jock123
Moderator
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#2 · Posted: 2 Jan 2014 18:08
None of the characters have birthdays, at least not given in the books.
We celebrate a "birthday" for Tintin and Snowy on the 10th of January, as that is the date when the strip debuted (they were first pictured the week before, but who would celebrate an advert...? ;-) ), but that's by way of an official, rather than natural, event.
So Professor Calculus doesn't have a birthday, unless one picks the day on which he first appeared... I know that he first showed up at the door of Tintin's flat in strip 13 of the black-and-white newspaper version of Red Rackham's Treasure (he actually rings the door-bell in strip 12, but is "off-stage", so we don't see him, or know who it is...).
That tale started on the 19th of February, 1943; what I am uncertain of is the actual publication schedule of Le Soir - did it publish five (Monday to Friday), six (Monday to Saturday) or seven (daily) issues per week? Did the war and paper shortages cause it to miss any days? It currently runs six issues a week, but was this always the case?
Furthermore, it could be that the strip was run in every issue, or may have had some other frequency (so it may only have run Monday to Friday, even if the paper came out more than that) - I just don't know (or at least can't remember).
However, we can do some speculative work in the mean time...
The 19th was a Friday that year, so the possibility is that strip 13 came out on Wednesday the 3rd of March (if it came out every day of the week), Friday the 5th of March (if it ran every day except Sunday) or Tuesday the 9th of March (if it only ran on week-days, and not at the weekend).
I'm sure someone must be able to firm up the detail...?
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