December 14 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on December 14

• Nostradamus (1503)

  French astrologer and physician whose collection of cryptic prophecies has been reinterpreted popularly for centuries. Note: the year uses the Julian calendar in use at the time; some modern sources convert his birth to a slightly later date.

• Jane Birkin (1946)

  British-French actress and singer, namesake of the Hermès Birkin bag.

• Vanessa Hudgens (1988)

  American actress and singer known for the High School Musical film series.

This Day in History

• 1799 — George Washington died at his Mount Vernon estate at age 67, less than three years after leaving the presidency.

• 1911 — Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen's expedition became the first to reach the geographic South Pole, beating a rival British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott by roughly a month.

• 1962 — NASA's Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to successfully fly by another planet, passing Venus and confirming its extremely high surface temperature.

What December 14 Says About You

December 14 is a date about reaching a destination first, or in George Washington's case, quietly stepping away from one. In 1911, Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition became the first humans to reach the geographic South Pole, arriving roughly a month ahead of the competing British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott, whose own party would reach the same spot only to find Amundsen's flag already planted and would not survive the return journey. Fifty-one years later, on the same date in 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 achieved its own kind of first, becoming the first spacecraft to successfully fly past another planet, sending back data on Venus that confirmed a surface far hotter than scientists had expected. Both are stories about arriving somewhere no one had verified firsthand before, one on foot across ice and one across tens of millions of miles of space. December 14 also marks the far quieter close of an era: George Washington died at Mount Vernon on this date in 1799, less than three years after voluntarily leaving the presidency, an act of relinquishing power that was, at the time, nearly as unprecedented as anything else on this list. Mid-December belongs to Sagittarius, closely associated with exploration and being first to arrive somewhere. Nostradamus, born on this date in 1503 under the Julian calendar then in use — a detail that makes some modern calendar conversions of his birth date inexact — built a reputation on claiming to see events before they happened, an odd echo of a date otherwise devoted to people actually getting somewhere first through effort rather than prophecy. Jane Birkin, born in 1946, became one of the more unlikely namesakes in fashion history when Hermès named its now-iconic handbag after her, while Vanessa Hudgens, born in 1988, became one of the defining young stars of Disney Channel's mid-2000s era. The 14th reduces to numerology day number 5, tied to movement and adaptability, matching a date whose history is built around expeditions into genuinely uncharted territory, on ice and in space alike. Safe travel is the old association carried by turquoise, zircon, blue topaz, and tanzanite, a fitting nod to two journeys that each went further than anyone had gone before. Scott's rival expedition reached the South Pole roughly five weeks after Amundsen, only to discover his Norwegian flag already there; all five members of Scott's party died on the return journey, worn down by cold, exhaustion, and dwindling supplies, a tragedy that became one of the defining stories of the entire heroic age of Antarctic exploration. Mariner 2 passed within roughly 34,000 kilometers of Venus's surface, close enough for instruments to confirm surface temperatures exceeding 400 degrees Celsius, definitively ending decades of popular speculation about a lush, jungle-like Venus. Washington's final illness, likely acute epiglottitis, was worsened rather than helped by his physicians, who drained several pints of his blood over less than a day in keeping with the standard medical practice of the time.