December 29 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on December 29

• Pablo Casals (1876)

  Spanish cellist and conductor widely regarded as one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century.

• Ted Danson (1947)

  American actor known for Cheers and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

• Jude Law (1972)

  English actor known for The Talented Mr. Ripley and Sherlock Holmes.

This Day in History

• 1845 — Texas was admitted to the United States as the 28th state, following its decade as an independent republic after breaking from Mexico.

• 1890 — U.S. cavalry troops killed hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, in one of the deadliest massacres of Native Americans by U.S. forces.

• 1989 — Playwright and dissident Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia by its parliament, less than two months after being released from prison under the country's communist regime.

What December 29 Says About You

Pablo Casals, born on this date in 1876, is widely regarded as one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century, and later became known nearly as much for his political conviction as his playing, refusing to perform in any country that formally recognized Francisco Franco's government in his native Spain, a self-imposed exile from the concert stages of much of the world that he maintained for decades. Ted Danson, born in 1947, spent eleven seasons as Sam Malone on Cheers before building one of the more durable second acts in television comedy decades later on Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Good Place. Jude Law, born in 1972, earned early acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley before becoming a reliable lead across both prestige drama and blockbuster franchises including Sherlock Holmes. The date's historical record swings between annexation, atrocity, and a genuinely hopeful transfer of power. Texas was admitted to the United States as the 28th state on December 29, 1845, closing out roughly a decade during which it had functioned as an independent republic after breaking away from Mexico. Forty-five years later, in one of the darkest entries on the American calendar, U.S. cavalry troops killed hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, on this same date in 1890, an event now widely recognized by historians as a massacre rather than a battle, and one that effectively ended large-scale armed Native American resistance on the Plains. Nearly a century later, in 1989, playwright and longtime dissident Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia by its parliament on December 29, less than two months after being released from prison under the communist regime he had spent years openly opposing, a genuinely rapid and largely peaceful transfer of power that came to symbolize the broader collapse of Soviet-aligned governments across Eastern Europe that year. Capricorn, well underway by this point in the calendar, is traditionally tied to endurance and the long, patient accumulation of moral or professional standing before it is finally recognized. The 29th carries the numerology master number 11, read in numerological tradition as sudden intuition and moral clarity arriving all at once rather than gradually, a description that fits Havel's rapid rise from prisoner to president far more comfortably than it fits Wounded Knee, a reminder that a date's folklore doesn't account evenly for everything attached to it. Clarity earned through hardship is a theme tied to turquoise, tanzanite, zircon, and blue topaz, December's birthstones, running through this date's history in more than one direction, not all of them redemptive. Pablo Casals continued performing in informal protest concerts abroad throughout his self-imposed exile, and in 1971, at age 94, he conducted his own 'Hymn to the United Nations' before the UN General Assembly, one of the final public performances of his long career. Jude Law was nominated for two Academy Awards early in his career, Best Supporting Actor for The Talented Mr. Ripley and Best Actor a few years later for Cold Mountain, cementing him as a serious dramatic lead before his higher-profile blockbuster work began.