Susan - no one apparantly could recall the exact date of his birth, one day in March they just noticed he was there, cogitating on the various meanings and significance of things, no doubt;

his 'prophecy' - in the Railway Bridge poem

"And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye Strong enough all windy storms to defy."

the tragedy took place on December 28, 1879 as a force 10 gale (some say) blew down the River Tay;

and as he says in his Disaster Poem: