April 23 Birthday
April 23 is the traditional birthday of William Shakespeare, born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. The actual date is unknown — he was baptized on April 26, and baptism typically occurred three days after birth. He died on April 23, 1616 — his fifty-second birthday. He wrote thirty-eight plays and 154 sonnets in twenty-three years. He left his wife Anne Hathaway his "second-best bed" in his will, which scholars have argued about for centuries — it may have been a sentimental gesture, as the second-best bed was the marital bed, while the best was reserved for guests. He is buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. His epitaph, supposedly written by himself, curses anyone who moves his bones: "Cursed be he that moves my bones." They have never been moved. On April 23, 2005, Jawed Karim uploaded the first video to YouTube: "Me at the zoo." The video is nineteen seconds long, shows Karim at the San Diego Zoo standing in front of the elephant enclosure, and says: "Alright, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants." That was it. The video has been viewed over 300 million times. YouTube was founded by three former PayPal employees — Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen — and sold to Google for $1.65 billion eighteen months later. YouTube now receives 500 hours of video uploaded per minute. Karim's first video — mundane, unedited, and unremarkable — is the foundation of the largest video platform in the world. In 1985, Coca-Cola replaced its flagship product with New Coke, a sweeter formula that had been developed to compete with Pepsi. The company had spent two years on the formula and conducted 200,000 taste tests, in which New Coke consistently won. But the taste tests measured preference in small sips, not in the context of drinking a full can. The public reaction was immediate and hostile — protesters dumped New Coke in the streets, and Coca-Cola received 40,000 calls and letters of complaint in the first week. Within seventy-nine days, the company brought back the original formula as "Coca-Cola Classic." New Coke became a textbook case of market research failure — the data was right and the conclusion was wrong. Shirley Temple, born this day in 1928, was the biggest box-office draw in America from 1935 to 1938, when she was seven to ten years old. She sang "On the Good Ship Lollipop" in Bright Eyes and "Animal Crackers in My Soup" in Curly Top. Her career ended at twelve, when the public lost interest. She became a diplomat — US Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Roy Orbison, born this day in 1936, had a three-octave range and wore dark glasses because he had astigmatism. He had hits in three decades — "Only the Lonely," "Oh, Pretty Woman," "You Got It" — and died of a heart attack at fifty-two. People born on April 23 fall under the zodiac sign of Taurus. The birthstone is Diamond and the birth flower is Daisy. Historical events on April 23 include 1564: Traditional birth date of William Shakespeare (also died on this date in 1616), 1985: Coca-Cola introduces New Coke (one of biggest marketing blunders in history), 2005: First video uploaded to YouTube ("Me at the zoo" by Jawed Karim). Famous people born on April 23 include William Shakespeare (1564), Shirley Temple (1928), Roy Orbison (1936).