September 25 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on September 25

• Barbara Walters (1929)

  American broadcast journalist known for pioneering roles at ABC News and co-creating The View.

• Christopher Reeve (1952)

  American actor known for playing Superman in the 1978 film, and later a disability rights advocate after a paralyzing injury.

• Will Smith (1968)

  American actor and musician known for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Men in Black, and an Academy Award-winning role in King Richard.

• Catherine Zeta-Jones (1969)

  Welsh actress and Academy Award winner known for Chicago and Traffic.

This Day in History

• 1513 — Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European recorded to see the Pacific Ocean from the Americas, after crossing the Isthmus of Panama.

• 1789 — The U.S. Congress passed twelve proposed constitutional amendments and sent them to the states; ten were ratified and became the Bill of Rights.

• 1957 — Escorted by federal troops, nine Black students entered Little Rock Central High School for the first time, a milestone moment in the American civil rights movement.

What September 25 Says About You

Vasco Núñez de Balboa cut his way across the Isthmus of Panama with a small expedition of Spanish soldiers and enslaved and indigenous guides, and on September 25, 1513, became the first European recorded to lay eyes on the Pacific Ocean from the Americas, a moment that reordered European geographic understanding of the hemisphere almost overnight. The date's other major legal milestone came nearly three centuries later in the same country that Balboa's discovery would eventually help shape: on September 25, 1789, the U.S. Congress passed twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states, ten of which were ratified and became the Bill of Rights, the foundational guarantee of individual liberties in American law. Those same rights took on very concrete meaning on this date in 1957, when nine Black students, escorted by federal troops, entered Little Rock Central High School for the first time, one of the defining images of the civil rights era and a direct test of whether the promises passed by Congress 168 years earlier actually applied in practice. Four performers born on September 25 have each built careers that expanded what audiences expected from their public roles. Barbara Walters, born in 1929, broke through a male-dominated broadcast news industry to become one of its most recognized interviewers. Christopher Reeve, born in 1952, defined a generation's image of Superman before a paralyzing riding accident turned him into one of the most visible disability rights advocates in the country. Will Smith, born in 1968, moved from television sitcom stardom to blockbuster film roles to an Academy Award for a very different kind of dramatic performance. And Catherine Zeta-Jones, born in 1969, won an Academy Award for a demanding singing and dancing role in Chicago after building her earlier career in more straightforward drama. Numerology reduces the 25th to day number 7, tied to introspection and searching, a fitting thread for a date whose events involve looking across an unknown ocean, writing down rights on paper, and testing whether those rights held up when it mattered. As a Libra date, September 25 carries the sign's traditional concern with fairness, well matched to a birthday whose real history is largely about extending rights that had, until then, existed mostly on paper. Balboa's crossing of the Isthmus of Panama took about three weeks through dense jungle, and upon reaching the shore he reportedly waded into the water in full armor to claim the ocean, along with all lands touching it, in the name of the Spanish crown, a claim so sweeping it would eventually be contested by every other European power exploring the Pacific. As with the rest of September, the 25th's stone and flowers are shared rather than day-specific — sapphire alongside the aster and morning glory — a fact that says nothing in particular about a date otherwise defined by rights extended and then tested to see if they held.