Top 10 February 28 Birthdays

Dishonorable Mention: February 28, 1906: Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. The former Murder, Incorporated hitman "invented" Las Vegas, but the profits didn't come in fast enough, and he paid the price.

10. February 28, 1955: Adrian Dantley. The forward was an All-American at Notre Dame, playing on the 1974 team that ended UCLA's college basketball record 88-game winning streak. He was a 6-time NBA All-Star, winning a Championship with the 1989 Detroit Pistons. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
 
9. Honorable Mention: February 28, 1929: Hayden Fry. He coached Southern Methodist University to a Conference Championship, and the University of Iowa to 3 of them. Barry Kemp, creator of the TV sitcom Coach, was an Iowa graduate, and named the lead character, Hayden Fox, after Fry -- though they were very different men.

8. February 28, 1942: Brian Jones. While he messed things up for himself, he was the most talented musician in The Rolling Stones.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1957: Cindy Wilson. Singer with the B-52's.

7. February 28, 1944: Sepp Maier. The goalkeeper for the Bayern Munich team that won the 1974, 1975 and 1976 European Cups (the tournament now known as the UEFA Champions League), and the West Germany team that won the 1974 World Cup.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1945: Bubba Smith. A defensive end, Charles Aaron Smith won a National Championship at Michigan State University, and Super Bowl V with the Baltimore Colts. But he's probably best known for appearing in Miller Lite commercials and the Police Academy movies.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1954: Brian Billick. Coached the Baltimore Ravens to win Super Bowl XXXV.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1961: Barry McGuigan. He was Featherweight Champion of the World for a shade over a year in 1985 and 1986, but he became a symbol of reconciliation in his native Ireland, where the slogan "Leave the fighting to McGuigan" became popular.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1970: Noureddine Morceli. The Algerian set a record in the mile run that stood for 6 years, and is still the 3rd-fastest ever run. He won the Gold Medal in the 1,500 meters at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1973: Eric Lindros. He scored 290 goals, made 7 NHL All-Star Games, won a Hart Trophy as NHL Most Valuable Player, and won a Gold Medal with Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. All despite a series of injuries that cost him his age 28 season and forced him to retire at 34, and administrative actions that cost him things we can only guess at. He didn't fail: He was sabotaged.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1999: Luka Dončić. The Slovenian forward for the Dallas Mavericks has already been an NBA Rookie of the Year, a 3-time All-Star, finished 2nd in last season's MVP voting, and earned lots of nicknames, including Cool Hand Luke, Wonder Boy, Luka Legend, Too Easy. And he's only 23.

Somewhat Honorable Mention: February 28, 1988: Aroldis Chapman. The Cuban relief pitcher has made 7 All-Star Games, collected 306 saves, helped the Chicago Cubs win the 2016 World Series, and been credited with the fastest pitch ever measured in a Major League Baseball Game: 105.1 miles per hour.

But he served a suspension for domestic violence. And his meltdowns in games have become part of recent New York Yankees lore, including his Pennant-losing home run to José Altuve of the Houston Astros in 2019. Yes, we know: Altuve cheated. Chapman should still have gotten him out.

6. February 28, 1931: Gavin MacLeod. He was a secondary character, Murray Slaughter, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He got promoted to Captain as Merrill Stubing on The Love Boat.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1942: Frank Bonner. He played Herb Tarlek on WKRP in Cincinnati.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1969: Robert Sean Leonard. He has mostly done stage work since his tour de force in Dead Poets Society.

5. February 28, 1948: Bernadette Peters. Perhaps the greatest Broadway performer ever, the muse of Stephen Sondheim.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1939: Tommy Tune. Another Broadway legend.

4. February 28, 1894: Ben Hecht. He wrote the screenplays for the 1932 version of Scarface, Queen Christina, Twentieth Century, the 1937 version of A Star Is Born, The Prisoner of Zenda, Angels with Dirty Faces, Gunga Din, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, His Girl Friday, Foreign Correspondent, The Outlaw, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Gilda, Notorious, Kiss of Death, The Inspector General, Strangers on a Train, The Man with the Golden Arm, Guys and Dolls, the 1956 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, and the 1963 version of Cleopatra.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1907: Milton Caniff. He created the comic strips Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon.

3. February 28, 1533: Michel de Montaigne. He popularized the essay as a literary genre, and was a giant of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the sarcastic saying, "What do I know?" Less well-known is this quip: "Man, which cannot yet make a worm, has been making gods by the thousands."

2. February 28, 1953: Paul Krugman. Now teaching at the City University of New York, and formerly at Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has been the leading liberal economist since the death of John Maynard Keynes. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008, and his column in The New York Times is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the nexus of economics and politics.

Honorable Mention: February 28, 1924: Robert A. Roe. He represented the 8th District of New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1993. That District has since been split, parts being in the 5th and parts in the 9th. The old 8th and the current 9th included my original hometown of Bloomfield, New Jersey, but because of redistricting after the 1970 Census and my family's move to what's now the 12th District in 1972, he was only our Congressman for a short time.

1. February 28, 1901: Linus Pauling. One of the founders of the fields of molecular biology and quantum chemistry, he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954. His subsequent work toward nuclear disarmament earned him the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1962, making him the 2nd and most recent person to win unshared Nobels in 2 fields. The 1st was Marie Curie.

Still alive as of this writing: Dantley, Wilson, Maier, Billick, McGuigan, Morceli, Lindros, Dončić, Chapman, Leonard, Peters, Tune and Krugman. 

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