Sharing a date

Yeah, birthdays count for nothing, except it is my 60th today and that one does give even more of a feeling than your 50th that on life's ride you're up and over that initial roller coaster hump, and only have the moderate twists and bumps to continue with until it comes to an abrupt stop.   Not the cheeriest of metaphors, but truth be told, I don't care for roller coasters much anyway.  😊

Anyway, it's good to be alive and well and around to watch things unfold.

I see that a couple of years ago I had a look at famous people who shared my birth date, and noted a couple of low level celebrities.   Looking at a much, much longer list of famous birthdays, and I note the following:

* DH Lawrence: (I've known that one for a long time, but have never read him and have no great interest to start now, either.  I just realised I know virtually nothing about his life, but he has quite a long Wiki entry, so I might read that later.)

* Oh!  Brian DePalma, the director, is 80 today.   I will go to my grave defending The Untouchables as a great gangster film with actually more serious moral content than most of Scorsese's work, and with the most thrilling shoot out sequence ever; so yeah, he's welcome to share my date.

* Ferdinand Marcos would be 103 today if he was still alive:  good to know I share a date with at least one Right wing dictator.   

* Here's a name anyone who has ever owned a pre-digital camera who have read at least once:  Carl Zeiss ("German scientific instrument and lens maker").

* Minamoto no Yoriie, Japanese shogun.  Born 1182.  Never heard of him, but I've taken to telling my kids I must have been Asian in a prior life (it's why I watch so much Asian content on Youtube and Netflix, obviously); and perhaps he is my specific previous incarnation.   No, wait, he was a bit of a dud:

Yoriie showed when still very young great interest in military arts like fencing, and horse-riding. After his father's death in 1199, the 17-year-old became head of the Minamoto clan and was appointed sei-i taishōgun in 1202.^[2] He was, however, criticized for his abandonment of his father's policies, and his mother forbade him from any involvement political activity.^[2] On June 30, 1203 (Shōji 1, 12th day of the 4th month) his remaining powers were formally taken from him and assumed by a council of 13 elders, headed by his grandfather Hōjō Tokimasa.^[2] He ordained as a Buddhist monk. Yoriie, in turn, plotted with the Hiki to subjugate the Hōjō clan; however, he failed, was put under house arrest and forced to abdicate, and was eventually assassinated on July 17, 1204 in Izu.^[2] Yoriie was succeeded by his younger brother Sanetomo, the last of the Seiwa Genji line to rule, at least nominally, over Kamakura. 

All a bit Game of Thrones-ish.  

* Who to end on?   Perhaps a homeopathic murderer?:  Hawley Harvey Crippen [Dr Crippen], American homeopath and first killer to be caught with the aid of wireless telegraphy, born in Coldwater, Michigan (d. 1910).  He has a lengthy Wiki entry too.  All quite famous, it seems, and I think I have heard of the name.   More fun reading.

Anyway, on with life....