Today in History
One event that happened today, 30 April, looms large in my personal view of history : I was born on this day.
For years–decades, actually–I've known of one significant event that happened on this same date in history : Hitler killed himself (Wikipedia about). Significant, yes, but not the happiest thing to keep in my "happened on my birthday list", so I've decided I'd like to add a few more positive events.
One very positive anniversary that I happened across just today : in 1997 on this date, Ellen Morgan, the character played by Ellen DeGeneres in her television series, came out as a lesbian, in what is know as "The Puppy Episode". There's a nice recounting of events here. That is 14 years ago now–seems like just a couple of years ago, of course–and things have changed so markedly since then. Back in those days there were very few celebrities out as lesbian or gay, and they weren't often seen in a positive way at all. The idea of marriage equality was barely starting to hatch, and remember that homosexual sex would still be illegal in much of the United States until the Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas (Wikipedia about) in 2003.
On the shared birthday date I've known about Carl Friedrich Gauss, born in 1777, for some time and I certainly don't mind sharing a birth date with the man so frequently described as "the world's greatest mathematician". Is there any hope of channeling a bit of his genius?
Some more shared birthdays I turned up today of people who seemed to me worth noting:
- 1870: Franz Lehar
- 1877: Alice B. Toklas
- 1912: Eve Arden
- 1916: Robert Shaw
- 1926: Cloris Leachman
- 1933: Willie Nelson
I was delighted at discovering that I share a birthday with Eve Arden, an actress I'm very fond of.
One event from the history of science that I've turned up so far : it was on this date in 1897 that J.J.Thomson announced publicly that he had discovered the electron earlier in that year. The electron was the first subatomic particle identified experimentally.