From History: Today's Famous Birthdays

Hi Steemians,

This is an effort to provide some information on Five selected famous personalities born on this day.

Courtesy of this information goes to onthisday.com, famousbirthdays.com and wikipedia.org and image source is mentioned under "Source" just below each image.

1. Jane Austen

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Jane Austen was an English novelist of 18th century famous for her 6 major novels including the notable Pride and Prejudice.

Her 6 major novels are Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Of these 6 major novels noted, 2 have been inspired to be movies viz. Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility have been made movies with same movie names as novels including her other novel Lady Susan, which has been made a movie with title Love & Friendship.

2. Quentin Blake

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Sir Quentin Blake is an English cartoonist, illustrator and children's writer who is best known for illustrating books written by Ronald Dahl (who was a famous British novelist).

By 2006 itself, Blake had illustrated more than 320 books including 35 written by himself.

He is the winner of inaugural Children's Laureate (a position awarded in the United Kingdom once every two years to a "writer or illustrator of children's books to celebrate outstanding achievement in their field).

He has also won biennial international Hans Christian Anderson Award(Highest award for creation of children's books) in 2002.

His other achievements include, being appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005, Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002.

He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Literature.

He is also a member of Royal Designer for Industry (a distinction established by the British Royal Society of Arts to encourage a high standard of industrial design and enhance the status of designers).

3. Joel Garner

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Joel Garner is a former West Indian cricketer of 1970's and 1980's and is nicknamed as "Big Joel" and "Big Bird" because of his height of 6 feet 8 inches.

He was part of the fearsome quarteret of fast bowlers along with Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Colin Croft and in later with Malcolm Marshall, Curtley Ambrose and Courtney Walsh during a period of 15 years in which, West Indies didn't lose a Test series.

In One Day Internationals, he still holds the record of best ever performance by a bowler in a Cricket World cup final with figures of 5 for 39 in 1979 World Cup.

4. Donovan Bailey

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Donovan Bailey is a retired Canadian Sprinter who was a Olympic Gold Medal winner for 100 Metres in 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

He was the first Canadian to break 10 seconds time for 100 metres. He has won 2 golds in Olympics(1 for 100 metres and other for 4 X 100 metres relay), 3 golds and a silver in World championships and a gold (4 X 100 m relay) in Commonwealh games.

Donovan has been inducted into Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.

He was also honoured as "Canadian Newsmaker of the Year" by Canadian Press in 1996 after he won double gold in 1996 Olympics.

5. Lei Jun

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Lei Jun is a Chinese entrepreneur and founder of Xiaomi Inc who was named Businessman of the Year by Forbes Asia in 2014.

After his graduation in 1987, a BA in Computer Science, he started his first company and later joined Kingsoft in 1992 as a Engineer and went on to become the CEO of that company in 1998.

In 2010, he co-founded Xiaomi Inc. along with 6 other prominent personalities.

He has been named as honorary professor by 2 Chinese Universities.