Momentous...ish

Arthur looked up. "Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."

- From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

So I'm 26 today ...

Like I said a couple weeks ago, it's not exactly a milestone birthday. Woo, 26. But I can mark a few random things in my own life.

For instance, I've had my driver's license for almost twelve years now. (Yep -- that's South Dakota for you.) Ten years ago I somehow managed to get tricked into a surprise party shortly before the spring band concert. Eight years ago I was in Kansas City, riding roller coasters. I moved away from home, officially and permanently, six years ago. And five years ago it snowed a lot in Rapid City.

I share this birthday with Salvador Dali, Natasha Richardson, Tim Blake Nelson, and Jonathan Jackson (who I wouldn't expect you to recognize unless you were a teenage girl precisely when he made a guest appearance on "Boy Meets World"). It's also the date of death of one Douglas Adams.

A lot more interesting things than Ashley Milestones have happened. Courtesy of Wikipedia, the slightly trimmed and annotated list includes:

330 – Byzantium is renamed Nova Roma during a dedication ceremony, but is more popularly referred to as Constantinople. [Sing it with me now ... "You can't go back to Constantinople..."]

1310 – In France, fifty-four members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake as heretics. [Hmm.]

1502 – Christopher Columbus leaves for his fourth and final voyage to the West Indies. [Hmm again.]

1812 – Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, London.

1813 – In Australia, William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth lead an expedition westwards from Sydney. Their route opens up inland Australia for continued expansion throughout the 19th century. [Note: still not overly inhabited, despite Britain's best attempts.]

1820 – Launch of HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin on his scientific voyage.

1858 – Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. state. [I'm not sure why I included this.]

1862 – American Civil War: the ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in the James River northwest of Norfolk, Virginia.

1867 – Luxembourg gains its independence.

1891 – The Ōtsu Incident: Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Imperial Russia (late Nicholas II) is critically injured on his head by the sword attack of Japanese policeman Tsuda Sanzō.

1910 – An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana. [Woot!]

1918 – The Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus is officially established.

1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded. [Origination of the Oscars and year-end releases of high-budget movies.]

1949 – Siam officially changes its name to Thailand for the second time; the name had been in use since 1939, but was reverted 1945. [Raise your hand if you learned the location of Siam by playing Risk!]

1949 – Israel joins the United Nations.

1953 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: an F5 tornado hits downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114.

1970 – The Lubbock Tornado: an F5 tornado hits Lubbock, Texas, killing 26 and causing $250 million in damage. [I had a morbid fascination with tornados as a kid. Both of these were subjects in a science project I did in seventh grade.]

1984 – A transit of Earth from Mars takes place. [The Martians see us as a tiny speck against the sun, despite Martian mothers admonishing their children to stop looking directly into the sun.]

1985 – Fifty-six spectators die when a flash fire strikes a football ground during a match in Bradford, England.

1987 – In Baltimore, Maryland, the first heart-lung transplant takes place. The surgery is performed by Dr. Bruce Reitz, of Stanford University School of Medicine.

1995 – In New York City, more than 170 countries decide to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.

1996 – The 1996 Everest disaster: on a single day eight people die on Mount Everest during summit attempts.

1997 – IBM Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format. [Nerds everywhere are conflicted over the outcome.]

1998 – India conducts three underground nuclear tests in Pokhran, including a thermonuclear device.

So there you have it. World history in condensed list form.

I'm going to get back to work now, but have a great week, all!