On December 27th, this site had a large traffic spike. Page requests were four times higher than they were the day before or the day after. The 27th also happens to be my birthday. Did people visit this site in order to wish me well? Of course not. They were looking for famous people born on their birthday.

I was well on my way to a Hermann-Paul collection when I discovered something of personal interest: The French graphic artist was born exactly one-hundred years before me, on December 27, 1864. We share a birthday and, apparently, a similar taste in art. He died on June 23, 1940 at age 75. I’m hoping for a better run.

The traffic spike that prompted this recollection made me wonder who else was born two days after Christmas. Interestingly, there’s a small cottage industry dedicated to solving this problem. A Google search provided plenty of sites that answer the following question: Who was born on my birthday? I chose Famous Birthdays because — let’s face it — you don’t expend this much effort to learn you share a birthday with Cleetus from rural Louisiana.

So what did Famous Birthdays have to say? It turns outs John Amos, Sydney Greenstreet and Savannah Guthrie were also born on the same day as me.  Imagine that.