Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (SNGF) - What Date Was Your Grandfather Born?

This week Randy Seaver from Genea-Musings has posted the following SNGF challenge - What Date Was Your Grandfather Born?:

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  What day of the week was your Grandfather born (either one)? Tell us how you found out.
2) What has happened in recorded history on your Grandfather's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.
3)  What famous people have been born on your Grandfather's birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.
4)  Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

I couldn't decide which of my grandfathers to choose, so I've chosen both.

Harold John Barnes – 20 October

John was born on a Friday according to http://www.dayoftheweek.org.

Important events that occurred in history on 20 October include:

1911 –   Amundsen sets out on race to South Pole

1963 –   South Africa begins trail of Nelson Mandela & 8 others on conspiracy

1973 –   USA Watergate: The Saturday Night Massacre

1973 –   Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II

1979 –   The number 1 hit on UK music charts was the Buggles – Video Killed the Radio Star

I found these events on 2 websites: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com & www.datesinhistory.com.

Some famous people born on 20 October are:

Snoop Dogg – Rapper

Bela Lugosi – Movie Actor

Mickey Mantle – Baseball Player

John Krasinski – TV actor (The Office)

Michelle Bridges – Fitness trainer guru (The Biggest Loser Australia)

Tom Petty – Singer

I found these birthdays on http://www.famousbirthdays.com.

John Raymond Curran – 6 July

John was born on a Sunday according to http://www.dayoftheweek.org. 

Important events that occurred in history on 6 July include:

1863 –   Australia - Northern Territory passes from New South Wales to South Australia

1885 –   The first inoculation of a human being for rabies.  Louis Pasteur inoculated a boy, Joseph Meister, who was bitten by a rabid dog.

1905 –   Alfred Deacon becomes Prime Minister of Australia for the 2^nd time

1928 –   The 1^st all-talking motion picture was shown in New York

1939 –   Holocaust – the last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed

1942 –   Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the ""Secret Annexe"" above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse to escape being sent to Nazi concentration camps

1955 –   USA – Air Pollution Control Act  was implemented for research into causal analysis & control of car-emission pollution after the killer fog in London left 4 000 dead & created worldwide concern over the effects of emissions pollution

I found these events on 2 websites: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com & www.datesinhistory.com.

Some famous people born on 6 July are:

Dalai Lama – Religious Leader

Sylvester Stallone - Actor

Kevin Hart – Actor / Comedian

50 Cent – Rapper

Frida Kahlo – Mexican artist

Geoffrey Rush – Australian actor

Peter Singer – Australian philosopher

  

I found these birthdays on http://www.famousbirthdays.com.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - What's Your Ancestor Score?

It’s a week late, but this is my first SNGF post.

Randy Seaver from Genea-Musings posted the following SNGF challenge - What's Your Genealogy Score on 4 Jan:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (and I hope more of you do than participated in the last several SNGF challenges), is to:

1.                  Determine how complete your genealogy research is.  For background, read Crista Cowan’s post FamilyHistory All Done?  What’s Your Number? And Kris Stewart’s What Is Your Genealogy“Score?”  For comparison purposes, keep the list to 10 or 11 generations with you as the first person.

2.                  Create a table similar to Crista’s second table, and fill it in however you can (you could create an Ahnentafel (Ancestor Name) list and count the number in each generation, or use some other method).  Tell us how you calculated the numbers.

3.                  Show us your table, and calculate your “Ancestral Score” – what is your percentage of known names to possible names (1,023 for 10 generations).

4.                  For extra credit (or more SNGF), do more generations and add them to your chart.

5.                  Post your table, and your “Ancestor Score,” on your own blog, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post or Google+ Stream post.

I think this would be a good exercise to do every year or so in order to see how my research has progressed.

I haven’t got into using reports on my genealogy software yet, but I do regularly update my own Ahnentafel Table I created in Word.  I like using the Ahnentafel Numbering System & this document helps me to keep track of who I’ve identified, which generation they are in, which of my 4 main lines they belong to (i.e. father’s father, mother’s mother, etc) & their relationship to me very easily.  It also helped me to determine how many ancestors I know in each generation for this exercise.

I think I’ve done well in my research up to, & including, the 8^th generation, but as you can see from the data trends on my 9^th & 10^th generation, there was no point going further back.  No extra credit for me (this year at least!).

Here is my ancestor table:

What's your Ancestor Score?