February 10 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on February 10

• Boris Pasternak (1890)

  Russian writer and poet known for the novel Doctor Zhivago, for which he was awarded, and later forced to decline, the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature.

• Roberta Flack (1937)

  American singer known for 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' and 'Killing Me Softly with His Song,' both Grammy-winning hits; some sources list her birth year as 1939.

• Laura Dern (1967)

  American actress known for Jurassic Park and her frequent collaborations with directors including David Lynch.

• Emma Roberts (1991)

  American actress known for the film Nancy Drew and television series including American Horror Story.

This Day in History

• 1763 — The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Seven Years' War (known in North America as the French and Indian War) and reshaping colonial territory across the continent.

• 1846 — British forces defeated Sikh forces at the Battle of Sobraon, effectively ending the First Anglo-Sikh War.

• 1962 — Captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, a landmark Cold War prisoner swap.

• 1996 — IBM's computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a single game under standard time controls, the first time a computer had beaten a reigning world champion in that format.

What February 10 Says About You

Boris Pasternak, born on this date in 1890, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958 for Doctor Zhivago and then forced by Soviet political pressure to decline it — a genuine collision between artistic achievement and state control that defined much of his later life. That same tension between individual achievement and larger, often adversarial systems runs through much of the rest of February 10's real history. The 1962 exchange of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge, later dramatized in film, was itself a Cold War negotiation carried out under enormous pressure between two systems that fundamentally distrusted each other. Deep Blue's 1996 single-game defeat of chess champion Garry Kasparov, achieved on this same date, marked a genuinely new kind of contest — a human world champion facing, and briefly losing to, a machine built specifically to out-calculate him, foreshadowing debates about artificial intelligence that are still very much alive decades later. Roberta Flack, also born on this date in 1937 (with some sources listing 1939, a discrepancy worth noting honestly), built a very different kind of legacy through two Grammy-winning songs that became genuine cultural touchstones for emotional intimacy in popular music. February 10's Aquarius placement pairs with a numerology digit of 1, a number tradition reads as independence and standing apart from convention — a suitable fit for a birthday marked by individuals and moments defined by resisting, negotiating with, or simply outlasting a larger system pressing against them. The Treaty of Paris, signed on this date in 1763, ended the Seven Years' War and dramatically reshaped colonial control across North America, setting conditions that would shape the following decades of American and Canadian history. The Battle of Sobraon in 1846 similarly marked a major turning point in British colonial expansion into the Indian subcontinent, ending the First Anglo-Sikh War on largely British terms. Amethyst, violet, and primrose — February's stone and flowers — close out a date whose recurring theme, across chess, literature, and Cold War diplomacy alike, is genuine pressure and negotiation between the individual and something much larger. Laura Dern won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2020 for her role in Marriage Story, decades after first drawing wide notice in Jurassic Park. Roberta Flack, whose two signature hits each won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in consecutive years, revealed in 2022 that she had been diagnosed with ALS, a diagnosis that ended her ability to perform live. Emma Roberts, born on this date in 1991, is the niece of actress Julia Roberts and built a separate career of her own, beginning with television and family films before moving into darker, more adult roles.