September 14 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on September 14

• Sam Neill (1947)

  New Zealand actor known for Jurassic Park and The Piano.

• Nas (1973)

  American rapper known for his debut album Illmatic, widely regarded as one of hip-hop's most influential records.

• Amy Winehouse (1983)

  English singer-songwriter known for the album Back to Black and a distinctive soul-influenced sound before her death in 2011.

• Sarah Michelle Gellar (1977)

  American actress known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cruel Intentions.

This Day in History

• 1607 — The Flight of the Earls saw Ireland's leading Gaelic aristocrats sail from Rathmullan into permanent continental exile, a turning point that ended the old Gaelic order in Ulster.

• 1814 — Having witnessed the overnight British bombardment of Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key finished writing the poem that became 'The Star-Spangled Banner.'

• 1901 — President William McKinley died of gunshot wounds sustained eight days earlier, and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president.

What September 14 Says About You

Francis Scott Key spent the night of September 13 to 14, 1814, watching the British Royal Navy bombard Fort McHenry from aboard a truce ship in Baltimore harbor, and by the morning of September 14, seeing the American flag still flying over the fort, he had finished the poem that would eventually become 'The Star-Spangled Banner' — a piece of writing born directly out of watching a single night's uncertainty resolve. The date carries a very different kind of resolution in 1901, when President William McKinley died of gunshot wounds eight days after being shot in Buffalo, and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as the youngest president in American history at the time. Centuries earlier, in 1607, the Flight of the Earls saw Ireland's leading Gaelic aristocratic families sail into permanent continental exile from Rathmullan, a departure that effectively ended the old Gaelic political order in Ulster and opened the way for the Plantation of Ulster that reshaped the region's demographics for centuries. Four musicians and performers born on September 14 have each, in different ways, built work out of tension and emotional exposure. Sam Neill, born in 1947, became one of the most reliably grounded presences in genre filmmaking, anchoring Jurassic Park amid its spectacle. Nas, born in 1973, released Illmatic at 20 years old, an album still cited as one of hip-hop's defining artistic statements. Sarah Michelle Gellar, born in 1977, spent seven seasons as the lead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a role that reshaped how female action leads were written for television. And Amy Winehouse, born in 1983, built a brief but enormously influential career around raw, soul-inflected songwriting before her death in 2011 at 27. Numerology reduces the 14th to day number 5, tied to change and instability, a theme that runs through a date marked by a flag surviving a night of bombardment, a presidency transferred by violence, and an aristocracy that chose exile over accommodation. As a Virgo date, September 14 carries the sign's watchful, detail-oriented instincts, fitting for a birthday whose most famous event is literally about watching closely through darkness to see what survives until morning. Key's poem was set, somewhat awkwardly, to the tune of a British drinking club song and wasn't formally adopted as the U.S. national anthem until 1931, more than a century after it was written, a long gap that surprises many people who assume the anthem's status was settled from the start, and for decades before that it competed with other patriotic songs like 'Hail, Columbia' for unofficial use at public events, with military bands and civic organizations settling on Key's tune inconsistently well into the early twentieth century. September's stone and flowers, like sapphire's old symbolism generally, belong to the entire month rather than the 14th specifically, though there's something apt in a gem prized for clarity sharing a date whose most famous moment was literally about watching through darkness for something to become visible by morning.