Today is my 50th birthday, though for some reason it feels like it alreay happened. I think I've been geared up for it long enough, that the arrival of the big 5-0 is somehow anti-climactic. I mean, I've been taking Centrum 50+ for like two years. And, The Other Half is five years older, so he always breaks in new ages for me. Whatever it is, I'm still a year older, officially, than I was yesterday. 50. F-I-F-T-Y.
It really doesn't sound so bad. I can't really still play the doubling game, where you figure out how old you'll be at twice your age: 100. Not bloody likely, but not impossible either. I could get there, but doubtful. But most of my friends and plenty of family are older than me, so 50 doesn't sound so bad.
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.
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!).
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, every once in a while it's Orthodox Easter! My birthday has occurred on ordinary Easter three times during my lifetime, and never will again, unless I live to be 105. Fancy that!
Source for much of this frivolity: Wikipedia.org
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