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What is documented about famous February birthdays
Famous February birthdays include the documented dates, the historical figures behind them, and the source conflicts that remain unresolved.
Published birth dates for well known people are wrong more often than readers expect. The interesting part is how a wrong date gets in, because every route leaves a different trace.
What to take away
- February's best documented birthdays belong to Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913), Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902) and Hank Aaron (February 5, 1934).
- A date with no stated source is a claim, not a fact. Name the holder before you repeat it.
- Day errors are usually a misread digit. Year errors poison every age and career length derived from them.
- Two honest sources can quote two real documents and still disagree.
The February birthdays that hold up
Rosa Parks was born February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her birth record sits with the Alabama Department of Public Health, and the date is repeated without dispute in the National Archives' holdings on the Montgomery bus boycott.
Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His own autobiography gives the year as 1902, which matters because early press biographies printed 1901 and some reference works copied it.
Hank Aaron was born February 5, 1934, in Mobile, Alabama. His date comes through league media guides, a chain of team-issued documents rather than a vital record.
Babe Ruth, February 6, 1895, is the standard test case. His birth record was filed late and the family gave conflicting years. The date on his Hall of Fame plaque is not the date on his certificate.
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. Kentucky kept no birth register then, so the date rests on a family Bible entry and on Lincoln's own written account.
Frederick Douglass gave February 14, 1818 as his birthday. He chose the date himself. No record of his birth survived, and he said so in his autobiography.
Ronald Reagan was born February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois. The date comes from a birth certificate filed in Illinois.
Toni Morrison was born February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio. Her Nobel Prize biography gives that date.
Michael Jordan was born February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, New York. The date travels through league and team media guides, the same chain that carries Hank Aaron's date.
Where a wrong date actually comes from
A recorded date starts as an entry made by someone not in the room. A registrar wrote down what a family member told them, sometimes weeks later and sometimes in a second language.
Civil registration is the system for keeping that entry. It is not a guarantee the entry was right when it was made.
The common failure routes:
How a Wrong Date Starts
- Entry made by someone not in the room
- Transcription: digit misread or format swapped
- Late or amended registration from memory
- Self-reporting with no matching requirement
- Translation of calendars and scripts
- Editorial invention fills a gap
Where a wrong date comes from
- A registrar wrote down what a relative said, weeks after the birth or through an interpreter.
- A family record, such as a Bible page, was the only entry ever made.
- A census or draft card listed an age, and someone later turned that age into a year.
- A press biography printed a date, and later reference works copied the biography instead of a record.
- An amended certificate replaced the visible entry, leaving the earlier date in circulation elsewhere.
Why the day and the year fail differently
Day errors tend to be small and local. Somebody misread a digit. One good document usually corrects it.
Year errors behave worse. Age is calculated from the year, so a wrong year silently poisons every derived statement: age at an event, career length, who was older.
Every name directory on this site, including the January list, which dates Martin Luther King Jr. to January 15, 1929, is only as sound as its year field. An unexplained one year gap between two sources deserves more attention than an unexplained one day gap.
What a birth certificate does and does not settle
A birth certificate is strong evidence. It is not the same thing as proof. It settles what was registered, not what happened.
What a Birth Certificate Settles
The document shows
- Date entered
- Registrar's entry
- Jurisdiction
- Registration place
- Version held
- Current record
- Name
- Name at registration
It does not show
- Date entered
- Informant reported correctly
- Jurisdiction
- Physical birth place
- Version held
- Earlier version's wording
- Name
- Later public name
An amended certificate replaces the visible record without announcing the replacement. That is one reason two honest sources disagree while both quote a real document.
Checking a date without repeating it
You do not need to publish a date to work with one. Separate what you know from what you have merely seen.
- Write down where each version came from and when you looked.
- Note whether the sources are independent, or whether one copied the other.
- Keep the disagreement in the file. Averaging two dates produces a third value no record supports.
- Say plainly when the evidence is thin.
The month pillar for February birthdays explains the month's shape. historical January entries cover calendar problems, as with Benjamin Franklin: January 6, 1706 in the Old Style record, January 17 in the New Style.
A day by day January index lists Betty White on January 17, 1922, and a roster of January musicians lists Elvis Presley on January 8, 1935.
Common questions
Are famous people's dates more error prone than anyone else's?
They are more copied, which produces the same result. A private person's date sits in one file. A public figure's sits in hundreds of places, so one early mistake gets many chances to look confirmed.
If two reference works disagree, is one careless?
Not necessarily. They may be quoting different documents, or the same document at different points in its life. Find which record each one used before deciding.
Why not publish both dates?
Often that is the honest answer.
