Dead Dictators and Birthdays

Pinochet's dead. What was horrifying about this news was that he wasn't dead already. Surely somebody could have 'offed' him ages ago. That's the trouble with this world: nice people are too nice. If you see what I mean. It terrifies me that I'm going to find out that even more scumbags I thought were dead aren't yet.

One personal Pinochet aside is that the date of the coup in Chile was September 11th. Now more famous for other things, but always more famous for me as my mother's birthday.

It was also my birthday the other day, December 7th, generally better known (in the US anyway) as Pearl Harbour Day. When I was studying American History for A level just a few years ago (Oh alright a loooooong time ago) I announced Pearl Harbour Day was my birthday. Which was interesting. The next date we came across turned out to be someone else in the class's birthday. And the next, and the next, and then someone's mother's birthday, and then someone's sister's birthday etc. etc. I suppose the truth is if you get a big enough group ( I guess there were about 20 of us) it's statistically likely that this will happen. But I'm not sure, I only got an E for my Stats A level. Depressingly I told someone recently (younger than me) that I was born on Pearl Harbour Day and they thought I meant the actual day - making me 17 years older than I am.

You do the math.