December 24 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on December 24

• Howard Hughes (1905)

  American business magnate, aviator, and filmmaker known for his aviation records and later reclusive lifestyle.

• Ricky Martin (1971)

  Puerto Rican singer known for Livin' la Vida Loca and his role in bringing Latin pop to mainstream American radio.

• Stephenie Meyer (1973)

  American author of the Twilight series of vampire romance novels.

This Day in History

• 1814 — The Treaty of Ghent was signed, formally ending the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, though news traveled slowly enough that the Battle of New Orleans was fought weeks later before word reached the front.

• 1968 — The crew of Apollo 8, orbiting the Moon, broadcast a Christmas Eve reading from the Book of Genesis back to Earth, watched by one of the largest television audiences in history at the time.

• 1979 — The European Space Agency launched its first Ariane rocket, beginning a commercial launch program that would make Europe a major player in the global satellite industry.

What December 24 Says About You

A December 24 birthday shares the calendar with Christmas Eve, which comes with a genuine practical footnote worth stating plainly: birthdays landing on or immediately around major holidays tend to get folded into broader family celebrations rather than marked entirely on their own terms, simply because everyone's attention and gift budget is already pointed at the next day. That logistical reality aside, the date's actual history includes one of the more unexpectedly moving broadcasts in television history: in 1968, the three astronauts of Apollo 8, orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve, took turns reading from the Book of Genesis in a live broadcast back to Earth, watched by an enormous global audience and later credited with helping settle a lawsuit-adjacent controversy over religious content in a government-funded mission, all while looking back at Earth from lunar orbit for the first time in human history. A century and a half earlier, in 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed on this date, formally ending the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, though the peace agreement took so long to cross the Atlantic that Andrew Jackson's forces fought and won the Battle of New Orleans weeks later, unaware the war had technically already ended. And in 1979, the European Space Agency launched its first Ariane rocket on this date, a modest beginning that would eventually make Europe a serious competitor in commercial satellite launches. Capricorn carries associations with patient, long-term planning at this point in its run. Howard Hughes, born on this date in 1905, spent much of his life obsessively pursuing aviation records and film projects with a relentlessness that eventually curdled into reclusive isolation. Ricky Martin and Stephenie Meyer, born in 1971 and 1973, both built massive commercial success out of genre work — Latin pop and vampire romance fiction, respectively — that critics initially underestimated. The 24th reduces to numerology day number 6, tied to home and family, a fitting number for the day just before the year's most family-centered holiday. Peace and goodwill are old associations tied to turquoise, tanzanite, blue topaz, and zircon along with the month's flowers, holly and narcissus, lining up, at least in spirit, with the date's place on the calendar. Bill Anders, one of the three Apollo 8 astronauts, snapped the 'Earthrise' photograph during that same orbit, an image many historians and environmentalists credit with helping catalyze the modern environmental movement by showing, for the first time, a fragile Earth rising over the barren lunar horizon. Ricky Martin, born on this date in 1971, came out publicly in 2010, becoming one of the most prominent Latin entertainers to do so at a time when LGBTQ visibility in Spanish-language media remained rare, while Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, which began with a novel published in 2005, went on to sell over 100 million copies worldwide and spawned a five-film franchise that reshaped the young-adult vampire romance genre for a decade.