Happy Birthday to me...

So today is my birthday. I am 40. I am not dead. I love what I do. My family is wonderful. All things considered, life could be much worse. I have had the Birthday Dirge going through my head all morning. It is a family tradition. It needs to be sung as a "dirge" (low and slow) and goes as follows:

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Sin and sorrow fill the air,
People dying everywhere,
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

It is very perky and festive.

Also born today are Nicollo Machiavelli (1469), Golda Meir (1898), Pete Seeger (1919) and James Brown (1928).

Other fun things on the biblio front that happened today:

In 1810, Lord Byron swam the Hellespont in tribute to Leander's legendary swims to visit his beloved Hero. Byron was 22 and still relatively unknown (though he had finished Childe Harold). He had, however, just wrapped up a affair with a married woman...that culminated in a sunrise duel.

English writter Dodie Smith was born today in 1896. She is best known for The One Hundred and One Dalmatians (did you know that someone other than Disney wrote that...shocking). She and her husband raised dalmatians for years...including a bitch who had a litter of FIFTEEN (including one stillborn but revived...as in the story).

Dylan Thomas, having spent over a decade trying to finish it, gave "Under Milk Wood" its first reading on this day in 1953. Still not finished, he was making changes literally until he stepped up to the proverbial mike at Harvard. It tells the of the day in the life of Llareggub, Thomas' fictional town in Wales. Some may recall that Thomas rather loathed Wales. Llareggub, you may note, is "Bugger All" backwards.

In 1926, Sinclair Lewis was given a Pulizter Prize for Arrowsmith (in 1937 M. Mitchell won it for Gone with the Wind, in 1943, Upton Sinclair won it for Dragon's Teeth, etc.)

Many other fun things happened today as well. For example, in 1851 most of San Fransisco burned to the ground. Also, in 1765, the first medical school in the United States opened in PA (founded by John Morgan, it was part of the College of Philadelphia (now Univ. of PA)). Finally, the symbol of New Hampshire, the natural granite formation Old Man of the Mountain, collapsed.

So all things considered, a very nice day. (Thanks to TiL for some of the lit events).