Wikipedia meme
Apr. 8th, 2006 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksHere's my entry for the Wikipedia meme (received via email, and sighted at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahf and McVane blogs.
1. Search your birth month and day (not year) at Wikipedia.
2. Pick three events, two births and one death of interest.
3. Post.
November 23 seems to be a busy day, although it probably isn't any more so than any other day. There was a lot of interesting information to choose from.
Events:
1499 - Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England. The Tudors are in power by then, and I find the War of the Roses and ultimate change of power to the Tudors to be fascinating. Haven't read much about Warbec, though.
1936 - First edition of Life is published. It is such a staple of 20th century Americana that I thought it was first published closer to the dawn of the century.
1993 - Rachel Whiteread wins both the £20,000 Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the £40,000 K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year. This just makes me laugh. Simultaneously the best and the worst? Just goes to show that art is subjective, and talent is in the eye of the beholder.
Births:
1221 - King Alfonso X of Castilla, known as "El Sabio," meaning the Wise or the Learned. He was generally thought to be more learned than wise. Known for his learning and work in astronomy and literature, and for trying to uniformly use castellano as the official government & church language instead of Latin, Alfonso was also egocentric (imagine a king being so) and scattered, wasting Spanish resources.
1837 - Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist. Nobel prize winner who recognized the role of molecules' volume in establishing the relationship between the pressure, volume and temperature of gases and liquids. His is one of the few science names I remember from chemistry, along with Planck, Roentgen, Curie, and Tesla.
1887 - Boris Karloff, born with the more pedestrian name of William Benjamin Pratt.
Death:
1902 - Walter Reed, American bacteriologist. For some reason, I thought he was a surgeon. ::shrugs:: Okay, I'm feeling like less of a dunce - I read the Wikipedia enry for Reed, which indicates that he was an Army surgeon who was also a bacteriologist.
sarahf and McVane blogs.1. Search your birth month and day (not year) at Wikipedia.
2. Pick three events, two births and one death of interest.
3. Post.
November 23 seems to be a busy day, although it probably isn't any more so than any other day. There was a lot of interesting information to choose from.
Events:
1499 - Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England. The Tudors are in power by then, and I find the War of the Roses and ultimate change of power to the Tudors to be fascinating. Haven't read much about Warbec, though.
1936 - First edition of Life is published. It is such a staple of 20th century Americana that I thought it was first published closer to the dawn of the century.
1993 - Rachel Whiteread wins both the £20,000 Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the £40,000 K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year. This just makes me laugh. Simultaneously the best and the worst? Just goes to show that art is subjective, and talent is in the eye of the beholder.
Births:
1221 - King Alfonso X of Castilla, known as "El Sabio," meaning the Wise or the Learned. He was generally thought to be more learned than wise. Known for his learning and work in astronomy and literature, and for trying to uniformly use castellano as the official government & church language instead of Latin, Alfonso was also egocentric (imagine a king being so) and scattered, wasting Spanish resources.
1837 - Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist. Nobel prize winner who recognized the role of molecules' volume in establishing the relationship between the pressure, volume and temperature of gases and liquids. His is one of the few science names I remember from chemistry, along with Planck, Roentgen, Curie, and Tesla.
1887 - Boris Karloff, born with the more pedestrian name of William Benjamin Pratt.
Death:
1902 - Walter Reed, American bacteriologist. For some reason, I thought he was a surgeon. ::shrugs:: Okay, I'm feeling like less of a dunce - I read the Wikipedia enry for Reed, which indicates that he was an Army surgeon who was also a bacteriologist.
