Well the initial results suggest a strong German presence in today's birthday list. For starters, we have Field Marshal Hans Joachim Von Zeiten, born in 1699. He was a cavalry officer under Frederick the Great, and is alleged to have fought 74 duels. Mainly because he apparently looked and sounded like a poof. And he didn't like it when ladies and Bruces asked "are you a poofta?".
Next was Rudolf Lipschitz, mathematician. Born in 1832, he is the creator of the Lipschitz Continuity Condition. Not even an inkling of a vague clue what that means, but I guess having a continuos condition is A Good Thing, unless you're either dead or really sick. But hey, he's German and he shows up on our birthday list, so what the hey.
Next up is another field marshal. Wilhelm List. He was on the Wrong Side in WWII. He commanded an army in the invasion of Poland, another in France, and an army group on the southern front in Russia. When his offensive slowed down in late 1942, due to numerous conditions which were mostly out of his control, he was sacked and replaced with either a Swedish dentist named Svenge, or Ralph the Wonder Llama. Or an Austrian born Bavarian corporal. One of them. At any rate, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after the war, but was released due to ill health. At which point he lived about another 17 years. You'd think Britain would have learned a lesson about releasing prisoners who are terminally ill, but apparently not.
Moving right along, our next mention is Otto Klemperer. He's best known as being one of the top conductors of the 20th century.... Nah, he's best known because his son Werner played Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes. Wonder how the elder Klemperer felt about that degree of fame...?
In 1901, Robert Ritter was born. He was a German psychologist, who did a lot of work with the Roma (or gypsies). Mostly he worked on eugenics and thR Roma, which led Germany to slaughter a higher proportion of Rom in the Holocaust than even Jews. Sadly, there was a lack of evidence, so he got away with it.
Switching gears, it's time to leave Germany and go to Canada. Which means a hockey player, eh. In this case, goalie Gump Worsley. He won and lost 300 games, a few Stanley Cups, a buttload of individual awards, and so on. No telling what he would have done if he hadn't kept getting traded and demoted to the minors- he had this weird idea that hockey players should be paid well for their talents, and perhaps should even be allowed to form a union. So I guess we can blame him for some of the stupidity in sports today. But we can let it slide, I guess.
Siân Phillips was also born on this date. She's an extremely well respected Welsh actress, best known for playing Livia in the brilliant "I, Claudius". By the way, Siân is apparently Welsh for "Jane" her given name. So I guess a Welsh Tarzan would have said "Me Tarzan, you Siân" which doesn't really work, so I guess now we know why Tarzan was written in English.
Bobby Darin was also born on this date, but I got nothing interesting on him, and don't feel like looking him up.
Also born today was Jack Bruce. He was the bassist for Cream. So he's got some coolness going on there.
Also born today, George Lucas, but he now insists that Solo shot Greedo in self defense, and he also created Jar Jar Binks, so we won't say anything nice about him.
Tim Roth was also born on this date. He wants you to me to him- or did until he got cancelled, but to me he'll always be Rosenkrantz. Or Guildenstern. If you've seen my favorite movie "Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead", you'll understand my confusion. It's an inside joke.
Suzy Kolber has a birthday too. No idea if Joe Namath still wants to kiss her, but I suspect she wouldn't be up for it.
And those are all the birthdays I feel like posting today. Maybe more tomorrow. Maybe an RIP later. Stop hassling me, man! You don't own me!
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