Birthdays Today

July 29, 2026

Birthdays Today: July 29

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Sixty-two living people we could verify share today's birthday, from two-time Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso, turning 45, and Rush frontman Geddy Lee, turning 73, to filmmaker Ken Burns, country star Martina McBride turning 60, and 90-year-old trailblazer Elizabeth Dole, plus a remarkable 1953 quartet of four notables across documentary film, prog rock, the E Street Band, and Project Runway, all turning 73 on this exact day.

The headliners

Fernando Alonso turns 45 today, and two decades after becoming Spain's first Formula One world champion he is still racing, now for Aston Martin. Born 29 July 1981 in Oviedo to a working-class family, he won back-to-back drivers' titles with Renault in 2005 and 2006, dethroning Michael Schumacher, and has 32 Grand Prix wins across 23 seasons. He is the only driver ever to win both the F1 world championship and the World Endurance Championship, adding two 24 Hours of Le Mans victories with Toyota. The surprise: Alonso is such a devoted cyclist that in 2013 he personally bought the cash-strapped Basque team Euskaltel-Euskadi to save it from folding, chasing a dream he once said he'd follow if he weren't an F1 driver.

Geddy Lee turns 73 today, and as the voice, bass, and keyboards of Rush he helped define progressive rock for half a century. Born Gary Lee Weinrib on 29 July 1953 in Willowdale, Toronto, he joined the band in 1968 with his childhood friend Alex Lifeson and played on every Rush album until the group wound down. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. The surprise is his name: "Geddy" came from his mother's thick Polish accent pronouncing "Gary," which a schoolfriend misheard and adopted, until it stuck for good. His parents were Holocaust survivors from Poland, a history Lee has spoken about more openly in recent years.

Ken Burns turns 73 today, and no American filmmaker has done more to turn the country's past into appointment television. Born 29 July 1953 in Brooklyn, he made The Civil War (1990), Baseball, Jazz, The Roosevelts, The Vietnam War, Country Music, and The American Revolution in 2025, all built on his signature slow pan-and-zoom over old photographs. That move is so identified with him that Apple named it the "Ken Burns effect" and built it into iMovie. The surprise: Burns never does commercial endorsements, so when Steve Jobs called in 2002 asking to use his name, Burns said no, until Jobs agreed to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment to nonprofits in exchange.

Martina McBride turns 60 today, a milestone for one of country music's most decorated voices. Born 29 July 1966 in Sharon, Kansas, she has won the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year award four times and earned 14 Grammy nominations, selling more than 14 million albums with a soprano that could fill an arena. The surprise is how it started: after moving to Nashville, she sold T-shirts at Garth Brooks concerts because her husband ran Brooks's sound. Brooks was so taken with her drive that he offered her his opening slot if she could land a record deal, and he kept that word in 1992 despite never having heard her sing.

Wil Wheaton turns 54 today, and few actors have so thoroughly grown up on screen and then reinvented themselves online. Born 29 July 1972 in Burbank, he played Gordie in Stand by Me at 14, Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and later a deliciously villainous version of himself on The Big Bang Theory. The surprise: Wheaton is a serious competitive poker player who joined Team PokerStars in 2005, played the World Series of Poker, and relished high-stakes heads-up matches against touring pros. He also created and hosted the YouTube board-game show TableTop, widely credited with helping spark the modern tabletop-gaming boom.

Elizabeth Dole turns 90 today, and her career is a string of firsts for women in American public life. Born 29 July 1936 in Salisbury, North Carolina, she served as secretary of transportation under Reagan and secretary of labor under George H. W. Bush, making her the first woman to hold two different cabinet posts. She later ran the American Red Cross, only the second woman to lead it since Clara Barton, and served as a U.S. senator from North Carolina. The surprise: at the 1996 Republican convention she ditched the podium and walked out among the delegates, talk-show style, to talk about her husband Bob Dole, a moment the press instantly dubbed Oprah-like.

A note before the roll call: Four of today's honorees were all born on this exact day in 1953, turning 73 in four wildly different worlds, documentarian Ken Burns, Rush frontman Geddy Lee, E Street Band singer Patti Scialfa, and Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn. And three more share 29 July 1966, all turning 60: country star Martina McBride, Olympic hurdle champion Sally Gunnell, and WNBA guard Debbie Black.

Also celebrating today

World & ideas

Arts & letters

Music

Screen & stage

Television & media

Sports

Happy birthday to all sixty-two.

That’s the reading for this issue.