Claim: Several prominent politicians and political commentators were born nine months after the 1947 Roswell incident.
Examples:
[Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Many will recall that on July 8, 1947, witnesses claim that an unidentified object with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell, New Mexico.
This is a well-known incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S. Air Force and the federal government.
However, you may NOT know that in the month of March 1948, exactly nine months after that historic day, Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., Hillary Rodham, John F. Kerry, William Jefferson Clinton, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Charles E. Schumer, and Barbara Boxer were born.
That piece of information has now cleared up a lot of things.
[Collected via e-mail, 2007]
Could be coincidence... but then again...
Many will recall that on July 8, 1947, witnesses claimed that an unidentified object with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell, New Mexico. This is a well-known incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S. Air Force and the rest of the U.S. government.
However, what you may NOT have realized is that in the month of March 1948, exactly nine months after that historic day, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Condolezza Rice, and Dan Quayle were all born.
See what happens when aliens breed with sheep? This piece of information may clear up a lot of things.
Origins: This
amusing bit of political humor first hit our inbox in August 2006, positing a connection between July 1947 events in Roswell, New Mexico (i.e., the alleged recovery of an alien spacecraft and its occupants) and the birth nine months later of several currently prominent Democrats.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious by deconstructing humor, we'll point out that the basic premise of the joke doesn't ring true. First of all, the normal human gestation period is about 38 weeks, so children conceived on or shortly after the date of the Roswell incident (8 July 1947) would most likely have been born (assuming ordinary, full-term pregnancies) in April 1948, not March. Secondly, only one of the political figures named was born even approximately nine months after the events as Roswell.
Five of the figures listed were born well before March 1948:
Dianne Feinstein (U.S. Senator, California): 22 June 1933
Nancy Pelosi (U.S. Representative, California): 26 March 1940
Barbara Boxer (U.S. Senator, California): 11 November 1940
John Kerry (U.S. Senator, Massachusetts): 11 December 1943
Bill Clinton (former U.S. President): 19 August 1946
Two more of the persons identified were born considerably later than nine months after Roswell:
Howard Dean (former Governor of Vermont): 17 November 1948
Charles E. Schumer (U.S. Senator, New York): 23 November 1950
Hillary Rodham Clinton (U.S. Senator, New York) was born on 26 October 1947, a mere three months after the Roswell incident.
Only Al Gore, Jr. (former U.S. Vice-President), who was born on 31 March 1948, came into the world at a time that reasonably fits into the framework of this humorous premise. Quite possibly this item started out as a joke specifically about him, and others later expanded it into a joke about Democrats in general.
In April 2007, the jape was reworked to aim it at prominent Republicans.
Four of the figures named on that list were born well before March 1948:
Donald Rumsfield (former Secretary of Defense): 9 July 1932
Dick Cheney (U.S. Vice-President): 30 January 1941
George W. Bush (U.S. President): 6 July 1946
Dan Quayle (former U.S. Vice-President): 4 February 1947
Three were born considerably later than nine months after Roswell:
Bill O'Reilly (political commentator): 10 September 1949
Rush Limbaugh (political commentator): 12 January 1951
Condoleezza Rice (Secretary of State): 14 November 1954
