Birthday Meme

Mt. Vesuvius
So, my friend Alison just posted an interesting exercise on her blog. Here’s the deal, straight from her page:
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. Post it.
So, here’s what I came up with! My birthday is Aug 24.
Events:
79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash. [For some reason, I’ve known this for a very long time. Guess someone felt compelled to tell me thousands of people DIED on my birthday. Or maybe I read it in a kid book. I dunno.]
1690 – Calcutta, India is founded. [Neat given I have Indian in me three generations ago from my mom’s side.]
1992 – Hurricane Andrew hits South Florida. [I live in Florida. Hmm.]
Birthdays:
1929 – Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 2004)
1973 – David Chappelle, American actor and comedian
Death:
1595 – Thomas Digges, English astronomer (b. 1546) [A popularizer of science; one of the first people to write, in English, that there are “a multitude of stars extending to infinity in all directions.”]
Pretty nifty! What happened on your birthday?