Learning something new every day

You learn something new every day, and sometimes you notice it in a large way.

This evening I was playing around on last.fm, audioscrobbler’s sister site, the one that is active right now, and I clicked on this and that as I was listening to my music and seeing this and that about it on last.fm. One thing led me to wikipedia and I got a few facts straight about discography with a couple of groups.

I was also looking at Asia info. I love early Asia, and so I clicked on John Wetton’s (Asia’s most noted vocal voice) name-link to see what wikipedia had about him. I found it interesting to see that he was born the day before my birthday, several years previous to me though. So I clicked on the link for July 17, which is his birthday, and I read down the list of events for that day through the years.

Since I was a day off of my own birthday, I changed the url ending from a “7” to an “8”. Notably people speak of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, here’s a fact about it:

64 – Great fire of Rome: A fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control while Emperor Nero reportedly plays his lyre and sings while watching the blaze from a safe distance.

Ah, the Great Fire that burned down Rome BEGAN on the day I was to be born, just 2002 years previous. Interesting.

Another intesting fact:

1536 – The authority of the Pope is declared void in England.

Interesting in light of the fact that I am protestant, Presbyterian, in fact. Wasn’t born Presbyterian, not into a family that was (though ancestors definitely were!) but was destined before time to become a Covenantal presbyterian understander of The Faith. This is particular only since I am part English and this happened on my birthday, 430 years previous.

More facts – these tie together:

1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie announce the discovery of a new element and proposed to call it polonium.

and this is what Polonium is:

Polonium is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare radioactive metalloid, polonium is chemically similar to tellurium and bismuth and occurs in uranium ores. Polonium had been studied for possible use in heating spacecraft.

Not that it HAS been used as that proposed use, but then consider this happened exactly on my birthday, birthyear, exactly the day I was born:

1966 – Gemini 10 launched.

Here’s the link: Gemini 10 Launches on July 18, 1966

It’s just interesting to me that all the above were things that happened on my birthday, the last one the very exact day of it, and the rest various different years before. I just hadn’t “realized” that the Gemini 10 went up on my birthday. Quite extraordinary, I think, now that I realize it. 🙂

Another interesting fact is, that Hitlter filters into everything, so 41 years before I was born, to the day:

1925 – Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf.

Two years after I was born this happened:

1968 – Intel incorporated.

I am working on a non-Intel computer 🙂 My laptop that died last month had an Intel Pentium 4 processor. Our first home computer had an Intel Pentium. The first Pentium. 🙂 We went with Athlon’s since building our own. The first was a little one, I forget the series. Next was Athlon XP 2100+, which just died or something on the board died, and so now I am using an Athlon 64 3000+, much faster. Thanks Intel. It was y’all who got it going. You formed on my Second birthday. I can remember those days. That’s when most of my earliest memories begin.

The Space and Computer Age. That’s what I was born into.

I see that they have my year open on the birthday list, no one listed for 1966. They must be holding it open for me. Gee whiz, see who’s next in line? Vin Diesel (Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick, The Pacifier, these most notable of all the movies he’s in) is a year younger than me.

I was going to get into a whole “racial” thing here, connected with the last entry, right above, but I won’t, afterall.

Homogenized Me signing out. 🙂