Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - The Day Your Grandfather Was Born

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings offers us the following challenge:

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) What day of the week was your Grandfather born (either one)? Tell us how you found out.

2) What has happened in recorded history on your Grandfather's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

3) What famous people have been born on your Grandfather's birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.

4) Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

My response:

My maternal grandpa, William Howard Taft Spence, was born on 12 May 1910, a Thursday.

My paternal grandpa, Andrew James Gunter, was born on 27 October 1918, a Sunday.

I did a search to find a perpetual calendar in order to pin down their birth day.  I used this one: Infoplease.

I also did an Internet search (search.yahoo.com) for “what happened on 5/12/1910” and “what happened on 10/27/1918 and found three sources with which I was able to find both events and those sharing birth dates with my grandpas. Ordinarily, I would be using Swagbucks for my searches, but I have yet to figure out how to make it the default search engine on this computer.

William Howard Taft Spence, 1910-1992

12 May
Things that happened on Grandpa Spence's birth date:
1864 – Death of JEB Stuart, Confederate Army General
1932 – The remains of the Lindbergh baby were found.
1949 – Soviet Union lifts blockade of Berlin
1965 – Luna 5, Soviet spacecraft, crashes on the moon
2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba

Those who shared Grandpa Spence’s birth date:
1812 – Edward Lear, English painter/poet
1820 – Florence Nightingale, English nurse
1910 – Gordon Jenkins, composer
1911 – Olive Faye, actress, USO Camp Shows
1925 – Yogi Berra, baseball player

Sources: Smriti "Simmi" D. Isaac, IMDB and Day in History

Andrew James Gunter, 1918-1980

27 October
Things that happened on Papa Gunter’s birth date:
1787 – First of Federalist Papers published, USA
1838 – Extermination Order, Missouri, Mormons must leave the state or be executed
1904 – The IRT, first rapid transit subway, opened, New York City
1914 – The British battleship, HMS Audacious, is sunk
1986 – “Big Bang”, the deregulation of financial markets in Britain

Those who shared Papa Gunter’s birth date:
1858 – Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th US President
1920 – Nanette Fabray, actress
1928 - Burt Bacharach, actor
1937 – George Carlin, actor
1948 – Steve Winwood, musician

Sources: Smriti "Simmi" D. Isaac, IMDB and Day in History


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