Memorial Day 2014

[Geo]

11 holidays? One more then an honest laborer like me gets throughout the year. Public sector in my region gets one more: Flemish holiday.

Jarlwolf: with the calender change, did May 1st (labours day) get misplaced too?

[Buster's Uncle]

I believe the Julian calendar's roughly 13 days behind.  Isaac Asimov used to complain that immigrating to America when he was four made him 13 days older than he really was.  -I don't think it would have lost as much as another day since 1904 - he'd be 110 if he was still alive.  I recall an article about it ending with "I want my 13 days back!  I want my 13 days back!"

[Geo]

Depends on when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in Soviet Union/Russia (for the first of May I mean).

Poor Asimov. Suffering from permanent temporal displacement. No wonder his scifi stories always involved some kind of FTL drive.

[Buster's Uncle]

He lived a long life and died rich, of a social disease.  I'd say he did okay, despite the time glitch.

[Geo]

72 is old?
Looks like he might at any time have decided to pick up those 13 days by celebrating his birthday before Chrismas 1919 instead of the early days of 1920.

[Buster's Uncle]

Ooh, I see I made him 16 years older than he was - he'd object to that.  72 still isn't young...

[Valka]

72 may not be young, but it's not ancient. One thing that calendar mixup did was affect Asimov's military service.

Thank goodness he did not get sent with the others to observe the nuclear bomb tests, or he might not have lived long enough to write some of his best works.

[Geo]

Ooh, I see I made him 16 years older than he was - he'd object to that.  72 still isn't young...

My father is already older then that, and might still have another 2 decades in him.

Thank goodness he did not get sent with the others to observe the nuclear bomb tests, or he might not have lived long enough to write some of his best works.

Did many of the observers die earlier then expected (cancer, radiation sickness, or what)?

[Buster's Uncle]

My dad made it to 73, and it was still way too soon.

I believe there was at least a very high incidence among soldiers present at early tests as essentially experiments.  Easy enough to google.

[Green1]

I think Apollo astronauts got more rads than the folks witnessing tests and folks like Buzz Aldrin ad crew are still kicking around.

[Valka]

I was basing my post on what Asimov said in the second volume of his autobiography.

It's a fascinating read, btw - just 3 huge books! 

[Buster's Uncle]

In Joy Still Felt?  Good book, though I don't recall him discussing the bomb test 28 years after reading - I did notice that after talking about Hubbard and Scientology a fair bit in In Memory Yet Green, not a word afterward - and wondered if that reflected Hubbard dropping out of his circle entirely by that period, or something more sinister.

[Valka]

It might have been in the first book - I don't have copies of either of those, so I can't look it up. I do have a copy of the third volume, and that one didn't mention his war service, to my recollection.