Lourdes

People often mistake me to have been born on February 11, and since I was not, there is more curiosity as to why I was named Lourdes. What’s even more peculiar, if you look it up on liturgical year, the “event” that is commemorated on this date is actually the beheading of St. John the Baptist. This has developed in me a need to explain—as if to justify—the reason for my name. Now I normally have a standard reply for this: the truth. But this year I checked out other events to see if I could use a version far more interesting. So far it has its share of brilliant inventions and noble foundations, but for some obscure reason wars seemed most abundant. This:


• 708 - Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
• 1189 - Ban Kulin wrote "The Charter of Kulin", which become a symbolic "birth certificate" of Bosnian statehood
• 1261 - Urban IV becomes Pope, the last man to do so without being a Cardinal first.
• 1350 - Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer). The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.
• 1475 - The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between France and England.
• 1484 - Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cibo is elected Pope Innocent VIII.
• 1521 - The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár, now known as Belgrade.
• 1526 - Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.
• 1533 - Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: Inca emperor Atahualpa is executed in Cajamarca by the garrote by Spanish invaders known as Conquistadores.
• 1541 - The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.
• 1756 - Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War.
• 1786 - Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
• 1831 - Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
• 1833 - The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire.
• 1842 - Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War
• 1869 - The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first rack railway.
• 1871 - Emperor Meiji orders the Abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).
• 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle.
• 1895 - The formation of the Northern Rugby Union at the George Hotel, Huddersfield, England.
• 1896 - Chop suey is invented in New York City.
• 1898 - The Goodyear tire company is founded.
• 1907 - The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers.
• 1910 - Japan changes Korea's name to Chōsen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony.
• 1911 - Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
• 1922 - Turkish forces set fire to Smyrna, in Asia Minor.
• 1930 - The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
• 1943 - German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves Danish government.
• 1944 - Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.
• 1949 - Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
• 1952 - Premiere of John Cage's 4′33″ in Woodstock, New York.
• 1958 - United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• 1966 - Last Beatles concert, in San Francisco, California.
• 1970 - First flight of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 jetliner, a competitor to the Boeing 747.
• 1982 - The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
• 1991 - Supreme Soviet suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
• 1995 - NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
• 1996 - Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Vnukovo Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
• 1997 - At least 98 villagers are killed by the GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.
• 2003 - Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
• 2005 - Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana (especially the Mississippi Gulf Coast) to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and costing over 115 billion dollars in damage.


Then I found out, to my sheer delight, that I had the same birthday as the brilliant Empiricist John Locke (who made me want to attend Oxford), Nobel laureate
Maurice Maeterlinck, American film director Joel Schumacher, and famous Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman (who also died on the same day years after). Then there's Lanny Barbie too. Check on the link to see who she is, hehe ;-)


But back to reality, blame it on my grandmother and parents. For my parents’ “strategic” inspiration and my grandmother’s piety. Yes, so I was named after Our Lady of Lourdes. And perhaps, there will be that one birthday when I get to fulfill the dream of actually going there--as some kind of going home.



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As my favorite character in a Chbosky novel said, “ I always get like this on my birthdays.” For the nth time I have become more pensive a few days before my actual birthday, which I think is true for most people too. Perhaps because celebrating birthdays is like coming to a full circle. New year is overrated and too generic; birthday is well, extremely personal. You may share it with a million of other people in the world, but it is something you can't help but make your own.