February 22 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on February 22

• George Washington (1732)

  First President of the United States and commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

• Frédéric Chopin (1810)

  Polish composer and virtuoso pianist known for nocturnes, études, and mazurkas; his birth date is disputed between February 22 and March 1, with contemporary baptismal records favoring the earlier date.

• Steve Irwin (1962)

  Australian wildlife conservationist and television personality known as 'The Crocodile Hunter.'

• Drew Barrymore (1975)

  American actress known for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and a long career spanning film, television, and media production.

This Day in History

• 1732 — George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, though under the Julian calendar then in use, his birth was originally recorded as February 11.

• 1819 — Spain formally ceded Florida to the United States under the Adams-Onís Treaty.

• 1980 — The U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics, a result later dubbed the 'Miracle on Ice.'

• 1997 — Scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute announced the successful cloning of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell.

What February 22 Says About You

George Washington's own birthday carries a small, genuine quirk worth explaining rather than glossing over: he was born on what was recorded as February 11, 1732 under the Julian calendar then in use in the British colonies, and his birthday shifted to February 22 only after Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Frédéric Chopin's birthday carries its own documented uncertainty — most modern scholarship favors February 22, 1810 based on his baptismal record, though the composer himself and his family sometimes cited March 1, a discrepancy honestly unresolved in the historical record rather than settled. Both men, whatever the precise mechanics of their recorded dates, share February 22's numerology day number, the master number 22, traditionally associated with exceptional, large-scale achievement — a fitting pairing for a founding president and one of the most enduringly performed composers in classical music. The 'Miracle on Ice,' achieved on this date in 1980 when a team of American college players defeated the dominant, professional-caliber Soviet national hockey team at Lake Placid, remains one of the most improbable upset victories in Olympic history, still widely cited as a defining sports moment of the Cold War era. Dolly the sheep's cloning, announced on this date in 1997 by researchers at Scotland's Roslin Institute, represented a genuine scientific first — the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell — that opened both new biological possibilities and a still-ongoing set of ethical debates. Pisces governs February 22, a sign whose folklore leans toward intuition and idealism well beyond the ordinary, a fitting undercurrent for a birthday whose real history includes both a genuinely improbable athletic upset and a scientific breakthrough that seemed, until it happened, more like fiction than fact. The Adams-Onís Treaty, signed on this date in 1819, quietly but permanently added Florida to U.S. territory, extending the country's southeastern boundary in a way that reshaped the map without the drama of the date's more famous entries. Steve Irwin and Drew Barrymore, both also born February 22, built public personas around a genuine, visible enthusiasm — for wildlife and for film, respectively — that fits neatly with the date's pattern of large, exuberant achievement. Amethyst as the month's stone, with violet and primrose as its flowers, rounds out a birthday unusually dense with both documented quirks and genuinely improbable triumphs. Chopin died in Paris in 1849 at just 39, reportedly of tuberculosis, having spent most of his career performing in intimate salons rather than large concert halls, a preference that shaped the more personal, piano-centered character of his compositions. Steve Irwin died in 2006 after being pierced by a stingray barb while filming a documentary in Australia, a death that prompted an outpouring of tribute across the wildlife conservation community he had spent his career championing.