July 13, 2026

Birthdays Today: July 13

Sixty-three living people we could verify share today's birthday, from Indiana Jones to the inventor of the Rubik's Cube and a 103-year-old Tuskegee Airman.

The headliners

Harrison Ford turns 84 today, and it is worth pausing on how unlikely his whole career is. He was a frustrated, barely-working actor in his thirties who taught himself carpentry to pay the rent, and was installing cabinets at George Lucas's house when Lucas cast him in American Graffiti. A few years later Lucas handed him Han Solo. Add Indiana Jones, and you have two of the most bankable characters in film history, played by a man who got his start building bookshelves. The other thing people forget: he has been vice chair of Conservation International since 1991, nearly as long as he has been Indiana Jones. And here is a birthday oddity: he shares the exact date, July 13, 1942, and even the birthplace, Chicago, with Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn.

Lamine Yamal turns 19 today, which is the strange part, because he is already one of the best footballers on Earth. The Barcelona winger won Euro 2024 with Spain, became the youngest scorer in the tournament's history, and finished runner-up for the 2025 Ballon d'Or. Last season he helped Barcelona to a domestic treble. The detail that tells you who he is: after every goal he holds up his fingers in a 304, the last three digits of the postcode for Rocafonda, the working-class Mataro neighborhood where he grew up. He has said he wanted the kids there to see that someone from their block could make it. He wears Barcelona's number 10 now. The name itself is a thank you: his parents named him after two people who helped the family financially before he was born.

Ernő Rubik turns 82 today, and the man who built the world's most famous puzzle could not solve it at first. He made the prototype in 1974 from 27 wooden blocks and rubber bands, as a teaching tool for his architecture students in Budapest, then scrambled it and spent a month getting it back. More than 350 million Rubik's Cubes have been sold since, making it one of the best-selling toys ever, which is a strange legacy for a quiet Hungarian professor who never set out to make a toy at all. He has said the cube came out of his interest in space, in how objects move and transform. These days he runs a foundation for young engineers and stays involved in math and science education. He still lives in Hungary, where he was born during the Second World War.

Wole Soyinka turns 92 today. In 1986 he became the first sub-Saharan African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, honored for work that folds Yoruba myth and modern politics into the same play. He has written dozens of plays, novels, and memoirs, and never stopped provoking: in 1965 he walked into a Nigerian radio station at gunpoint and swapped the tape of a politician's speech for one accusing the government of electoral fraud, and got arrested for it. He spent more than two years in solitary confinement during the Nigerian Civil War for trying to broker peace. For his 90th birthday in 2024, Nigeria renamed its National Arts Theatre after him. He is still writing, and still looms large in the country's arguments.

Roger McGuinn turns 84 today, with the same exact birthday, July 13, 1942, and the same birthplace, Chicago, as Harrison Ford. As the frontman of the Byrds he took folk rock mainstream, singing "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and making the jangling Rickenbacker 12-string guitar the sound of a whole era. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Byrds in 1991. The surprise is how he got there: he was a folk purist playing coffeehouses and backing the Chad Mitchell Trio until he heard the Beatles and decided folk and rock had to meet. He still tours.

Ken Jeong turns 57 today, and the most surprising thing on his resume is the part he left behind: he is a licensed physician. He earned his MD from the University of North Carolina in 1995, did his internal-medicine residency, and was practicing medicine in California when he was cast as the deranged gangster Leslie Chow in The Hangover. He largely quit doctoring after that. He became Ben Chang on Community, broke out in stand-up, and now panels on The Masked Singer. He is still a licensed physician in California, though he long ago stopped practicing. He was born in Detroit to South Korean immigrant parents and grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he finished high school at 16.

Also celebrating today

Screen

Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor X), turning 86. Cheech Marin (Cheech and Chong; Nash Bridges; voices in Coco and Cars), turning 80. Cameron Crowe (writer-director of Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire), turning 69. Tom Kenny (the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants since 1999), turning 64. Gil Birmingham (Thomas Rainwater on Yellowstone; Billy Black in Twilight), turning 73. Didi Conn (Frenchy in Grease), turning 75. Daphne Maxwell Reid (the second Vivian Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), turning 78. Catherine Breillat (French filmmaker and provocateur), turning 78. Colton Haynes (Jackson on Teen Wolf; Roy Harper on Arrow), turning 38. Kenny Johnson (Curtis Lemansky on The Shield; Sons of Anarchy; S.W.A.T.), turning 63. Leo Howard (Jack Brewer on Disney XD's Kickin' It; young Snake-Eyes in G.I. Joe), turning 29. Steven R. McQueen (Jeremy Gilbert on The Vampire Diaries; grandson of Steve McQueen), turning 38. Wyatt Oleff (Stanley Uris in It; young Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy), turning 23. Ashley Scott (voice and motion capture of Maria Miller in The Last of Us games), turning 49. Linnea Berthelsen (Kali, or Eight, on Stranger Things), turning 33. Carmen Villalobos (Catalina Santana in Sin senos no hay paraiso), turning 43. Samia Longchambon (Maria Connor on Coronation Street), turning 44. Pio Marmai (French actor, lead in Netflix's Nero the Assassin), turning 42.

Music

Leon Bridges (soul singer behind "Coming Home" and a Grammy-winning traditional R&B performance), turning 37. Deborah Cox (Canadian R&B singer; "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here" held the US R&B number one for 14 weeks), turning 52. Akina Nakamori (one of Japan's biggest pop idols of the 1980s), turning 61. Rhonda Vincent (bluegrass singer dubbed the "Queen of Bluegrass," a Grammy winner), turning 64. Benny Benassi (Italian DJ and electro-house pioneer behind "Satisfaction"), turning 59. Louise Mandrell (country singer, younger sister of Barbara Mandrell), turning 72. Mark "The Animal" Mendoza (bassist of Twisted Sister), turning 70. Tulisa (N-Dubz singer and former X Factor UK judge), turning 38. Rich the Kid (rapper behind "Plug Walk"), turning 34. Mitch Rowland (songwriter and guitarist who co-wrote Harry Styles' "Watermelon Sugar"), turning 37.

Sports

Yadier Molina (St. Louis Cardinals catching legend, nine Gold Gloves, two World Series rings), turning 44. Liu Xiang) (Chinese hurdler, 2004 Olympic 110m gold, China's first men's athletics gold), turning 43. Guillermo Ochoa (Mexican goalkeeper named to six straight World Cup squads), turning 41. Faf du Plessis (former South Africa cricket captain), turning 42. Cody Bellinger (Yankees outfielder, 2019 NL MVP), turning 31. Shin-Soo Choo (South Korean MLB outfielder for the Mariners, Indians, Reds and Rangers), turning 44. DJ LeMahieu (MLB infielder for the Cubs, Rockies and Yankees, a batting champion), turning 38. David Thompson) ("Skywalker," NBA Hall of Famer who led NC State to the 1974 title), turning 72. Spud Webb (the 5-foot-7 guard who won the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk Contest), turning 63. Josh Hines-Allen (Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end, two Pro Bowls), turning 29. Craig Bellamy (head coach of Wales, former Liverpool and Manchester City forward), turning 47. Roberto Martinez (football manager, recently boss of the Portugal national team), turning 53. Jarno Trulli (Formula 1 driver, winner of the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix), turning 52. Thierry Boutsen (Belgian Formula 1 driver, three Grand Prix wins), turning 69.

World, science, letters, and media

Ma Ying-jeou (president of Taiwan, 2008 to 2016), turning 76. Richard Marles (Australia's deputy prime minister and defence minister since 2022), turning 59. Jose Andres (chef and founder of World Central Kitchen, which feeds millions after disasters), turning 57. James H. Harvey (Tuskegee Airman and the first Black US Air Force jet fighter pilot to fly combat in Korea), turning 103. Aleksei Yeliseyev (Soviet cosmonaut who flew Soyuz 5, 8, and 10), turning 92. George Nelson) (NASA astronaut on three shuttle missions), turning 76. Ghillean Prance (botanist and former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), turning 89. Earl Lovelace (Trinidadian novelist and playwright), turning 91. R.J. Palacio (author of the bestseller Wonder), turning 63. Carl Zimmer (science writer, and the only writer with a species of tapeworm named after him), turning 60. Ian Hislop (editor of Private Eye and a team captain on Have I Got News for You since 1990), turning 66. Tony Kornheiser (co-host of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption), turning 78. Johnny Gilbert (the announcer of Jeopardy! since 1984), turning 98. Bartholomew Nnaji (Nigerian engineer, founder of Geometric Power, former minister of power), turning 70. Sean Waltman (wrestler known as the 1-2-3 Kid and X-Pac), turning 54.

If someone you love shares this date, that is the real gift of these lists. See you tomorrow.