Happy 100th Birthday Aunt Dot!!!

Happy 100th Birthday Aunt Dot!!!




Aunt Dot and I last year when she was 99 and I had awesome red hair!

If you have been following my blog over the last couple of years, you already know about my Aunt Dot and all her fun birthday celebrations. Well this year it's the BIG one and my family will all gather to celebrate with our special gal this weekend at her house....yes, Aunt Dot still lives in her own house and my family that live close by keep a watchful eye on her. 100 years, I can't get over it, the things she must have seen in her lifetime!! What an amazing life she has lived.

For fun, here are some things that were happening way, way, way back in 1911, the year my sassy Aunt Dot was born!

Famous People Born in 1911

January 1 – Hank Greenberg, American baseball player (d. 1986)
January 3 – John Sturges, American film director (d. 1982)
January 5 – Jean-Pierre Aumont, French actor (d. 2001)
January 7 – Butterfly McQueen, American actress (d. 1995)
January 20 – Wendell J. Westcott, American carillonneur (d. 2010) (This one makes the cut because I don't know what a carillonneur is.)
January 22 – Mary Hayley Bell, English dramatist, wife of Sir John Mills (d 2005)
February 6 – Ronald Reagan, actor and 40th President of the United States (d. 2004)
February 8 – Elizabeth Bishop, American poet (d. 1979)
February 11 – Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh (Carroll Daly), fifth president of Ireland (d. 1978)
February 13 – Jean Muir, American actress (d. 1996)
February 14 – Willem Johan Kolff, Dutch inventor of hemodialysis (d. 2009)
February 14 – Eduardo Serrano, Venezuelan musician and composer (d. 2008)
February 19 – Merle Oberon, British actress (d. 1979)
March 3 – Jean Harlow, American actress (d. 1937)
March 13 - L. Ron Hubbard, American science fiction author and founder of Scientology (d. 1986)
March 24 - Joseph Barbera, American cartoonist (d. 2006)
March 25 – Jack Ruby, American killer of Lee Harvey Oswald (d. 1967)
March 26 - Tennessee Williams, American playwright (A Streetcar Named Desire) (d. 1983)
April 3 – Michael Woodruff, British/Australian pioneering transplant surgeon (d. 2001)
April 13 – William Tuttle, American makeup artist (d. 2007)
May 8 – Robert Johnson, American guitarist and singer (d. 1938)
May 10 – Bel Kaufman, German-born American author
May 17 - Maureen O'Sullivan, Irish actress (d. 1998)
May 18 – Big Joe Turner, American singer (d. 1985)
May 27 - Hubert H. Humphrey, U.S. Vice President and Senator (d. 1978)
May 27 - Vincent Price, American actor (d. 1993)
June 26 – Babe Didrikson Zaharias, American athlete and golfer (d. 1956)
June 29 - Bernard Herrmann, American composer (d. 1975)
July 4 - Mitch Miller, American singer and television personality (d. 2010)
July 5 – Georges Pompidou, President of France (d. 1974)
July 6 – LaVerne Andrews, member of the 1940s Big Band/Swing group The Andrews Sisters (d. 1967)
July 7 – Gian-Carlo Menotti, Italian-born American composer (d. 2007)
July 9 - Mervyn Peake, British writer and illustrator (d. 1968)
July 16 - Ginger Rogers, American actress (d. 1995)
July 18 – Hume Cronyn, Canadian actor (d. 2003)
July 21 – Marshall McLuhan, Canadian author (d. 1980)
August 6 - Lucille Ball, American actress (I Love Lucy) (d. 1989)
August 9 – William Alfred Fowler, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1995)
September 19 – William Golding, English writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1993)
October 26 – Sid Gillman, American football coach (d. 2003)
October 27 – Leif Erickson, American actor (The High Chaparral) (d. 1986)
October 30 – Ruth Hussey, American actress (d. 2005)
November 5 – Roy Rogers, American singer and actor (d. 1998)
November 13 – Buck O'Neil, American baseball player and manager (d. 2006)
November 27 - David Merrick, American theater producer (d. 2000)
December 5 – Wladyslaw Szpilman, Polish pianist and memoirist, whose story is told in the movie The Pianist (d. 2000)
December 8 – Lee J. Cobb, American actor (d. 1976)
December 11 - Val Guest, British film director (d. 2006)
December 11 - Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2006)
December 18 – Jules Dassin, American director (d. 2008)
December 21 – Josh Gibson, African-American baseball player (d. 1947)
December 25 – Louise Bourgeois, French-born American artist (d. 2010)
December 26 – Arsenio Lacson, Filipino politician and sportswriter (d. 1962)
December 27 – Anna Russell, British comedian and singer (d. 2006)
December 30 – Jeanette Nolan, American actress (d. 1998)

In 1911 they drove cars that looked like this.....

The fashions of 1911...

In 1911:

• The first official airmail flight was conducted by Fred Wiseman, who carried three letters between Petaluma, California and Santa Rosa, California
• Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers the phenonomena of superconductivity
• 1911 Orville Wright
• Orville Wright remains in the air for 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a glider setting a new world record that stands for 10 years
• 27th President: William Howard Taft. March 4th 1909 - March 4th 1913 Republican

Inventions in 1911

• Road surface marking
• Flying boat
• self starter (perfected)
• CRT television
• Hydroplane
• Knapsack parachute

The cost of living in 1911...

The average house cost $5,714
Equivalent today: $135,748

The average car cost $780
Equivalent today: $18,531

The average wage was $545
Equivalent today: $12,948

Popular songs of 1911...

1911 was the year of Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" - introduced on stage by Emma Carus - a "cheerful revolt against the prejudices of Victorian America". But Victorian America was of course still alive. Two major hits served as a kind of counter model to the new music from the streets of New York. Nostalgia for the good ol ' days was the other answer to urban life: "I Want A Girl (Just Like The Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)" and "Down By The Old Mill Stream". That year also saw for example a revival of "Silver Threads Among The Gold" (Rexford/Danks), a song first published in 1873. Listening to other hits of the year it becomes clear how much "Alexander's Ragtime Band" stood out against the rest.

1. Alexander's Ragtime Band
2. Let Me Call You Sweetheart
3. Down By The Old Mill Stream
4. I Want A Girl (Just Like The Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad)
5. Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey


1911 seemed like a very good year to be born! Happy Birthday Aunt Dot!!!! I wonder what her secret is to having lived such a long, happy life? I will have to ask her when I see her. Here are a few of my guesses...her faith in God, a positive personality, being active and working in the garden, good genes!

What do you think is the secret to living a long happy life???