Births
- January 4 - Dyan Cannon, actress
- January 8 - Shirley Bassey, singer
- January 8 - Bob Eubanks, game show host
- January 15 - Margaret O'Brien, actress
- January 17 - Troy Donahue, actor
- January 18 - John Hume, politician, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998
- January 30 - Vanessa Redgrave, actress
- January 30 - Boris Spassky, chess grand master
- January 31 - Suzanne Pleshette, actress
- January 31 - Philip Glass, composer
- February 1 - Garrett Morris, comedian
- February 1 - Don Everly, musician
- February 2 - Tom Smothers, musician, comedian, half of the Smothers Brothers
- February 8 - Manfred Krug, actor
- February 11 - Bill Lawry, Australian cricket player.
- February 11 - Lodewijk Boer, Dutch violinist/playwright.
- February 11 - Marilyn Butler, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford University.
- February 11 - Peter Lashley, West Indies cricket player.
- February 12 - Charles Dumas, American high jumper
- February 17 - Rita Süssmuth, politician
- February 20 - Nancy Wilson (singer), singer and actress
- February 20 - Roger Penske, automobile racer
- February 21 - Harald V, King of Norway (1991 - )
- February 25 - Tom Courtenay, actor
- March 6 - Valentina Tereshkova, cosmonaut
- March 9 - Mickey Gilly, country music performer
- March 20 - Jerry Reed, country musician
- March 22 - Armin Hary, German athlete
- March 30 - Warren Beatty, actor/director
- April 5 - Colin Powell, US Secretary of State
- April 6 - Merle Haggard, country musician
- April 6 - Billy Dee Williams, actor
- April 22 - Jack Nicholson, actor
- April 28 - Saddam Hussein, former President of Iraq
- May 8 - Thomas Pynchon, novelist
- May 6 - Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, boxer
- May 12 - George Carlin, comedian
- May 13 - Roch Carrier, Canadian author of fiction
- May 13 - Roger Zelazny, science fiction author (d. 1995)
- May 15 - Trini López, musician
- May 15 - Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State
- May 17 - Hazel R. O'Leary, United States Secretary of Energy
- May 18 - Brooks Robinson, Baseball Hall of Famer
- May 18 - Jacques Santer, politician
- June 9 - Harald Rosenthal, biologist
- June 18 - Vitali Zholobov, cosmonaut
- July 6 - Vladimir Ashkenazy, pianist
- July 6 - Ned Beatty, actor
- July 9 - David Hockney, artist
- July 12 - Lionel Jospin, Prime Minister of France
- July 12 - Bill Cosby, actor, comedian
- August 4 - David Bedford, musician
- August 8 - Dustin Hoffman, American actor
- August 18 - Robert Redford, American actor
- September 4 - Dawn Fraser, Australian swimmer
- September 15 - Fernando de la Rúa, former president of Argentina
- September 28 - Rod Roddy, television announcer (d. 2003)
- October 5 - Barry Switzer, American football coach
- October 10 - Bobby Charlton, English footballerer
- November 15 - Yaphet Kotto, actor ()
- November 17 - Peter Cook, comedian, satirist and writer
- November 26 - Boris Yegorov, cosmonaut
- December 3 - Bobby Allison, NASCAR driver
- December 8 - Arne Næss Jr, Norwegian mountaineer, businessman (d. 2004)
- December 29 - Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives
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Deaths
- January 6 - Brother Andre, Canadian religious figure
- January 23 - Marie Prevost, actress
- February 11 - Walter Burley Griffin, architect and town planner
- March 12 - Charles-Marie Widor, organist and composer
- March 15 - H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer
- March 29 - Karol Szymanowski, composer
- April 19 - William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer
- May 23 - John Davison Rockefeller, American industrialist and philanthropist.
- May 28 - Alfred Adler, psychologist
- June 19 - J. M. Barrie, novelist and dramatist
- July 9 - Oliver Law, first African American commander of American troops, killed in battle during the Spanish Civil War.
- July 11 - George Gershwin, composer (b. 1898)
- August 11 - Edith Wharton, writer
- September 2 - Pierre de Coubertin, French founder of the modern Olympic Games
- September 26 - Bessie Smith, blues singer
- September 29 - Ray Ewry, American athlete
- Guglielmo Marconi, italian inventor, "the father of radio"
Nobel Prizes