March 13 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on March 13

• L. Ron Hubbard (1911)

  American author who founded the Church of Scientology after an earlier career writing pulp science fiction.

• William H. Macy (1950)

  American actor known for Fargo and Shameless.

• Adam Clayton (1960)

  Irish musician and bassist of the rock band U2.

• Common (1972)

  American rapper and actor known for his socially conscious hip-hop and Academy Award-winning song 'Glory'.

This Day in History

• 1781 — Astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, the first planet identified using a telescope rather than known since antiquity.

• 1930 — The Lowell Observatory announced the discovery of Pluto, found by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh the previous month.

• 1997 — Thousands of people across Arizona and Nevada reported a mysterious formation of lights in the night sky, an event that became known as the Phoenix Lights.

• 2013 — Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, taking the name Francis and becoming the first pope from the Americas.

• 1639 — The Massachusetts Bay Colony's General Court formally named the recently founded college in Cambridge 'Harvard College,' honoring clergyman John Harvard, who had left it his library and half his estate the previous year.

What March 13 Says About You

March 13 belongs, almost improbably, to the sky. William Herschel discovered Uranus on this date in 1781, the first time a planet had been identified by telescope rather than known to observers since ancient times, instantly doubling the known size of the solar system overnight. A century and a half later, on the very same calendar date in 1930, the Lowell Observatory announced Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto, adding a ninth world to the map (one later reclassified, but the discovery itself was real and it happened on this exact day). The Phoenix Lights, seen by thousands of witnesses across Arizona and Nevada on this date in 1997, never received a fully agreed-upon explanation, joining Uranus and Pluto in the date's running theme of things overhead that reward careful, patient attention. Even the 2013 papal conclave, which chose Cardinal Bergoglio on this date, involved its own kind of watching the sky — the traditional wait for white smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel chimney to signal a decision made. It's a fitting set of facts for a Pisces birthday, a sign long associated in older astrological tradition with the mystical and the barely explainable, matched here by a date whose real, documented history keeps circling back to exactly that kind of open question. The numerology adds its own note of depth: the 13th reduces to day number 4, tied to structure and patient, methodical work — the same quality that let Herschel and Tombaugh each spend years of careful observation before their discoveries became public on this date. L. Ron Hubbard, born March 13, 1911, spent his early career writing pulp science fiction about exactly the kind of undiscovered worlds Herschel and Tombaugh were finding for real, before turning to a very different kind of belief system later in life. William H. Macy, born the same day in 1950, has built a career playing characters whose ordinary surfaces hide something much stranger underneath, a very March 13 kind of role. Bloodstone was once prized specifically for its speckled, star-flecked look, and aquamarine for its clear depth — both fitting stones for a birthday whose real history rewards looking up and paying close, patient attention. Not everything tied to March 13 involves the heavens: the formal naming of Harvard College on this date in 1639, honoring a young clergyman whose modest bequest of books and money helped a barely two-year-old college survive its earliest, most fragile years, is a reminder that this date's patient, methodical qualities show up in institution-building as readily as in astronomy.