What Else Happened on September 20?

Well.

In addition to the birth of the “One-Woman Positivity Machine” which I’ve previously mentioned, your humble correspondent was born 69 years ago today.

But, enough about me.  What do you think about me?

LOL.  Someone actually said that to me (not sarcastically or ironically), once.

In other news:

• Virgil, the Roman poet best known for the Aeneid, died on September 20, 19BC**
• Perry Mason–a hugely successful and still running in syndication–American crime drama starring Raymond Burr and based on the works of Erle Stanley Gardner–launched on television in 1957
• Ferdinand Magellan set out in 1519 from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, on an expedition which would result in the first circumnavigation of the globe–maybe
• Billie Jean King (a 29-year-old woman) beat Bobby Riggs (a 55-year-old man) in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome (in the days when “sex” trumped “gender”)
• 1n 1977, Vietnam was admitted to the United Nations, an outcome unthinkable only a few years before
• Chulalongkorn, King of Siam, and (movie) son of Yul Brynner, was born.  He was the first King of Siam (now Thailand) to have been brought up  under Western influence via his governess, Anna Leonowens.  The story is told, and greatly romanticized, in the movie The King and I.
• Kenneth More, a favorite actor of my childhood, was born in 1901.
• Johnny Dankworth, saxophonist and brilliant jazz musician, was born in 1927.
• One of the saddest stories in English literature, that of poet Chidiock Tichborne, ended when he was executed at the age of 24 because of his rather daft and naïve involvement in the treasonous Babington plot.  His poem which begins “My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,” could have been written for Generation Z.  It was idiotic then, and it’s idiotic now.
• One of the transformative books of my young life (thank you, Auntie Pat for sending me my first copy when I was about eleven), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was published for the first time in 1937

September 20 has always been a day like every other day.  And, like every other day, it’s always been a day like no other.

I’m just grateful to have been part of it.  Thanks for reading.

**I simply refuse to use the acronym “BCE,” which–as I understand it–means “Before the Common Era.”  If “19BC” means “19 years before the birth of Christ,” and “19BCE” means “19 years Before the Common Era,” then I think–if you believe that the birth of Christ ushered in a Common Era from which we should all start counting—that you’re the one who’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.