Birthing Discovery

Once again I find myself being hit with a surge of boredom and apathy.

Now, normally, this would just mean that I've been thinking too much and fried my thought processes, but for today's case, it went differently.

I woke up and tried thinking of something to do to entertain myself before I had to go to work.
And for some reason, nothing seemed fun.
Not reading, not watching How I Met Your Mother, not World of Warcraft... not even ranting on this blog about boredom.



So I turned to the one thing I knew would sate my "do something" mindset and kill time while slowly inspiring me to "do something" with myself for the day: a variant of "The Wiki Game."

If you're too lazy to click the link, here's how The Wiki Game works:

1. Select a starting page on Wikipedia (or have it selected randomly somehow).
2. Randomly find another page on Wikipedia.
3. Get from the starting page to the other page with as few clicks as possible.

Personally, I think it's a fun game - it's somewhat educational, and it promotes out-of-the-box thinking.
Not to mention that you can create interesting chains from topic A to topic B with this game. (My challenge to you: get from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to former U.S. President William Howard Taft. Last time I tried this, I think I failed miserably and had triple-digits in my clicking.)

My variant is different, as I use it to come up with an idea for writing.

1. Select a starting page consisting of a topic I enjoy.
2. Read until I find a link to another interesting-sounding topic.
3. Repeat Step 2 until inspiration strikes.

Now, for today's game, I'm going to be frank: I honestly can't remember where I started.
When I first started to compose this entry, I had about 20-30 open tabs from Wikipedia alone, and I was still thinking about raving about my boredom.
Then I noticed one of the tabs: "August 16."

If you haven't been stalking me enough already, I cite that particular day as "a day smack-dab in the middle of the most boring month of the year" (as there are no American holidays in August and that most American school districts - particularly the community college ones - start in the middle of that month) and, to a lesser extent, my birthday.

Prior to looking at that page, I knew that my birthday was shared with a few other people and events, including:

• a shared birthday with celebrities such as Madonna, Steve Carell, and Evanna Lynch (the girl who plays Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter movies)
• the death anniversaries of Elvis Presley and Pixar animator Joe Ranft
• a shared birthday with a cousin on my dad's side
• Joseph Kittinger's famous high-altitude jump in 1960 that set three still-unbroken world records
• two plane crashes, and
• a solar flare that popped up on my actual birthday in 1989 that apparently screwed up the Toronto stock market.

So, as a cure to help alleviate my boredom, I decided to research August 16 some more and see if I can find out some new things.
I did. And here's what I found interesting about what I found out about people and events that shared my birthday:

Sports Illustrated shares its birthday with me. The first SI published was on August 16, 1954.

The United States of America shouldn't fight battles (or at least fight the British) on August 16. American forces lost two battles - the 1780 Battle of Camden in the American Revolution, and the surrender of Fort Detroit in the War of 1812.

Of the two plane crashes that occurred on August 16 (1987's Northwest Airlines Flight 255 and 2005's West Caribbean Airways Flight 708), only one person survived.

Ray Chapman, a Cleveland Indian, is struck on the head in the August 16, 1920 game against the New York Yankees. He died the next day and is to-date the second person in the MLB to die from game injuries.

Many earthquakes and other natural disasters (most occurring due to earthquakes) seem to be drawn to August 16. I didn't bother listing them because there were too many.



Quite interesting. Kinda makes you want to check out your own birthday to see what it shares, huh?