These Notable People Were Born On The Same Day As Hitler

Stuart Harrington, known as "Tack," was one of the early 20th century's most groundbreaking surgeons. He worked at the prestigious Mayo Clinic for 34 years, according to his profile on the Mayo Clinic's official website. He was soon a "famous surgeon" and an "international authority." He pioneered many techniques and treatments, all of which are very complicated and medical sounding, but the list is long, and includes breakthrough work on lung, spinal, and breast surgeries. A workaholic, the surgeon's only hobby was going for drives to break up his crazy long shifts. Yet he also had an excellent bedside manner, known for showing exceptional "sincerity and concern" for all his patients.

Tack Harrington was able to go on to such an esteemed career in medicine because he first got into an incredible college, Pennsylvania State University, as a pre-med student in 1908. He excelled in school, managing both his coursework and playing for the varsity football teams at both Penn State and later at the University of Pennsylvania. All this, despite the fact that Harrington had to hold down multiple jobs to pay his tuition, since his father disagreed with his decision to pursue medicine. His college experience obviously laid the groundwork for his success and drive to help others.

The same year Tack Harrington was accepted to Penn State, the World History Project says Adolph Hitler was rejected from the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Twice. That also set him down the path that would make him infamous. Others have said it before, but seriously, think what could have been avoided if Hitler was a little better at painting.

Harold Bache was born into that level of English privilege where everything was going to go right for him. His father was a successful lawyer, and Bache was accepted to the private King Edward's School. After graduation, he attended Cambridge University. Throughout his schooling, everyone noticed he was a great guy but even greater at sports. The school magazine called him "a boy of great character and a notable athlete." "A History of Eton Fives" (via the Eton Fives Association) says he played four different sports at Cambridge.

Bach went on to play both professional cricket and professional soccer, scoring 87 goals in 39 games. He also competed in tennis at Wimbledon. But when WWI broke out, Bache left his cushy life behind and enlisted. Author Simon Wight (via Remember the Fallen) says Bache routinely showed uncommon amounts of bravery at the front, on one occasion refusing a direct order to take cover in order to rescue some of his comrades, and on another he was seen "walking about the trenches, pulling the wounded out of danger, encouraging his men and binding up wounds, every moment in peril of his life." Harold Bache's luck ran out on February 16, 1916, when he was shot by a German sniper and died.

Adolph Hitler also served in WWI, and War History Online reports that he was also gravely wounded in 1916, barely 60 miles from where Bache was killed. Had his shrapnel wound, which landed him in the hospital for two months, been as deadly as the snipper who trained his sight on Harold Bache, the history of the 20th century might have been very different.

If you've ever seen a movie in a theatre, you owe most of that experience to Abraham J. Balaban. He essentially created the experience in the beginning of the 20th century. Someone had to, since movies were brand new and there was no automatic understanding about what watching a movie entailed. A profile on Balaban in Variety in 1929 managed to call him a "pioneer" in the industry four times in the first two sentences. He was a big deal.

He got his start in the business with his family, running and leasing vaudeville theatres in Chicago. Early success led to them building what was the biggest theatre in the city, called the Central Park, in 1915. But in 1921, Balaban opened the theatre that is still a landmark today, calling it simply, The Chicago. Described by Madison Square Garden Entertainment as a "miniature Versailles" that "leaves its visitors breathless," the Chicago was not just the best theatre in existence – when it opened it was called "the Wonder Theatre of the World" – but it became "the prototype for all others." Every theatre after that wanted to be like the Chicago and give its patrons the same type of movie-going experience. Balaban was the vanguard of the most important part of the entertainment industry: the experience of the people being entertained.

Three months before Abe Balaban opened the Chicago, the theatre that would be his legacy, Adolph Hitler was made the head of the Nazi party and given the title of Führer. That, too, would make his legacy.

Marie-Antoinette de Geuser, also known as Marie of the Trinity, was called to a religious life from a young age. In one letter she wrote of a mystic experience: "In this state, it seemed that my 'self' was dead, and that God alone remained: it was somewhat as if His Unity, His Immensity, and even, I know not how, His Changelessness were subsisting within me. It was God alone and nothing of myself remained." Marie wanted to join the Carmelite order and become a nun but was too sickly. So she became a kind of unofficial nun on her own, writing down her mystic experiences. After she died in 1918, her letters were turned into a book, "Consummata," and it became a sensation, with multiple updated versions released throughout the 1920s. One reviewer said Marie would "almost certainly take her place one day among the foremost of the mystics of her time," another said "it would be impossible to find greater spiritual depth and soundness of doctrine."

Edith Stein, who was born Jewish, converted, and became a Carmelite nun (and eventually a saint), was a big fan of Marie. She wrote that Marie "had to undertake this highest Christian duty in the midst of the world." Saint Edith Stein is even said to have had Marie's book with her when she fled the Nazis in 1938.

As for the one making her do the fleeing, the 1920s saw Hitler's own publication. Like Marie's, it was his thoughts and feelings condensed down and put on paper. "Mein Kampf," unfortunately, would fill people with as much hatred as "Consummata" filled people with faith and love.

Born in the then-Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), the American Jewish Archives sums up Albert Jean Amateau's busy life: he was a "social worker, lawyer, businessman, author," and after he moved to the United States, he served in WWI, where he was wounded. Back in New York City, he became the first rabbi to have a deaf congregation.

Hitler wouldn't be besties with this birthday twin, what with Amateau being Jewish and all, but weirdly, they both had very messed up opinions on the Armenian Genocide of 1915-22. A speech purportedly given by Hitler in 1939 defended Germany's invasion of Poland and the slaughter of innocent people, saying history would not judge them. He asked, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" He was right; the world had already forgotten.

But 50 years after Hitler gave that speech, Amateau wanted everyone to know that Hitler had been wrong ... because the Armenian Genocide never happened. In a sworn statement to the U.S. Senate in 1989, he said: "One and a half million Armenians are claimed to have been massacred. The avowals of their leaders prior to and after the First World War prove that there had been no massacre ... If 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives during that war, they died as soldiers, fighting a war of their own choosing against the Ottoman Empire which had treated them decently and benignly ... A few thousand Armenians may have lost their lives during their relocation, caused by their own subversion."

At the start of the Armenian Genocide, this supposed expert witness hadn't lived in Turkey for six years. Congress would not officially recognize the atrocity until 2019.