I’m on vacation, but wanted to store up some fun things that will post while I’m gone.
I saw this Birthday Meme on Tanya’s blog and thought I’d borrow it, especially since I just had a birthday.
The idea is to go to Wikipedia, type in your birth date (without the year) and from that search, you are supposed to list 2 birthdays, 3 events, and 1 holiday that are of interest.
June 24 in History
Birthdays
Do you remember this young man? He was sick with cancer and his parents requested greeting cards so that he could get in the Guinness Book of World Records. Only: they forgot to put a deadline on it, and the e-mails morphed, and through the years he has received over 350 million cards. Apparently cards are still getting sent, but the post office just recycles them. His family had to move because of the influx of mail!
This was the only other person on the list that was sort of interesting to me: I always wondered why she left ER and came back, you’ll have to go read the article if you want to find out. I’m not even sure I knew she’d left again. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched. After all of the original people were finally gone, I found I didn’t care a whole lot anymore.
Events
This is harder than it looks. For the events I picked, I tried to pick ones that had to do with interesting female figures in history.
1519 – Death of Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (b. 1480)
I’m going to have to go back and read more about Lucrezia and the rest of the Borgia family: this is one of those names adn stories that I feel like I ought to know more about, but only really know just a teensy bit.
1916 – Mary Pickford becomes first female film star to get a million dollar contract.
1983 – Space Shuttle program: STS-7 Mission Sally Ride, first female American astronaut, returns to earth.
I don’t want to be an astronaut myself, but I live with 3 boys that would like to do this someday.
Holiday
Discovery Day in Newfoundland and Labrador (celebrating the 1497 discovery by John Cabot)
First European exploration of the region since the Vikings!
Well, that’s all I can come up with: I wish more interesting things had happened on my birthday in history, but I guess the fact that it is MY birthday really ought to be enough, right?
Consider yourself tagged if you are at all interested in playing along!
okay, I tried it…but I don’t have a blog, so I’ll answer you here…
July 4
Birthdays:
1872 – Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States.
1918 – Ann Landers, American advice columnist (d. 2002)
1918 – Abigail Van Buren, American advice columnist (“Dear Abby”) (I always read Ann Lander and Dear Abby in the newspaper.)
Events:
1838 – The Iowa Territory is organized.
1862 – Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.
Holiday:
United States – Independence Day (1776) (This one was pretty obvious!)
Filipino-American Friendship Day
This was interesting…have to go back and read some more!
Jami
This was cool stuff. Next time you’re getting tagged fer sure!
A few years ago, I was at a meeting of a local business organization. A staff member from one of the local congressmen’s offices started passing out flyers urging us to send postcards to Craig Shergold. I had a devil of a time convincing them that no, this was not a good idea. After I provided proof they were actually a bit offended.
Now I kind of want to read up on Lucrezia Borgia myself. I’m curious about whether she died from, say, poisoning.