I don’t know if you realize this but 1912 was a big year. It saw the birth of the Republic of China and the death of 1,500+ people on the Titanic. 1912 marks the first time a man was foolish brave daring enough to jump out of a perfectly good airplane wearing a parachute.* Wilbur Scoville devised the Scoville Unit to measure the heat of peppers, which seems only fitting since that was also the year New Mexico became a state.
The first woman detective was appointed to the NYC police (where would cop shows and novels be if that hadn’t happened?), the Girl Scouts were formed in Savannah (under the name Girl Guides), and the Dixie Cup was invented, changing modern medicine forever. (I don’t want to know how people provided “samples” before Dixie Cups.) Fenway Park opened and 15 young women were fihttps://tastinggod.wordpress.com/wp-admin/paid-upgrades.php?product=1003&view=purchase&loc=admin-bar&ref=go-prored by Curtis Publishing for dancing “Turkey Trot” during their lunch break. (I wonder if there was a ‘no dancing’ clause in their employee handbook?)
Then there are the birthdays:
Danny Thomas
Jackson Pollock
Francis Schaeffer
Pat Nixon
Perry Como
Woody Guthrie
Art Linkletter
Julia Child
Gene Kelly
John Cage
Chuck Jones (animator for Warner Brothers)
Pope John Paul I
Minnie Pearl
Lady Bird Johnson
…just to name a few.
Imagine, if you will, a birthday bash for all the above. I’ll be in the kitchen with Julia and with any luck Danny and Art will hang out with us telling jokes. We’ll give Jackson bowls of melted chocolate in various colors and let him go to town decorating the cake. (We’ll top that cake with cookies & cream ice cream since Oreos turned 100 this year, too.)
Chuck can draw cartoon versions of everyone for party favors. I can imagine Minnie Pearl and Lady Bird getting on like a house afire arranging wildflowers for the centerpieces. Pat will volunteer wherever needed (volunteerism was her ‘cause’). His Holiness can say grace and we’ll let Francis start the dinner conversation (can’t wait to hear Woody’s take on that one). Perry and Gene can collaborate on the dinner playlist and kick off the post-dinner dancing. John can transcribe the whole thing onto staff paper and release it as his new composition “Birthday”. We’ll end the evening at a hockey game since the first NHL game was played in 1912.
Like I said, a big year; and that’s only a small part of the big list. What do you think they’ll say about 2012 one hundred years from now? Will your name be on the list of accomplishments? I wonder if any of the babies I know who were born this year will be on the famous birthday list? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
*Per Wikipedia, “rather than being attached to the parachute by a harness Berry was seated on a trapeze bar.” Makes me queasy just thinking about it but apparently he survived. There’s also a contender for the ‘first’ title who claims to have jumped in late 1911, but that doesn’t really fit in today’s post so I’m choosing to ignore it.
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