This is my friend Lester, a.k.a. Solonor Rasreth. Yes, he does look a lot like me. We could pass for brothers. Poor guy.

This is the impact crater left by the Tunguska Meteor, deep in the Siberian wilderness.

And here’s what they have in common:

Today is their shared birthday. This is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska impact. The meteor that struck Siberia left a hole as big as the District of Columbia and the blast wave was felt as far west as England, but was generally unnoticed until Soviet scientists found the blast site in the 1920s. According to this Novosti report, had the impact occurred 4 minutes and 47 seconds later, the meteor would have struck St. Petersburg, totally obliterating the city (which was the Czarist capital of Russia) and everything around it…which, presumably, would have gotten a bit more attention.

Lester is not as old as that, but he does know his ass from a hole in the ground. Happy birthday, you half-elf.