September 28 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on September 28

• Brigitte Bardot (1934)

  French actress and model known for And God Created Woman, and later an animal rights activist.

• Naomi Watts (1968)

  English-Australian actress known for Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams, both earning her major acting nominations.

• Hilary Duff (1987)

  American actress and singer known for Lizzie McGuire and a subsequent pop music career.

• Ed Sheeran (1991)

  English singer-songwriter known for hits including Shape of You and Perfect, and one of the best-selling music artists of his era.

This Day in History

• 1066 — William, Duke of Normandy, landed with his invasion fleet at Pevensey, England, beginning the campaign that led to the Norman Conquest.

• 1928 — Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming noticed mold contaminating a bacterial culture in his laboratory, leading to the discovery of penicillin.

• 2008 — SpaceX's Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit.

What September 28 Says About You

Alexander Fleming wasn't looking for anything in particular on September 28, 1928, when he noticed that a mold contaminating one of his neglected bacterial culture plates seemed to be killing the surrounding bacteria — an accident, by his own account, that he almost dismissed before deciding to investigate further, and that led directly to the discovery of penicillin, the first true antibiotic and one of the most consequential medical breakthroughs of the twentieth century. Nearly nine centuries earlier, an entirely different kind of arrival reshaped a country: on September 28, 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, landed his invasion fleet at Pevensey on the English coast, beginning the campaign that ended weeks later at the Battle of Hastings and permanently altered English language, law, and aristocracy through the Norman Conquest. And in a considerably more recent echo of ambitious firsts, SpaceX's Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit on September 28, 2008, after three previous failed attempts, a milestone that helped establish private spaceflight as commercially viable rather than purely experimental. Four people born on September 28 have built careers defined by a specific, recognizable persona sustained across decades. Brigitte Bardot, born in 1934, became an internationally recognized symbol of 1950s French cinema before retiring from acting to focus on animal rights activism. Naomi Watts, born in 1968, built a career on psychologically demanding roles, earning major recognition for both Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams. Hilary Duff, born in 1987, moved from a Disney Channel lead role into a parallel pop music career while still a teenager. And Ed Sheeran, born in 1991, became one of the best-selling solo artists of his generation through a stripped-down, acoustic-rooted songwriting style. Numerology reduces the 28th to day number 1, tying the date back to beginnings despite its double-digit form, a fitting undercurrent for a date whose real history includes an accidental scientific discovery, an invasion that reset a nation's future, and a rocket reaching orbit after years of failed attempts. As a Libra date, September 28 carries the sign's instinct for recognizing unexpected balance, well matched to a birthday whose most famous event turned an overlooked accident into one of medicine's great turning points. Fleming's original mold sample was later identified as Penicillium notatum, and it took more than a decade after his 1928 discovery before chemists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain figured out how to purify and mass-produce the compound as a usable drug, work that arrived just in time to treat wounded soldiers during the Second World War and that ultimately shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine between all three men, even though Fleming himself had largely set the discovery aside for years, doubting it could ever be produced in usable quantities. Like every date in September, the 28th shares rather than owns its birthstone and flowers — sapphire, aster, and morning glory apply to the whole month — though there's a loose fit between a gem valued for revealing hidden clarity and a birthday whose most famous event turned an overlooked accident into medicine's great turning point.