April 9 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on April 9

• Charles Baudelaire (1821)

  French poet known for Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), a foundational and controversial work of modern poetry.

• Paul Robeson (1898)

  American bass-baritone singer, actor, and civil rights activist known for his rendition of 'Ol' Man River' and his outspoken activism.

• Hugh Hefner (1926)

  American publisher who founded Playboy magazine in 1953.

• Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933)

  French actor closely associated with the French New Wave, particularly Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

This Day in History

• 1865 — Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.

• 1940 — Nazi Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, opening a new front in World War II.

• 1959 — NASA introduced the Mercury Seven, the first group of American astronauts selected for spaceflight.

What April 9 Says About You

The single event most associated with April 9 in American history is a genuine hinge point: on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending four years of civil war. It's a heavy historical anchor for a date whose zodiac sign, Aries, is more commonly associated with starting conflicts than ending them — a useful reminder that the sign's cardinal fire covers decisive action of any kind, including the difficult decision to stop fighting. Charles Baudelaire, born on this date in 1821, spent his career pushing against the boundaries of what French poetry was allowed to say, and Les Fleurs du mal was prosecuted for obscenity within months of publication — its own kind of stand taken and held. Paul Robeson, born in 1898, combined an extraordinary singing voice with outspoken civil rights activism that cost him considerable professional standing during the McCarthy era, another example of the date's recurring theme of people willing to absorb real consequences for a position. Jean-Paul Belmondo, born in 1933, became one of the defining faces of the French New Wave, a genuine artistic rupture with the filmmaking conventions that came before it, most famously in Godard's Breathless. Hugh Hefner, born in 1926, founded Playboy in a considerably less rebellious spirit but with its own claim to disruption of mid-century American convention. History added a much darker note in 1940: on April 9, Nazi Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, opening a new front in World War II barely more than seventy-five years after Appomattox had closed one of America's bloodiest conflicts. On a brighter note, NASA introduced the Mercury Seven on April 9, 1959, the first group of American astronauts, a beginning that eventually led to the Apollo program and the moon landing a decade later. April 9 sits within Aries, well clear of the sign's later Taurus cusp, and its fire-sign decisiveness runs through this date's history as both endings and beginnings — a war concluded, a new one opened, a space program launched. The numerology attached to this day of the month is 9, generally read as a marker of completion, idealism, and closing a cycle, which lines up remarkably well with Appomattox specifically, a genuine closing of one of the largest chapters in American history. Against a lineup this heavy, the month's quieter symbols — diamond for the stone, daisy and sweet pea for the flowers — offer a modest coda to a date whose real history swings between some of the heaviest and most hopeful moments on the calendar. Les Fleurs du mal's obscenity conviction wasn't formally overturned in France until 1949, more than eighty years after Baudelaire's death, when the ban on six of its poems was finally lifted. Among the Mercury Seven introduced that day was John Glenn, who would go on to become the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Robeson's own passport was revoked by the U.S. State Department for eight years during the 1950s over his political activism, effectively ending his ability to perform internationally.