Exactly as Old

November 19, 2015 6:59 AM

Today, Ken Griffey Jr. is exactly as old as Shakespeare was the day he died, Joe Montana is exactly as old as Nixon was the day of Watergate, and Robert Downey Jr. is exactly as old as Steve McQueen was the day he died (plus, my sister is exactly as old as George Sisler was the day he had 6 hits in a single baseball game). Yesterday, Carrie Underwood was exactly as old as Thomas Edison was the day he invented the lightbulb, Ralph Macchio was exactly as old as Mikhail Gorbachev was the day he became head of the USSR, and Blue Jays 3rd baseman Josh Donaldson was exactly as old as Darryl Strawberry was the day he hit 9 homers for the Springfield Isotopes (and my aunt is exactly as old as Walter Cronkite was the day he retired). You can check dates of your own choosing using the widget, and Chris Jaffe updates his Twitter daily with more and weirder/sillier On This Day facts (i.e "If this was the planet Neptune, this would be the 1st anniversary of the death of Mary Shelley.").
posted by Copronymus (35 comments total)

No matches for my birthday. :-(
posted by KingEdRa at 7:06 AM on November 19, 2015

This is the greatest thing ever this month.

(And incredibly depressing -- Steinbrenner bought the Yankees when he was my age.)
posted by Etrigan at 7:06 AM on November 19, 2015

If this was the planet Neptune, Mary Shelley would have died pretty much immediately instead of living to be 53, so I think his calculations are a little bit off.
posted by Naberius at 7:11 AM on November 19, 2015

Uh, she wouldn't live to be fifty three, she would have been like 1/3 years old (four months, I guess, if they have months on Neptune).
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:14 AM on November 19, 2015

Anyway thanks this is neat but there's a lot of sports stuff and I wish there were more other things so I can feel badly about how many Pulitzers I haven't won by my age or whatever.

This is a weird combination of fun and whimsical and just further proof that I am a complete failure.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:16 AM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

It says I'm twice as old as Drew Barrymore was the day The Wedding Singer was released and exactly as old as the Metafilter user known as not_on_display.
posted by bondcliff at 7:16 AM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

"That's exactly as old as Mookie Wilson was the day of his final major league baseball game."

Hmm... good to know.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:22 AM on November 19, 2015

Nothing interesting for me, but my favorite 'exactly as old as' for myself is:

The first successful message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 pm on 29 October 1969, from Boelter Hall 3420. Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940 Host computer. The message text was the word login; on an earlier attempt the l and the o letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was lo. About an hour later, after the programmers repaired the code that caused the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full login.
posted by Huck500 at 7:23 AM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Me: That's exactly as old as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the day the 100 Days (that began his presidency) ended
posted by octothorpe at 7:25 AM on November 19, 2015

If this was the planet Neptune, Mary Shelley would have died pretty much immediately instead of living to be 53, so I think his calculations are a little bit off.


Uh, she wouldn't live to be fifty three, she would have been like 1/3 years old (four months, I guess, if they have months on Neptune).

I think it still works if you assume it's from the perspective of a Neptunian who heard about Mary Shelley dying on Earth and not "what if she lived and died on Neptune".
posted by Copronymus at 7:27 AM on November 19, 2015

Oh great…"exactly as old as Osama bin Laden was the day the Taliban declared him to be a "man without sin" with regard to the 1998 embassy bombings" …thats who I get? thanks Obama Internet
posted by ShawnString at 7:29 AM on November 19, 2015

I think it still works if you assume it's from the perspective of a Neptunian who heard about Mary Shelley dying on Earth and not "what if she lived and died on Neptune".

I refuse to assume that.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:30 AM on November 19, 2015

Sorry, no matches for you ╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

"It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years. -- Tom Lehrer
posted by Mchelly at 7:35 AM on November 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Someone noted online that Sylvester Stallone is as old in Creed (69) as Burgess Meredith was in Rocky.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 7:37 AM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

We only know the date that Shakespeare was baptized, not his actual birth date. The date that is celebrated is traditional, and plausible, but not documented. So really Griffey is only approximately as old as Shakespeare was.

/pedantic.
posted by anastasiav at 7:40 AM on November 19, 2015

I got: That's exactly as old as Maximilien Robespierre was the day France's King Louis XVI executed.

Which reminded me that the day of my birth is also the anniversary of Stalin's death.

Maybe there'll be something more cheerful when I check back in the future.
posted by audi alteram partem at 7:42 AM on November 19, 2015

GhostintheMachine: "Someone noted online that Sylvester Stallone is as old in Creed (69) as Burgess Meredith was in Rocky."

Mark Hammil is now a year older than Alec Guinness was in 1977.
posted by octothorpe at 7:44 AM on November 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

Weirdly, I had this very idea for an app a couple of years ago, the day I realized that I had outlived John F. Kennedy by three weeks and counting. I have always had a fascination for seeing how far apart dates are and putting that span into a different context so as to get a more visceral feel for the span.

That, coupled with my discovery years ago that you can put dates into Excel and learn the number of days apart they are with a simple subtraction has led to the occasional odd realization. On July 1 this year when most of my facebook feed was my countrymen wishing everyone Happy Canada Day and posting pictures of fireworks, I was mentioning that the time between the Kennedy assassination and July 1, 2015 was the same span as the gap between Titanic striking the iceberg and the Kennedy assassination: 18,849 days. A baby boomer friend of mine was struck by this: to him, JFK's death was a few years ago at most, but Titanic was in the time of his grandparents.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:45 AM on November 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Half as old as John Sirica was the day he died. Really, Internet? That's the best you can do?
posted by Daily Alice at 7:45 AM on November 19, 2015

We only know the date that Shakespeare was baptized, not his actual birth date. The date that is celebrated is traditional, and plausible, but not documented. So really Griffey is only approximately as old as Shakespeare was.

/pedantic.

As well, we know he died on 23 April, so there is a pleasing symmetry to that being his date of birth too (especially with it being St George's Day).

The more delightful bit of Shakespeare date pedantry is that he and Miguel de Cervantes died on the same date. However, with Spain being on the Gregorian calendar in 1616 and England hanging tight with the Julian one, they died a week and a half apart on their respective April 23rds.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:51 AM on November 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Taylor Swift will live her whole life, and then some to be as old as this skirt I'm wearing.

Robert Downey Junior...I'm just sayin'.
posted by Oyéah at 7:52 AM on November 19, 2015

they died a week and a half apart on their respective April 23rds

This is the best factoid EVER. Thank you!
posted by anastasiav at 8:00 AM on November 19, 2015

No "Exactly as Old"s for me, however I am twice as old as Justin Timberlake was the day his Justified album was released.

Apparently that's his first album; strangely enough I feel older not knowing that fact than I do being twice as old as he was then.
posted by Laura in Canada at 8:01 AM on November 19, 2015

Me: That's half as old as Andy Rooney was the day he died. Grump.
posted by Melismata at 8:03 AM on November 19, 2015

I'd like to chip in some of my spare whitespace for this posting.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:23 AM on November 19, 2015

Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was lo.

Oh, if only his finger had twitched, causing him to accidentally add an extra L at the end...
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:37 AM on November 19, 2015

No match for me, but from this site, I learned that, in 64 days, I will be the age John Lennon was when he died. Wow.

I have also recently outlived Malcolm X.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:16 AM on November 19, 2015

No matches for today. Bah. I'm exactly as old as I need to be.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:57 AM on November 19, 2015

I'm twice as old as Clyde Barrow was when he met Bonnie Parker?

(There's a "most likely" in there, but damn, they were kids!)
posted by Mister Moofoo at 12:21 PM on November 19, 2015

I watched Master of None yesterday. There is a dedication to Harris Wittels during the end-credits of the finale. I realized that I must be fairly close to the age (to-the-day) he was when he died. Upon Googling "days between dates", I used the first result, and found out that next month will put me at the same number of days. I was thinking that I would like to see more examples of this (more for myself, though I am enjoying seeing these other comparisons) and, less than 24 hours later, voila! Thanks for sharing!
posted by Jeff Morris at 2:40 PM on November 19, 2015

"It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

- Tom Lehrer
posted by phong3d at 2:47 PM on November 19, 2015

No matches for me today either.

However, thanks to Ben Trismegistus's link, I learned that I will outlive Ted Bundy in 36 days. In the next year, I will outlive the following people: Gary Coleman, Margaux Hemingway, Divine, Robert Kennedy, and Elvis Presley.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:30 PM on November 19, 2015

A couple good ones from today:

"Murder victim Jon Benet Ramsey would have been exactly as old as Charles Lindbergh was the day he landed in Paris (9,237 days)."

"Comedian Jimmy Kimmel is exactly as old as Al Capone was the day he died (17,539 days)."

I find the Jon Benet Ramsey thing especially interesting because it manages to highlight both how young Lindbergh was and how old she would be.
posted by Copronymus at 7:23 AM on November 20, 2015

Bit of weird synchronicity with the child murder victim thing, as well.
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:38 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

I haven't been checking daily, but I saw a few more interesting ones today:

"Quarterback Peyton Manning is exactly as old as Richard Nixon was the day he gave his Checkers speech (14,502 days)."

"Comedian Jon Stewart is exactly as old as Jerry Garcia was the day he died (19,367 days)."

I also got one for my birth date about Ron Howard that just made me feel old so I won't share it.
posted by Copronymus at 11:00 AM on December 7, 2015