December

Woody Allen (1935) American comedian, actor, and filmmaker

Lee Trevino (1939) American professional golf champion

Georges Seurat

(1859) French artist who started a way of painting called
pointillism

Tracy Austin (1962)

American tennis player

George McClellan (1826) Union general in the Civil War

Joseph Conrad (1857) Polish-born author who wrote some of the
greatest novels in English

Thomas Carlyle (1795) Scottish author of essays and French and
English history

Edith Cavell (1865) World War I English nurse

Who shares my birthday?

Is your birthday in December? The names of some of the famous people
born in December are shown on the calendar on this page and the next.
What do you know about the person who shares your birthday?

Martin Van Buren (1782) 8th President of the United States

Walt Disney (1901) American creator of Mickey Mouse and other movie
cartoon characters

George Armstrong

Custer (1838) American cavalry officer; defeated at Little Bighorn

Dave Brubeck (1920) American jazz composer and pianist

Rudolf Friml (1879)

Austrian-born composer of operettas

Joyce Kilmer (1886)

American poet; best known for “Trees”

Eli Whitney (1765) American inventor of the cotton gin

Padraic Colum (1881) Irish poet, playwright, and author of young
people’s books

John Milton (1608) English poet

Joel Chandler Harris (1848) American author of the Uncle Remus
stories

Cesar Franck

(1822) Belgian composer of music for piano and orchestra

Emily Dickinson

(1830) American poet

Hector Berlioz

(1803) French composer, conductor, critic, and writer

Annie Jump Cannon (1863) American astronomer

John Jay (1745) American diplomat and 1st chief justice of the
United States

Gustave Flaubert (1821) French author

Emily Carr (1871) Canadian painter and writer

Alvin York (1887)

American hero in

World War I

James Doolittle

(1896) U.S. Air Force general

Margaret Chase Smith (1897) American senator from Maine

Maxwell Anderson

(1888) American playwright and 1933 Pulitzer Prize winner

J. Paul Getty (1892) American billionaire

Jane Austen (1775) English author of Pride and Prejudice and other
books

Margaret Mead (1901) American anthropologist and author

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807) American poet

Arthur Fiedler (1894) long-time conductor of the Boston Pops
Orchestra

Charles Wesley

(1707) English clergyman who wrote many hymns

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. (1912) the first black U.S. major general

Albert Michelson (1852) first American physicist to win the Nobel
Prize in physics (1907)

Cicely Tyson (1939) American actress

Maud Gonne (1865) advocate of Irish freedom

Harvey Firestone

(1868) American founder of Firestone Tire & Rubber Company

Benjamin Disraeli (1804) twice prime minister of Great Britain

Albert Payson Terhune (1872) American author of stories about dogs

James Oglethorpe (1696) English founder and first governor of the
colony of Georgia

Giacomo Puccini

(1858) Italian opera composer who wrote La Boheme

Richard Arkwright

(1732) British inventor of a machine to make thread

Jose Greco (1918) Italian-born Spanish dancer

Kit Carson (1809) American frontier scout

Matthew Arnold

(1822) English poet and literary critic

Isaac Newton

(1642) English mathematician who discovered the law of gravity

Clara Barton (1821) founder of the American Red Cross

Thomas Gray (1716)

English poet; wrote “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

George Dewey (1837) American admiral who took Manila in 1898

Johannes Kepler (1571) German astronomer

Louis Pasteur (1822) French scientist who discovered disease is
spread by bacteria

Carol Ryrie Brink

(1895) American author

Earl (Fatha) Hines (1905) American jazz musician

Andrew Johnson (1808) 17th President of the United States

Woodrow Wilson (1856) 28th President of the United States

Rudyard Kipling (1865) English author of The Jungle Book, Just So
Stories, Captains Courageous, and other books

Henri Matisse

(1869) French painter

Odetta (Felicious

Gordon) (1930)

American folk singer