Francis Scott Key
(1779) American who wrote “The Star- Spangled Banner”
Maria Mitchell
(1818) American astronomer and Hall of Fame member
John Tyndall (1820) British physicist
Moses Coit Tyler (1835) American author and first professor of
American history in the United States
Ernie Pyle (1900) American journalist of World War II fame; won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his newspaper columns about American soldiers
in action
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792) English poet
Knut Hamsun
(1859) Norwegian author and 1920 Nobel Prize winner for literature
Who shares my birthday?
Is your birthday in August? The names of some of the famous people born
in August are shown on the calendar on this page and the next. What do
you know about the person who shares your birthday?
Ruth Sawyer (1880) American author of children’s books
Neil Armstrong (1930) American astronaut; first person to set foot
on the moon
Alfred, Lord
Tennyson (1809) English poet
Sir Alexander Fleming (1881) British scientist who discovered
penicillin
Louis Leakey (1903) British scientist who found evidence of human
origins
Ralph Bunche
(1904) American statesman; won the Nobel Peace Prize
Sara Teasdale (1884) American poet
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896) American author of The Yearling
and other stories about children and animals
Izaak Walton (1593) English author of The Compleat Angler, a
classic book on fishing
John Dryden (1631) English poet and playwright
Herbert Hoover
(1874) 31st President of the United States
Jimmy Dean (1928) American country and western singer
Carrie Jacobs
Bond (1862) American writer of popular songs
Alex Haley (1921) American author; his book Roots was adapted for
TV
Katharine Lee Bates (1859) American poet who wrote the words to the
hymn “America the Beautiful”
Lucy Stone (1818) American women’s rights leader
Annie Oakley (1860) American who was famous for her accurate
shooting
John Galsworthy (1867) English author
John Ringling North (1903) American whose family ran the world’s
largest circus
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769) military genius and emperor of France
Sir Walter Scott (1771) Scottish author of Ivanhoe
Gabriel Lippmann
(1845) French physicist and Nobel Prize winner
Fess Parker (1927)
American actor who played Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett
(1786) American frontiersman who was killed defending the Alamo
Virginia Dare
(1587) first English child born in America
Roberto Clemente
(1934) Puerto Rican baseball player who won fame as a hitter
Orville Wright (1871) pioneer American aviator and airplane designer
Willie Shoemaker
(1931) American jockey
Oliver Hazard
Perry (1785) American naval officer; hero of the Battle of Lake Erie
Benjamin Harrison (1833) 23rd President of the United States
Count Basie (1904)
American jazz pianist
Wilt Chamberlain
(1936) American basketball star
Claude Debussy
(1862) French composer
Dorothy Parker
(1893) American author
Baron Cuvier
(1769) French naturalist who began the study of fossils
Edgar Lee Masters
(1869) American poet and biographer
George Stubbs (1724) English animal painter
Shirley Hufstedler
(1925) American jurist; first U.S. secretary of education
Bret Harte (1836)
American author of colorful stories about the West
Althea Gibson
(1927) American tennis player
Antoine Lavoisier
(1743) French chemist
Lee De Forest
(1873) American inventor and radio pioneer
Margaretha Schurz
(1833) German-born educator who established the first U.S.
kindergarten
Lyndon B. Johnson
(1908) 36th President of the U.S.
Johann von Goethe (1749) German writer
Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774) first American-born Catholic saint
Oliver Wendell
Holmes (1809) American author and doctor
Maurice Maeterlinck
(1862) Belgian poet and playwright
Mary Shelley (1797) English author of Frankenstein
Ernest Rutherford
(1871) British physicist; “father of nuclear science”
Maria Montessori
(1870) Italian educator
Wilhelmina (1880) queen of the Netherlands