In just 6 days time I will add another year to my three decades worth of trips around the sun. As I sit here typing this, I am staring at a stack of 5 dollar bills. Last year my wife and I made an agreement to never spend our fives and save them for a trip or something fun. So I have a bunch just laying on my desk right now. Coincidentally, the dead president on these bills is none other than Honest Abe, or Abraham Lincoln if you're not familiar with the nickname.

Of course there are a litany of people who share February 12th as their day of birth, these are just a few of my favorites, and some I just happened to run across while doing this research.

Honest Abe was born in Hardin County, Kentucky in 1809. He became the 16th president of the United States of America and was notoriously assassinated at Ford's theater by John Wilkes Booth. As an adolescent, I took great pride in sharing a birthday with Abe. My two best friends and I in grade school all had a connection to him somehow. I shared his birthday, my buddy Kellen was related to him by way of a great, great, great, great...you get the picture, relative. My buddy Mike had the same relationship string to John Wilkes Booth. We would joke that Mike's (great, great, great, etc..)grandpa murdered Kellen's (great, great, etc.) grandpa. We felt it was kismet at the time to be the best of friends and have this connection to Abe.

As I have gained more knowledge of history in my time, I hold less and less favorable of opinions of Abe. As President, he suspended Habeas Corpus and depending on which historian you ask, the bloodiest war in Americas history, the civil war, was possibly avoidable as slave ownership was on it's way out anyway. He and his wife, Mary Todd, were both slave owners themselves. It seems to me, now, he talked the talk but didn't necessarily walk the walk.

Abe with his famous beard and top hat

His most widely acclaimed accomplishments would probably be the Emancipation Proclamation, The Gettysburg Address, and enacting the 13th amendment to the US constitution which outlawed slavery. He is widely regarded my many as the greatest President in US history. He died a day after being shot in 1865, at age 56.

February 12th, 1809 was a powerhouse year for people who made massive influential changes to human history. Case in point, Charles Darwin, the Father of the Theory of Evolution.

It's kinda funny to me that these two men would be born on the same day, same year, on opposite sides of the globe. Mainly because Darwin was the grandson to two prominent abolitionists. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin and his wife, Susannah. As religious disciples, they were adamantly against slave ownership. Interesting enough to me, seeing as religion and Darwin's eventual theory of evolution would collide as contradicting principles. How could God have made the world in 7 days if we had evolved from prior species?

It was only after visiting the South America, and particularly the Galapagos Islands, on a sailing expedition in 1831, would he accumulate enough data to support his most famous work "On The Origin of Species" in 1859.

Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection still brings about much debate between the scientific and religious community. He passed away from what we would call today heart disease, on April 19th, 1882, age 73.

How could I be @intothewild without Christopher Johnson McCandless?

Chris was born February 12th, 1968, in El Segundo, California. His father worked for NASA and his relationship with his parents is the most widely accepted reason to Chris's worldview. Chris didn't want things. He didn't see value in money. He was definitely a trail blazer into the un-common thoughts of society. He donated his life savings, 24 thousand dollars, to OXFAM America after graduating from Emory University. A charity organization built to fight against world hunger.

Chris in front of the Magic Bus which he made his home in Fairbanks Alaska.

Chris drove all over the US in his POS Datsun, taking on menial jobs to support himself. A fry cook at a fast food joint. A grain farmer in South Dakota. It was all he needed to get by.

His adventurous spirit led him to a few weeks at Slab City. Then a harrowing kayak ride down the Colorado River all the way to Mexico, and eventually hitch hiking all the way North to Alaska where he settled in at a bus left in the wilderness

I just watched Into the Wild yesterday as I had called in sick for work and was laid up in bed. It gets me...every. damn. time. Why am I still doing this whole 9 to 5 thing? The wild is calling me and I am being stubborn...waiting for that day when I feel secure enough to do it.

Some say he essentially committed suicide by way of lack of planning. He had no map and was vastly ill-prepared for what he was getting himself into. I see it differently. I think Chris believed society was essentially committing suicide by way of conformity and materialistic identities. He saw life for what it is. A short time period to live, laugh, and love. Although it took his death bed for him to see the final piece for himself. One of his last entries in his journal was "Happiness is only real when shared". I thank Chris, AKA Alexander Supertramp (his surname after leaving his family) for gracing me with his words of life-experienced wisdom. Luckily it won't take my death bed to come to this realization.

I am married to the love of my life and we just started our family. Our daughter will turn one at the end of the month. I hope it won't take much longer for us to realize our true goals in life. To live off the land and simply spend quality time together while raising our family. We can't take possessions with us when we go, but we can make amazing memories together while we inhabit these earthly bodies.

Chris was found dead in the magic bus by a hunter in August of 1992. It is speculated he ate an inedible variety of wild potato which lead to his inability to digest food. Starvation would end up being deaths calling. Although others disagree with this hypothesis, it might be lost forever how Chris really died. He was 24 years old.

Famed author Jon Krakauer wrote an article titled "Death of an Innocent" in January 1993, published in Outside. In 1996, he would expand on that article with "Into the Wild", Chris's life story and journey to Alaska.

In 2007 Sean Penn would produce the feature film "Into the Wild" , with Emile Hirsch playing the part of Chris. It went on to win Best Picture from the American Film Institute.

Others that share February 12th as a birthday which I just found out today include...

Cotton Mather 1663-1729. American Puritan minister born in Boston, Mass who was part of the Salem Witch Trials.

Dominic DiMaggio 1918-2009. Youngest of the DiMaggio brothers. Played 11 years with the Boston Red Sox, mostly living in the shadow of his older brother, the great Joe DiMaggio.

Bill Russel 1934-present. Former Boston Celtics great and Gold Olympian in 1956.

A few, maybe less notable, but popular in their own regard include author Judy Blume, Comedian Arsenio Hall, Actor Josh Brolin, and NASCAR racer Brad Keselowski.

Do you share a birthday with any notable people in history? Let me know and thanks for reading!

Sources:

https://www.onthisday.com/birthdays/february/12

https://www.galapagosislands.com/info/history/charles-darwin.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

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