A Wikipedia Meme

This meme is courtesy of the Daily C. The rules are simple:

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. Post it.

My birthday happens to fall on August 30, so that's what I typed in. The result was a modest list of events, most of which were war-related. Fortunately, historians (and the Wikipedians who reference them with varying degrees of success and accuracy) keep track of more than just battles and sieges. Here are three of the more peaceful events:

• 1850 - Honolulu, Hawaii, becomes a city
• 1967 - Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court
• 2005 - The 17th Street Canal in New Orleans is breached during Hurricane Katrina, leading to massive flooding and destruction.

Since I'm not the best judge of whose birthdays are important and whose are not, I will list two people (a guy and a gal) whose names I think would be most recognizable to the average reader:

• 1918 - Ted Williams, baseball player (d. 2002)
• 1972 - Cameron Diaz, American actress

And as for the interesting death, I chose:

• 30 BC - Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt (b. 69 BC)

If you want to give this one a try, go for it.