop-prone priest in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
10. January 6, 1924: Earl Scruggs. An early star of country music, and perhaps the greatest banjo picker of all time.
9. January 6, 1880: Tom Mix. One of the earliest Western movie heroes, and one of the few big movie stars to successfully make the late 1920s transition from silent films to "talkies." My grandmother was a big fan of "Tom Mix and his Wonder Horse, Tony!"
8. January 6, 1920: Early Wynn. A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, he won the 1959 American League Cy Young Award, leading the Chicago White Sox to win the Pennant, winning 24 games at age 39. He finished his career with exactly 300 wins.
7. January 6, 1939: Murray Rose. The Australian swimmer won 3 Gold Medals at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, in his homeland. He won a 4th in Rome in 1960.
6. January 6, 1960: Howie Long. One of the greatest defensive ends in football history, he became part of the Fox NFL Sunday team. His image as a sharp, clean intellectual makes you forget that he played for the Raiders.
5. January 6, 1412: Joan of Arc."The Maid of Orléans" was little more than a rallying point for French forces against England in the Hundred Years' War. But she has become a symbol of French pride, Catholic martyrdom, and even feminism.
4. January 6, 1883: Kahlil Gibran. One of the earliest known Americans of Arab descent, the native of then-Ottoman-controlled Lebanon became one of the foremost poets of his time through his book The Prophet, though he rejected the title of "philosopher." But he is not the most famous Lebanese-American born on a January 6.
3. January 6, 1878: Carl Sandburg. One of America's greatest poets and one of its greatest historians, 2 fields without much crossover.
2. January 6, 1882: Sam Rayburn. He served a district in northeast Texas in Congress from 1913 until his death in 1961. From 1940 onward, he was the Democratic Party's floor leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. And from 1940 to 1946, again from 1949 to 1952, and again from 1955 to 1961, the man known to his colleagues as "Mr. Sam" was the Speaker of the House, serving longer in that office than anyone.
1. January 6, 1912: Danny Thomas. The most famous Arab-American of his time, he was a great comic actor, who believed his good fortune had been achieved through prayer. Like Gibran, he was a Maronite Catholic. He founded St. Jude Children's Research Center, which fights cancer and other diseases in children. It was founded in Memphis because one of his early spiritual advisers was from Tennessee.
His daughter Marlo Thomas became a star actor as well, and his son Tony Thomas became one of the leading TV producers.
Still alive as of this writing: Lopez, Lawson, McKinnon, Holtz, Atkinson, Long.