December 7 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on December 7

• Larry Bird (1956)

  American basketball Hall of Famer who led the Boston Celtics to three NBA championships.

• Ellen Burstyn (1932)

  American actress and Academy Award winner known for The Exorcist and Requiem for a Dream.

• Tom Waits (1949)

  American singer-songwriter known for a distinctively gravelly voice and idiosyncratic, theatrical songwriting.

• Johnny Bench (1947)

  American baseball Hall of Fame catcher regarded as one of the greatest defensive catchers in the sport's history.

This Day in History

• 1941 — Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, prompting the United States' entry into World War II.

• 1972 — Apollo 17 launched from Kennedy Space Center, the sixth and, to date, most recent crewed mission to land on the Moon.

• 1988 — A powerful earthquake struck Spitak, Armenia, killing tens of thousands and prompting an unusually large international relief effort during the late Soviet era.

What December 7 Says About You

December 7 is dominated, understandably, by a single event: the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which killed more than 2,400 Americans in under two hours and pulled the United States directly into World War II the following day. President Franklin Roosevelt would call it 'a date which will live in infamy,' and few dates on the calendar have earned that kind of permanent historical weight quite so completely. But December 7 carries other real history too, some of it pointed in the opposite direction. In 1972, Apollo 17 launched on what remains, more than five decades later, the most recent crewed mission to land on the Moon — a farewell to an era of lunar exploration that hasn't yet reopened. And in 1988, a devastating earthquake struck Spitak, Armenia, killing tens of thousands and prompting an unusually large humanitarian relief effort from Western countries into the Soviet Union, at a moment when Cold War barriers were just beginning to loosen under Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Sagittarius, the sign attached to early December, is often described in terms of blunt confrontation with large, unavoidable realities. Against that weight, the date's birthdays offer a quieter counterpoint. Larry Bird, born December 7, 1956, built a basketball legacy on unglamorous fundamentals rather than flash. Ellen Burstyn, born in 1932, has spent over six decades delivering performances built on restraint as much as intensity. Tom Waits, born in 1949, turned a deliberately unpolished voice into one of the most instantly recognizable instruments in American songwriting, while Johnny Bench, born in 1947, redefined what a catcher could do defensively in baseball. Numerology assigns the 7th day number 7, linked to reflection and depth, fitting for a date whose signature event still demands sober remembrance rather than celebration. December's recognized birthstones, blue topaz, tanzanite, zircon, and turquoise, along with holly and narcissus, its birth flowers, don't offer much cheerful counterbalance here, and perhaps shouldn't; some dates are simply built for remembrance first. The USS Arizona alone lost 1,177 crew members in the Pearl Harbor attack, nearly half of all American deaths that day, and the ship's wreck remains a permanent memorial and gravesite in the harbor today. Apollo 17's crew, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, spent just over three days on the lunar surface, the longest stay of any Apollo mission, before Cernan became, and to date remains, the last person to walk on the Moon. The Spitak earthquake registered magnitude 6.8 and killed an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people, a toll made worse by Soviet-era construction standards that left many buildings unable to withstand the shaking. Larry Bird went on to win three consecutive NBA Most Valuable Player awards in the mid-1980s, a run matched by very few players in league history, while Johnny Bench won National League MVP honors twice and is credited with popularizing the one-handed catching style still taught to young players today. The USS Arizona Memorial, built directly over the ship's sunken remains, was formally dedicated in 1962 and continues to draw over a million visitors a year, most arriving by boat operated by the National Park Service.