T w e n t y S i d e d
Random surfing led me to Tim Worstall, who had this idea:
I won’t limit myself to the numbers above. Let’s just see what’s interesting about August 24:
Facts:
79 AD: Mount Vesuvius erupts.
1456: The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
1853: Potato chips are first prepared.
1891: Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.
1944: World War II: French and Allied troops start the attack on Paris.
1968: France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power.
Births:
1817: Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
1929: Yasser Arafat
1973: David Chappelle
Deaths:
1042: Michael V, Byzantine Emperor
Ludonarrative Dissonance
What is this silly word, why did some people get so irritated by it, and why did it fall out of use?
The Best of 2016
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2016.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
A Star is Born
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Marvel's Civil War
Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
i checked my birthday, and guess what? BARBRA WALTERS WAS BORN ON MY BIRTHDAY!!!? WHAT THE HELL!? IS THERE NO JUSTICE!?
I don’t even have to look it up to know that the Queen of England and Rush Limbaugh’s mother share my birth date. Guess what radio show I learned that from
Mom
Guess what radio show I learned that from
Ummmm…. The O’Franken Factor?
:-)
It is a new day. I woke up with a better memory. Margaret Thatcher ( not Queen Elizabeth) was born on the same day as Rush Limbaugh’s mother. Maybe even the same year. Rush will confirm that later this year as he ALWAYS wishes HIS mother a happy birthday on the air (and mentions his hero, M Thatcher). The point here is, of course, that I notice you rarely remember the birthday of YOUR mother. And just to set the record very straight, YOUR mother is MUCH younger than Margaret Thatcher but, she won’t live forever so you don’t have that many more years to get THAT straight! I’ll be watching for my big HB on Twenty sided (with or without a nod to Rush’s mom and the former occupant of 10 Downing Street)
A Libra
September 19th, 1978
Facts:
1900 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid commit their first robbery together.
1957 – First U.S. underground nuclear bomb test.
1982 – Scott Fahlman posts the first recorded instance of the emoticon :-) to an online bulletin board.
2003 – Musician Elliott Smith plays his final concert at Redfest in Salt Lake City, Utah, only weeks before his suicide. (I had to include this one even though its the 4th)
Births:
1551 – King Henry III of France (d. 1589)
1980 – Tegan and Sara Quin, Canadian singer/songwriters
Hermione Granger’s birthday, from J.K. Rowling’s series Harry Potter.
Deaths:
1942 – Condé Nast, American publisher (b. 1873)
Frankly there is no excuse for anybody to forget birthdays anymore. In this day and age you can store them in your email, or calendar.google.com, or a ton of other websites that will send you email to remind you. Personally I use rainlendar as my desktop calendar.
Frankly I would consider taking him out of this world, it is your right ;)
p.s. I wish my mom was a technological to post on my blog, but if she read it I would have to leave stories out like getting kicked out of bars :)
December 26
Events:
1620 – Pilgrim Fathers land at what becomes New Plymouth in Massachusetts.
1848 – The Phi Delta Theta fraternity is founded at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
1996 – Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey is found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado.
May I note how creepy it is that we even celebrate “six-year-old beauty queens”.
Births:
1893 – Mao Zedong, Chinese military leader and politician (d. 1976)
Deaths:
268 – Pope Dionysius
418 – Pope Zosimus
April 2:
Events:
68 – Galba, governor of Hispania, names himself legatus senatus populique Romani, breaking the line of Roman emperors begun with Julius Caesar and Augustus.
1513 – Juan Ponce de Leon sets foot on Florida becoming the first European known to do so.
1865 – American Civil War: The Siege of Petersburg is broken – Union troops capture the trenches around Petersburg, Virginia, forcing Confederate General Robert E. Lee to retreat.
1865 – American Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most of his Cabinet flee the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
1917 – World War I: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asks the U.S. Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.
1917 – The first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin, takes her seat as a representative from Montana.
Births:
742 – Charlemagne (d. 814)
1743 – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States (Old style date) (d. 1826)
Deaths:
1872 – Samuel F. B. Morse, American painter and inventor of the telegraph (b. 1791)
1882 – Jesse James, American outlaw, shot in the back of the head by Robert Ford (b. 1847)
2005 – Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
I remember that last one. Coming down the stairs for breakfast..
“Oh hey, happy birthday. By the way, the Pope is dead.”
“…”
Some say the television is evil and meant to brainwash the population.'
Motion Picture: Patented on August 24 (First Day of Virgo)
1
__ = 1.50150150 (Virgo lies on the 150th Parallel)
0.666
First RFID “˜Mark of Beast' test implantation occured August 24, 1998. (First Day of Virgo)
“˜Leiscerbette' on http://www.createspace.com.
Coming Soon!!
This post will not be read by anybody, and this topic is many, many years old, but I have the worst birthday of all. January 30.
On January 30:
1649: Charles I of England is Beheaded
1933: Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany
1945: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with German refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, killing approximately 9,500 people in what is the deadliest known maritime disaster.
1948: Gandhi is assassinated
1969: Beatles’ last public performance
1972: Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland
2000: Off the coast of Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.
Oh, and to top it all off….
January 30, 1941: Dick Cheney is born.
Ain’t that right.