And another one....

The blog memes are coming thick and fast this morning. Hard on the heels of Mr Dale's top 10 challenge comes the Birthday Meme, this time from Mars Hill's Paul Burgin.

The challenge is as follows:

1) Go to Wikipedia
2) In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.
3) List three events that happened on your birthday.
4) List two important birthdays and one death.
5) One holiday or observance.

Here are mine, with comments in red italics:

Three things that happened on my birthday

1851 - Herman Melville's Moby Dick is first published as The Whale. Never read it though...

1922 - The British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) is founded to establish a national broadcasting service. Long may it continue...

1968 - Bob Beamon (pictured) sets a world record of 8.90m in the long jump at the Mexico Olympics. This becomes the longest unbroken track and field record in history, standing for 23 years. I genuinely believe this to be the sporting achievement of the 20th century. He broke the record by the best part of a metre.

Two important birthdays

1919 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada (d. 2000) Probably the most well-known politician on the list although I could also have had the former Greek Culture Minister, Melina Mercouri.

1956 - Martina Navrátilová. The greatest.

One death

1978 - Ramón Mercader, Assassin of Leon Trotsky (b. 1914) In the immortal words of The Stranglers: "He got an ice-pick that made his ears burn."

One holiday or observance

Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist. My birthday often coincides with a late warm spell and is known colloquially as St Luke's Summer in parts of rural England.

I'm not going to tag anyone else to do this in case I get another one sent to me, and I need to get on with some work! But anyone who wants to try this out can leave their answers in the comments below.