August 21 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on August 21

• Princess Margaret (1930)

  Younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II and a member of the British royal family known for her public style and a life often contrasted publicly with her sister's more restrained public role.

• Wilt Chamberlain (1936)

  American professional basketball player who set numerous NBA scoring and rebounding records, including a still-unbroken 100-point single game in 1962.

• Kenny Rogers (1938)

  American singer known for country and pop crossover hits including 'The Gambler' and 'Lucille.'

• Usain Bolt (1986)

  Jamaican sprinter and eight-time Olympic gold medalist, holder of world records in the 100 meters and 200 meters.

This Day in History

• 1959 — Hawaii was admitted to the Union as the 50th U.S. state.

• 1911 — The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris by an Italian handyman, Vincenzo Peruggia, who kept it in his apartment for over two years before it was recovered.

• 1968 — Warsaw Pact tanks occupied Prague, completing the invasion that ended the Prague Spring reform movement in Czechoslovakia.

What August 21 Says About You

Records, both the athletic kind and the archival kind, keep this date's story anchored. Usain Bolt, born on this date in 1986, holds world records in both the 100 and 200 meters that have stood since 2009, marks so far ahead of the previous generation's times that sports scientists have spent years debating whether they represent an outlier or a new baseline. Wilt Chamberlain, born fifty years earlier on the same date, holds a record even his own era considered nearly unbelievable: 100 points in a single NBA game in 1962, a number that, unlike Bolt's sprint times, has never come remotely close to being matched by any player since. The Mona Lisa's 1911 theft from the Louvre created an odd kind of record of its own — Vincenzo Peruggia, the Italian handyman who stole it and kept it hidden in his apartment for over two years, unintentionally made the painting far more famous than it had been before the theft, since the two-year search and worldwide press coverage embedded the image in public consciousness more deeply than centuries of prior gallery display had managed. Hawaii's 1959 admission as the 50th state closed out the current count of U.S. states, a number that's held as its own kind of stable record for over six decades since. Kenny Rogers, born on this date in 1938, built a career on story-songs about gambling and getting by, an odd but fitting thematic echo for a date defined by high-stakes, once-in-a-generation feats and heists. Princess Margaret, the date's other notable birth, spent a public life frequently compared, usually unfavorably by the tabloid press of her era, to her sister's more restrained conduct as monarch, itself a different kind of record — a lifetime lived in close, constant comparison to someone else's. The Prague Spring's final crushing, completed as Warsaw Pact tanks occupied the city on this date in 1968, closed out an eight-month experiment in political liberalization that Czechoslovak reformers had hoped might hold longer than it did. As a Leo date, August 21 fits Bolt's and Chamberlain's spotlight-commanding athletic dominance about as cleanly as any date going. Numerologically, the 21st reduces to day number 3, associated with creative self-expression, visible in Rogers's storytelling and in the sheer theatrical audacity of both athletic records this date produced. Peruggia's theft of the Mona Lisa, oddly enough, belongs in that same theatrical category — a crime whose actual planning was almost laughably simple, hiding the painting under his coat and walking out during a closure day, yet whose consequences played out on a genuinely grand, internationally watched stage for over two years, with the missing painting making front-page news across Europe long before it ever turned up hidden inside Peruggia's own trunk.