I don’t know exactly what my sister’s husband is doing today, but I’ll find out when I call to wish him a happy birthday. I’ll be checking in not only because our chronological ages will be identical for the next couple of months, but because those individuals who were born on this date all need a little extra TLC.
Today’s date is significant historically for a variety of reasons. London’s Royal Opera House opened on December 7, 1732. Delaware became the first of the original 13 colonies to ratify the United States Constitution 223 years ago today. On December 7, 1930 America’s first-ever television commercial, a spot extolling the virtues of I. J. Fox Furriers, was broadcast by W1AXV in Boston, which was sending video of the CBS Radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers, over the area’s nascent air waves that day. And on December 7, 1963, instant replay was utilized for the first time during a televised football game when Army’s touchdown in the closing moments of their 21-15 loss to Navy was re-shown while announcer Lindsey Nelson reminded viewers that, “Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!”
Beloved actors Eli Wallach (1915) and Ted Knight (1923) were born on December 7th. So were Gerry Cheevers (1940), the goalie for the last Boston Bruins Stanley Cup-winning team in 1972, baseball star Johnny Bench (1947), Senator Susan Collins (1952), and basketball great Larry Bird (1956).
The point is that many events of significance have taken place on December 7th, but due to the gravity of one of them (and some memorable subsequent remarks by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt) the 341st day of every non-leap year has for most Americans long since become “a date that will live in infamy.”
The seventh day of the twelfth month isn’t the only date on the calendar that’s gotten a bad rap. Consider November 22nd. The Juan Fernandez Islands off the coast of Chile were discovered on that date in 1574. Denver, Colorado was founded on November 22, 1858, and the Humane Society of the United States began operations on November 22, 1954. But precisely nine years after the admirable group which works to protect the rights of animals began its existence, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. As a result every noteworthy event which had ever taken place on a previous November 22nd was reduced to trivia.
Similarly, until just over nine years ago September 11th was an utterly unremarkable day. But thanks to an awful event that took place on that date in 2001, its reputation has been forever sullied. Never mind that previous September 11ths included one which saw Henry Hudson discover Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there (1609), another on which ground was broken for the construction of the Pentagon (1941), and yet another that saw NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor reach the Red Planet’s surface (1997). Now thanks to Osama bin Laden and his misguided but resourceful pals from al Qaeda, people born on the 254th day of the year can no longer have a birthday party without somehow feeling guilty about celebrating anything that day.
Fairly or unfairly, dates on the calendar acquire reputations just like people do. To most Americans July 4th means cookouts, parades, and fireworks. But why should people feel all warm and fuzzy about a date that has seen among other things, brutal British forces capture the Zululand capital of Ulundi and subsequently burn it to the ground (1879) and Nazis massacre Polish scientists and writers in a captured Ukrainian city (1941)? July 4th was the date on which beloved figures like actress Eva Gabor (1995), television reporter Charles Kuralt (1997), and Hannibal Hamlin, the only Mainer to ever serve as vice-president of the United States (1891), breathed their last. It was also the birth date of mobster Meyer Lansky (1902) and New York Yankee boss George Steinbrenner (1932).
And why is December 25th such a sacred cow? A magnitude 7.6 earthquake on that date in 1932 killed 275 people in Gansu, China. Forty-two members of an Indian laboring caste were burned alive on December 25th, 1968 in retaliation for their campaigning for higher wages.
I cannot pretend to know in advance what my brother-in-law (or my sister, for that matter) will do in any given situation; the two of them are no more predictable than any other pair of human beings. But there was one occasion when I successfully forecast with 100 percent certainty what they would not do.
When they became parents for the first time I was absolutely sure they wouldn’t name their baby daughter “Pearl.”
— Andy Young teaches in Kennebunk, and lives in Cumberland.
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