Well, I think we can pretty well establish that I have a proven record of struggling to remain inside the boundaries of any meme's original scope and intent. Mary of Life, Universe and Everything tagged me for a fairly harmless looking little meme. The idea is ...

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your Birthday Month and day only.
2. List 3 Events that occurred that day.
3. List 2 important Birth days.
4. List 1 Death.
5. List a Holiday or Observance. (if any)
6. Tag 5 other bloggers.

I came close to staying within the boundaries. As to #6, I'm tired from all the exploring I did when I fell head over heals into this little exercise. It was amusing, informative, and ... a little disheartening to discover that only movie stars and musicians were born after say 1945-ish. Oh, yeah, right, as I was saying ... I'm worn out from goofing off with this ... so ya'll talk amongst yourselves, compare notes, and tag someone else to do the meme. Then come back and let me know "who, what, when, where ...." If you want, you can even throw in "why."

For my birthday: July 3

Events

• 1608 - Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain.
• 1775 - American Revolutionary War: George Washington takes command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• 1778 - American Revolutionary War: British forces massacre 360 men, women & children in the Wyoming Valley massacre.
• 1986 - US President Ronald Reagan presides over the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty. [Cause I wanted something I could actually claim as "Hey I know when that happened and I watched it on TV."]
  

Births

• 1567 - Samuel de Champlain, French explorer (d.1635)[Loved to do small things on his birthday ... like establish cities in out of the way places ... like Canada.]
• 1738 - John Singleton Copley, American painter (d.1815) "... was a Boston-born American artist of the colonial period, famous for his portraits of important figures in colonial New England, particularly men and women of the middle class. His portraits were innovative in that they tended to portray their subjects with artifacts that were indicative of their lives." [Yeah ... but when the going got tough ... he took off for England.]
• 1958 - Aaron Tippin, American [country] singer [I do not mind sharing my bday with him.]
  

Death
1749 - William Jones, Welsh mathematician (b.1675) "As a
mathematician, his most noted contribution is his proposal for the use of the symbol π (the Greek letter pi) to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He became a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Edmund Halley. In 1712, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was later its Vice-President." [The man knew how to collect friends! Can you imagine bumping into the three of them at the local coffee shop?]

Holiday / Observance
July 3 is the official first day of the Dog Days of Summer. And my mom will be the first to vouch for the truth of this statement. She does not have fond memories of dealing with a first new baby in the heat.


For my mother's birthday: March 23

Events

• 1775 - American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his famous speech - "give me liberty or give me death" at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.
• 1857 - Elisha Otis's first elevator is installed at 488 Broadway New York City.
• 1903 - The Wright Brothers apply for a patent on their invention of one of the first successful airplanes. [FYI my mom flew for the first time ever last summer to Daughter V's wedding]
• 1965 - NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States' first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young).

Births

• 1699 - John Bartram, American botanist (d.1777)
• 1924 - Bette Nesmith Graham, American inventor (d.1980)
• 1941 - Jim Trelease, American educator and children's literature author [My kids will remember The Read-Aloud Handbook and now out is The New Read-Aloud Handbook. I can say without hesitation Jim Trelease's book contributed to my children's great love of books. It is a HUGE MUST GET BOOK if you have children ... or grandchildren ... or know children ... or know anyone who has children ...]

Death
1982 - Barney Clark, first artificial heart recipient (b.1921)

Holidays
I was totally dissatisfied with the holidays listed on Wikipedia so, with very little effort, I discovered that March 23 is both "Liberty Day" (in honor of the 1775 speech by Mr. Henry) and it is "Near Miss Day." You can read "Did the Earth almost get hit by an asteroid on March 23, 1989?" at The Astronomy Cafe