It's a date..!

Tomorrow is a reasonably significant date in my life, being that I emerged, stretched and bawled for the first, but definitely not the last, time in an antiquated ward in a north-eastern hospital forty-five earth-years ago.

Many people are able to recall a list of notable happenings and dignitaries who share their significant date and I decided that perhaps I needed to look into this more deeply as the only thing I recalled was the unfortunate death of Steve 'Strewth' Irwin from an unfortunate encounter with a stingray a few years back.

So without further ado, I unashamedly list the following notable events and people with whom I share the 4th September for the reasons given below. I must admit that it hardly sets the world alight but, hey!

1870 - Emperor Napoleon III is deposed
1884 - The British Government ends its policy of penal transportation to Australia
1907 - Edvard Grieg, Norwegian composer dies
1913 - Mickey Cohen, 'Jewish Mafia' LA gangster is born
1944 - Antwerp is liberated by British forces
1949 - Golfer Tom Watson is born in Kansas City
1951 - Harry S Truman makes first Pan-American TV Broadcast!
1964 - The Queen opens the Forth Road Bridge
1970 - Ione Skye, actress daughter of Donovan is born (no, I don't remember her either)
1972 - Mark Spitz wins his 7th swimming Gold Medal at the Munich Olympics

1975 - DJ/ Producer Mark Ronson is born!
1977 - San Francisco Golden Dragon Massacre takes place in a restaurant in Chinatown. (I have a feeling that this restaurant, now thankfully closed, also massacred Mrs C's credit card when we visited some years ago!)

1988 - Google Inc is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (ironically in a garage)

So not quite an illustrious list. I have cherry picked some of the better entries! It did seem to be a popular date for births of basketball players and obscure Asian singers (MC Mong anyone?)

My favourite though has to be in the USA, on September 4th each year as National Newspaper Carrier Day is celebrated up and down the land!! Go Paperboy!!