January 6th and a few associated birthdays

Some aspects of the lives of Stella Gibbons and Stella Benson were compared in the post that marked their birthdays.

There are a few more associated birthdays to mention.

Stella Benson shares the day of her birth, January 6th, with SF writer Eric Frank Russell and engineer/ businessman John DeLorean.

January 6th is also said to be Sherlock Holmes’s birthday.

Stella Benson shares the year of her birth, 1892, with J. R. R. Tolkien, who was born a few days earlier. 

Incidentally, Lucy M. Boston was also born in 1892, as was Basil Rathbone, the actor who played Holmes in major Hollywood films.

By coincidence, both Tolkien and Rathbone were born in South Africa. 

Sherlock Holmes is deduced to have been born on January 6th 1854:

John DeLorean and Gerald Durrell: born on the same day?

I noticed an interesting coincidence recently: two very different men with very different lives and outlooks share the same birthdate. 

The automobile engineer and executive John DeLorean was born on January 6th 1925 in Detroit; the author, naturalist, zoo keeper and wildlife conservationist Gerald Durrell was born in India on January 7th 1925. Allowing for time differences, they were born at much the same time – and under the sign of Capricorn.

One appears to be on the whole one of the good guys, the other was a fraudster. From his obituary in The Guardian:

“Almost everyone who had business dealings with car-maker John DeLorean … suffered either money losses in the millions, public vilification for the vanished cash, or both. Through all this turbulence, DeLorean remained unscathed: even if he did lose a fortune, he had not been entitled to it in the first place… DeLorean was a world-class conman, despite a brilliant early engineering career at General Motors. Among his victims of fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion or defaulted loans, were the governments of Britain, the US, and Switzerland…”

John DeLorean called the British government ‘suckers’ and his Irish workers ‘dummies’; Gerald Durrell built good relationships with various authorities and made friends with and allies of ordinary people wherever he went. 

John DeLorean ruined the livelihoods of many people; Durrell saved several species from extinction.

Astrology and the influence of the moon

There was a time many years ago when I decided to investigate astrology. Although I found the works of the more serious astrologers – Dr. Liz Greene for example – to be worth reading, I was never convinced that the heavenly bodies had much influence on our lives.

I did benefit in that I learned some more history and Greek mythology; I was also introduced to the idea of different personality types based on the presence and balance of the four elements in their birth charts, which gave me some respect for psychological diversity.

My scepticism did dissolve a little when I discovered that many of my favourite childhood authors were fellow Capricorns: Dennis Wheatley; Rudyard Kipling; Ouida; Gerald Durrell; Hugh Lofting; Noel Streatfeild; A. A. Milne; Stella Gibbons; J. R. R. Tolkien … but then I realised that there are other Capricorn authors whose work I don’t like much or at all, and many authors born under other signs whose work I like as much as or more than the work of the best Capricorn writers.

Something that happened many years ago while I was still reading books about astrology made me take the subject a little more seriously:

I was doing some spring cleaning. I was happily washing down a wall while listening to a tape of the song Liverpool Farewell by the Spinners. I felt energised by the song, which seemed cheerful and exciting: new adventures were on the horizon. 

This was in the morning; when I resumed work in the afternoon, I played the tape again. This time, the song sounded unbearably sad because people were parting; I was tearful and did not feel like continuing with the work. 

I had an idea. I investigated some tables and discovered that the moon had actually changed signs during my lunch break: in the morning it had been in the airy-fairy sign of Gemini; in the afternoon it had moved to the cry-baby sign of Cancer!

However, a change from sunshine to dull, grey, wet weather can have a similar effect.

I went into and through astrology and came out the other end. I have found many other areas of investigation to be more relevant and helpful. The jury’s still out.

The Leaving of Liverpool: