What do I have in common with The Royal Albert Hall, Eric Idle and Adolf Hitler?

Today is my birthday. Admittedly there is nothing very special about that, approximately 20 million others around the world will also have Happy Birthday sung at them, but for me, today, it is. Today, according to the saying, my life begins. Today I turn forty. I am so excited about what the day will bring that I actually feel as if I am turning ten!! I am about to embark on a four day birthday-a-thon. My wife and children will take charge today. Tomorrow, no doubt my work colleagues will have something planned, so I will continue being jolly and happy. On Saturday I am meeting a group of friends for dinner and on Sunday I seeing some of them again for breakfast. Then I shall go home and re-live the whole lot again. And again. And again!

For this week's blog, I have decided to find out more about 29th March and the number 40. It turns out that there are some pretty interesting facts. Not mind-blowing stuff, just "gosh, really, I never knew that" kind of interesting.

40 is the atomic number of Zirconium.

Forty is both an octagonal number, and a semiperfect number. Far too complicated for me to explain, I struggle with Count Von Count so click on the links to find out more!

Negative forty is the unique temperature at which the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales correspond; that is, −40°F = −40°C.

My nearest major road is the A40 and nearest motorway is the M40. The former is the trunk road connecting London to Fishguard, the latter connects London to Birmingham, which begs the question if there already is a way to get to Birmingham, why do we need HS2?

The planet Venus forms a pentagram in the night sky every eight years with it returning to its original point every 40 years. You see, fascinating!

Noah had to deal with forty days and forty nights of rain. Aahh, nothing like an English Summer!

The Quran says that a person is only fully grown when they reach the age of 40. All those years of being told to grow up and struggling to do so could have been avoided if only I had known this!

In Russian folklore, some believe that ghosts of the dead linger at the site of their death for forty days.

In football, 40 is generally considered the number of points that a Premier League team needs to avoid relegation. Not sure what any of this means, but I am sure someone will have heard of football.

Ali Baba had 40 thieves.

Supposedly we should only work 40 hours a week! Which un-unionised industry sticks to this one?

The theoretical number of weeks for an average term of pregnancy. For a human. A ferret is about 40 days.

The letters of the word "forty" are in alphabetical order.

After all this intake of knowledge, you may well now need forty winks!

29th March is.........

Boganda Day in the Central African Republic, remembering the first Prime Minister.
Day of the Young Combatant in Chile, usually celebrated with civil disorder by leftists and anarchists.
Youth Day in the Republic of China, commemorating The Yellow Flower Mound Revolt.
The feast day of Saint Bertold of Mount Carmel (also known as Bartoldus of Calabria)

Births......

1869 - Edwin Lutyens, architect, London
1900 - Bill Aston, British racing driver (d. 1974)
1902 - William Walton, England, composer (Troilus & Cressida, Wise Virgins)
1917 - Man O'War, racehorse (winner of 20 out of 21 races)
1931 - Evelyn de Rothschild, English banker/multi-millionaire
1931 - Lord Tebbit,
1943 - Eric Idle, England, comedian/actor (Monty Python)
1943 - John Major, British PM (C, 1990-97)
1944 - John Suchet, British TV journalist (Independent TV News)
1945 - Julie Goodyear, British actress (Bet Lynch-Coronation Street)
1955 - Brendan Gleeson, Irish actor
1957 - Christopher Lambert, actor (Highlander)
1964 - Elle MacPherson, Sydney, Austrailian super model and actress (Sirens)
1972 - Me
1976 - Jennifer Capriati, tennis pro (Olympic gold 1992)
2334 - Beverly Crusher, Copernicus Luna, fictional doctor-Star Trek Next Gen
2336 - Deanna Troi, Betazed, fictional counsellor-Star Trek Next Generation

..........Deaths

1848 - John Jacob Astor, charted American Fur Company, dies at 84
1912 - Robert Falcon Scott, British pole explorer, dies in Antarctica at 43
1972 - J Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank, industrialist/film magnate
1992 - Earl Spencer, father of Lady Diana, dies at 68

On this day in........

1871 - Queen Victoria opened the Royal Albert Hall
1882 - The Knights of Columbus were founded
1936 - Adolf Hitler receives 99% of the votes in a referendum to ratify Germany's illegal reoccupation of the Rhineland, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters. So, a fair and democratic vote then?
1945 - World War II: Last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England.
1972 - I was born!
1973 - The last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.
2004 - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.
2004 - The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants. And have probably ignored it ever since!

I hope you life has been enriched by the reading of this! Just look up your birthday, something quite good is bound to have happened. I love that the Albert Hall and I share a significant date, although I'm still trying to get over the fact that Elle Macpherson has never sent me a birthday card!!

I hope you all have a great weekend, anything like mine and I know you will!