December 20 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on December 20

• Uri Geller (1946)

  Israeli illusionist and self-proclaimed psychic best known for claiming to bend spoons through mental power.

• Jonah Hill (1983)

  American actor known for Superbad and Moneyball, an Academy Award nominee for both acting and screenwriting.

This Day in History

• 1803 — France formally transferred the Louisiana Territory to the United States in a ceremony in New Orleans, completing the Louisiana Purchase and roughly doubling the size of the country.

• 1989 — The United States launched an invasion of Panama, known as Operation Just Cause, aiming to remove Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega from power.

What December 20 Says About You

December 20 is a date about territory changing hands, in one case peacefully and in one case by force, one hundred eighty-six years apart. In 1803, a formal ceremony in New Orleans completed the transfer of the vast Louisiana Territory from France to the United States, a purchase negotiated for roughly fifteen million dollars — about three cents per acre in the dollars of the time — that, almost overnight, doubled the size of the young country and opened the door to westward expansion across the entire Mississippi basin, even though the land itself was inhabited by numerous Native nations who had no part in the negotiation between France and the United States. Nearly two centuries later, in 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause on this date, an invasion of Panama aimed at removing Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, a military intervention that sent Noriega fleeing into the Vatican's Panama City embassy before his eventual surrender roughly two weeks later and a subsequent conviction on drug trafficking charges in a U.S. federal court, a rare instance of a foreign head of state being prosecuted in an American courtroom. Both events, in very different registers, involve the United States asserting control over a strategically significant piece of land, whether through a negotiated purchase or a military operation. Sagittarius carries strong associations with expansion and territorial ambition as its long run through the calendar nears its end. Uri Geller, born on this date in 1946, built an entire public career around claimed feats of mental influence over physical objects, most famously spoon-bending demonstrations that drew both large audiences and persistent skepticism, including from stage magician James Randi, who spent decades publicly reproducing Geller's effects through ordinary conjuring technique and arguing no supernatural explanation was required, a rivalry that arguably made Geller as well known for the controversy as for the demonstrations themselves. Jonah Hill, born in 1983, moved from broad studio comedies into more serious dramatic and even directorial work as his career matured, expanding his range in a way that mirrors, loosely, the date's broader theme of territory being claimed and grown into. The 20th reduces to numerology day number 2, tied to partnership and negotiation — a theme that fits the Louisiana Purchase rather better than the Panama invasion, a reminder that a date's numerological overlay doesn't always predict which version of its themes will show up in any given year's history. Turquoise, zircon, tanzanite, and blue topaz, along with narcissus and holly, carry old associations with homeland in some folk traditions. The Louisiana Purchase was negotiated on the American side by Robert Livingston and James Monroe, who had been authorized only to buy New Orleans and nearby territory but seized the opportunity when France, needing funds and abandoning ambitions in the Americas after a failed campaign in Haiti, offered the entire territory instead. Noriega ultimately surrendered on January 3, 1990, after ten days sheltering in the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Panama City, reportedly worn down partly by American psychological operations that included blasting rock music at the building around the clock.