June 12 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on June 12

• Anne Frank (1929)

  German-Jewish diarist whose posthumously published diary, written while hiding from Nazi persecution, became one of the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust.

• George H. W. Bush (1924)

  41st President of the United States and former CIA Director, World War II Navy pilot, and vice president under Ronald Reagan.

• Chick Corea (1941)

  American jazz pianist and composer known for his work with Miles Davis and his own influential fusion group Return to Forever.

• Adriana Lima (1981)

  Brazilian model known for her long tenure as a Victoria's Secret Angel.

• Dave Coulier (1959)

  American actor and comedian known for the television series Full House.

This Day in History

• 1942 — Anne Frank received a diary as a gift for her 13th birthday, the same notebook in which she would begin the writings later published as The Diary of a Young Girl.

• 1987 — President Ronald Reagan delivered his 'tear down this wall' speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, calling on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to open the Berlin Wall.

• 1994 — Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her Los Angeles home, leading to the widely televised trial of O.J. Simpson.

• 1963 — Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, hours after President Kennedy's televised civil rights address the previous night.

What June 12 Says About You

Some birthdays are inseparable from a single fact, and Anne Frank's is one of them: she was born June 12, 1929, and it was on that same date in 1942, her thirteenth birthday, that she received the red-and-white checked diary in which she would begin the writing later published as The Diary of a Young Girl, one of the most widely read firsthand accounts of the Holocaust. That the diary and the birthday share the exact same calendar date isn't coincidence dressed up for effect — it's simply what happened, and it gives June 12 a weight few other dates carry. Ronald Reagan's 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate, delivered on this same date forty-five years later, called for the Berlin Wall's removal in front of a Cold War backdrop that, within two and a half years, would in fact come down — a speech whose most famous line ('tear down this wall') was initially resisted by some of Reagan's own advisors as too provocative before he delivered it anyway. Chick Corea, born June 12, 1941, spent his career restlessly experimenting across jazz, fusion, and classical idioms, winning more Grammy Awards than all but a handful of musicians in history. George H. W. Bush, born on this date in 1924, survived being shot down as a Navy pilot in the Pacific during World War II before a career that eventually led to the presidency — a life that, like several others sharing this date, was defined by surviving one chapter to reach a very different next one. Expression and communication are numerology's traditional keywords for day number 3, and the 12th reduces to exactly that (1+2=3) — a strangely apt pairing for a date whose most enduring legacy is a diary — one young girl's private written voice that ultimately reached an audience of hundreds of millions. Medgar Evers' assassination outside his Jackson, Mississippi home on this date in 1963, mere hours after Kennedy's televised civil rights address, is a grim historical companion that this site records honestly rather than omitting. June's shared pearl and rose motif recedes into the background here; the date's real character is carried instead by written and spoken words that outlasted the people who made them — a diary, a speech, a life story told after the fact.