[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith a Number 1 album and worldwide acclaim, Lorde might be the most famous teenager since Joan of Arc. But every time we write about her and list her November 7, 1996, birthday, we can’t help but think back to what we were up to on that fateful Thursday. Personally, I was probably busy hating high school and listening to the just-released “Beautiful Ones” single by Suede while marveling at how awesome Yankees closer John Wetteland was in the ’96 World Series (and thinking “Damn, that set-up man, Mariano Rivera, might be pretty good one day”).
RELATED: Lorde details her rise to fame and takes aim at the music industry in personal editorial, October 7, 2013
But what about everyone else? What were YOU doing?
To help jump-start your noggin, here are a few random things that happened on the day Ella Yelich-O’Conner was born in Devonport, New Zealand:
— Tupac Shakur was on the cover of Rolling Stone It was the October 31 issue, not too far removed from his September 13 murder.
— According to birthdayjams.com, Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” was the Number 1 song in the United States.
— That same site also lists Sublime’s “What I Got” as the top “alternative” song. RIP, Bradley Nowell, who died a few months earlier on May 25.
— NASA launched its Mars Global Surveyor.
— Decorated World War II veteran Beauford Theodore “Andy” Anderson died at the age of 74. Anderson was a United States Army soldier who received the Medal of Honor on June 27, 1946.
— Superstar DJ David Guetta turned 29 years old, and the New Highway Hymnal bassist Amelia Gormley turned 6.
— Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt celebrated being dead 34 years, and Steve McQueen’s death reached coveted Sweet 16 status (sorry).
— The Edmonton Oilers smoked goaltender Scott Bailey and the Boston Bruins at the old Garden, 6-0, behind a hat trick by former Bruin Mariusz Czerkawski. Mariusz Czerkawski!
— The NBA’s Sacramento Kings saw their then-record 497-game sellout streak broken.
— The Florida Marlins signed Brian Daubach as a free agent. Good Ol’ Dauber would be released, then signed again by the Fish, making his debut in 1998 before coming to Boston a year later.