Wikipedia birthday meme

DPF and Krimsonlake have a Wikipedia meme that I'm belatedly picking up on. Instructions (which I've flouted):

1. Go to Wikipedia
2. In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.
3. List five events that happened on your birthday
4. List two important birthdays and one death
5. One holiday or observance (if any)

Great events:

• 1851 - Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick is published.
• 1971 - Mariner program: Mariner 9 reaches Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
• 1982 - Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Poland's outlawed Solidarity movement, is released after eleven months of internment.
  
• 1995 - A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs. (Woo hoo!)
• 2001 - Afghan Northern Alliance fighters takeover the capital Kabul and throw out those Taleban bastards. (Woo hoo!)
  

Birthdays:

• 1650 - King William III of England, ie., he of the 1688 'Glorious Revolution'
• 1840 - Claude Monet, French painter
• 1947 - P. J. O'Rourke, American writer
• 1948 - Charles, Prince of Wales
• 1954 - Condoleezza Rice, United States Secretary of State
• 1971 - Adam Gilchrist, Australian cricketer

Deaths:

• 1716 - Gottfried Leibniz, German philosopher and mathematician (b. 1646)
• 1831 - Georg Hegel, German philosopher (b. 1770)
• 1832 - Charles Carroll of Carrollton, signer of the American Declaration of Independence and U.S. Senator (b. 1732)

Holidays:

My only reason for supporting the Monarchy would be if Charlie's birthday became one. Until then, all I have is a Roman festival: The Equorum Probatio.

TAGS: Blog, Nonsense, History