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Building a Time Machine out of Blogspot (no, not a DeLorean)

A week from Monday, I'm going to be older. That's kind of how I look at my birthday these days. It doesn't have the kind of excitement it once did. I remember the days when I couldn't wait to be old enough to go to a rated-R movie by myself, or vote, or drink legally, or be technically old enough to be president of the United States (not that anyone would be much honored by that milestone these days . . . who would want THAT headache).

I guess the excitement for middle-aged birthday celebrants goes more like this: Hey, I'm way too old to be drafted! Can't wait to be old enough to get my first colonoscopy! Counting down the days until I can become an AARP member! How much longer until I get the Senior Citizens' Discount at Denny's?! Grand slam gets even grander, it seems. Woohoo, I'm still around for another birthday!

I thought I'd look back to the year of my birth and see what today's newsmakers were doing way back when. Time machine set to December 1971 . . .
  • According to RenewAmerica.com, our now-president Barack Obama was a fifth-grader at a prep school in Hawaii. He was the same age my son is now. 
  • Justin Bieber's DAD, my sources calculate, wouldn't be born for another three-and-a-half years.
  • Cher had just released her album "Gypsys, Tramps, and Thieves" and was starring in "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" on CBS. Cher, now age 68, announced earlier this week cancellation of the last 24 dates on her current tour because of health problems. 
  • TMZ reported (in November 2014) that actress Louisa Moritz alleges Bill Cosby forced her to perform oral sex in her dressing room before an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1971. Cosby's iconic cartoon series "Fat Albert" debuted the following year. Hey hey hey.
  • Hillary Rodham had just started dating Bill Clinton. The two were Yale Law School classmates at the time. 
  • Walt Disney World opened in Orlando in October '71. The latest Disney rumors, which popped up in mid-November 2014, suggest that the theme-park giant may be considering plans to build a Disneyland in the Middle East -- specifically, Egypt.
  • On November 24, 1971 (the night before Thanksgiving that year), the man known in the media as "D.B. Cooper," with $200,000 in ransom money, parachuted out of a Northwest Orient flight over Washington State that he had hijacked, and was never seen again. It remains the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history. 
  • Former pilot, engineer, astronaut, and United States Senator John Glenn celebrated his 50th birthday in 1971. He's still alive and kicking at age 93 (As of Nov. 22, 2014). He might feel the same way I do about birthdays. He once joked, "There is still no cure for the common birthday."

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