Here's today's quiz question: guess what the following luminaries all have in common?
Henry Fielding (1707-1754), English novelist
Eleazer Wheelock (1711-1779), founder of Dartmouth College (in 1769)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher
Madame de Staël (1766-1817), Swiss-born saloniste, novelist, and literary critic
Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), leader of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
Bettie Page (1923-2008) , American pinup queen, playmate of the month in the January 1955 issue of PLAYBOY.
Answer: like yours truly, they were all born on this day. So here's a little toast to the birthday boys and girls of April 22:
To Henry Fielding, author of TOM JONES,
Whose novels titillate our funny bones.
To Eleazer Wheelock, next in line
Who founded Dartmouth on a hill of pine.
To Kant, who taught us all just how to live
By categorical imperative;
To Madame Staël, who piqued Napoleon
By dashing off a novel called DELPHINE,
And then enraged the great French emperor
By speaking up for German literature.
To Lenin next, who led the Bolsheviks
To set the stage for Stalin's dirty tricks;
To Bettie Page, the busty pinup queen,
Like all the others, no more to be seen.
And last, to her and all the other five,
I beg to add one more--who's still alive.