June 18, 1949

1949Chris Van Allsburg, American author and illustrator^[†]

Chris Van Allsburg is an American writer and illustrator of children's books. He has won two Caldecott Medals for U.S. picture book illustration, for Jumanji (1981) and The Polar Express (1985), both of which he also wrote, and were later adapted as successful motion pictures. He was also a Caldecott runner-up in 1980 for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. For his contribution as a children's illustrator, he was a 1986 U.S. nominee for the biennial International Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition for creators of children's books. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Michigan in April 2012.

1949Jarosław Kaczyński, Polish lawyer and politician, 13th Prime Minister of Poland^[†]

Jarosław Aleksander Kaczyński is a Polish politician. He co-founded the Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2001 with his twin brother, Lech Kaczyński, and has served as its leader since 2003. He served as Prime Minister of Poland from 2006 to 2007, and has twice held the post of Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, first from 2020 to 2022, and a second time from June to November 2023. He is considered to have been the eminence grise of Poland, when PiS formed the government in 2005–2007 and again in 2015–2023, with direct political influence over the prime ministers Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Beata Szydło and Mateusz Morawiecki.

1949Lech Kaczyński, Polish lawyer and politician, 4th President of Poland (died 2010)^[†]

Lech Aleksander Kaczyński was a Polish politician who served as the city mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005, and as President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010 in a plane crash in the vicinity of the Russian city of Smolensk. The aircraft carrying him and senior Polish officials had crashed while they were travelling to attend ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. Prior to his tenure as president, Kaczyński served as President of the Supreme Audit Office from 1992 to 1995 and later Minister of Justice and Public Prosecutor General in Jerzy Buzek's cabinet from 2000 until his dismissal in July 2001.