Today, July 15, 2003, is Jesse Ventura's birthday. It is also the birthday of George Voinovich, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Barry Goldwater, Jr., among other living politicos. Of the more than 100,000 politicians in my PoliticalGraveyard.com database, I have dates of birth for 18,726 of them. The earliest date of birth in the TPG database is in February 1622. Ignoring the 1752 calendar shift, there were about 139,000 days from then until now. Interesting question: of those 139,000-some days, from February 1622 to July 2003, which one date was the birthday of the largest number of living-at-the-time politicianss? The surprising answer: December 25, 1879 -- when 44 pols (at least theoretically) celebrated birthdays. There's a tie for #2 between December 25, 1880, and December 25, 1878, both with 43. Given that I'm much more likely to have detailed information on more recent figures, it is exceedingly strange that the top birthday is more than twelve decades ago. On the other hand, the 1870s were the height of the tradition of so-called "rotation in office" (informal term limits), and the turnover in Congress was extremely rapid. A disproportionate share of everyone who ever served in Congress did so in 1865-85. The biggest non-Christmas dates were also the highest ones in the 20th century: March 28, 1922, and March 28, 1923, which had 37 birthdays each. The most common birthdate (month and day, any year) in the database is actually January 1st, with 86. Christmas Day, December 25, is second with 78. See http://politicalgraveyard.com/chrono/by-date.html I think what we're seeing here is some measurement error. (1) Births on January 1st and December 25 are easier to remember, and hence more likely to be recorded and reported in public sources. (2) People whose dates of birth are unknown might well pick January 1 or December 25 as pseudo birthdates. There is plenty of precedent for people getting their own birthdates wrong, or deliberately falsifying them. Military service is one motivator: my father lied about his age (saying he was born in September 1924 instead of September 1925) so he could join the Army in June 1943. Those supposedly super-long-lived Soviets turned out to have changed their ages when young to avoid being drafted by the Tsar. I'm told that most porn stars report their birthdays as being December 31. Not clear why that would be.5 responses total.
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Another reader speculated that (1) people born on December 25 might have an inflated sense of their importance, and hence be more likely to run for office, or (2) people born on December 25 feel that they don't get enough attention, so they run for office in order to get attention.
To clarify, you're not saying all those people sharing, say December 25, 1879, were born on the same day, just that they were all born on December 25 of some year, and were alive in 1879, right? If that's the case, we should be able to assume that they're largely the same group as December 25, 1878 and 1880.
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Re 3. Yes, exactly. Presumably one of the 44 died during the year from December 25, 1879 to December 25, 1880. Re 4. Good question -- I don't have any quick answers.
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