in the absence of time to babble about the minutia (how is that word spelt correctly?) of my life, I bring you the current popular meme on my flist - who died on your birthday?

132,112 People

People who died on February 21 (various years)

* 2005 - Eugene Scott, American religious broadcaster
* 2005 - Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Cuban novelist
* 2005 - Gérard Bessette, Quebec novelist and poet
* 2005 - Ara Berberian, American opera singer
* 2004 - Guido Molinari, Canadian artist
* 2004 - John Charles, Welsh footballer
* 2003 - Eddie Thomson, Scottish football player and coach
* 2002 - John Thaw, English actor
* 2002 - Harold Furth, Austrian-born physicist
* 2000 - Antonio Díaz-Miguel, Spanish basketball coach
* 1999 - Wilmer David Mizell, baseball player
* 1999 - Gertrude B. Elion, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
* 1996 - Morton Gould, American composer
* 1991 - Dame Margot Fonteyn, English ballet dancer
* 1989 - Alex Thépot, French footballer
* 1986 - Shigechiyo Izumi, Japanese sugarcane farmer, also the world's oldest man ever
* 1986 - Helen Hooven Santmyer, American writer
* 1985 - Louis Hayward, British actor
* 1984 - Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate
* 1982 - Murray the K, American impresario and disc jockey
* 1980 - Alfred Andersch, German writer
* 1978 - Mieczysław Żywczyński, Polish historian and priest
* 1976 - Florence Ballard, American Motown singer, 1959 to 1966 she was the leader of The Supremes, 1943
* 1974 - Tim Horton, Canadian hockey player
* 1972 - Bronislava Nijinska, Polish-Russian ballet dancer
* 1968 - Howard Walter Florey, Australian-born pharmocologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
* 1967 - Charles Beaumont, American writer
* 1966 - Paul Comtois, French Canadian politician
* 1965 - Malcolm X, American black activist
* 1960 - Jacques Becker, French film director and screenwriter
* 1958 - Duncan Edwards, English footballer
* 1949 - Tan Malaka, Indonesian nationalist activist and communist leader
* 1946 - José Streel, Belgian World War II collaborator
* 1945 - Eric Liddell, Scottish runner
* 1944 - Ferenc Szisz, Hungarian-born race car driver
* 1941 - Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
* 1938 - George Ellery Hale, American astronomer
* 1926 - Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
* 1920 - Jacinta Marto, witness of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima
* 1901 - George Francis FitzGerald, Irish mathematician
* 1862 - Justinus Kerner, German poet
* 1846 - Emperor Ninko of Japan
* 1824 - Eugène de Beauharnais, son of Napoleon's wife, Josephine
* 1821 - Georg Friedrich von Martens, German diplomat
* 1788 - Johann Georg Palitzsch, German astronomer
* 1730 - Pope Benedict XIII
* 1715 - Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, Governor of the Province of Maryland
* 1677 - Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher
* 1668 - John Thurloe, English Puritan spy
* 1595 - Robert Southwell, English Jesuit priest and poet (executed)
* 1554 - Hieronymus Bock, German botanist
* 1543 - Ahmed Gragn, Sultan of Adal
* 1513 - Pope Julius II
* 1471 - John of Rokycan, Czech Catholic archbishop
* 1437 - King James I of Scotland




I think I'm most intrigued by the factoids that Dame Margot Fonteyn and Howard Florey died on my birthday (the former in 1991, the latter in 1968)