The Tease of Things I Don't Need

## Meme-ries ##

Okay, I'm getting into another of these memes a few days after averyone else.

I saw it over on Tammy's (where there are links to a few others in their comments) and I'm taking a stab at it via my recent birthday. I knew two of the events I'd choose before I even checked the date, though.

The meme? Go to Wikipedia, punch in some special month and day -- birthday, anniversary, whatever, and list three events, three birthdays and three deaths from that date. As with nearly everyone else, if I like more than three then you're going to see more than three:

Events
1755 - Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language published in London.
1912 - The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks at about 2:20 a.m. after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic almost three hours earlier. (That damned Kate Winslet escapes a much-deserved watery grave.)
1923 - Insulin first became generally available for use by diabetics.
1955 - The first McDonald's restaurant opens in Des Plaines, Illinois. (Hey, Ray Kroc gave insulin a 32 year head-start! That's more than sporting.)

Births
1452 - Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist (d. 1519) (In a few weeks he'll rise from the grave to kick Ron Howard and Tom Hanks asses for perpetuating bullshit with his name attached to it.)
1922 - Michael Ansara, Syrian-American actor (Some may know him as the voice of Mr. Freeze in Batman cartoons of the past 15 years, some as Kang from an episode of Star Trek, but I always think of him first as the time-displaced soldier from the future, Quarlo, in a Harlan Ellison-written episode of The Outer Limits.)
1933 - Elizabeth Montgomery, American actress (d. 1995) (So, did Mrs. Kravitz finally get to burn her at the stake?)
1955 - Dodi Al-Fayed, Egyptian businessman (d. 1997) (Fast women and fast cars'll get you in the end!)

Deaths
1843 - Noah Webster, American lexicographer (b. 1758) (Well, I worked Johnson's dictionary into the events, so it only seemed fair.)
1865 - Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by John Wilkes Booth. (Never did find out what Mrs. Lincoln thought of the play.)
1980 - Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and writer, Nobel Prize laureate (declined) (b. 1905) (Hmmm... Being and Nothingness... I guess we know which one won.)
1998 - Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator (b. 1925) (Kill almost 2 million people and die under house arrest at the age of almost 73. What was it Eddie Izzard said? "Well done!"
2002 - Damon Knight, American author (b. 1922)