December 11 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on December 11

• Rita Moreno (1931)

  Puerto Rican actress and singer, one of the few performers to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.

• John Kerry (1943)

  American politician who served as U.S. Secretary of State and previously as a senator and presidential nominee.

• Mo'Nique (1967)

  American comedian and Academy Award-winning actress known for Precious.

• Hailee Steinfeld (1996)

  American actress and singer known for True Grit and the Pitch Perfect franchise.

This Day in History

• 1946 — The United Nations General Assembly established the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, later renamed UNICEF, to provide relief to children affected by World War II.

• 1936 — King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom abdicated the throne in order to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, an event that shook the British monarchy.

• 1994 — Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Chechnya, beginning the First Chechen War.

What December 11 Says About You

Rita Moreno, born on this date in 1931, holds a distinction still held by only a small handful of entertainers: she has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, the so-called EGOT, across a career spanning seven decades in film, television, and stage that began when Puerto Rican-born actresses were offered vanishingly few substantial roles in Hollywood. Her Oscar-winning turn in West Side Story (1961) came in a decade when few Latina performers were given lead billing at all, and she kept working prominently into her 90s, one of the longer sustained careers in American entertainment history. John Kerry, born in 1943, spent decades in American public life, serving as a U.S. senator, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, and later Secretary of State, a career arc that moved from decorated Vietnam veteran and prominent war critic to the country's chief diplomat. Mo'Nique, born in 1967, won an Academy Award for her unflinching supporting performance in Precious (2009), a role that stood in sharp contrast to the broad comedy that had built her earlier career. Hailee Steinfeld, born in 1996, earned an Academy Award nomination at just 14 for True Grit, one of the youngest nominees in the category's history, before building a second career as a recording artist. The date's historical record leans toward institutions built to protect the vulnerable and moments when established power abruptly gave way. The United Nations created UNICEF on December 11, 1946, specifically to address the immediate needs of children left hungry and displaced across a Europe and Asia devastated by World War II, a mandate the organization has since expanded worldwide. A decade earlier, on the exact same calendar date in 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne to marry Wallis Simpson, a genuinely unusual coincidence: a king voluntarily giving up the most powerful hereditary position in Britain, on the same date that, ten years later, an international body was created for children who had no power at all. December 11, 1994's opening of the First Chechen War, when Russian forces launched their invasion, sits at the other end of the date's history, a reminder that this birthday carries no fixed thematic through-line beyond coincidence of the calendar. Sagittarius, ruling this stretch of December, is traditionally described in terms of bluntness and a willingness to act on conviction regardless of consequence, arguably visible in both Edward VIII's abdication speech and in Kerry's decision, as a decorated veteran, to testify publicly against the war he had fought in. The 11th carries the numerology master number 11, traditionally read as heightened intuition and idealism rather than reduced to a single digit, a number some readings tie to lives that swing between extremes rather than settling into a single lane — loosely fitting for a birthday shared by an EGOT winner, a war-veteran-turned-diplomat, and a comedian who reinvented herself as a dramatic actress. December's birthstones, zircon, turquoise, tanzanite, and blue topaz, carry old folk associations with clarity of vision, a theme that pairs oddly well with a date whose real headline events involve people and institutions choosing, at real cost, to see clearly and act.