Born on June 7

Founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan unified the nomadic tribes of Central Asia in the early 13th century. His conquests created the largest contiguous empire in history.

William Conybeare was a 19th-century British geologist and palaeontologist. A pioneer in the study of fossil marine reptiles, he notably described the plesiosaur and contributed to the rise of stratigraphic geology.

Considered the father of modern Russian literature, Pushkin (1799–1837) wrote foundational works such as Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades. Killed in a duel at 37, he embodies Russian Romanticism.

Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist painter and a major figure of modern art. Rejecting Western civilization, he settled in Polynesia, where he painted brightly colored works celebrating Tahitian life. His synthetist style profoundly influenced 20th-century art.

Secretary General of the French Communist Party from 1972 to 1994, Georges Marchais was one of the major figures of the French left during the Cold War. He embodied an orthodox communism, publicly supporting the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1980.

Anna Kournikova is a Russian tennis player born in 1981 in Moscow. Turning professional at just 14, she reached the world top 10 and won two Grand Slam doubles titles at the French Open and Wimbledon alongside Martina Hingis. A media icon of the 1990s and 2000s, she came to embody the intersection of sport and popular culture.

Iggy Azalea is an Australian rapper, songwriter, and model born in 1990. Having left for the United States at 16, she made her mark on American rap with her hit “Fancy” in 2014, becoming one of the few non-American female artists to break through in the genre.