December 15 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on December 15

• Gustave Eiffel (1832)

  French civil engineer whose company designed the Eiffel Tower for the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

• J. Paul Getty (1892)

  American oil industrialist who became one of the world's wealthiest people and a prominent art collector.

• Don Johnson (1949)

  American actor known for Miami Vice.

This Day in History

• 1791 — The U.S. Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was ratified after Virginia became the final necessary state to approve it.

• 1939 — Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, drawing enormous crowds for what became one of the highest-grossing films ever made when adjusted for inflation.

• 1961 — Adolf Eichmann, a chief architect of the Holocaust's logistics, was sentenced to death by an Israeli court following his trial in Jerusalem.

What December 15 Says About You

The U.S. Bill of Rights became law on December 15, 1791, when Virginia's ratification pushed the first ten constitutional amendments past the required threshold — a foundational moment for American civil liberties that gets comparatively little standalone attention next to July 4th or the Constitution's original signing, despite being at least as consequential to how the country actually functions day to day. Structures built to last a very long time are something of a theme on this date more broadly: Gustave Eiffel, born on December 15, 1832, designed a tower for the 1889 Paris World's Fair that was meant to be temporary and dismantled after twenty years, yet remains standing well over a century later as one of the most recognized structures on Earth. The date's other major event took a much darker turn: in 1961, an Israeli court sentenced Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief bureaucratic architects of the Holocaust, to death following a widely covered trial in Jerusalem that forced a global reckoning with how ordinary administrative machinery could be turned toward atrocity. And in 1939, Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta on this date, drawing crowds so large that the city effectively shut down for the occasion, en route to becoming one of the highest-grossing films ever made once adjusted for inflation. Sagittarius, presiding over mid-December, is associated with big, structural undertakings and an appetite for scale. J. Paul Getty, born on this date in 1892, built one of the largest personal fortunes of the twentieth century through oil and became an equally serious art collector, funding a museum that still bears his name. Don Johnson, born in 1949, became one of the defining faces of 1980s television through Miami Vice's stylized approach to crime drama. Numerology gives the 15th day number 6, linked to responsibility and lasting structures, matching a date whose real history spans a foundational legal document, an enduring engineering landmark, and a wartime tribunal. Tanzanite, turquoise, zircon, and blue topaz carry old associations with strength and endurance, themes well suited to a date this concerned with things built to outlast their moment. James Madison originally proposed twelve amendments to the First Congress, of which ten were ultimately ratified as the Bill of Rights, while one of the other two, concerning congressional pay raises, was not ratified until 1992, becoming the 27th Amendment more than two centuries later. The Eiffel Tower stood roughly 300 meters tall upon completion, making it the tallest man-made structure in the world until New York's Chrysler Building surpassed it in 1930. Eichmann had been captured not in Germany but in Argentina in 1960, where he had been living under a false identity for over a decade before Israeli Mossad agents located and abducted him for trial in Jerusalem. Getty's will ultimately directed the bulk of his fortune toward the J. Paul Getty Museum, whose endowment made it one of the wealthiest art institutions in the world by the time of its 1997 Los Angeles campus opening. Don Johnson's pastel-suited style on Miami Vice was influential enough that the show's costume choices are still credited with shifting men's fashion trends throughout the mid-1980s.