Randy Seaver has some fun things to do on a Saturday night. This week he asks us to answer these questions:

1) What day of the week were you born? Tell us how you found out.

2) What has happened in recorded history on your birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

Here are my answers:

1) For some reason I have always known I was born on a Thursday. But I went to time and date.com and created a calendar of 1970 to find the exact date. And I was right. Thursday it was.

2) It was a lot harder to find a good resource for this list of historical events. Eventually I went to Wikipedia's list of historical anniversaries. Here are the top 5 events/births/deaths (other than my birth):

Events:

• 193 - Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum (in the Balkans).
• 1865 - American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the war.
  
• 1867 - Alaska purchase: Passing by a single vote, the United States Senate ratifies a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska.
• 1945 - The United States Atomic Energy Commission is formed.
• 2003 - 2003 invasion of Iraq: Baghdad falls to American forces.

Births:

• 1926 - Hugh Hefner, American editor and publisher, founder of Playboy
• 1932 - Cheeta, chimpanzee actor
• 1954 - Dennis Quaid, American actor
• 1957 - Seve Ballesteros, Spanish golfer
• 1965 - Paulina Porizkova, Czechoslovakian-born actress and supermodel

Deaths:

• 491 - Zeno, Byzantine Emperor
• 715 - Pope Constantine
• 1024 - Pope Benedict VIII
• 1483 - King Edward IV of England (b. 1442)
• 1959 - Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect (b. 1867)

This should make it pretty easy to figure out my birthday, right?