Famous People Born with the Sun in Cancer

Earth is at aphelion, as far from the Sun as it gets, in the first days of July, so the Sun's apparent pace is slowest then. Averaged over 1800 to 2009, the Sun spends 31.5 days a year in Cancer, an expected share of 8.6% against the 8.3% of an even twelfth. Spread over the 3,851 people whose Sun sign the roster can fix, that rate predicts about 332; the roster has 307, or 8%.

A binomial yardstick sizes the gap. For a random draw of this many people one standard deviation is about 17, so the shortfall is 1.4 standard deviations, below the two-deviation line usually crossed before a difference is called significant. Real scatter is probably wider, because the roster is no random draw. Most countries have a birth season, and a list ranked by Wikipedia readership leans on actors and athletes born since the 1940s, so the months those people arrived in feed straight into each sign's count.

Moving about 0°57′ a day through Cancer, the Sun gives each bar of the chart roughly one calendar day of birthdays. George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States, and Sylvester Stallone, American actor and filmmaker, were both born on July 6, 1946; neither has a chart page here, so each card shows the noon Sun, and both land on the same 13°57′. The tallest bar, 9°00′ to 10°00′, reaches 19 where the mean bar is 10.2; counts this small scatter widely from bar to bar, and the shape was not tested against chance.

The crossing-day rule trims both edges by about the same amount. A settled birthday keeps the noon Sun at least half a day's motion, about 0°28′, from either boundary; anything closer means the Sun changed sign during that local day. Among the noon-Sun cards, the lowest degree belongs to Octavia E. Butler, American science fiction writer, born June 22, 1947, at 0°32′, and the highest is 29°24′. William, Prince of Wales, born June 21, 1982, the day the Sun entered Cancer, stays on the list because his chart page records a well-sourced birth time. His card shows the Sun at that moment, 0°06′, the lowest on the list and nearer the boundary than any noon card can sit. Each end bar is left with about half a degree of settled birthdays: the closing one holds 5, the shortest on the chart, and the opening one 10.

Entertainment still leads with 123 members, though its 40% trails a roster-wide 42%. Sports runs the other way at 18% against 16%, a surplus of about 6 people. Neither gap reaches one binomial standard deviation for a group of 307, so both sit comfortably inside chance. Modern astrologers tie Cancer to home, memory and protectiveness, a reading of temperament that these field counts neither back nor refute.

Births from the 1970s make up 17% of the list and outnumber the 1960s by 21, while the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s sit within two of one another. Slices this thin move by several people on chance alone. The earliest-born member is Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author, born July 4, 1804.

Professional footballer Erling Haaland, born July 21, 2000, heads the grid and Lionel Messi, born June 24, 1987, follows him; soccer players take four of the first five cards. Demand decides that order: average monthly English Wikipedia views over the last twelve full months, with a fixed lift for natives or citizens of the United States, the Philippines, India and Britain. Meryl Streep, Film, stage and television actor, born June 22, 1949, has her Sun only 0°43′ past the solstice crossing.