Born on August 13

Humanist, printer, and philologist from Lyon (1509–1546), Étienne Dolet was one of the first great publishers of texts in French and Latin. A champion of the French language, he was condemned for heresy and burned at the stake on Place Maubert in Paris in 1546.

A French navigator and explorer, Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Quebec in 1608 and is known as the Father of New France. He mapped much of Canada and established lasting alliances with Indigenous peoples.

Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was one of the first American activists to fight simultaneously for the abolition of slavery and women's right to vote. The first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree, she refused to take her husband's name after marriage.

A British filmmaker and naturalized American citizen, Alfred Hitchcock was nicknamed the “master of suspense.” A pioneer of a cinema built on psychological tension and dread, he profoundly reinvented the conventions of the thriller with works such as *Psycho*, *The Birds*, and *Vertigo*.

Frederick Sanger (1918-2013) was a British biochemist, one of the very few scientists to have received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice. He developed fundamental methods for determining the sequence of proteins and then of DNA.

Janet Yellen is an American economist specializing in the labor market and monetary policy. She chaired the Federal Reserve of the United States from 2014 to 2018, becoming the first woman to hold this position, and later served as Secretary of the Treasury from 2021 to 2025 — again the first woman appointed to this office.