June 10 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on June 10

• Judy Garland (1922)

  American actress and singer known for The Wizard of Oz and a career spanning film, recording, and live performance.

• F. Lee Bailey (1933)

  American defense attorney known for high-profile cases including the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

• Kate Upton (1992)

  American model and actress known for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue covers and film roles including The Other Woman.

• Elizabeth Hurley (1965)

  English actress and model known for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and a long modeling career with Estée Lauder.

• Maurice Sendak (1928)

  American writer and illustrator known for the children's book Where the Wild Things Are.

• Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921)

  Husband and consort of Queen Elizabeth II for over seven decades, and the longest-serving royal consort in British history.

This Day in History

• 1692 — Bridget Bishop was hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, the first person executed as a result of the Salem witch trials.

• 1935 — Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio, by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, later growing into a worldwide mutual-support organization.

• 1943 — The Zoot Suit Riots began in Los Angeles, days of racially charged clashes between U.S. servicemen and Mexican American youths.

• 1967 — The Six-Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states ended, reshaping territorial boundaries in the Middle East in ways still contested today.

What June 10 Says About You

Judy Garland spent her whole life performing under intense, often exploitative scrutiny from the age of thirteen onward, and there's something worth sitting with in the fact that her June 10 birthday also belongs to Bridget Bishop, the first person executed during the Salem witch trials in 1692 — two women, three centuries apart, both consumed in different ways by public spectacle they didn't fully choose. That's a heavier opening than most birthday pages offer, but June 10's real history earns it. On a very different note, the same date in 1935 saw Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith found Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, a mutual-support model that has since spread to millions of members worldwide and reshaped how addiction recovery is approached institutionally — arguably the date's most quietly consequential entry, even if it doesn't generate headlines the way witch trials or movie stars do. Maurice Sendak, born on this date in 1928, wrote and illustrated Where the Wild Things Are, a children's book that took real childhood rage and fear seriously rather than sanitizing them, in its own way as unflinching about difficult feelings as anything else on this date's ledger. Elizabeth Hurley and Kate Upton, born decades apart on June 10, both built careers in front of cameras that scrutinized their images as closely as Garland's studio once did hers, a throughline of public visibility running through the date regardless of era. Numerology reduces the 10th to day number 1 (1 plus 0), tied to independence and fresh starts — a fitting number for a founding date like AA's, even if it sits uneasily against Bishop's 1692 execution. The Zoot Suit Riots, which began on this date in 1943, add another entry to June 10's recurring theme of public conflict playing out in the open, this time racial tension boiling over into days of street violence in Los Angeles. Pearl and rose, June's shared symbols, don't smooth any of this into something simpler than it is — June 10 is a date that holds genuine light and genuine darkness within the same 24 hours, which is probably the most honest thing that can be said about it. Prince Philip, born on this date in 1921, spent more than 70 years in a supporting role to the British monarchy, a form of quiet, sustained public duty a world apart from the date's other more dramatic entries, and one that made him the longest-serving consort in the history of the British crown by the time of his death in 2021.