Sandy Supposes....

Other Than My Glorious Birth?

PROMPT July 8th

What historical events, besides your own birth, occurred on your birthday in the year you were born?

         Is this some insidious plot designed to determine my age? Something more important than my glorious birth happened? You mean I never have been the centre of the universe? My family deceived me.

         Of course, I consulted the wondrous online finder of everything, Google. That led me to Wikipedia and other sites. My family were correct. Other than my birth, nothing much happened on my special day. Could what did occur be categorized as 'an historical event?' The facts I discovered were meager.

         Let me just state that I am not a baseball fan, but an incident correlates with my arrival. I do appreciate that some people follow all things baseball, so here is a random tidbit. On June 1st, 1959, a Monday I am told, two-time world defending champion Monterrey, Mexico learned its team had been declared ineligible for the Little League Baseball World Series because of certain improprieties re the geographic origin of their players. Is this double-speak for cheating? I was born at a time of a cheating scandal? At that time, the throwing, batting, and catching of a ball did not concern me in the least. To this day, this holds true.

         I missed being born in March of 1959 when Barbie burst onto the doll scene. In August of that seminal year, British Motor Inc. launched the ten-foot long, four seater car dubbed the Morris Mini-Minor. I am not aligned with a toy doll or a toy-sized vehicle. But, I persevered in my research and I discovered the following.

         On the day of my entrance into this world, a British novelist, Sax Rohmer with the nom de plume, Arthur Henry Ward, died at the age of seventy-six. He created the fictional villain Dr. Fu Manchu an evil criminal genius and mad scientist. He headed a powerful Chinese organization and earned a reputation as being ruthless. He ordered his thugs to murder, but never with guns or explosives. He preferred knives, snakes, fungi, bacilli and black spiders. I suppose one could say he put some thought and preparation into his 'work.' This unleashed the Fu Manchu moustache on the unsuspecting world, too. I'd describe it as a droopy, comical length of facial hair, but then again I'm not a propagator of long facial hair that would dip itself in my soup or become entangled in any number of painful items. Fu Manchu embodied the evil lurking ready to pounce and his character thrived in movies, television, radio and both comic strips and books for over ninety years.

         Huh, so now I am forever tied to a lost baseball championship and a make believe Chinese master criminal. This all makes perfect sense for a girl born in Canada.