Wikipedia Wonder

When I’m not killing mice or working on websites, I’m checking out other things on the internet. Today, I found out that you can search Wikipedia for any day of the year and find out what happened on that day over history. In other words, you can search for “September 21” (my birthday–presents gladly accepted, even if they’re late) and find out who was born then, who died, what battles happened, etc. Granted, since it’s all user-generated, some of it (or even a lot of it) might be wrong, it’s still interesting to browse and look into further if anything catches your eye. Highlights of my birthdate:

Bill Murray, Stephen King, H.G. Wells, Chuck Jones, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ethan Coen all share my birthday, which made me start wondering if we aren’t predisposed to liking the work of people who share our birthday. Then I saw that Nicole Richie has the same birthday, too. So much for that hypothesis.

Sir Walter Scott died on my birthday.

In honor of my birth, countries around the world celebrate. It’s the International Day of Peace, International Day Against Alzheimer’s, International Banana Festival, and Independence Day in Malta, Belize and Armenia. So perhaps millions of people celebrate my birth each year. I’ll never feel lonely at a birthday party again, because I’ll know that somewhere, some people in Belize are blowing stuff up (or doing whatever they do to celebrate).

Events of note to happen on my birthday:
The angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith
The Hobbit was published
The “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” article was published in the New York Sun

So. What cool things happened on YOUR birthday?