Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age - Freeze-Frame Radio

Ruby · The Good Witch Of The South

Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age

sgmorrell · Low in Fiber High in M-SG

I don't feel so bad...no one did anything...

At age 48:

Umberto Eco, a professor of semiotics, wrote his first novel, The Name of the Rose.

George Blanda played his last year of NFL football.

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

At age 25:

The future mythologist Joseph Campbell decided to move to Woodstock to read the classics for five years, nine hours a day. Living on very little, he would make himself readily available as a dinner guest.

Orson Welles coscripted, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.

By this age, Charles Chaplin had appeared in 35 films.

P. T. Barnum bought a "160-year-old" slave woman and began a career in show business.

Janis Joplin made her first recording, "Cheap Thrills," which grossed over a million dollars within a few months.

Chris Burden created "Painting Shoot," which involved the artist being shot in the left arm by a friend.

Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic, thus winning a $25,000 prize.

Fayette, N.Y. farmhand Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He claimed he translated the Book of Mormon from some golden tablets revealed to him by the angel Moroni.

Bavarian painter Aloys Senefelder invented the lithograph.

French engineer Benoit Fourneyron invented the first waterwheel turbine.

Sarah Bernhardt scored her first triumph, being asked to repeat her theatrical performance before Napoleon III.

Activist Mollie Steimer became the first person to be deported from both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Physician Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile. As he collapsed unconscious into the arms of his trainer, the loudspeaker announced, "The time was three..." The uproar of the fans drowned out the rest of the announcement.

Man, I'm a failure. I haven't invented anything, I haven't been deported, and I haven't performed in front of Napoleon!

Ruby · The Good Witch Of The South

Here's for my little one:

At age 4:

British novelist David Garnett told his mother, "All right, I will learn to read, but when I have learned, I never, never shall."

Brazilian Formula One race-car driver Ayrton Senna da Silva began driving go-karts at age 4. (He stopped driving at 34.)

Natalie Wood acted in her first movie.

Judy Garland was singing and playing vaudeville shows .

Dorothy Straight wrote a book called How the World Began.

German composer/conductor Richard Strauss played the piano well.

Spanish composer and piano virtuoso Albeniz gave his first public performance.

Billy Joel started taking classical piano lessons.

Singer/songwriter Tori Amos was accepted into Baltimore's Peabody Academy of Music, the youngest student ever accepted there. She was expelled at age 11 for improvisation and playing rock covers by ear.

Jose Raul Capablanca learned to play chess by watching his father play. When he challenged his father to a game, his father said, "You don't know how to play." Jose replied, "Yes I do" and proceeded to beat his father. He went on to win the world chess championship at age 32.

Ruby · The Good Witch Of The South

And my slacker:

At age 15:

Albert Einstein, with poor grades in geography, history and languages, dropped out of school.

Composer George Gershwin ("Rhapsody in Blue") left school to pitch his songs in Tin Pan Alley.

Chess champion Bobby Fischer became an international grandmaster and dropped out of high school to devote himself to professional competition.

Swedish tennis star Bjorn Borg dropped out of school to concentrate on tennis.

American reformer Susan B. Anthony began teaching school.

Issac Asimov entered Columbia University.

Henry Ford, disliking life on the farm, moved to Detroit and trained as a machinist.

Ragtime musician Eubie Blake began playing piano in Baltimore brothels.

Benjamin Franklin contributed anonymously to a local newspaper, and he wrote ballads and peddled them in the streets. Also at this age, he became a free-thinker and a vegetarian.

Edith Piaf began her career singing in the streets of Paris.

Billie Holiday began singing in a Harlem nightclub.

Eddie Murphy performed his own comedy routines at youth centers in New York.

Louis Braille, blind since age 3, improved the method of raised writing.

Baker's apprentice Hanson Crockett Gregory invented the first ring doughnuts by knocking the center out of a fried doughnut.

Outlaw Jesse James joined up with Quantrill's pro-Confederate guerrillas.

Tennis player Jennifer Capriati became the youngest semifinalist at Wimbledon.

Inventor Thomas Alva Edison became manager of a telegraph office.

Newspaper editor Horace Greeley became an apprentice printer.

Anne Frank wrote the final entry in her diary.

Jules · The Wonder From Down Under

At age 33 (actually 33 next week! biggrin:):

English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "Vindication of the Rights of Women"

Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone.

Vaudeville performer Walter Nilsson rode across the United States on an 8 1/2 foot unicycle.

Successful merchant Cyrus West Field retired at age 33 to devote himself to laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable.

John Knowles published A Separate Peace, which was immediately successful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay, "Nature," encouraging readers to see the miraculous in the common.

Woo Hoo · The Chosen Woo

At age 31:

French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone.

British physician Thomas Wedgwood produced the first photograph.

Eli Terry produced clocks with interchangeable parts. He also introduced the free-trial, no-money-down sales method.

garougal · Cleverly Disguised As A Responsible Adult

I love it!

At age 35:

Based on a nightmarish dream, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Russian ambassador Aleksandr Borosovich Kurakin introduced the practice of serving meals in courses.

Frederic William Herschel, an English astronomer, invented the contact lens.

American sprinter Evelyn Ashford won her final Olympic gold medal at age 35, old for a sprinter.

Amedeo Avogadro developed Avogadro's hypothesis.

Law School professor Anita Hill charged that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas made indecent remarks to her.

Margie Profet proposed a new theory of menstruation which claims that menstruation protects against infection and won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin achieved his life's ambition at age 35 and wondered, what do you do after that?

Mozart stopped composing and started, well, you know.