Just like a snowflake...

Today I did something I just thought I had to. I started this blog. 

I had picked on a "quote" for which no-one was acknowledged as having started it. It was very simple - and very spread everywhere. This particular one came from an organisation. Not my first, but the first of this blog. 

This organisation is a traumatic brain injury website, Facebook page and magazine. I joined their FB page after my brain aneurysm surgery and stroke. It's a very good page and I "like" it each time there's anything on there which I find inclusive of people like me. Until yesterday. Previously I'd found a picture as a quote which did not acknowledge who actually originally said that, and I'd done some Googling to try to find who did actually said it. Unfortunately the one they posted yesterday really got me.

I felt a sort of a wind-up. I felt riled. I felt that no-one was checking anything. I felt that whatever company or person who used a quote without acknowledgment was bad. 

This was the real start of this blog.

I've looked into quite a few before, put my comments on Whackworks, my other blog, put "Unknown" on any quote I couldn't trace to whoever said it. And I put the "Unknown" quote on my Quotes page on my website.

This one today lead me into a lot of work. I got to 23 Google pages before I finally gave them up, but I had already found some very good information. Have a look through these - dated, the ones I found - which have whirled this quote around so many groups and organisation, yet all still compare where they are with the normal every day snowflake. 

"Just like snowflakes, no two people are alike" March 30, 2011 

"Strokes are like snowflakes – no two are exactly alike" September 21, 2011

"Like snowflakes, no two images would be alike" September 2012 

"We are like little snowflakes…. no two of us are alike" April 13, 2013

"Brain injury is like snowflakes...no two are ever the same" May 5, 2015

"Like snowflakes, no two NBA players are exactly alike" October 9, 2015  

The last one I included was "Brain injuries are like snowflakes – no two are alike", said in an article by David Grant, Brain Injury Journey magazine, April 2013. 

The websites I'd been to included brain injuries, neurotrauma units, concussion, feet, stroke, insurance, children, dental and NBA players. All compared to snowflakes. No person ever acknowledged.

Silly Beliefs said that the guy who started the belief that "no two snowflakes are alike" was religious, but didn't provide any more information, November 3, 2009 

I found a website, a public domain review site, an article called "The Snowflake Man of Vermont". They believed that our understanding of the quote had come from 1925. They said: "Our belief that 'no two snowflakes are alike' stems from a line in a 1925 report in which he remarked: 'Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost.'" 

I went into Wikipaedia and found the same year and the dude with the same name as mentioned in PDR - Wilson Bentley. Kenneth G Libbrecht, mentioned on here, said: "he did it so well that hardly anybody bothered to photograph snowflakes for almost 100 years".

It seems that everyone these days who has any sort of human issues now compares their own issue with the snowflake. I put together my own picture which named many of the human issues, and which, mentioned above, had compared them to snowflakes. If you're interested in any of these issues, have a look at the websites mentioned and see how the quote is shuffled around - except just for the snowflakes. 

We, it seems, aren't "the same" or "alike". Perhaps that's a good thing that we've found that out!