List of Famous people who born in 1912

Pope John Paul I was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 26 August 1978 to his death 33 days later. He was the first pope to have been born in the 20th century. His reign is among the shortest in papal history, resulting in the most recent year of three popes and the first to occur since 1605. John Paul I remains the most recent Italian-born pope, the last in a succession of such popes that started with Clement VII in 1523.

Roberta Wright McCain was an American socialite and oil heiress. She was the wife of U.S. Naval Admiral John S. McCain Jr., and the mother of politician John S. McCain III and stage actor and journalist Joe McCain. McCain was active in the Navy Wives Clubs and her Capitol Hill home was a popular salon for lawmakers and politicians. In 2007 and 2008, she actively campaigned in support of her son John during his presidential bid.

Roy Cleveland Sullivan was a United States park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Between 1942 and 1977, Sullivan was hit by lightning on seven occasions and survived all of them. For this reason, he gained the nicknames "Human Lightning Conductor" and "Human Lightning Rod". Sullivan is recognized by Guinness World Records as the person struck by lightning more recorded times than any other human being.

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a German-born American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States.

Eva Anna Paula Hitler was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and, for less than 40 hours, his wife. Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was a 17-year-old assistant and model for his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. She began seeing Hitler often about two years later. She attempted suicide twice during their early relationship. By 1936, she was a part of his household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden and lived a sheltered life throughout World War II. Braun was a photographer, and she took many of the surviving colour photographs and films of Hitler. She was a key figure within Hitler's inner social circle, but did not attend public events with him until mid-1944, when her sister Gretl married Hermann Fegelein, the SS liaison officer on his staff.

Sheikh Abd al Aziz ibn Abdullah Ibn Baz was a Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar who served as the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia from 1993 until his death in 1999. According to French political scientist Gilles Kepel, ibn Baz was a "figurehead" whose "immense religious erudition and his reputation for intransigence" gave him prestige among the population of Saudi Arabia. He "could reinforce the Saud family's policies through his influence with the masses of believers". His death left the government without a comparable figure from amongst Salafi scholars to "fill his shoes". He was a leading proponent of the Wahhabism school of thought.

Erich Ernst Paul Honecker was a German communist politician who led East Germany from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defense Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As leader of East Germany, Honecker had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.

Monty Franklin Pierce Stratton was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). He was born in Palacios, Texas and lived in Greenville, Texas, for part of his life. His major league career ended prematurely when a hunting accident in 1938 forced doctors to amputate his right leg. Wearing a prosthetic leg, Stratton played in the minor leagues from 1946 to 1953. His comeback was the subject of the 1949 film The Stratton Story, in which he was portrayed by Jimmy Stewart.

Juan Pujol García, also known as Joan Pujol Garcia, was a Spanish spy who acted as a double agent loyal to Great Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II, when he relocated to Britain to carry out fictitious spying activities for the Germans. He was given the codename Garbo by the British; their German counterparts codenamed him Alaric and referred to his non-existent spy network as "Arabal".