October 16, 1956

1956Marin Alsop, American violinist and conductor^[†]

Marin Alsop is an American conductor. She is the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Ravinia Festival, and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2020.

1956John Chavis, American football player and coach^[†]

Johnny Chavis, nicknamed "the Chief", is an American college football coach who was most recently the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the Birmingham Stallions of the United Football League (UFL). He previously served as defensive coordinator for the Arkansas Razorbacks football team and former defensive coordinator, linebacker coach, and associate head coach at the Tennessee Volunteers football, LSU Tigers football, and Texas A&M Aggies football programs.

1956Meg Rosoff, American-English author^[†]

Meg Rosoff is an American writer based in London, United Kingdom. She is best known for the novel How I Live Now, which won the Guardian Prize, the Printz Award, the Branford Boase Award and made the Whitbread Awards shortlist. Her second novel, Just in Case, won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians recognising the year's best children's book published in the UK.

1956Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah, Bangladeshi poet, author, and playwright (died 1992)^[†]

Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah was a Bangladeshi poet noted for his revolutionary and romantic poetry. He is considered one of the leading Bengali poets of the 1970s. He received Munir Chaudhury Memorial Award in 1980 and Ekushey Padak in 2024