Today is rather exciting–not only is it Friday the Thirteenth, it’s my birthday. 🙂
I love keeping track of the birthdays of some of my favorite authors and celebrities, and celebrating if I can (which usually means reading or watching something relevant). Since it’s my birthday, I thought I’d share about some other birthdays.
January 18: Cary Grant, 1904 – My favorite actor, January 18th is the perfect opportunity to watch Bringing Up Baby or Arsenic and Old Lace.
January 19: Michael Crawford, 1942 – The original Phantom in London and on Broadway, I have enough of his CDs to spend an entire day listening to them.
March 17: Lawrence “Titus” Oates, 1880 – Titus went to the South Pole with Captain Scott, and is a major character in The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean. He also brings many people to this blog; his name is a frequent search term in WordPress’ stats.
April 23: William Shakespeare, 1564 – I once had a Shakespeare class which met on Shakespeare’s birthday. I brought cookies, even though I knew my professor wasn’t a Stratfordian.
June 9: Johnny Depp, 1963 – I have, erm, lots of movies on my shelf to choose from to celebrate Johnny’s birthday.
September 1: Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1875 – And I have even more books by Burroughs…
November 30: This one is interesting, because a remarkable number of my favorite people were born on this date – L. M. Montgomery (1874), Winston Churchill (also 1874!), Mark Twain (1835), William Bouguereau, my favorite painter (1825), and Mandy Patinkin (1952), who forever endeared himself to me as Inigo Montoya. It’s rather a busy day!
Do you celebrate the birthdays of anyone from history or literature? It’s fun–like putting extra holidays on the calendar!
Tales of the Marvelous 
Happy Belated Birthday 🙂
I hope you have had a lovely birthday! I think my kids could get really into this idea of celebrating many different people’s birthdays throughout the year. When you’re a kid, more cake always equals a good thing, right? Once we celebrated their 6 and 3/4, 4 and 1/2 and 2 1/2 year old birthdays by making a cake and inviting friends over! It was a fun impulse, but not necessarily a tradition I want to start.
What an unusual coincidence that L.M. Montgomery and Winston Churchill share the exact same birthday! Was she aware of that? Hope you have a very happy birthday
I thought that was pretty amazing when I realized it! I’ve read all of her Selected Journals and published letters, but I don’t recall her ever referencing Churchill at all, let alone commenting on their birthdays. She followed World War I closely so she must have been aware of him then. By World War II, she’d mostly stopped writing her journal and letters, so little opportunity to comment then. I guess it’s a mystery if she knew!
Well first and foremost, a very Happy Birthday to you! And on Friday the 13th to boot! You must celebrate with either watching a scary/supersitious film or at least walking under a ladder or two, or opening an umbrella indoors. 🙂
Great list of birthdays. You listed two of my most favorite Cary Grant movies. I think both of them are brilliant. I would add Holiday to that list because I like him and Katherine Hepburn in that one as well. But there are so many Cary Grant movies that I love.
Funny that you included Crawford as I got the overwhelming urge last night to spend some time with his Christine, Sarah Brightman. I hadn’t enjoyed my SB DVD’s for a long time and I pulled out Symphony and watched it before bed last night. Just love her.
I need to get back to reading A Princess of Mars this weekend. I left off mid-way through my re-read to get caught up in the reading for the things I’m hosting, but now I actually have a little time I could go ahead and finish it. I’m enjoying it every bit as much this time.
I hope you spend the whole weekend celebrating and being celebrated for your special day. 🙂
Thanks for the birthday wishes! Funnily enough, I actually did open an umbrella inside today…it wasn’t a deliberate flouting of superstition, it just happened to be raining this morning. 🙂 I’ll have to watch out for black cats!
Cary Grant is one of those actors who’s just wonderful in pretty much everything, isn’t he? 🙂 And Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn…can’t go wrong there! Love Philadelphia Story too.
Have fun with Princess of Mars! I reread it last summer. It also hasn’t been too long since I read Fighting Man, my favorite, but it’s been ages on the others…I’ll have to do something about that! After I get through all these fairy tales I have stacked up, of course…