Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, and 16 and 3 make 19 again. What is so deep about this number 19? Why are we standing on the Capitol steps today? That number 19! When you have a nine, you have a womb that is pregnant. And when you have a one standing by the nine, it means that there’s something secret that has to be unfolded.

Presidents are made, not born. That’s a good thing to remember. It’s silly to think that Presidents are born, because very few people are 35 years old at birth, and those who are won’t admit it. So if you’re only 16 don’t be discouraged, because it’s only a phase and there’s nothing wrong with you that you won’t outgrow.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink — help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'

All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:

<blockquote>There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. I

A lot of sources said I was born in 1917. That is incorrect. I was born in 1920. 1917 was the year the studios listed as my birth year to make me appear younger.

The truth is, I've always been quietly proud of my real age. Why wouldn't I want to celebrate every crease in my brow, all that hard-earned wisdom that lives between the folds? If my first manager, Warren Coleman, hadn't been so insistent that I age myself down—he feared, and perhaps rightfully so, that an industry rife with female age discrimination would count me out of a lot of roles—I may have just omitted my age, rather than changing it. It's nobody's business. But when the Kennedy Center honor came around, I felt it was important to set the public record straight. Months before I learned I was to receive the award, I'd celebrated my ninetieth birthday. During the press blitzkrieg surrounding the Kennedy Center ceremony, I spoke that number aloud with nary a quake in my voice. "When were you born?" one reporter asked me. "December 19, 1924," I answered. For me, it was not a matter to be ashamed of. It was a journey to delight in.

I was born on April 1, 1988. Birth certificate 2841329, dated December 2, 1991, proves that I legally did not exist until I was about four years of age.

April 21. My birthday — I am told the fifty-seventh, and yet I feel only a boy. Must make haste and get my work done ere the night falls. Made an excursion with the babes to Mount Wanda.

The year you were born in - 1917 - was one of the memorable years of history.... In the very month you were born, Lenin started the great Revolution which has changed the face of Russia and Siberia.

I was born on the 2nd of December 1940 (or so we all agreed) until I was twenty years old when we realized that that was the birth date of my late brother Norman who died before I was born and in whose memory was named Nora.

I have a baptismal certificate signed by the mission. The date of my birth was in that baptismal certificate.

Our lives consist of two numbers: date of birth and date of death.

Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish. I was just informed, while on the helicopter, that our president has finally released a birth certificate. I want to look at it, but I hope it's true, so that we can get on to much more important matters, so the press can stop asking me questions. He should have done it a long time ago. Why he didn't do it when the Clintons asked for it, why he didn't do it when everyone else was asking for it, I don't know. But I am really honored, frankly, to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue. Now, we have to look at it, we have to see, is it real? Is it proper? What's on it? But I hope it checks out beautifully. I am really proud, I am really honored.

When the necessary eleven days were added, George Washington’s birthday, which fell on February 11, 1731, Old Style, became February 22, 1732, New Style.