Birth Date Meme

[rj_anderson]

It's everywhere by now, but I gacked this particular version from npkedit:

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and two deaths in your journal, including the year.

March 23

Neat Facts:

1801 - Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael Palace.
1839 - First recorded use of "OK" as an abbreviation for "oll korrect" in the Boston Morning Post.
1989 - A 1,000-foot diameter Near-Earth asteroid misses the Earth by 400,000 miles.

Births:
1429 - Margaret of Anjou, queen of Henry VI of England (d. 1482)
1912 - Wernher von Braun, German-born physicist and engineer (d. 1977)

Deaths:
1754 - Johann Jakob Wettstein, Swiss theologian (b. 1693)
1964 - Peter Lorre, Hungarian-born actor (b. 1904)

Considering that I know about eight people who share my birthday (one of them my sister-in-law, another the son of my next-door neighbour), the results of this meme were surprisingly... not that interesting. Though I do feel sorry for Tsar Paul, because ouch.

Comments

[cesario.livejournal.com]

hey, can you get online? if you're so bored, i have a Who fic that needs an audience!

[greenwoodside.livejournal.com]

Though I do feel sorry for Tsar Paul, because ouch.

The Russians do like to be thorough when it comes to killing Tsars, don't they?

The most memorable thing to happen on my birthday is the Slave Trade Act (1807). Pretty chuffed about that.

[camillofan.livejournal.com]

I think greenwoodside and I must share a birthday!

[pharnabazus.livejournal.com]

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown! But yes, it does sound painful! Most history books just say he "was assassinated" without saying much how.

Anyway, I "always" wondered where the expression "OK" came from, and what it originally meant! Thanks for that!

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Apparently it was a bunch of upper crust young men who went in for jokey mis-spellings.

Paul sounds as if he needed nearly as much effort to kill as Rasputin.

[pharnabazus.livejournal.com]

Rasputin sounds as though someone had given him a Bezoar! He seems to have been immune to "any" poison! What else was tried in the end? Drowning? Bullets?

[crazyluke.livejournal.com]

Grr... Margaret of Anjou. Nasty piece of work. Nasty, nasty nasty. ¬.¬