It’s Saturday Night

and Time for Some Genealogy Fun

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to:

1)  What is the day, month and year was your Grandfather born (either one)? [Use a grandmother if you want!]What was the day of the week for this event?  Tell us how you found out.

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

3)  What famous people have been born on your Grandfather’s birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.

My Grandfather Crawford was born 6 February 1894 in Newton, Kansas. While I knew I could use Google to figure out what day of the week this was, I also knew there was a birth announcement in the Newton, Kansas newspaper.

This birth announcement was published on FRIDAY 9 February 1894 in the Newton Daily Republican (on Newspapers.com). Thus the 6th would have been Tuesday.

A Google search for “what day of week was February 6 1894” turned up several useful sites for this blog post. The site, dayofweek.org, identifies the day of the week and what day in the year it was. Scrolling down on this site one finds a list of two people born on this same day: Eric Partridge, New Zealand lexicographer and Kirpal Singh, Indian religious figure.

Another site found via my Google search was On This Day, which provides some additional information about the day.

To find the events that have happened on February 6th, I did another Google search. This time, I searched for “events that happened on February 6th”. This search led me to ‘The People History‘

For my list of five events, I’m choosing events that I can relate to or that relate to my research.

• 1943 – Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the commander-in-chief of all allied forces in North Africa (I had to choose this one since I’m a Kansan!)
• 1952 – King George dies making Elizabeth Queen of England
• 1971 – Alan Shepard hits a golf ball on the moon
• 2007 – Denial of service attacks on the Internet
• 2007 – Genealogist finds that Barack Obama is related to George Washington, James Madison, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter thru his mother’s side

To identify famous people born on February 6th, I did another Google search. This time, I searched for “who was born on February 6”. This led me to the Famous Birthdays site.

For my list of famous people born on February 6th, I’m going with names I recognize.

• Babe Ruth
• Ronald Reagan
• Aaron Burr
• Zsa Zsa Gabor
• Eva Braun

Since I don’t pay much attention to singers and actors, I only recognized the five people I listed. Thus, I checked the site The Famous People and found some more names I actually recognized:

• Tom Brokaw
• J.E.B. Stuart
• Thomas Durant
• Olena Zelenska
• Fabian Forte

Thanks Randy for the challenge!