It's My Birthday, Once Again

And not just celebrated for one day, but throughout the entire year. It's my long-standing belief that celebrants should party on that long as this particular day (unfortunately) will only come once in a lifetime.

I'm part of the Baby Boomer generation which covers the age range between 58-77 years from 1945 to 1964. The term comes from the explosion of babies born during the post WW II baby boom when the number born during this time period was about 50% higher than average. Baby Boomers are now reaching the age of retirement which both Grenville, also a Baby Boomer, and myself have been enjoying for 20+ years.

I was born on a Thursday a.m. in II•III•MCMXLIX or 73 years ago in Arabic numerals! It wasn't a leap year, that was the year before (1948). My astrological sign is Aquarius, the water bearer; nice that there was a song about it too; The Age of Aquarius by The 5th Dimension remains a favorite. My Chinese zodiac sign is the Ox. My birthstone is the amethyst, and lucky for me as purple is my favorite color.

These events happened on my birthdate in various years: 

1864 - Maj. Gen. William Sherman begins the Meridian campaign through Mississippi

1869 - Booth theater opens in NYC at 23rd & 6th (Romeo & Juliet)

1918 - Twin Peaks Tunnel light rail/streetcar tunnel begins service in San Francisco, CA

1945 - Walt Disney releases The Three Caballeros

1945 - Yalta Conference agreed that Russia would enter WWII against Japan

1964 - Meet the Beatles LP goes Gold

1966 - Soviet Luna 9 is the first spacecraft to soft-land on the moon

1984 - Challenger 4,10th Space Shuttle Mission 4 is launched

While there were notable occurrences(and fun ones) worldwide in my birth year, none happened on my actual birthdate, but here's some major 1949 events:

Some Major Events

• Communist forces gain power in China; nationalists flee to Taiwan
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established
• Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb
• Israel admitted to United Nations
• Soviet Union lifts 11-month blockade against West Berlin
• West Germany and East Germany formally established as nations

Business & Economy

Nearly 500,000 steel workers went on strike in 29 states shutting down 95 percent of the nation's steel mills. The issue was whether workers should contribute to a pension plan recommended by a Presidential fact-finding board. The strike coincided with a coal miners strike that year.

Science & Technology

U.S. Air Force’s Lucky Lady II, a Boeing B-50 Superfortress, became the first airplane to circle the world non-stop. Its 1949 journey, assisted by in-flight refueling, lasted 94 hours and 1 minute. 

Sports

In the World Series, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers winning in five games for their second defeat of the Dodgers in three years

Arts & Entertainment

Here's what was happening in the movies, TV, on the radio, in books, and more:

• Movies: The Third Man, All the King’s Men
• Songs: So In Love, Riders in the Sky, Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Some Enchanted Evening
• TV Shows: Texaco Star Theatre, Candid Camera, Colgate Theatre, Kukla Fran & Ollie
• Books: The Man with the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren; The Jacaranda Tree, H.E. Bates; Guard of Honor, James Gould Cozzens; Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford; 1984, George Orwell; This I Remember, Eleanor Roosevelt
• Rodgers and Hammerstein's production of South Pacific opened on Broadway
• Death of a Salesman, a play by Arthur Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for drama

Everyday Life

• Grocery stores: a loaf of bread cost 13 cents on average. Milk was 84 cents a gallon. A pound of bacon was 50 cents. A 13 ounce box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes was 19 cents. A 10-1/2 ounce can of Campbell's Soup was 10 cents.
• Average annual salary $2,950 to $3,600; minimum wage 40 cents per hour.
• There were about 44,000 TVs in American households, compared to 44,000 in 1947, and that number swelled to 940,000 in 1949 and 20 million in 1953.
• The fad of pyramid clubs began in California. The concept was that a dollar would get you in the door and 12 days later you were over $2,000 richer. The promise of easy money made these clubs hard to resist and they quickly spread across the U.S. and into Canada. Only a handful of people would make any profits from the fad; most will be organizers of their own pyramids. 

Popular 1949 Baby Names

Mary, Patricia, Barbara, Susan, Sandra, Linda, Carol, Kathleen, Margaret, Judith, Chirley

James, Robert, John William, Michael, Richard, David, Charles, Thomas, Donald, Joseph

Celebrated 1949 Birthday Babies

John Belushi, Jeff Bridges, Simon Callow, Keith Carradine, Patrick Duffy, Julian Fellowes, Victor Garber, Richard Gere, Billy Joel, Don Johnson, Lawrence Kasdan, Andy Kaufman, Jessica Lange, Nancy Meyers, Bill Nighy, Michael Richards, Sissy Spacek, Meryl Streep, Zoe Wanamaker, Sigourney Weaver

Couple of Fun Facts

Silly Putty® was introduced in a 1949 toy catalog and priced at $2, it outsold everything else. It was originally called Nutty Putty, and invented in 1943 by James Wright, an engineer working in a General Electric laboratory in New Haven, CT. When a rubber shortage threatened war production during WW II, the government had asked U.S. companies to invent a synthetic rubber with similar properties, but made with non-restricted ingredients. Wright found that combining boric acid and silicone oil produced a putty that could bounce when dropped, stretch farther then rubber, and had a high melting temperature, while amazing, it didn't contain properties needed to replace rubber. Unable to come up with an idea on how to use the putty, Wright sent samples to other scientists, but none found a use for it until Peter Hodgson, an advertising consultant, persuaded a toy seller to advertise it in a toy catalog. He later changed its name. Sales poured in after a 1950 article in The New Yorker magazine. It was considered a novelty toy for adults, before becoming a hit with children.

Gussie Moran

U.S. tennis player Gussie Moran, ranked No. 4, and playing at Wimbledon wore an outfit that featured a short skirt revealing, at certain angles, lace-trimmed panties. It was created by Cuthbert Tinling, a tennis player, fashion designer and sports writer. The outfit, a first at Wimbledon, caused photographers to lay down to capture the “racy” and “naughty” outfit. Moran was called Gorgeous Gussie in newspaper reports which reported the fringed panties were in evidence when Gussie races across the court or leaps for a high shot. The Committee of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club accused Moran of bringing “vulgarity and sin into tennis.” Tinling, who had served as an official Wimbledon host for 20 years, was asked to “take leave” of his position by the outraged tennis establishment. He wasn't invited back for 33 years. 

Thanks for reading this birthday post and also
for your well wishes, always MUCH appreciated.

We're on a road trip and Grenville told me it was for my birthday and Hearts Day. He said it was mere coincidence that there's a ham radio convention in Orlando, FL in between the two dates.