Home / Birthday profiles / Herb Thomas

Birthday profile

Herb Thomas

Herb Thomas, American race car driver (died 2000)

Find birthday twinsOpen interactive profile
Born
April 6, 1923
Died
August 9, 2000
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1923

About Herb Thomas

Herbert Watson Thomas was a stock car racer who was one of NASCAR's most successful drivers in the 1950s. Thomas was NASCAR's first multi-time Cup Champion. In 1949, Thomas took part in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock (the forerunner to the Grand National and ultimately the modern NASCAR Cup Series) race and made four starts in the series' first year. Thomas won the Southern 500 rather handily in what was famously dubbed "the Fabulous Hudson Hornet", which would be the first of six wins in two months. With help from crew chief Smokey Yunick, Thomas subsequently became the first owner/driver to take the championship in the process.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Herb Thomas was born

Herb Thomas was born in 1923. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1923

  • #1 song"Yes! We Have No Bananas"
  • Top movieThe Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille)
  • Best-selling bookBlack Oxen – Gertrude Atherton

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst 24 Hours of Le Mans race
  • Top headlineTime magazine publishes its first issue
  • Technology milestoneFirst neon signs appear in the United States
  • Defining fadDance marathons
  • Notable inventionFrozen food process (Clarence Birdseye)
  • World population1.93 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWarren G. Harding / Calvin Coolidge
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • U.S. population111.9M

1923 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Herb Thomas's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19232026
Gas$0.22$3.45/gal
Average home$5,700$435,000
Average income$3,380$67,500
Movie ticket$0.15$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population111.9M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Driver Database, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.