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Wikimeme Apr 07

An interesting meme via Doctorvee:

Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

Birth date: May 20

Events:

  • 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a US patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
  • 1896 – The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier falls on the crowd resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others.
  • 1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States.

Births:

  • 1806 – John Stuart Mill, English philosopher (d. 1873)
  • 1970 – Louis Theroux, British television presenter

Death:

  • 1996 – Jon Pertwee, British actor (b. 1919)

9 Responses

  1. 1
    Jackie 

    Well, I can live with Augustus Ceaser and Kaublai Khan. I had no idea that my birthday was International Bisexuality Day. I have learned.

  2. 2
    Matt 

    Interesting. The chandelier disaster at the Paris Opera House was presumably an inspiration for The Phantom of the Opera.

    Events
    1867 – The first ship passes through the Suez Canal.
    1933 – The end of prohibition in the USA. Mine’s a pint.
    1958 – Saint Clare of Assisi is made the Patron Saint of Television by the Pope, on the basis that when she was too ill to attend mass she miraculously saw it on the wall of her room (the flash cow must’ve had a plasma screen, probably with 5.1 surround, though why she’d want to watch Songs of Praise on it instead of, say, Revenge of the Sith is quite beyond me).

    Births
    Rene Russo (slaver), 1954
    Paris Hilton (shudder), 1981

    Death
    Thelonius Monk, 1982

    Matt

  3. 3
    Matt 

    Oops, that’s all “things that happened on February 17th”. Yasser Arafat was meant to share my birthday, but according to Wikipedia he was born in August 1929.

  4. 4
    Jules 

    Date: 8th July

    Events

    1680 – The first confirmed tornado in America kills a servant at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    1947 – Reports are broadcast that a UFO has crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico.

    1990 – At 12:34:56 (both AM and PM) the time and date by US reckoning was 12:34:56 7/8/90.

    Births

    1838 – Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, German inventor (d. 1917)

    1958 – Kevin Bacon, American actor

    Death

    1822 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (b. 1792)

  1. 5
    Niles’s Blog » On this Day (via Pingback)

    […] Will has a rather nifty meme to take Wikipedia’s ‘On this Day’ function and find out things about your birthday. Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal. […]

  2. […] No geek is an island » Blog Archive » Wikimeme […]

  3. Wikimeme

    An interesting meme via Will:
    Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal …..

  4. […] An interesting meme comes via Will Howells’ blog. […]

  5. 9
    Quaequam Blog! » Wikimeme (via Pingback)

    […] Okay Will and Jonathan, I’ll bite (on the basis that, unlike most memes, this one doesn’t involve me having an opinion about stuff): […]