MOST RECENT STORY: Teach Me (54 pages, 21192 words. Coming on Valentine's Day!)
IN PROGRESS: Tough Times
CURRENT DISTRACTION: Pokémon LeafGreen

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This is it.

The big one.

Today is my twenty-first birthday.

Except…I don’t drink…so it’s kind of anti-climactic…and cigars and porn already came at eighteen…so…yeah.

Events in history that happened on my birthday:
1377 – The Cesena Bloodbath
1690 – Massachusetts issues the first paper money in America
1783 – Spain recognizes US independence
1873 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified (voting rights regardless of race)
1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified (income tax)
1917 – The US breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany (for the first time...)
1945 – 1,000 B-17 bombers bomb the shit out of Berlin (USA! USA! USA!)
1959 – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper die in a plane crash (The Day the Music Died…fuck)
1966 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 makes the first rocket landing on the moon (unmanned)
1969 – Yasser Arafat is appointed leader of the PLO
1998 – A US military plane cuts the line of a cable car in Italy, plunging 20 people to their deaths (way to go, genius…)
2007 – a bomb explodes in a Baghdad market, killing 135 and injuring 339

People who were born on my birthday:
1338 – Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V of France
1809 – Felix Mendelssohn, German composer
1811 – Horace Greeley, American journalist, editor, and publisher (hope I caught some of that magic)
1859 – Hugo Junkers, German aircraft designer
1894 – Norman Rockwell, American illustrator (I know I didn’t catch any of that magic)
(everybody after that was people I’d never heard of)

People who died on my birthday (depressing):
1874 – Lunalilo, Hawaiian monarch
1924 – Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America
1935 – Hugo Junkers, German aircraft designer (whoa, freaky)
1945 – Roland Freisler, Nazi leader (shithead probably got hit by one of those B-17s)
1959 – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper, American musicians (again, fuck)
1985 – Frank Oppenheimer, American physicist and younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer (light ‘em up, baby!)

Holidays occurring today:
Setsubun (Japan) – the traditional first day of Spring
Four Chaplain’s Day (United States) – commemorating the deaths of four US Army chaplains who gave their lives to save soldiers on the sinking USAT Dorchester during WWII

So, in short, a lotta shit happened on my birthday and I won't be getting drunk. But I already got some new earrings, so that's cool.

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Folks who write purty good:

 incog  jewelwriter  thewanderingpikachu  ysrnty