Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Wiki Birthday

I dropped by to see Captain Picard recently, and it turned out he was having a birthday. To celebrate, he was playing the Wiki Birthday game with his visitors. I couldn't stay long, but I did find out some interesting things about my birth date. Since it's still a long way off, I decided to celebrate my second blogiversary by passing this along. Enjoy!

First, the instructions:
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. You will see a list of births, deaths and events. Copy a couple of each.
(Note: the original instructions I saw on Interstellar Lass's blog went like this:
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. One holiday or observance (if any).
I kind of liked that one, so I'll probably mix it in a bit.)

Events:
1896 - Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in the Klondike in Canada
1930 - The first color sound cartoon, called Fiddlesticks, is made by Ub Iwerks (I just liked that name)
1960 - Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

2 Important Birthdays:
1888 - T. E. Lawrence, English writer and soldier (d. 1935)
1913 - Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1992)
There are quite a few unimportant birthday people, too: Madonna, Lesley Ann Warren, Kathie Lee (and Frank) Gifford, Trevor McDonald, or even Angela Bassett or Julie Newmar

1 Interesting Death:
This one was hard. I had Babe Ruth, Margaret Mitchell, and Bela Lugosi on my list.
Idi Amin and Abu Nidal had the decency to die on my birthday, but I've gotta go with Elvis. You know:
- Elvis Presley, American singer and actor (b. 1935)
He died on my 10th birthday. I heard the news while on the way to my party; it was the only time in my life I got to take my friends out for a special party and I was really excited. The news about Elvis bummed everybody out and we had a lousy time. Thanks a lot, Elvis.

1 Holiday or Observance:
Nothing happens in my birth month, except the Feast of St. Stephen I of Hungary, which is funny because King Wenceslas also died that day. Maybe it's not that funny.

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