Guess Whose Birthday It Is...

So it turns out that February 26th was a pretty cool day in history. On February 26th, the following people were born:

• a German king (Wenceslas, 1361--yes, as in "Good King Wenceslas looked down...");
• the developer of the greatest invention of all time, dry cereal (John Harvey Kellogg, 1852--shout out to Kellogg's Foot Loops and Frosted Flakes);
• a famed French writer (Victor Hugo, 1802--don't deny that you don't tear up when you hear "Bring Him Home" from Hugo's Les Miserables);
• a famed German clothing designer (Levi Strauss, 1829--I still can't believe that a kid from my high school class, Brandon Vest, named his son after Mr. Strauss); and
• several famous singers (Mr. Johnny Cash, 1932--one of Tommi's favorite people in the music business; Michael Bolton, 1953--Tommi sported a Bolton hairdo at 10 yrs old; and Corrine Bailey Rae, 1979--whose "Like a Star" is one of those that you can't get out of your head even though you don't know any other words than "Just like a start that hmmm the sky, just like a hmmm that hmmm hmmm hmmm...").

There were also some pretty significant historical events that took place on Feb. 26th:

• 1815: Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from the island of Elba to begin his second conquest of France;
• 1952: Winston Churchill announces that Britain has developed its own atomic bomb;
• 1991: Gulf War--Iraq leader Saddam Hussein announces the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait; and
• 1993: The first World Trade Center Bombing--a bomb explodes in the garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

But, of course, to me the most significant of all these events took place on a cold February morning in 1976 at Cottonwood Hospital when Tommi Jean Peterson came into the world (TJ's birth certificate confirms it indeed was Cottonwood, though her mother still insists Tommi was born at St. Marks). So last night was the 32nd anniversary of Tommi's birth, but this blog entry will be the final reference to her birthday, since Tommi has now decided that she will no longer allow a number/age to be associated with her birthday. From now on, February 26th will simply be known as a day to celebrate Tommi (you know, "Tommi Day," just like Mother's Day, Memorial Day or Arbor Day).