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Emily Beard kept up a family tradition when she was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, on the 12th day of the12th month (12 Dec 1997) at 12 minutes past 12 noon. Emily's father David was born on the 4th of the 4th at 4.40pm and her mother Helen, 33, on the 10th of the10th. Emily's brother Hatty, three, arrived on the 6th of the 6th and Helen's mother Sylvia Carpenter on the11th of the 11th. Mr Beard, a heating engineer from Gosport, Hampshire, said: "Emily was being born by Caesarean section and was supposed to arrive at 10am. But complications put the birth back. When I rang my mum to tell her, she said I'd been born at 4.40. That's when we realised how weird it was." [London] Times, Sun, Mirror, 23 Dec 1997.

Adlai Stevenson, U.S. presidential candidate during the 1950s, in a speech noted when Demosthenes spoke, his listeners are reported to have cried: "How well he spoke!" When Pericles spoke, the listeners are said to cried: "Let us march!" ******* It is well-known that Major General George Armstrong Custer died at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Less well-known that so did his brother Tom Custer. The same Tom Custer who is the only man to have ever won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. ******* AND lionized U.S. Civil War General Robert E. Lee had four daughters. All became spinsters. Seems they believed no man could ever live up to their father.... Pathological, perhaps?

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