1908 births

Maurice Archambaud (30 August 1908 in Paris – 3 December 1955 in Le Raincy) was a French professional cyclist from 1932 to 1944. His short stature earned him the nickname of le nabot, or "the dwarf", but his colossal thighs made him an exceptional rider.
As an amateur, he won the Paris-Soissons and the Paris-Verneuil in 1931 and turned professional the following year for Alcyon, one of the top teams in France. He won the inaugural Grand Prix des Nations in his first season.He set the world hour record at 45.767 km at the Vigorelli velodrome in Milan on 3 November 1937. He beat the Dutchman, Frans Slaats' record of 45.485 km, set on 29 September 1937. The record stood for five years before being beaten by Fausto Coppi.
Archambaud rode for France in the Tour de France between the wars. His sudden changes of form and frequent falls meant that he never won the race, but he did win ten stages and wear the yellow jersey.
He won a shorter stage race, Paris–Nice, in 1936 and 1939.

Capitaine Raymond Dronne (8 March 1908, in Mayet, France – 5 September 1991, in Paris) was a French civil servant and, following World War II, a politician. He was the second Allied officer to enter Paris as part of the liberation forces during World War II. A volunteer who joined the Free French Forces in Africa in 1940. Later, he was assigned as commanding officer of the 9e Compagnie, Régiment de Marche du Tchad (Ninth Company, Regiment of March of Chad), known as "La Nueve" as it was mainly composed of Spanish republicans. The 9th Company was a unit of the 3rd battalion RMT, part of the French 2nd Armored Division.
During the move on Paris, due to combat conditions and poor road progress, General Philippe Leclerc, commanding general of the Second Armored, ordered Dronne to form an advance party, go to Paris and let the Resistance know that the Second Armored would be in Paris in 24 hours.
His advance party, the 9th Company, consisted of 15 half tracks (M5s and M5A1s), and three Sherman tanks from 501 RCC of the division, plus engineer units. The H/Ts included those called Les Cossaques, Guadalajara, Madrid and Ebro and the added Sherman tanks were called Montmirail, Romilly and Champaubert.

Marcel Béalu was a writer and bookseller born in Selles-sur-Cher in the Loire valley on 30 October 1908, who died in Paris on 19 June 1993.

Zenon Kliszko (Łódź, December 8, 1908 – September 4, 1989, Warsaw), was a politician in the Polish People's Republic, considered the right-hand man of Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) leader Władysław Gomułka.

James Thomas Flexner (January 13, 1908 – February 13, 2003) was an American historian and biographer best known for the four-volume biography of George Washington that earned him a National Book Award
in Biography and a special Pulitzer Prize. His one-volume abridgment, Washington: the Indispensable Man (1974) was the basis of two television miniseries, George Washington (1984) and George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation (1986), starring Barry Bostwick as Washington.

Daisy and Violet Hilton (5 February 1908 – early January 1969) were English-born entertainers, who were conjoined twins. They were exhibited in Europe as children, and toured the United States sideshow, vaudeville and American burlesque circuits in the 1920s and 1930s. They were best known for their film appearances in Freaks and the biographic Chained for Life (1951).
The twins were born at 18 Riley Road, Brighton, England, on 5 February 1908. Their mother was Kate Skinner, an unmarried barmaid. The sisters were born joined by their hips and buttocks; they shared blood circulation and were fused at the pelvis but shared no major organs.
They were variously called or referred to as The Siamese Twins, The Hilton Sisters and The Brighton Twins or The Brighton Conjoined Twins and in the United States as the San Antonio Twins. The sisters performed alongside Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin. After years of being managed professionally by their legal guardians, in the early 1930s, on the advice of Harry Houdini, they were legally emancipated.

Françoise Dolto (French: [dɔlto]; November 6, 1908 – August 25, 1988) was a French pediatrician and psychoanalyst.

Rudolf Ismayr (14 October 1908 – 9 May 1998) was a German weightlifter. He won a gold medal at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and a silver medal at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, as well as a silver medal at the 1938 World Championships. Between 1931 and 1935 he set five official and six unofficial world records.Ismayr took the Olympic Oath at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Death unspecified.

Helmut Thielicke (German: [ˈhɛlmuːt ˈtiːlɪkə]; 4 December 1908 in Wuppertal – 5 March 1986 in Hamburg) was a German Protestant theologian and rector of the University of Hamburg from 1960 to 1978.

Annemarie Minna Renée Schwarzenbach (23 May 1908 – 15 November 1942) was a Swiss writer, journalist and photographer. Her bisexual mother brought her up in a masculine style, and her androgynous image suited the bohemian Berlin society of the time, in which she indulged enthusiastically. Her anti-fascist campaigning forced her into exile, where she became close to the family of novelist Thomas Mann. She would live much of her life abroad as a photo-journalist, embarking on many lesbian relationships, and experiencing a growing morphine addiction. In America, the young Carson McCullers was infatuated with Schwarzenbach, to whom she dedicated Reflections in a Golden Eye. Schwarzenbach reported on the early events of World War II, but died of a head injury, following a fall.