Commonality

I have never really given too much thought to my birthday in my adult life. It’s one of those things that, when you think about it, you are celebrating being another day older. I guess the only thing that comes about more often regarding this day is when someone has a similar birthday or some event happens to fall on this day. Other than that, it is an excuse to be with family and friends and to enjoy the fact that I have experienced a lot in the last year and however hard it may have been at times I have made it through.

Something fun to do this time of year is to find out what happened on this day and discover the people that I share this birthday with. This year, I share this Wikipedia list with you and I encourage you to do the same on your birthday as it is one of the ways to accumulate random Jeopardy knowledge. Enjoy!

Events:

• 355 – Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls.
• 1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in the area that would become Texas.
• 1632 – Thirty years war: Battle of Lützen is fought, the Swedes are victorious but the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus dies in the battle.
• 1789 – Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States.
• 1844 – The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted.
• 1856 – Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.
• 1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
• 1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 unarmed merchant vessels.
• 1869 – In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6–4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.
• 1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
• 1917 – World War I: Third Battle of Ypres ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.
• 1918 – The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed.
• 1934 – Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority.
• 1935 – Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
• 1935 – First flight of the Hawker Hurricane, with its K5083 first prototype.
• 1935 – Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for MONOPOLY from Elizabeth Magie.
• 1939 – World War II: Sonderaktion Krakau takes place.
• 1941 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his 27-year rule. He falsely states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.
• 1942 – World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign begins.
• 1943 – World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city's ancient buildings.
• 1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
• 1947 – Meet the Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
• 1948 – Deputy commander-in-chief of the Eastern China Field Army General Su Yu launches a massive offensive toward Xuzhou, defended by seven different armies under the Suppression General Headquarter of Xuzhou Garrison, the Huaihai Campaign. The largest operational campaign of the Chinese Civil War begins.
• 1962 – Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
• 1963 – Vietnam War: Following the November 1 coup and execution of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
• 1965 – Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans had made use of this program.
• 1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
• 1975 – Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.
• 1977 – The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39.
• 1985 – In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the 19th of April Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.
• 1986 – Sumburgh disaster – A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes 2.5 !2¹⁄₂ miles east of Sumburgh Airport killing 45 people. It is the deadliest civilian helicopter crash on record.
• 1991 – The last Kuwaiti oil field fire is extinguished.
• 1995 – The Rova of Antananarivo, home of the sovereigns of Madagascar from the 16th to 19th centuries, is destroyed by fire.
• 1995 – Cleveland Browns relocation controversy: Art Modell announces that he signed a deal that would relocate the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens, the first time the city had a football team since 1983 when they were the Baltimore Colts.
• 1999 – Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.
• 2004 – An express train collides with a stationary car near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing seven and injuring 150.

Births:

• 745 – Musa al-Kadhim, Imam (d. 799)
• 1391 – Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, English politician (d. 1425)
• 1479 – Joanna of Castile (d. 1555)
• 1494 – Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman sultan (d. 1566)
• 1550 – Karin Månsdotter, Swedish wife of Eric XIV of Sweden (d. 1612)
• 1607 – Sigmund Theophil Staden, German composer (d. 1655)
• 1661 – Charles II of Spain (d. 1700)
• 1692 – Louis Racine, French poet (d. 1763)
• 1753 – Jean-Baptiste Breval, French composer (d. 1823)
• 1753 – Mikhail Kozlovsky, Russian sculptor (d. 1802)
• 1814 – Adolphe Sax, Belgian musician, invented the saxophone (d. 1894)
• 1833 – Jonas Lie, Norwegian author (d. 1908)
• 1835 – Cesare Lombroso, Italian psychiatrist (d. 1909)
• 1841 – Nelson W. Aldrich, American politician (d. 1915)
• 1841 – Armand Fallières, French politician, President of France (d. 1931)
• 1851 – Charles Dow, American journalist and economist (d. 1902)
• 1854 – John Philip Sousa, American composer (d. 1932)
• 1855 – E. S. Gosney, American philanthropist and eugenicist, founded the Human Betterment Foundation (d. 1942)
• 1861 – James Naismith, Canadian-American inventor of basketball (d. 1939)
• 1880 – Robert Musil, Austrian author (d. 1942)
• 1880 – George Poage, American hurdler (d. 1962)
• 1880 – Chris van Abkoude, Dutch-American author (d. 1959)
• 1882 – Thomas H. Ince, American actor, director, and producer (d. 1924)
• 1884 – Mohammad-Taqi Bahar, Iranian poet, journalist, historian and professor of literature (d. 1951)
• 1887 – Walter Johnson, American baseball player (d. 1946)
• 1892 – Harold Ross, American journalist, co-founded The New Yorker (d. 1951)
• 1893 – Edsel Ford, American businessman (d. 1943)
• 1894 – Opal Kunz, early American aviator and feminist (d. 1967)
• 1903 – June Marlowe, American actress (d. 1984)
• 1906 – James D. Norris, American businessman (d. 1966)
• 1912 – N. Shanmugarajah, Ceylon Tamil engineer
• 1914 – Jonathan Harris, American actor (d. 2002)
• 1916 – Ray Conniff, American composer and conductor (d. 2002)
• 1921 – Eric Day, English footballer (d. 2012)
• 1921 – James Jones, American author (d. 1977)
• 1922 – Frank J. Lynch, American judge and politician (d. 1987)
• 1923 – Ray B. Sitton, American pilot and general (d. 2013)
• 1924 – Jeanette Schmid, Austrian whistler (d. 2005)
• 1925 – Michel Bouquet, French actor
• 1926 – Haradhan Bandopadhyay, Bengali-Indian actor (d. 2013)
• 1926 – Frank Carson, Irish comedian and actor (d. 2012)
• 1926 – Zig Ziglar, American author (d. 2012)
• 1930 – Tom Hornbein, American mountaineer
• 1931 – Peter Collins, English race car driver (d. 1958)
• 1931 – Mike Nichols, German-American director, screenwriter, and producer
• 1932 – Stonewall Jackson, American singer-songwriter
• 1932 – Francois Englert, Belgian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1937 – Leo Goeke, American tenor (d. 2012)
• 1937 – Garry Gross, American photographer (d. 2010)
• 1937 – Eugene Pitt, American singer (The Jive Five)
• 1937 – Marco Vassi, American author (d. 1989)
• 1937 – Joe Warfield, American actor and director
• 1938 – Mack Jones, American baseball player (d. 2004)
• 1938 – Branko Mikasinovich, Serbian journalist and scholar
• 1938 – P.J. Proby, American singer-songwriter and actor
• 1938 – Diana E. H. Russell, South African activist and author
• 1939 – Michael Schwerner, American activist (d. 1964)
• 1939 – Leonardo Quisumbing, Filipino jurist
• 1940 – Johnny Giles, Irish footballer
• 1940 – Ruth Messinger, American politician
• 1940 – Dieter F. Uchtdorf, American pilot and religious leader
• 1941 – Guy Clark, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
• 1946 – Sally Field, American actress
• 1946 – Viivi Luik, Estonian poet and author
• 1946 – Fred Penner, Canadian singer and guitarist
• 1947 – Jim Rosenthal, English sportscaster
• 1947 – Edward Yang, Taiwanese director (d. 2007)
• 1947 – George Young, Scottish guitarist, songwriter, and producer (Easybeats and Flash and the Pan)
• 1947 – Carolyn Seymour, English actress
• 1948 – Sidney Blumenthal, American journalist
• 1948 – Glenn Frey, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (Eagles)
• 1949 – Brad Davis, American actor (d. 1991)
• 1949 – Nigel Havers, English actor
• 1949 – Arturo Sandoval, Cuban trumpet player, pianist, and composer
• 1949 – Joseph C. Wilson, American diplomat
• 1950 – Amir Aczel, Israeli historian
• 1950 – Chris Glen, Scottish bass player (The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and Michael Schenker Group)
• 1950 – Nimalan Soundaranayagam, Sri Lankan Tamil teacher and politician (d. 2000)
• 1951 – Peter Althin, Swedish lawyer and politician
• 1951 – John Falsey, American scriptwriter and producer
• 1952 – Michael Cunningham, American author
• 1953 – Frank Hanisch, German footballer
• 1954 – Catherine Crier, American judge, journalist, and author
• 1955 – Alton Coleman, American serial killer (d. 2002)
• 1955 – Maria Shriver, American journalist
• 1957 – Cam Clarke, American voice actor and singer
• 1957 – Klaus Kleinfeld, German businessman
• 1957 – Siobhán McCarthy, Irish actress and singer
• 1957 – Lori Singer, American actress
• 1958 – Trace Beaulieu, American actor
• 1959 – Mare Tommingas, Estonian dancer and choreographer
• 1960 – Michael Cerveris, American actor
• 1961 – Kazuhiko Aoki, Japanese video game designer
• 1961 – Craig Goldy, American guitarist (Dio, Giuffria, and Rough Cutt)
• 1961 – Florent Pagny, French singer-songwriter and actor
• 1962 – Aznil Nawawi, Malaysian actor and singer
• 1962 – Annette Zilinskas, American musician and singer, who was the original bass guitarist for The Bangles then later lead vocalist with Blood on the Saddle
• 1963 – Rozz Williams, American singer-songwriter (Christian Death, Shadow Project, and Premature Ejaculation) (d. 1998)
• 1964 – Kerry Conran, American director and producer
• 1964 – Arne Duncan, American educator, 9th United States Secretary of Education
• 1964 – Corey Glover, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (Living Color and Galactic)
• 1964 – Greg Graffin, American singer-songwriter, producer, and author (Bad Religion)
• 1964 – Arkie Whiteley, Australian actress (d. 2001)
• 1965 – René Unglaube, German footballer
• 1966 – Peter DeLuise, American actor and director
• 1966 – Paul Gilbert, American guitarist and singer (Mr. Big, Racer X, and Yellow Matter Custard)
• 1966 – Elizabeth Price, English artist
• 1967 – Rebecca Schaeffer, American actress (d. 1989)
• 1968 – Caesar Meadows, American cartoonist
• 1968 – Kelly Rutherford, American actress
• 1968 – Alfred Williams, American football player
• 1968 – Jerry Yang, Taiwanese-American businessman, co-founded Yahoo!
• 1970 – Ethan Hawke, American actor, director, and screenwriter
• 1971 – Clonie Gowen, American poker player
• 1972 – Deivi Cruz, Dominican baseball player
• 1972 – Garry Flitcroft, English footballer
• 1972 – Adonis Georgiades, Greek politician and author
• 1972 – Thandie Newton, English actress
• 1972 – Rebecca Romijn, American actress
• 1973 – Nell McAndrew, English model
• 1974 – Zoe McLellan, American actress
• 1974 – Frank Vandenbroucke, Belgian cyclist (d. 2009)
• 1975 – Tarmo Saks, Estonian footballer
• 1976 – Catherine Clark, Canadian journalist
• 1976 – Mike Herrera, American singer-songwriter and bass player (MxPx and Mike Herrera's Tumbledown)
• 1976 – Jodi Martin, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 1976 – Pat Tillman, American football player (d. 2004)
• 1977 – Patrícia Tavares, Portuguese actress
• 1978 – Sandrine Blancke, Belgian actress
• 1978 – Daniella Cicarelli, Brazilian model and television host
• 1978 – Jolina Magdangal, Filipino singer and actress
• 1978 – Taryn Manning, American singer-songwriter and actress (Boomkat)
• 1978 – Zak Morioka, Brazilian race car driver
• 1979 – Adam LaRoche, American baseball player
• 1979 – Lamar Odom, American basketball player
• 1979 – Gerli Padar, Estonian singer
• 1979 – Brad Stuart, Canadian ice hockey player
• 1979 – Myolie Wu, Hong Kong actress
• 1981 – Cassie Bernall, American student, victim of the Columbine High School massacre (d. 1999)
• 1981 – Lee Dong-wook, South Korean actor
• 1981 – Kaspars Gorkšs, Latvian footballer
• 1981 – Andrew Murray, Canadian ice hockey player
• 1982 – Sowelu, Japanese singer
• 1982 – Steve Millar, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 1983 – Jon Hume, Australian singer-songwriter and producer (Evermore)
• 1983 – Janette McBride, Filipino-Australian actress
• 1984 – Ricky Romero, American baseball player
• 1984 – Sebastian Schachten, German footballer
• 1985 – Ettore Marchi, Italian footballer
• 1986 – Katie Leclerc, American actress
• 1986 – Conor Sammon, Irish footballer
• 1987 – Ana Ivanovic, Serbian tennis player
• 1988 – Erik Lund, Swedish footballer
• 1988 – Emma Stone, American actress
• 1989 – Jozy Altidore, American soccer player
• 1989 – Shaina Magdayao, Filipino actress, singer, and dancer
• 1990 – André Schürrle, German footballer
• 1990 – Valentina Nappi, Italian pornographic actress and adult model
• 1992 – Paula Kania, Polish tennis player
• 1997 – Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, English actor