04.05.07

The Wikipedia Meme

Posted in Memes at 9:28 am by Christina

I see this sort of thing all the time around the blogosphere, and I usually pass them by, but this one is interesting to this history major and so I’m checking it out. You go to Wikipedia and type in your birth month and day and see what’s up in the history of that day!

3 EVENTS

1969: The symbolic birth date of the Internet, with the publication of something called RFC 1 and the awarding of the ARPANET contract.

1827: First sale of the friction match.

1805: First performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony (Eroica).

2 BIRTHDAYS (I’m going to list two modern/living and two historical, just for fun!)

1920: Ravi Shankar, Indian sitar player (who worked with the Beatles and basically brought sitar music to the west; we learned this during preparations for the geography fair last week, which I still have to get a blog post up for!).

1964: Russell Crowe, Australian actor.

1506: Francis Xavier, who with Ignatius Loyola and others founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

1770: William Wordsworth, English poet.

1 DEATH

1891: P.T. Barnum, American showman.

1 HOLIDAY or OBSERVANCE

World Health Day, from the World Health Organization at the United Nations; WHO was founded on April 7, 1948.

ANOTHER INTERESTING THING

Dante entered the gates of hell in the Inferno…