50+ Celebrities Born on June 13

Jules Burke
May 16, 2024 59 items

Stars align on June 13, marking the birthdays of some of the entertainment world's most vibrant personalities. This list celebrates those celebrities, like Steve-O, and historical figures both living and deceased who share this special day, exploring how their unique talents and contributions have colored our screens and stages. From iconic movie stars, such as Chris Evans and Kat Dennings, to influential musicians, like Rivers Cuomo, get ready to discover which of your favorite celebs blow out candles on June 13. Whether it's for trivia night or just a fun fact to share at parties, knowing these birthdays might just make you the star of the conversation!

  • Ryan McDonagh

    Ryan McDonagh

    Ryan Patrick McDonagh (born June 13, 1989) is an American professional ice hockey defenseman, an alternate captain for the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League (NHL). Drafted in the first round, 12th overall, by the Montreal Canadiens in 2007, he played college hockey for the Badgers at the University of Wisconsinā€“Madison. He also played for the New York Rangers, for whom he served as team captain from October 2014 until being traded to the Lightning in 2018. McDonagh also competes internationally for the United States and was a member of the men's ice hockey team at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
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  • Dorothy L. Sayers

    Dorothy L. Sayers

    Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 ā€“ 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, which remain popular to this day. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays.
  • James McCann
    James Thomas McCann (born June 13, 1990) is an American professional baseball catcher for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB). He previously played for the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox. Prior to beginning his professional career, he played college baseball at the University of Arkansas. McCann has also competed for the United States national baseball team. In 2019, as a member of the White Sox, he was named to the MLB All-Star Game.
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  • John Forbes Nash, Jr.
    John Forbes Nash Jr. (June 13, 1928 ā€“ May 23, 2015) was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations. Nash's work has provided insight into the factors that govern chance and decision-making inside complex systems found in everyday life. His theories are widely used in economics. Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the later part of his life, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi. In 2015, he also shared the Abel Prize with Louis Nirenberg for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations. John Nash is the only person to be awarded both the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the Abel Prize. In 1959, Nash began showing clear signs of mental illness, and spent several years at psychiatric hospitals being treated for paranoid schizophrenia. After 1970, his condition slowly improved, allowing him to return to academic work by the mid-1980s. His struggles with his illness and his recovery became the basis for Sylvia Nasar's biography, A Beautiful Mind, as well as a film of the same name starring Russell Crowe as Nash.On May 23, 2015, Nash and his wife Alicia died in a car crash while riding in a taxi on the New Jersey Turnpike. He is survived by his two sons, John Charles Martin Nash and John Stier.
  • Laura Kightlinger
    Laura Kightlinger is an American actress, comedian and writer. She was a writer and consulting producer on Will & Grace, while also occasionally appearing on the show as the character Nurse Sheila. Kightlinger also played the title role in the TV show The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, which she created, wrote and executive produced.
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  • Ban Ki-moon
    Ban Ki-moon (; Korean: ė°˜źø°ė¬ø; Hanja: ę½˜åŸŗꖇ; Korean pronunciation: [pan.É”i.mun]; born 13 June 1944) is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 2007 to December 2016. Before becoming Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he graduated from university, accepting his first post in New Delhi, India. Ban was the foreign minister of South Korea from January 2004 to November 2006. In February 2006 he began to campaign for the office of Secretary-General. Ban was initially considered to be a long shot for the office. As foreign minister of South Korea, however, he was able to travel to all the countries on the United Nations Security Council, a maneuver that turned him into the campaign's front runner. On 13 October 2006, he was elected to be the eighth Secretary-General by the United Nations General Assembly. On 1 January 2007, he succeeded Kofi Annan. As Secretary-General, he was responsible for several major reforms on peacekeeping and UN employment practices. Diplomatically, Ban has taken particularly strong views on global warming, pressing the issue repeatedly with U.S. President George W. Bush, and on the Darfur conflict, where he helped persuade Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to allow peacekeeping troops to enter Sudan.Ban was named the world's 32nd most powerful person by the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People in 2013, the highest among South Koreans. In 2014, he was named the third most powerful South Korean after Lee Kun-hee and Lee Jae-yong. In 2016, Foreign Policy named Ban one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for his achievement of making the Paris Agreement a legally binding treaty less than a year after it was adopted.AntĆ³nio Guterres was appointed by the General Assembly on 13 October 2016 to be the successor of Ban Ki-moon as he stepped down on 31 December 2016. He was widely considered to be a potential candidate for the 2017 South Korean presidential election, before announcing, on 1 February, that he would not be running.On 14 September 2017, Ban was elected chair of the International Olympic Committee's Ethics Commission. Also in 2017, Ban co-founded the nonprofit Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. He also currently serves as Distinguished Chair Professor at Yonsei University's Institute for Global Engagement and Empowerment.He became the first major international diplomat to throw his weight behind the Green New Deal, a nascent effort by members of the Democratic Party in the United States to zero out planet-warming emissions and end poverty over the next decade.
  • Mike Jones
    Michael Jones (born June 13, 1962) is an American professional wrestler and actor, known for his time in the World Wrestling Federation as Virgil, Ted DiBiase's personal assistant, and in World Championship Wrestling under the ring names Vincent, Shane and Curly Bill.
  • Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia
    Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia (Russian: ŠžĢŠ»ŃŒŠ³Š° ŠŠ»ŠµŠŗсŠ°ĢŠ½Š“рŠ¾Š²Š½Š°; 13 June [O.S. 1 June] 1882 ā€“ 24 November 1960) was the youngest child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II. She was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg. Olga's relationship with her mother, Empress Marie, the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, was strained and distant from childhood. In contrast, she and her father were close. He died when she was 12, and her brother Nicholas became emperor. In 1901, at 19, she married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, who was privately believed by family and friends to be homosexual. Their marriage of 15 years remained unconsummated, and Peter at first refused Olga's request for a divorce. The couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had fallen in love several years before. During the First World War, the Grand Duchess served as an army nurse and was awarded a medal for personal gallantry. At the downfall of the Romanovs in the Russian Revolution of 1917, she fled with her husband and children to Crimea, where they lived under the threat of assassination. Her brother Nicholas and his family were shot by revolutionaries. Olga escaped revolutionary Russia with her second husband and their two sons in February 1920. They joined her mother, the Dowager Empress, in Denmark. In exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother, and was often sought out by Romanov impostors who claimed to be her dead relatives. She met Anna Anderson, the best-known impostor, in Berlin in 1925. After the Dowager Empress's death in 1928, Olga and her husband purchased a dairy farm in Ballerup, near Copenhagen. She led a simple life: raising her two sons, working on the farm and painting. During her lifetime, she painted over 2,000 works of art, which provided extra income for both her family and the charitable causes she supported. In 1948, feeling threatened by Joseph Stalin's regime, Olga and her immediate family relocated to a farm in Campbellville, Ontario, Canada. With advancing age, Olga and her husband moved to a bungalow near Cooksville, Ontario. Colonel Kulikovsky died there in 1958. Two years later, as her health deteriorated, Olga moved with friends to a small apartment in East Toronto. She died aged 78, seven months after her older sister, Xenia. At the end of her life and afterwards, Olga was widely labelled the last Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia.
  • Richard Thomas
    Richard Earl Thomas (born June 13, 1951) is an American actor. He is best known for his leading role as budding author John-Boy Walton in the CBS drama The Waltons, for which he won one Emmy Award and received nominations for another Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. He also starred in Stephen King's miniseries IT and played Special Agent Frank Gaad on FX's spy thriller series The Americans.
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  • G. V. Prakash Kumar
    G. V. Prakash Kumar is an Indian actor, a composer of film scores and soundtracks, and a producer and singer. He has predominantly scored music for Tamil films. His first film was S Pictures' Veyyil (2006).
  • Lynne Koplitz
    Lynne Koplitz is an American stand-up comedian and actress. Koplitz was host of Telepictures' nationally syndicated dating show Change of Heart, guest host on NBC's Later, co-host of the Food Network's How to Boil Water, and co-host of Sony Pictures syndicated talk show Life and Style. Her stand-up has appeared on a number of Comedy Central specials, including Premium Blend and Comedy Central Presents. She performed at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.
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  • Kym Marsh
    Kimberley Gail Marsh (formerly Ryder and Lomas; born 13 June 1976) is an English actress and former singer-songwriter, who rose to fame in 2001 after winning a place in the band Hear'Say, as a result of appearing on the reality television series Popstars. Hear'Say enjoyed brief success, achieving two UK number one singles and a UK number one album, but Marsh left the band in 2002 to pursue a solo career. She released an album titled Standing Tall in 2003, which peaked at number nine in the UK and spawned two UK top ten singles. Since 2006, she has portrayed Michelle Connor on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street. She was named Best Newcomer at the 2007 British Soap Awards and the 2007 National Television Awards, and received the award for Best Female Dramatic Performance at the 2017 British Soap Awards. In 2010, she finished fourth when she competed on Popstar to Operastar, a reality show featuring well-known pop stars being trained to sing opera.
  • Nic White
    Nic White is an Australian rugby union player who plays for the Brumbies in Super Rugby. His playing position is scrum-half. He made his Brumbies debut during the 2011 Super Rugby season against the Reds in Brisbane. On 15 January 2015, White, along with teammate David Pocock, were appointed vice-captains of the Brumbies for the 2015 Super Rugby season.
  • Alonzo Bodden
    Alonzo Bodden (; born June 13, 1962) is an American comedian and actor known for winning the grand prize in the third season of the reality-television series Last Comic Standing. He had been the runner-up in the previous season. In 2007, he released his DVD Tall, Dark and Funny. He was a talent judge in NBC's 5th season of Last Comic Standing, along with Kathleen Madigan and ANT. He is also a television host and voice-over actor.
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  • Sam Adams
    Sam Adams (born June 13, 1973) is a former professional football player who was a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL) for fourteen seasons. He played college football at Texas A&M University, and earned All-American honors. He was originally drafted by the Seattle Seahawks eighth overall in the 1994 NFL Draft, and he also played professionally for the Baltimore Ravens, Oakland Raiders, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals and Denver Broncos of the NFL. Adams was a three-time Pro Bowl selection and a two-time All-Pro.
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  • Kenenisa Bekele
    Kenenisa Bekele (Amharic: į‰€įŠįŠ’įˆ³ į‰ į‰€įˆˆ; born 13 June 1982) is an Ethiopian long-distance runner and the current world record and Olympic record holder in both the 5000-metre and 10,000-metre events. He won the gold medal in both the 5000 m and 10,000 m events at the 2008 Summer Olympics. At the 2004 Olympics he won the gold medal in the 10,000 m and the silver medal in the 5000 m. He is married to actress Danawit Gebregziabher and he has one younger brother, Tariku Bekele, who is also an accomplished world-class distance runner. He is the most successful runner in the history of the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, with six long (12 km) course and five short (4 km) course titles. He won the 10,000 m title at the World Championships in Athletics in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009 (matching Haile Gebrselassie's four in a row win streak). Kenenisa was unbeaten over 10,000 m from his debut in 2003 until 2011, when he failed to finish at the World Championships final. At the 2009 World Championships in Athletics he became the first man to win both 5000 m and 10,000 m title at the same championships. Over 5000 m he has also won an Olympic silver (2004), World Championship bronze (2003), two African Championship titles and one All-Africa Games gold medal. He also won the 3000 metres title at the 2006 World Indoor Championships. Kenenisa is considered as one of the greatest distance runners of all time, owning several world records and an array of medals. On 6 April 2014, he produced the sixth fastest marathon debut ever on a record-eligible course with his victory at the Paris Marathon, in a course record time of 2:05:04. On 25 September 2016, Kenenisa won the Berlin Marathon in a time of 2:03:03, a new personal best, then the third-fastest marathon of all time.
  • Mark Frankel
    Mark Frankel (13 June 1962 ā€“ 24 September 1996) was a British actor, known for his leading roles in British film Leon the Pig Farmer and American TV series Kindred: The Embraced.
  • Lisa Vidal
    Lisa Vidal (born June 13, 1965) is an American actress, best known for her roles in television series Third Watch, The Division, ER, and The Event. In 2013, Vidal began starring in the BET drama series Being Mary Jane.
  • Siegfried Fischbacher
    Siegfried Fischbacher (June 13, 1939 ā€“ January 13, 2021) was a magician, and one-half of the Siegfried & Roy duo, a pair of German-American magicians and entertainers, best known for their appearances with white lions and white tigers. The other half was Roy Horn (born Uwe Ludwig Horn; October 3, 1944 ā€“ May 8, 2020). From February 1, 1990, until Horn's career-ending injury on his birthday on October 3, 2003, the duo formed Siegfried & Roy at the Mirage Resort and Casino, which was regarded as the most-visited show in Las Vegas, Nevada. From August 2004 to May 2005, Fischbacher and Horn were executive producers of the animated sitcom Father of the Pride.
  • Alaska
    Marƭa Olvido Gara Jova (born June 13, 1963) better known as Alaska is a Spanish-Mexican singer, DJ, and television personality famous in Spain and Latin America. She was one of the founding members of the La Movida MadrileƱa, the cultural and artistic movement that followed the end of Francoist Spain. This movement, in which music, the arts, cinema and fashion erupted and collided to show what Spain had become under Franco. She has participated, since the late 1970s, in several music groups: Kaka de Luxe 1977, Alaska y los Pegamoides 1980, Alaska y Dinarama 1983, and since 1989, the Spanish electropop band, Fangoria. Today, Alaska continues to perform and has become an icon of 1980s Spain.
  • Eleanor Holmes Norton
    Eleanor Holmes Norton (born June 13, 1937) is an American politician serving as a non-voting Delegate to the United States House of Representatives, representing the District of Columbia. As a non-voting member, Norton may serve on committees as well as speak on the House floor; however, she is not permitted to vote on the final passage of any legislation. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
  • Thomas Young
    Thomas Young FRS (13 June 1773 ā€“ 10 May 1829) was a British polymath and physician. Young made notable scientific contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology. He "made a number of original and insightful innovations" in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs (specifically the Rosetta Stone) before Jean-FranƧois Champollion eventually expanded on his work. He was mentioned by, among others, William Herschel, Hermann von Helmholtz, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein. Young has been described as "The Last Man Who Knew Everything".Young is credited with establishing the wave theory of light, influenced in his experiments by those of Isaac Newton. His work was subsequently supported by the work of Augustin-Jean Fresnel.
  • Red Grange
    Harold Edward "Red" Grange (June 13, 1903 ā€“ January 28, 1991), nicknamed "The Galloping Ghost", was an American football halfback for the University of Illinois, the Chicago Bears, and the short-lived New York Yankees. His signing with the Bears helped legitimize the National Football League (NFL).In college, Grange was a three-time consensus All-American and led his team to a national championship in 1923. He was the only consensus All-American running back in 1924 who was not a member of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame. The same year, Grange became the first recipient of the Chicago Tribune Silver Football award as the Big Ten Conference's most valuable player. In 2008, he was named the best college football player of all time by ESPN, and in 2011, he was named the Greatest Big Ten Icon by the Big Ten Network. Shortly after his final college game in 1925, Grange joined the Bears and the NFL, embarking on a barnstorming tour to raise the league's attention across the country. When his rookie contract expired, he and agent C. C. Pyle formed the American Football League in 1926, with Grange playing for the Yankees. The league lasted just one year before shutting down and the Yankees were assimilated into the NFL. Grange suffered a serious knee injury in 1927 that prevented him from playing the following season, and he returned to the Bears in 1929. He remained with the team until he ended his playing career in 1934, from which he became a backfield coach for the Bears for three seasons. He is a charter member of both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame.
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  • Grigori Perelman
    Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman (Russian: Š“Ń€ŠøŠ³Š¾Ń€ŠøŠ¹ ŠÆŠŗŠ¾Š²Š»ŠµŠ²Šøч ŠŸŠµŃ€ŠµŠ»ŃŒŠ¼Š°Š½, IPA: [É”rŹ²ÉŖĖˆÉ”orŹ²ÉŖj ĖˆjakəvlŹ²ÉŖvŹ²ÉŖtɕ pŹ²ÉŖrŹ²ÉŖlŹ²Ėˆman] (listen); born 13 June 1966) is a Russian mathematician. He has made contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology. In 1994, Perelman proved the soul conjecture. In 2003, he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture. The proof was confirmed in 2006. This consequently solved in the affirmative the PoincarĆ© conjecture. In August 2006, Perelman was offered the Fields Medal for "his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow", but he declined the award, stating: "I'm not interested in money or fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a zoo." On 22 December 2006, the scientific journal Science recognized Perelman's proof of the PoincarĆ© conjecture as the scientific "Breakthrough of the Year", the first such recognition in the area of mathematics.On 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to receive the first Clay Millennium Prize for resolution of the PoincarĆ© conjecture. On 1 July 2010, he rejected the prize of one million dollars, saying that he considered the decision of the board of CMI and the award very unfair and that his contribution to solving the PoincarĆ© conjecture was no greater than that of Richard S. Hamilton, the mathematician who pioneered the Ricci flow with the aim of attacking the conjecture. He had previously rejected the prestigious prize of the European Mathematical Society, in 1996. At present, the only Millennium Prize problem to have been solved is the PoincarĆ© conjecture.
  • James Clerk Maxwell
    James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 ā€“ 5 November 1879) was a Scottish scientist in the field of mathematical physics. His most notable achievement was to formulate the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism have been called the "second great unification in physics" after the first one realised by Isaac Newton. With the publication of "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" in 1865, Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light. He proposed that light is an undulation in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. The unification of light and electrical phenomena led his prediction of the existence of radio waves. Maxwell is also regarded as a founder of the modern field of electrical engineering.He helped develop the Maxwellā€“Boltzmann distribution, a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. He is also known for presenting the first durable colour photograph in 1861 and for his foundational work on analysing the rigidity of rod-and-joint frameworks (trusses) like those in many bridges. His discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics. Many physicists regard Maxwell as the 19th-century scientist having the greatest influence on 20th-century physics. His contributions to the science are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. In the millennium pollā€”a survey of the 100 most prominent physicistsā€”Maxwell was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein. On the centenary of Maxwell's birthday, Einstein described Maxwell's work as the "most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton". Einstein, when he visited the University of Cambridge in 1922, was told by his host that he had done great things because he stood on Newton's shoulders; Einstein replied: "No I don't. I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell".
  • Denis Ten
    Denis Yurievich Ten (Š”ŠµŠ½Šøс Š®Ń€ŠøŠ¹Ņ±Š»Ń‹ Š¢ŠµŠ½; Š”ŠµŠ½Šøс Š®Ń€ŃŒŠµŠ²Šøч Š¢ŠµŠ½; 13 June 1993 ā€“ 19 July 2018) was a Kazakhstani figure skater. He was the 2014 Olympic bronze medalist, a two-time World medalist (silver in 2013, bronze in 2015), the 2015 Four Continents champion, the 2017 Winter Universiade champion, and a five-time national champion of Kazakhstan. Ten was the first skater from Kazakhstan to stand on the podium at the World Championships, Four Continents Championships, Asian Winter Games, and the Olympic Games. At the 2008ā€“09 ISU Junior Grand Prix event in Belarus, he became the first skater from Kazakhstan to win an International Skating Union competition. His other accomplishments include qualifying two spots for his country in the men's event at the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. Ten was the official ambassador for the Olympic Bidding Committee "Almaty 2022". He was a member of the Astana Presidential Sports Club and the political party "Nur Otan". In 2013, he began producing his own ice show, "Denis Ten and Friends". In summer 2014, he announced his co-operation with All That Sports management company established by Yuna Kim. In July 2018, Ten was murdered in a carjacking attempt.
  • Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
    Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (born 13 June 1954) is an economist and international development expert. She sits on the Boards of Standard Chartered Bank, Twitter, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), and the African Risk Capacity (ARC). Previously, Okonjo-Iweala spent a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, rising through the ranks to the No. 2 position of Managing Director, Operations (2007-2011). She also served two terms as Finance Minister of Nigeria (2003-2006, 2011-2015) under the leadership of President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan respectively.
  • Missy Crider
    Missy Crider is a singer and violinist, an actress and writer.
  • Paavo Nurmi
    Paavo Johannes Nurmi (Finnish pronunciation: [ĖˆpɑĖŹ‹o Ėˆnurmi] (listen); 13 June 1897 ā€“ 2 October 1973) was a Finnish middle-distance and long-distance runner. He was called the "Flying Finn" or the "Phantom Finn", as he dominated distance running in the early 20th century. Nurmi set 22 official world records at distances between 1500 metres and 20 kilometres, and won nine gold and three silver medals in his twelve events in the Olympic Games. At his peak, Nurmi was undefeated for 121 races at distances from 800 m upwards. Throughout his 14-year career, he remained unbeaten in cross country events and the 10,000 m. Born into a working-class family, Nurmi left school at the age of twelve to provide for his family. In 1912, he was inspired by the Olympic feats of Hannes Kolehmainen and began developing a strict training program. Nurmi started to flourish during his military service, setting national records en route to his international debut at the 1920 Summer Olympics. After winning a silver medal in the 5000 m, he took gold in the 10,000 m and the cross country events. In 1923, Nurmi became the first runner to hold simultaneous world records in the mile, the 5000 m and the 10,000 m races, a feat which has never since been repeated. He set new world records for the 1500 m and the 5000 m with just an hour between the races, and took gold medals in both distances in less than two hours at the 1924 Olympics. Seemingly unaffected by the Paris heat wave, Nurmi won all his races and returned home with five gold medals, although he was frustrated that Finnish officials had refused to enter him for the 10,000 m. Struggling with injuries and motivation issues after his exhaustive U.S. tour in 1925, Nurmi found his long-time rivals Ville Ritola and Edvin Wide ever more serious challengers. At the 1928 Summer Olympics, Nurmi recaptured the 10,000 m title but was beaten for the gold in the 5000 m and the 3000 m steeplechase. He then turned his attention to longer distances, breaking the world records for events such as the one hour run and the 25-mile marathon. Nurmi intended to end his career with a marathon gold medal, as his idol Kolehmainen had done. In a controversial case that strained Finlandā€“Sweden relations and sparked an inter-IAAF battle, Nurmi was suspended before the 1932 Games by an IAAF council that questioned his amateur status; two days before the opening ceremonies, the council rejected his entries. Although he was never declared a professional, Nurmi's suspension became definite in 1934 and he retired from running. Nurmi later coached Finnish runners, raised funds for Finland during the Winter War, and worked as a haberdasher, building contractor, and share trader, eventually becoming one of Finland's richest people. In 1952, he was the lighter of the Olympic Flame at the Summer Olympics in Helsinki. Nurmi's running speed and elusive personality spawned nicknames such as the "Phantom Finn", while his achievements, training methods and running style influenced future generations of middle- and long-distance runners. Nurmi, who rarely ran without a stopwatch in his hand, has been credited for introducing the "even pace" strategy and analytic approach to running, and for making running a major international sport.