Born on January 1

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was the first English woman to earn her living by the pen. A prolific playwright, novelist, and spy in the service of Charles II, she defied the conventions of her time by making her mark in the male-dominated literary world.

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) was an American photographer and gallery owner who played a fundamental role in establishing photography as a fine art in its own right. He founded Gallery 291 in New York and edited influential journals such as Camera Notes and Camera Work.

J. Edgar Hoover was the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which he led from 1924 until his death in 1972. A powerful and controversial figure, he modernized the American federal police while conducting intrusive political surveillance of numerous citizens and activists.

A radio operator for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), of Indian origin and Sufi tradition, she was parachuted into occupied France in 1943. Arrested by the Gestapo, she was executed at the Dachau camp in 1944 and posthumously awarded the George Cross.

Adonis is a Syrian-Lebanese poet and literary critic writing in Arabic, born in 1930. A major figure of Arab poetic modernity, he profoundly renewed the language and forms of contemporary Arabic poetry.