In addition to being Greek Independence Day …

And the Great Feast of the Annunciation (new style) …

It’s the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Flannery O’Connor, born in Savannah, Georgia (1925), the only child of a rare Catholic family in the Protestant Bible Belt. When she was five, she became famous for teaching a chicken to walk backward; a national news company came to town to film the feat and then broadcast it all around the country. She said, “That was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. It’s all been downhill from there.”

Stolen from The Writer’s Almanac (3/25/08)