not writing study guides

i stole this from jess. i like it. i'm a history nerd, what can i say. (however the history nerd-ness does not extend to actually writing the lesson plans/study guides for my 9th grade us history class.)

Go to Wikipedia. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List three important birthdays and three interesting deaths. Post this in your journal.

Events:
1) 1454 - In the Thirteen Years' War, the Secret Council of the Prussian Confederation sends a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master. - i really have no idea who or what this was, but it sounds cool. i feel like it would involve secret decoder rings.
2) 1862 - Bacardi, one of the world's largest spirits companies, is founded as a small distillery in Santiago de Cuba in eastern Cuba. - yay rum. i find it highly amusing that this is an event deemed worthy of an encyclopedia entry.
3) 1941 - World War II: The United Service Organization (USO) is created to entertain American troops. - hooray for bob hope, saturday night dances, and old women with coffee at train stations.

and keeping with my war obsession, it is interesting to note that my birthday also marked the end of the american revolution and the founding of the confederacy.

Birthdays:
1) 1677 - Johann Ludwig Bach, German composer - pretty decent musician
2) 1840 - Hiram Stevens Maxim, American inventor - this guy invented the machine gun and the mousetrap. quite the combination.
3) 1913 - Rosa Parks, American civil rights activist - share a birthday and a last name. also, for further amusement on this topic, see http://lauraquinn45.blogspot.com/2006/01/back-to-high-school.html

Deaths:
1) 211 - Septimus Severus, Emperor of Rome - being emperor is pretty cool. even if he did turn rome into a military dictatorship. and a harry potter character is named after him.
2) 1884 - Adolphe Sax, Belgian instrument maker - yeah, you guessed it. invented the saxophone.
3) 1984 - Anna Anderson, claimant to the throne of Russia - this chick said she was anastasia. did it not occur to her that even if she was anastasia, the soviet government wasn't going to care? plus, she died on my actual birthday.