Birthday Events

This is one of those things that a friend sends you every once in a while but this one was interesting. You get to learn things about history. So I did it for all three of us. Here is what you are suposed to do:
Enter your date of birth (eg. January 12) into the Wikipedia search field.1. List five famous people - dead or alive - born on that day.
2. List five historical events on that day.
3. List any days of national or religious observance that occur on that day.

Rayna – December 19th
1. List five famous people - dead or alive - born on that day
- 1778 - Princess Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, eldest child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI (d. 1851)
- 1915 - Édith Piaf, French singer and actress (d. 1963)
- 1933 - Cicely Tyson, American actress
- 1923 - Gordon Jackson, Scottish actor (d. 1990)
- 1980 - Jake Gyllenhaal, American actor2. List five historical events on that day.

- 1776 - Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis.
- 1941 - World War II: Adolf Hitler becomes Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army.
- 2007 - The Lakotah people, a Native American tribe, proclaim independence and withdraw all their treaties with the United States. They then proceed to establish the Republic of Lakotah, with an ongoing process of international recognition as a separate country.
- 1154- Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.
- 1986 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from internal exile in Gorky.3. List any days of national or religious observance that occur on that day.

- Roman festivals - Opalia
- R.C. Saints – O Radix
- Liberation day - Goa

Scott – October 4th

List five famous people - dead or alive - born on that day.
- 1289 - King Louis X of France (d. 1316)
- 1895 - Buster Keaton, American comedian (d. 1966)
- 1941 - Anne Rice, American writer
- 1903 - John Vincent Atanasoff, American computer pioneer (d. 1995)
- 1965 - Skip Heller, American musician

List five historical events on that day.
- 610 - Heraclius arrives by ship from Africa at Constantinople, overthrows Byzantine Emperor Phocas and becomes Emperor.
- 1795 - Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence with a "Whiff of Grapeshot", using cannon to suppress armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the French Legislature (National Convention).
- 1853 - Crimean War: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
- 1957 - Launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.
- 1988 - U.S. televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted for fraud.

List any days of national or religious observance that occur on that day.
- Lesotho - Independence Day (from Britain, 1966).
- World Animal Day
- The beginning of World Space Week
- RC Saints - Feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi; also of Saint Amun, Saint Petronius of Bologna.

Chance – December 21st

1. List five famous people - dead or alive - born on that day.
- 1966 - Kiefer Sutherland, British-born Canadian actor
- 1879 - Joseph Stalin, U.S.S.R Leader
- 1940 - Frank Zappa, American musician (d. 1993)
- 1915 - Werner von Trapp, member of the Trapp Family Singers (d. 2007)
- 1921 - Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira, Finnish-born American actress (d. 2008)

2. List five historical events on that day.
- 1620 - Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
- 1968 - Apollo program: Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At 2h:50m:37s Mission elapsed time (MES), the crew performs the first ever manned Trans Lunar Injection and become the first humans to leave Earth's gravity.
- 1913 - Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.
- 1861 - Medal of Honor: Public Resolution 82, containing a provision for a Navy Medal of Valor, is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln.
- 69 - The end of the Year of the four emperors: Following Galba, Otho and Vitellius, Vespasian becomes the fourth Emperor of Rome within a year.

3. List any days of national or religious observance that occur on that day.
- Roman festivals – Divalia in honour of Angerona
- R.C. Saints – O Oriens, Saint Petrus Conisius; formerly feast day of Thomas the apostle
- In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice, sometimes known as Yule, occurs on or very close to this date. In the Southern Hemisphere the summer solstice occurs at this time.
- Yalda, originally a religious holiday for Zoroastrians, is now a social holiday in Iran.
- Chester Greenwood Day in Maine, celebrating the inventor of earmuffs.