September 24 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on September 24

• F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896)

  American novelist known for The Great Gatsby, a defining chronicler of the Jazz Age.

• Jim Henson (1936)

  American puppeteer and creator of the Muppets, Sesame Street, and The Dark Crystal.

• Nia Vardalos (1962)

  American actress and writer known for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which she wrote and starred in.

• Kevin Sorbo (1958)

  American actor known for the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

This Day in History

• 1789 — The U.S. Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, establishing the federal court system and creating the Supreme Court of the United States.

• 1957 — President Dwight Eisenhower ordered federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federalized the Arkansas National Guard to enforce school desegregation at Central High School.

• 1996 — The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty opened for signature at the United Nations, aiming to ban all nuclear explosions for military and civilian purposes.

What September 24 Says About You

The Supreme Court of the United States, an institution most people now think of as having simply always existed, was created by an act of Congress on September 24, 1789 — the Judiciary Act, which established the federal court system in more or less its enduring three-tiered shape, filling in the sparse constitutional outline of 'one supreme Court' with actual structure and jurisdiction. September 24 has a pattern of turning federal authority from theory into enforced practice. In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock, Arkansas, and federalized the state's own National Guard, overriding Governor Orval Faubus's attempt to block school desegregation and ensuring nine Black students could safely attend Central High School — a rare moment when a president used federal military authority directly against a state's own governor on domestic soil. And in 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty opened for signature at the United Nations, an ambitious attempt to ban all nuclear explosions worldwide that, decades later, still hasn't entered into force because key nations have yet to ratify it. Four people born on September 24 have built work defined by imagined worlds and defining cultural voices. F. Scott Fitzgerald, born in 1896, became the most quoted chronicler of the Jazz Age through The Great Gatsby, a novel that sold modestly in his lifetime before its posthumous rise to canonical status. Jim Henson, born in 1936, built an entire universe of felt-and-foam characters that shaped childhood television for multiple generations. Kevin Sorbo, born in 1958, became a defining face of 1990s syndicated fantasy television through Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. And Nia Vardalos, born in 1962, wrote and starred in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a film made on a modest budget that became one of the highest-grossing romantic comedies ever released. Numerology reduces the 24th to day number 6, tied to responsibility and care, a fitting thread for a date whose history includes institutions built to protect rights and a president stepping in to enforce them directly. As a Libra date, September 24 carries the sign's traditional concern with fairness and balance, well matched to a birthday whose real events keep circling back to enforcement of rights on paper. The Judiciary Act of 1789 also set the original size of the Supreme Court at six justices, not the nine most people assume has always been the number, and Congress adjusted that figure several times over the following century before settling on nine in 1869, a size that has held ever since despite periodic political proposals to change it, including a widely rejected court-expansion plan floated by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 after several of his New Deal programs had been struck down by the sitting justices. September's birthstone, sapphire, and its paired flowers, aster and morning glory, are month-wide assignments that don't distinguish the 24th from any other date in the calendar's ninth month.