Today is my birthday! No, I’m not telling my age, but the number of candles on my cake would produce 9,828 calories of heat (9.828 food calories) which would boil about 4.5 oz of water (so I guess not that old?). In celebration, I thought I’d pass along a few facts about good ol’ 2/28. Did you know that on February 28th:
- In 1861, Colorado was organized into a United States territory
- In 1935, Nylon was invented by Wallace Carothers
- In 1940, basketball was first televised
- In 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson tell their friends that they’ve discovered the chemical structure for DNA (official announcement was on April 25th)
And then there are those who share my birthday:
- Linus Pauling, American chemist and activist, Nobel laureate
- Bugsy Siegel, American gangster, driving force behind development of Las Vegas
- Leon Neil Cooper, American physicist, Nobel laureate
- Tommy Tune, American dancer
- Mario Andretti, Italian-American race car driver
- Steven Chu, American physicist, Nobel laureate, U.S. Secretary of Energy
- Bernadette Peters, American actress and singer
- Mercedes Ruehl, American actress
- Gilbert Gottfried, American comedian
- John Turturro, American actor
- Daniel Handler, American writer, better known as Lemony Snicket
It also happens to be:
- International Sword Swallowers Day
- Floral Design Day
- Rare Disease Day
- National Tooth Fairy Day
- Public Sleeping Day
- And, this year, it also happens to be Purim
Yep…February 28th. Good day, good day. Below is a photo of the World’s Largest Birthday Cake, made in 2005 to celebrate Las Vegas’ Centennial. It was built over 14 hours by 1,000 volunteers and weighed in at 130,000 pounds.
