Famous People Born Today

All things being equal, today is a special day for 18,611,111 people, more or less. See, the United States Census Bureau estimates the world population as of today to be 6,800,500,000. An easier way to say that would be a little over 6.8 billion people. And they’re all coming to your house for dinner! Ok…not really. Just me!

Anyway, if you take that 6.8 billion and divide by 365.4 (the approximate number of days in a year) you come up with 18.6 million people – having a birthday today. OK…I know more people are born in certain months, and nine months after a cold snap or a power outage, and blah blah blah. That’s why I said, “All things being equal…”

Some of the more famous people having birthdays today: Charles Lindbergh, who crossed an ocean to get away from a crowd of people. And then there’s Oscar De La Hoya, the boxer who’s famous for his baby face, or at least he was before Floyd Mayweather gave him a 12 round facelift.

I see that Alice Cooper and Dan Quayle are having birthdays today. I get those two mixed up. One of them sang about school being out and the other was out of school on the day they taught spelling.

And a couple more famous people with birthdays today are Brandon “Bug” Hall and Rebekah Flanagan. You remember “Bug” Hall. He played Buster, the kid in the movie “The Stupids”. If you haven’t seen “The Stupids”… don’t! It's just too stupid. And Rebekah Flanagan played the role of Reece’s firstborn child in the movie….wait a minute! That‘s not a movie. It’s REAL LIFE!

Rebekah is famous in my eyes for so many things I couldn’t start to name them all. Her entire childhood is one fond memory after another - mostly of her beautiful smile, or when she gave me “the look”! And I’ll never forget when she came to me and said, “Dad, I need to tell you something…” She didn’t even have the words out of her mouth yet and my grin was ear to ear. A few months later she gave me my granddaughter, Kiley! If you didn't get to see Rebekah's smile as a kid, just look at Kiley's!

If Rebekah had never accomplished anything of note in her life I would still be proud of her. But listen to this – she put herself through college…and graduated! I would have loved to have been able to pay for my kids to get their degree, but it just wasn’t happening. Undeterred, she arranged the grants and loans, juggled her schedule, attended night classes and got her sheepskin – all the while working full time and having a kid! This one's gonna go far in life.

So join me in wishing my beautiful daughter Rebekah a happy birthday today.

♫ “Happy birthday to you ♫ Happy Birthday to you ♫ Happy Birthday, Dear Rebekah ♫ Happy birthday to youuuuuuuu!” ♫

I love you, sweetheart!