November 26 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on November 26

• Charles Schulz (1922)

  American cartoonist who created Peanuts, one of the most widely syndicated comic strips in history.

• Tina Turner (1939)

  American-Swiss singer known for hits including What's Love Got to Do with It and a landmark career comeback in the 1980s.

• Natasha Lyonne (1979)

  American actress known for Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll.

• Rita Ora (1990)

  British singer known for hits including Anywhere and her role as a coach on The Voice UK.

This Day in History

• 1789 — George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving under the newly ratified U.S. Constitution, a one-time national observance rather than yet an annual tradition.

• 1922 — Archaeologist Howard Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon became the first people in three thousand years to peer into the burial chamber of Tutankhamun's tomb, with Carter's famous first words describing seeing 'wonderful things.'

• 1942 — Casablanca premiered in New York City ahead of its wider 1943 release, going on to become one of the most acclaimed films in American cinema.

What November 26 Says About You

It's a nice coincidence that Charles Schulz, the man who would go on to create A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving decades later, shares a birthday with the very first American Thanksgiving proclaimed under the new Constitution, issued by George Washington on this date in 1789. That original observance was a one-time event rather than an annual holiday — Thanksgiving wouldn't become a fixed yearly tradition in the United States until Abraham Lincoln's proclamation more than seventy years later — but the date's symbolic association with gratitude and gathering was already set in motion. A very different kind of discovery happened on this same date in 1922, when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon became the first people in three thousand years to peer into Tutankhamun's burial chamber, Carter reportedly describing what he saw simply as wonderful things before elaborating further. And in 1942, Casablanca premiered in New York, a film whose closing line about a beautiful friendship has become nearly as quoted as anything in American cinema. Beginnings that quietly turned out to be much larger than they first appeared — a one-time proclamation that became a national holiday tradition, a tomb opening that reshaped Egyptology, a modest wartime release that became a classic — connect all three anniversaries, and that slow-burn significance suits Sagittarius, the sign governing this date, whose astrological reputation includes an optimistic faith that things will expand and grow given time. The numerology of the 26th reduces to day number 8, tied to ambition and lasting achievement, fitting Tina Turner, born in 1939, whose 1980s comeback after a difficult and abusive earlier chapter of her career became one of music's most celebrated second acts, an achievement earned the hard way rather than handed to her. Charles Schulz spent nearly fifty years drawing Peanuts almost entirely by himself, an enormous, disciplined body of work built one daily strip at a time, without the assistants many long-running cartoonists eventually relied on. Natasha Lyonne has built a genuinely varied career across independent film and prestige television, moving between very different registers with unusual range. Rita Ora, born in 1990, has similarly worked across recording, coaching, and acting rather than settling permanently into a single entertainment lane. November's chrysanthemum, in America, has long been associated specifically with autumn table settings and Thanksgiving centerpieces, tying this birthday's own flower directly back to the holiday first proclaimed on this same date. Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, adopting her stage name only after she began performing with Ike Turner in the late 1950s, decades before the comeback that made her an icon in her own right. Charles Schulz, for his part, never liked the title 'Peanuts,' a name imposed by his newspaper syndicate rather than chosen by him, and he reportedly considered it dismissive of the strip's more serious undercurrents for the rest of his career.