One hundred and two.

Today marks a very important day: my granny's birthday. Granny was born November 26, 1913 to Rear-Admiral Archibald and Maye Cochrane in Windlesham, Surrey, UK. Granny moved to Canada with my Papa after World War II. He asked for Granny's hand in marriage, but was told to go back to Canada and get a job first - which he did! Granny and Papa settled down in Toronto, Ontario and shortly after had my dad, James (1952) and my aunt Anne (1953). So you don't have to read that twice, she is my granny.. not my great-granny and she is a magnificent 102 years old. She exercises daily - whether it is in her balance classes or walking around the block, and is always up for a visit or a quick chat on the phone. She has always loved tennis, and while her eyesight and hearing make it a little more difficult to watch the tournaments on TV any longer, her interest remains! Granny is a truly spectacular woman.

This past weekend, my dad, my brothers and I celebrated Granny's big day in Toronto with two of my aunts, one of my cousins, and a couple of granny's oldest, friends. We had a great birthday lunch together and I think Granny was very pleased with the celebration! I postponed this week's blog from Monday til today so that I could post on her birthday - I have accumulated some facts from each of the past 102 years. Some important ones and some completely random ones that I just snagged from the World Wide Web. This weekend, my dad asked Granny what she thought was the most amazing thing that has happened over her lifetime, her answer "Airplanes!" Probably because she travelled back to England by boat to visit her family with my young father and aunt in tow and let's face it... that would not be fun.

Anyway, I hope you learn something new, enjoy!

1913: November 26 - Stella Dorothea Cochrane is born!
1914: The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading
1915: John McCrae writes "In Flanders Fields" a poem which I'm sure most of you know by heart
1916: The Boston Red Sox defeated Brooklyn to win the World Series
1917: Walt Disney graduates from Benton High School
1918: Worldwide Spanish Influenza outbreak; Daylight Savings goes into effect; World War I ends on November 11
1919: Bentley Motors Ltd is incorporated in England
1920: Prohibition begins in USA .. bring on the bootlegs and the speak easy's!
1921: Maurice "The Rocket" Richard is born!
1922: Insulin is discovered; Reader's Digest is published (you can't tell me you haven't read this on the toilet at some point in your life....)
1923: Transcontinental air mail begins
1924: First Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix, France
1925: Former FEMALE British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher is born (girl power!); a pair of patent leather pumps cost $5.95
1926: UK Legitimiacy Act 1926: permits legitimisation of a child born to unmarried parents before their subsequent marriage to each other (MTV starts glorifying teen pregnancy with the show "Teen Mom" .. kidding but not really)
1927: The first talking movie "The Jazz Singer"
1928: Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean
1929: The Great Depression begins
1930:  The planet Pluto is discovered!
1931: The Empire State Building in New York City is completed. It took only one year and forty-five days to build. In 1931. It took three years (2010-2013) to build Investor's Group Field in Winnipeg and they still didn't even get it right.
1932: Average car price: $US 610.00
1933: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany (I don't understand how); Crack open a beer! Prohibition ends!
1934: Cheeseburger is created. Waistlines grow everywhere.
1935: Babe Ruth plays his final season of baseball with the New York Yankees. "The Great Bambino"
1936: Actor Albert Finney is born (Daddy Warbucks in Annie! The sun'll come out tomorrow)
1937: Britain begins the 999 emergency service (911 in America)
1938: Volkswagon produces the Beetle
1939: World War II begins - Granny and Papa would meet on their way to Egypt, Granny was a Wren in the war.. look it up! I did, it's pretty cool; The Wizard of Oz comes out
1940: Winston Churchill becomes the Prime Minister of England; Nylon stockings go on sale; Bugs Bunny debuts
1941: Pearl Harbour - several airfields and ships were bombed by the Japanese
1942: Anne Frank goes into hiding; the t-shirt was introduced 
1943: the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is created (now go watch A League of their Own)
1944: June 6 - D-Day: The invasion of Europe
1945: World War II comes to an end
1946: the bikini is introduced. Forever ruining every girl's self-esteem in the world; The Flamingo Hotel opens in Las Vegas, NV
1947: Tennessee Williams' "Streetcar Named Desire" premieres in New York City
1948: One million households have televisions, whereas only 5000 homes had them three years prior; also Ozzy Osbourne was born this year and I don't know how he is still alive
1949: De-Havilland Comet first commercial passenger jet airliner takes it`s first test flight
Are you still reading? You deserve a trophy. Cause I'm exhausted just from typing this.
1950: Charles Shulz introduces the Peanuts comic strip
1951: My Granny and Papa moved to Toronto and were married. Apparently the ring that my dad would later propose to my mom with was given to my granny as a "in case you need to come back, sell this" present.
1952: My dad is born!
1953: My aunt Anne is born!
1954: Marilyn Monroe marries Joe DiMaggio
1955: Great Britain declares state of emergency due to National Rail Strike; Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama after refusing to give up her seat to a white person
1956: Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel enters the charts - the first of 170 hit singles for Elvis
1957: In the USA, 12 eggs cost $0.28
1958: Sir Edmund Hillary reaches the South Pole; London Gatwick Airport is opened
1959: The first known human with HIV dies in Congo
1960: Chubby chequer and the Twist are the new cool dance moves! Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho comes out; Rock band The Beatles is formed
1961: World's population reaches an estimated 4 billion
1962: the first Wal-Mart is opened in Bentonville, Arkansas .. peopleofwalmart.com was probably just a twinkle in someone's eye at this point
1963: "long leg slimming panty" (so, Spanx) cost $US 9.80
1964: board game "Mouse Trap" cost $US 3.99; Merv Griffin creates probably my all time favourite TV show: Jeopardy!
1965: The soap opera The Days of Our Lives debuts and is still on today with probably some of the same actors
1966: The Miranda Rights come into effect. Most people know them because they watch movies and think they can become police officers "You have the right to remain silent..."
1967: the first Rolling Stone Magazine is published with a still of John Lennon in the movie How I Won the War on the cover
1968: McDonald's sells it's first Big Mac for $0.49; popular musicians include Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and The Monkees
1969: Neil Armstrong is the first man on the moon "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"
1970: An Easy Bake Oven was $US 10.99
1971: The floppy disc is invented .. people started living in fear that if they moved the little square, all of their stored information would disappear
I can't believe you are still reading this as much as I can't believe I'm still writing this.
1972: The first female FBI agents are hired. Thank goodness, or Sandra Bullock would never have been able to be Miss Congeniality
1973: Sydney Opera House is opened in Australia (P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney)
1974: Pocket calculators start to be sold in stores .. I wondre if they spelled words upsidedown too (80085, 43770 - BOOBS and HELLO)
1975: Motorolla obtains a patent for the first portable mobile phone .. so begin the days of carrying around a brick
1976: The movie Rocky is released and Sylvestor Stallone is still acting in similar films today (aka a million Rocky sequels)
1977: The first Apple II computers go on sale for $1298 (base price)
1978: The movie Grease came out. Enough said.
1979: Daniel E Chadwick invents the snowboard
1980: Former Beatle, John Lennon, is shot to death in Manhattan
1981: Granny and Papa's first grandchild arrives, my brother Neil
1982: Michael Fagan breaks into the Queen's bedroom at Buckinham Palace (This is insane!)
Oh my gosh this is never ending, I'm so sorry! But it's still cool. Admit it.
1983: The internet is born!
1984: Granny and Papa's second grandchild arrives, my brother Thomas
1985: British scientists discover a hole in the ozone layer; Back to the Future is released
1986: smoking is banned on all public transport in the US - this includes trains, planes and busses (good call to whoever decided that!!)
1987: You can buy a Honda civic for $US 6195
1988: The Hubble Space Telescope is put into operation
1989: Obviously the most important thing to happen in 1989 is Taylor Swift being born (I hope you read that with the same sarcastic tone I typed it in)
1990: GRANNY AND PAPA'S FAVOURITE GRANDDAUGHTER (ME) IS BORN. I am also her only granddaughter but that's besides the point
1991: The airbag is invented. I feel like this is way too long after they invented the car. Also, it seems like all of the good movies are finally starting to be made: Beethoven, Hook, Beauty and the Beast, Thelma and Louise
1992: The Mall of America is constructed, spanning 78 acres of shopping bliss
1993: TY launches Beanie Babies. Still got your tags in plastic protectors? Those things are worth like five dollars on eBay right now.......
1994: The Channel Tunnel between England and France is opened .. taking claustrophobia to a whole other level
1995: Microsoft releases Windows 95. I'm sure someone still has this running their computer somewhere in the world
1996: Number of internet hosted computers goes from 1 million to 10 million; Prince Charles and Dianna, Princess of Wales get divorced
1997: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is published. Little did we know this would become a pretty big deal..
1998: Europeans agree on a single currency: the Euro; Apple unveils the iMac
1999: Mattel`s Barbie celebrates it's 40th birthday
2000: The Millenium. We are all told to stock up on canned food and batteries. Nothing actually happens.
2001: 9/11
2002: Elizabeth Smart is kidnapped from her Salt Lake City, Utah home
2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected Governer of California (we still didn't know about his illegitimate son)
2004: Fox hunting is outlawed in the UK
2005: Hurricane Katrina strikes Louisiana, Mississppi and Alabama
2006: Pluto is downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet
2007: Apple introduces the iPhone. Our world's are literally changed forever because we can't seem to function without our SmartPhones anymore and it's really sad
2008: Fidel Castro steps down as president of Cuba after nearly 50 years
2009: Michael Jackson passes away in suspicious circcumstances
2010: The Winter Olympic Games are held in Vancouver and Canadians kicked ass
2011: The world's first synthetic organ transplant was a success in Sweden - surgeons transplanted a synthetic trachea in a patient
2012: The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II; Granny becomes a great-granny to Audrey
2013: Lance Armstrong admitted to doping in all of this Tour de France victories in an interview with Oprah Winfrey; Boston Marathon bombings
2014: A Malaysian Airlines 747 disappears from the sky; Granny becomes a great-granny again to Adele!
2015: Granny celebrates her 102 birthday with family and friends

Thank you for having the patience to go through all of that! 102 years is a very long time. Happy birthday, Granny!

dream big dreams, be reckless
-L