Today is my birthday, though for some reason it doesn't really feel like it yet. Perhaps it is because there hasn't yet been an office party, or maybe it's because I got birthday wishes a week ago when I was back home in Ohio. Whatever it is, I'm still a year older, officially, than I was yesterday. 43. Forty-three.
It really doesn't sound so bad. I can still play the doubling game, where you figure out how old you'll be at twice your age: 86. Not entirely likely, but not impossible either. I could get there. And most of my friends and co-workers are older than me, so 43 sounds just fine.
April 19th isn't a particularly happy day in history, despite its meaning to me. Here are just a few of the bad and/or very serious things that happened on my birthday:
- 1775: "The shot heard 'round the world," the first shot of the American Revolutionary War fired. Sure, it ended up OK, but somebody was on the other end of that shot!
- 1927: Mae West sentenced to ten days in prison for indecency!
- 1961: Bay of Pigs invasion.
- 1989: 47 soldiers killed on USS Iowa.
- 1993: Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas is raided, then burns to the ground.
- 1995: Domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City bombing.
Then again, some good and/or interesting things happened on April 19th too:
- 1775: That American Revolutionary War thing is good, of course.
- 1892: First automobile driven in the United States.
- 1935: Actor Dudley Moore born.
- 1946: Actor/singer Tim Curry born.
- 1971: Charles Manson sentenced to death. . .so why is he still alive?
- 1987: The Simpsons debuts as a short, recurring cartoon within The Tracey Ullman Show (on my 21st birthday, and I was watching!).
- 2005: The current Pope was named. Ambivalent about this one.
Other birthdays today include Kate Hudson, Jayne Mansfield, Hayden Christensen, Ashley Judd and Suge Knight. Deaths on this date include Charles Darwin (1892), Pierre Curie (1906) and Benny Hill (1992).
And did you know that my birthday is also: Bicycle Day, Venezuala's Independence Day, "Feast Day" of several Roman Catholic saints, and this year it's Orthodox Easter! My birthday has occurred on ordinary Easter three times during my life, and never will again, unless I live to be 105. Fancy that!
Source for much of this frivolity: Wikipedia.org
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