List of Famous people born on May 31st

Shirley Verrett was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles, i.e. soprano sfogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s, particularly well known for singing the works of Verdi and Donizetti.

Abū Ibrāhīm Ismā'īl ibn Aḥmad, better known simply as Ismail Samani, and also known as Isma'il ibn Ahmad, was the Samanid amir of Transoxiana (892–907) and Khorasan (900–907). His reign saw the emergence of the Samanids as a powerful force. He was the son of Ahmad ibn Asad and a descendant of Saman Khuda, the eponymous ancestor of the Samanid dynasty who renounced Zoroastrianism and embraced Islam.

Max Weber was a German lawyer, municipal official and National Liberal politician. He was the father of the social scientists, Max and Alfred Weber.

John George Kemeny was a Hungarian-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator best known for co-developing the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas E. Kurtz. Kemeny served as the 13th President of Dartmouth College from 1970 to 1981 and pioneered the use of computers in college education. Kemeny chaired the presidential commission that investigated the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. According to György Marx he was one of The Martians.

John Sanford or John B. Sanford, born Julian Lawrence Shapiro, was an American screenwriter and prose writer who wrote 24 books. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature describes him as, "Perhaps the most outstanding neglected novelist." A one-time member of the Communist Party, after he and his wife Marguerite Roberts refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, they were blacklisted and unable to work in Hollywood for nearly a decade.

Michael I was the ruler of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 29 September 1669 until his death in 1673.