July 9 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on July 9

• Tom Hanks (1956)

  American actor known for Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and Saving Private Ryan, a two-time Academy Award winner.

• Courtney Love (1964)

  American musician and actress, frontwoman of the band Hole.

• David Hockney (1937)

  British painter and printmaker, a major figure in 20th- and 21st-century contemporary art.

• Jack White (1975)

  American musician known as the guitarist and vocalist of the White Stripes.

• Jimmy Smits (1955)

  American actor known for the television series L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, and later Star Wars film roles.

This Day in History

• 1540 — The English Parliament formally annulled King Henry VIII's marriage to Anne of Cleves, ending a union that had lasted only about six months.

• 1816 — Argentina formally declared independence from Spain at the Congress of Tucumán.

• 1850 — U.S. President Zachary Taylor died suddenly after a brief illness, five days after falling ill at a July 4th celebration; Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded him the next day.

• 1955 — The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London, warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons and calling on scientists to assess the risks posed by weapons of mass destruction.

• 1877 — The first Wimbledon lawn tennis championship began at the All England Club in London.

What July 9 Says About You

Very few American presidents have died in office from something as ordinary-sounding as a stomach illness, but that's essentially what happened to Zachary Taylor, who fell sick after a July 4th celebration and died on July 9, 1850, five days later — a death still debated by historians, with some later theories (largely discredited after a 1991 exhumation and forensic test) even suggesting arsenic poisoning. It's an oddly fitting historical note for a date that otherwise deals in declarations, warnings, and beginnings. Argentina declared its independence from Spain on this date in 1816 at the Congress of Tucumán, a Southern Hemisphere counterpart to July 4 that gets far less attention outside Argentina itself. Nearly 140 years later, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein released their joint manifesto on July 9, 1955, warning the world's scientists and governments about the existential risk of nuclear weapons — a document credited with helping launch the Pugwash Conferences and the broader nuclear disarmament movement. Tom Hanks, born on this date in 1956, has spent a screen career built around a kind of grounded moral seriousness that would fit comfortably alongside Russell and Einstein's plainspoken urgency, even if the medium is entirely different. This is a Cancer birthday, and the sign's emotional sincerity and care track with both Hanks's reputation as one of Hollywood's most consistently warm public figures and David Hockney's decades of painting that return, again and again, to intimacy — swimming pools, domestic interiors, and the people closest to him; Hockney was born the same date in 1937. The numerology reduction of the 9th produces day number 9, traditionally linked to idealism, completion, and humanitarian concern, a natural match for the Russell-Einstein Manifesto's global, big-picture appeal to conscience. Ruby and larkspur close things out here in their usual, gently symbolic way. The first Wimbledon Championship also began on July 9, 1877, opening what would become tennis's oldest and most prestigious tournament — a slower-building kind of history compared to the date's sudden death and sudden declarations, but no less lasting. Between an unexpected presidential death, a hard-won independence, a landmark scientific warning, and the start of a 150-year sporting tradition, July 9 covers ground that ranges from the deeply consequential to the quietly enduring. Henry VIII's marriage to Anne of Cleves, arranged for political alliance rather than affection, was formally annulled by Parliament on this exact date in 1540 after barely six months, a swift institutional undoing that fits neatly alongside the date's other quick reversals of fortune. Jimmy Smits, born July 9, 1955, built a decades-long career playing steady, principled professionals on television, a very different register from the date's more dramatic history but a reminder that Cancer's loyalty and consistency show up in quieter career-long forms just as often as in single historic moments.