Today's the Day

[LeMartinPecheur]

fhg: I think you need the word 'annulled' somewhere in the bit about King Lois VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine. (Marrying X doesn't usually leave one free to marry Y)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

fhg: I think you need the word 'annulled' somewhere in the bit about King Lois VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine. (Marrying X doesn't usually leave one free to marry Y)

Doesn't it?! Now you tell me!

Oops!

Duly amended

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 22nd

The Feast Day of St Darerca of Ireland - the (biological) sister of St Patrick, and the mother of Saints Reat, Nenn, and Aedth - all of whom Patrick anointed as Deacons. In fact, the WIKI entry for Darerca has quite a bit of information on her various male relations, but nothing about what her own actual accomplishments were (other than, of course, giving birth, which is some accomplishment to be sure).
And it's World Water Day - a UN initiative to advocate the sustainable use and management of freshwater supplies. And Emancipation Day in Puerto Rico, commemorating the abolision of slavery on this date in 1873.

Also on this date: Gordian I and his son Gordian II begin their joint, three-week period as Roman Emperors [Gordian jnr is killed battling forces loyal to Maximinus Thral - who is also Emperor of Rome - and his father commits suicide on hearing the news] (238); Viking invaders defeat the Saxon army of King Aethelred I of Wessex at the battle of Mereton (probably in Devon or Wiltshire) - Aethelred dies within a month and is succeeded by his younger brother, Alfred (871); the Jewish community in Erfurt, Germany is attacked by their gentile neighbours who believe that this will prevent the Black Death from coming to their city [it is believed that the disease is caused by Jews poisoning Well water] - hundreds are killed or kill themselves [some also setting fire to their property - which, given the looting that goes on from the houses of those families who don't take this measure, turned out to be an act of defiance] (1349 - the Plague reaches the city the following year, killing 16000 residents); Anne Hutchinson is expelled from the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony for disagreeing with the [male] elders (1638); the British Parliament impose the Stamp Act, the first direct tax on the American colonies - it is highly unpopular and repealed less than a year later [see 18th March] (1765); Edmund Burke gives a speech in Parliament arguing passionately for peaceful dealings with American rebels and presents a series of resolutions aimed to prevent Revolution (1775 - it is too late, conflict begins a month later); Thomas Jefferson becomes the first US Secretary of State (1790); the Lumiere brothers show their first moving picture films to an audience of industrialists in Paris - besides the moving pictures there were also exhibits of some of the first colour photographs; but there is much greater interest in the monochrome movies (1895); the first play by Frederico Garcia Lorca, The Malevolence of the Butterfly is premiered in Madrid (1920 - it has four poorly-received performances before it is cancelled; Lorca later pretends to have forgotten writing it); President Roosevelt makes it legal to make, sell, and consume beer with up to 3.2% alcohol (1933); the Arab League is formed (1945); AL Schawlow, CH Townes, and TH Maiman are granted a patent for their invention of laser (1960); Nicolae Ceaușescu is elected General Secretary of the Romanian Communist party - he is dictator of the country for nearly 25 years; the US Supreme Court rules that unmarried couples have the same right to contraception as married couples (1972); the first democratic elections in Albania in over 40 years results in a decisive victory for the Democratic Party who win 92 out of the 140 seats (1992); Intel introduce the first Pentium Microprocessors (1993); Comet Hale-Bopp comes its closest to Earth [121 million miles] (1997 - the discover of the comet a couple of years earlieris interesting in that it is one of the last such discoveries to be announced by telegram; in fact, the "later" e-Mails confirming the discovery reach the Central Astronomical Bureau before the telegram); Khalid Mashood, drives a car into a crowd of people on the pavement of Westminster Bridge, killing four people and injuring 50 others, he then stabs a police officer to death before being shot by armed police (2017)

Birthdays today include: Gioseffo Zarlino (1517); Anthony Van Dyke (1590); Katherine Boyle (1615); Hamish MacCunn (1868); Leonard "Chico" Marx (1887); Ruth Page (1899); Madeleine Milhaud (1902); Louis l'Amour (1908); Minna Keal (1909); Nicholas Montssarrat (1910); Wilfred Bramble and Karl Malden (both 1912); Werner Klemperer and Fanny Waterman (1920 - the latter still very much with us, of course); Marcel Marceau (1923); Gerard Hoffnung (1925); Stephen Sondheim (1930); William Shatner and Leslie Thomas (both 1931); Roger Whittaker (1936); Billy Collins and Bruno Ganz (both 1941); Deborah Bull (1963); and Reece Witherspoon (1976).

Final days for: Jean-Baptiste Lully (1687); Johann wolfgang von Goethe (1832); Thomas Hughes (1896); Ben Lyon (1979); William Hanna (2001); Rudolf Baumgartner (2002); Terry Lloyd (2003); and Derek Watkins (2013).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Saturday, 22nd March, 1969 were:
The Saturday Concert (gramophone records)
Record Review: Bach's St Matthew Passion, BaLed by Stamley Sadie; recent bargain records reviewed by Paul Dawson-Bowling
Jazz Record Requests presented by Steve Race

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 23rd

The Feast Day of St Gregory the Illuminator, the late 3rd - early 4th Century Armenian nobleman who converted to Christianity after marrying his Christian wife, Miriam. Gregory went on to become the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and is credited with converting the country from paganism - Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion (in 301).
And it's World Meteorological Day, commemorating the founding this day in 1950 of the World Meteorological Organisation to "showcase the essential contribution of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services to the safety and wellbeing of society". Let's all hope it turns out nice again.

On this date: Waltham Abbey becomes the last religious community to be dissolved in Henry VIII's Reformation of the Church in England (1540 - it has be achieved relatively peacefully, over a period of years, with generous pensions for many of the "employees" - including "Singing Man", Thomas Tallis, who, in 1538, had been given 20shillings in owed slary and a further 20shillings as a bonus); Puritans John Greenwood and Henry Barrowe tried and sentenced to death on the charge of devising and circulating seditious books; their execution ois particularly sadistic - twice they are led out to be hanged, the noose actually put around their necks, only to be temporarily "respited - on the third occasion, two weeks later, they are hanged (1593); Handel's Messiah receives its first performance in London at Covent Garden; the success the work had previously enjoyed in Dublin is not replicated here (1743); "The Old Pretender", James Francis Edward Stuart, eldest son of James II/VII, attempts to land at the Firth of Forth to start an invasion at restoring the Stuart line - his ships are prevented by bad weather and the British fleet (1708); at the Second Virginia Convention (1775) attorney Patrick Henry [may have] made his "Give me liberty, or give me death" speech [it is possible that William Wirt gave him the words in his 19th Century biography of Henry]; Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony is premiered in London (1792); Beethoven's String Quartet in F, Op 130 is posthumously premiered in Vienna by the Schuppanzigh Quartet (1828); Tsar Paul I of Russia dies of - according to the doctor's report - "apoplexy"; well, getting struck with a sword and then strangled and stamped upon by a band of drunken army officers probably does get you a bit cross (1801); "OK" first appears in print in the Boston Morning Post (1839); John W Draper announces that he has taken a daguerreotype image of the Moon - the first such photograph (1840); the First Boer War comes to an end (1881); President Arthur brings the Edmunds Act into US Law, outlawing polygamy (1882); Tchaikovsky's "Manfred" Symphony is premiered in Moscow (1886); Gliere's Ilya Murometz Symphony is premiered in Moscow (1912); Ernest Bloch's Trois Poemes Juifs is premiered in Boston (1917); with the help of earlier funding (worth around £8000 per week in today's money) from MI5, Benito Mussolini re-organises his Fascist Party as the Italian Fascist Combat Squad - it has around 200 members (1919); Delius' Requiem is premiered in London (1922); Pfitzner's Symphony in c# minor [an arrangement of a String Quartet] is premiered in Munich on the very same day that the German parliament give Hitler complete and unregulated control of the country under the Enabling Act (both 1933); Bartok's 2nd Violin Concerto is premiered in Amsterdam by Zoltan Szekely and the Concertgebeouw under Mengelberg on the very same day that Hungarian Air Force bombs the headquarters of the Slovak Air Force, beginning the week-long Slovak-Hungarian War (both 1939); the Swallow Sidecar Company, a little embarrassed by its trading name of "SS Cars" decides to change it to Jaguar Cars (1945); Pakistan becomes the first country to adopt the title "Islamic Republic" (1956); Rolf Hochhuth's play Der Stellvertreter ("The Deputy") opens in Berlin (1963); the first two-man space crew is launched in Gemini 3 from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station (1965); Bruno Maderna's Aura is premiered in Chicago (1972); the first of the Nixon/Frost Interviews is recorded (1977); General Efrain Rios Montt seizes control of Guatemala in a military coup d'etat (1982); Ronald Reagan announces the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative (1983); the eleven-year long Sierra Leone Civil War begins when rebels backed by Liberian forces attempt a coup d'etat (1991); two American Airforce planes collide at Pope Field Air Base, causing the deaths of 24 servicemen - and, on the same day, Mexican Presidential Candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio is assassinated at an election rally in Tijuana (both 1994); Russian Space Station Mir is de-orbited: a controlled destruction in the Earth's atmosphere over the sea near Fiji (2001); and Ground Penetrating Radar scanning reveals that Shakespeare's skeleton is missing its skull (2016).

Birthdays Today include: Margaret of Anjou (1430); Ludwig Minkus (1826); Julius Reubke (1834); Susan Jane Cunningham (1842); Calouste Gulbenkian (1869); Franz Schreker (1878 - he died two days before his 56th birthday); Josef Čapek and Juan Gris (both 1887); Erich Fromm (1900); Joan Crawford (1904); Akira Kurosawa (1910); Geoffrey Bush (1920); Donald Campbell (1921); Roger Bannister (1929); Norman Bailey (1933); Barry Cryer (1935); Boris Tischenko (1939 - he's 80 today); Michael Nyman (1944 - he's 75 today); Alan Bleasdale (1946); Steve Redgrave (1962); Chris Hoy (1976); Mo Farrah (1983); and Jan Lisiecki (1995).

Final Days for: George Pinto (1806); Stendhal (1842); Nikolai Rubinstein (1881); Hovhannes Tumanyan (1923); Raoul Dufy (1953); Peter Lorre (1964); John Dexter (1990); Eileen Farrell (2002); Fritz Spiegl (2003); Elizabeth Taylor (2011); and Roy Douglas (2015).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Friday, 23rd March, 1979 were:

Overture: Purcell, The Married Beau (incidental Music); Greene Arise, Shine, O Zion; CPE Bach Sinfonia in G; Geminiani 'cello Sonata in d minor, Op5 #2; Arne Overture in C
Morning Concert: Brahms Academic Festival Ovt; Mendelssohn Capriccio Briliant; Schubert Symph #2.
This Week's Composer: RVW ("Tallis Fantasia"; Mass in g minor)
"Stem BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra" [sic - that's what it says on the Genome!]: conducted by Proinnsias O' Duinn; Kelly The Dancing Master Ovt; Holst A Somerset Rhapsody; Diamond Romeo & Juliet Suite; Verdi (arr Robinson) Aida Suite
Parry Songs of Farewell
Alfred Brendel: Liszt Fantasia and Fugue on BACH; Bach, arr Busoni Chorale prelude; Beethoven Sonata in D minor, Op 31 #2

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 24th

Appropriately enough for someone who spent his life dedicated to maufacturing clocks and seeking out a solution to the Longitude Problem, March 24th is both the birth date and the death date of John Harrison, the Yorkshire carpenter. Except that it isn't - he was born on 24th March 1693, and died on 24th March, 1776 - but in 1752, the Gregorian Calendar was adopted, so he died eleven days "earlier" than he would have done had he not lived at the time of the changeover of calendar.

And today is the World Health Organisation World Tubercolosis Day, raising awareness of the disease, which still causes over a million deaths worldwide each year, and seeking help to irradicte it.
Not forgetting European Day of Early Music - commemorated in today's Early music Show.
And, thankfully, it's not [any longer] the Feast Day of Sim[e]on of Trent, a two-year-pld Italian boy, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1475, and whose murder was blamed (using fabricated "evidence" and "confessions" extracted under torture) on the Jewish community - with the sickening consequences that have become all-too-familiar.

Also on this Date: the War of the Rough Wooing [initiated by Henry VIII's plan to destroy the alliance between Scotland and France by marrying his son Edward to Mary, Queen of Scots] ends with the signing of the Treaty of Boulogne (1550); James I of Scotland becomes King James I of England and Ireland (16043); Bach dedicates Six Concerti Grossi "avec plusieurs instruments" to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt (1721); the British Parliament passes the Quartering Act, requiring families in the American colonies to accommodate British troops (1765); the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston is founded (1815); the Roman Catholic Relief Act allows Catholics to serve in the British Parliament (1829); African-Canadian men are given the right to vote (1837); French cross-channel passenger ferry SS Sussex is torpedoed by a German U-Boat, the craft manages to stay afloat, but between 50 & 100 passengers lose their lives, including Enriques Granados (1916); Sibelius' Fantasia Sinfonica #1 is premiered in Stockholm, just three weeks after it had been completed (1924 - when it is published the next year, the composer renames it as his Seventh Symphony); William Wyler's film of Wuthering Heights, with Olivier, Oberon, and Niven, is premiered in Hollywood (1939); occupying German troops in Rome murder 335 Italian anti-Nazi citizens in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre; and, on the same day, 76 Allied prisoners-of-war begin their Great Escape from Stalag Luft III (1944); Tennesse Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is premiered at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway (1955); Stockhausen's Gruppen is premiered in Cologne, jointly conducted by three composers - Maderna, Boulez, and Stockhausen himself (1958); the University of Michegan organises the first ever "teach-in" in protest at the Vietnam War, boycotted by the Young Republicans, it still attracts 3,500 participants (1965); a military coup d'etat in Argentina deposes the constitutional government of Isabel Peron (1976); Morarji Desai becomes the first Prime Minister of India not to be a member of the INC (1977 - at 84, he is also the oldest person so far to be elected to the office); following a sermon in which he urged Salvadorean soldiers to disobey their officers' orders if they contradicted Christian teaching, Archbishop Oscar Romero is assassinated (1980); Philip Glass' Akhnaten is premiered in Stuttgart under its German title "Echnaton" (1984); an explosion of landfill gases explodes in the Derbyshire village of Heaton destroys a house and leads (eventually) to tighter restrictions on Landfill laws (1986); the Exxon Valdez oil tanker shipwrecks off Alaska, spilling over 36,000 tons of crude oil (1989); fragmented comet Shoemaker-Levy is discovered (1993); teachers and students at Westside Middle School, Arkansas are shot at by two children [aged 11 and 13] - five of them are killed and ten more injured (1998 - on the very same day, computer-assisted bone segment navigation is successfully used for the first time in the University of Regensburg); NATO forces attack Yugoslavia without UN approval - the first time that a sovereign nation has been so attacked; and a lorry carrying margerine and flour ignites in the Mont Blanc tunnel causing an inferno that kills 38 people (1999); Andreas Lubitz, a co-pilot on German budget airline Germanwings uses his pilot's absence from the cockpit of their Airbus to deliberately crash the plane killing all 144 passengers and 6 crew (2015); and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić is found guilty of genocide in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, and sentenced to 40 year imprisonment (2016 - a sentence later found "too lenient", and increased to "Life Imprisonment").

Birthdays today include: Georgius Agricola (1494); Maria Malibran (1808); William Morris (1834); Harry Houdini (1874); Wilhelm Reich (1897); Malcolm Muggeridge (1903); Clyde Barrow (1909); Joseph Barbera (1911); Dorothy Height (1912); Dario Fo (1926); Byron Janis (1928); Cristobel Halffter and Steve McQueen (both 1930); Patrick Malahide (1945); Alan Sugar (1947); Alyson Hannigan (1974) - and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, multi-talented co-Founder of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers is 100 today.

Final Days [with apologies for the "awkward" juxraposition there!] for: Elizabeth I; Samuel Scheidt (1654); Georg Friedrich Kaufmann (1735); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1882); Jules Verne (1905); JM Synge (1909); Enrique Granados (1916); Deodat de Severac (1921); Mary of Tesk (1953); Bernard Montgomery (1976); Richard Widmark (2008); and Johan Cruyf and Gary Shandling (both 2016).


And the Radio 3 schedules for Friday, 24th March, 1989 (Good Friday that year) were:

Morning Concert : Diego Ortiz 2 Fantasias on "Slave Regina"; Mozart S4tet K589; Handel Oboe Concerto HWV301; Allegri Miserere; Schubert Impromptu in Eb; Mendelssohn Violin Concerto
Composer of the Week: Bartok (the last Decade) - Viola Concerto & Concerto for Orchestra
Heaven Upon Earth: The fourth of seven programmes in which David Melling describes Holy Week at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in the ancient city of Constantinople.
An Easter Sequence: Rimsky-Korsakoff Russian Easter Festival Ovt; Dowland Lachrimae pavan antiquae novae; Leighton An Easter Sequence; Dowland Lachrimae pavan gementes; Dvorak Biblical Songs 1 - 5; Dowland Lachrimae pavan tristes; Dvorak Biblical Songs 6 - 10; Dowland Lachrimae pavan coactae; Strauss Tod & Verklarung; Dowland Lachrimae pavan amantes; RVW Symphony #5

(followed in the afternoon by Parsifal, in the Karajan [studio] recording.)

[Bryn]

Looks like I will have to dig out Joanna MacGregor's recording of Harrison's Harrison's tomorrow.

[edashtav]

" Deodat de Several (1921)": a typo with a knowing wink, eh, ferney?

Déodat de Séverac tried several guises, including his 'friend', Debussy's. He probably found his 'voix' when he adopted a Southern French accent. He's like a non A.C. vin rouge: best consumed warm 'en Languedoc'.

[vinteuil]

" Deodat de Several (1921)": a typo with a knowing wink, eh, ferney?

Déodat de Séverac tried several guises, including his 'friend', Debussy's. He probably found his 'voix' when he adopted a Southern French accent. He's like a non A.C. vin rouge: best consumed warm 'en Languedoc'.

... if ever you are in the pretty village where he was born - Saint-Félix-Lauragais - there is a particularly nice restaurant (avec chambres) with splendid views over the woad country ...

https://www.auberge-du-poids-public.fr/

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-F%C3%A9lix-Lauragais

Aldo Ciccolini is buried in Saint-Félix-Lauragais - another good reason to make a pilgrimage....

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Ciccolini

.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

" Deodat de Several (1921)": a typo with a knowing wink, eh, ferney?

Oops! Don't know what happened there - I had been concerned that I didn't write his forename as "Deoderant" (to "er" is human), but had completely missed the plural surname. Duly ammended.

Incidentally, ed - nobody seems to have taken you up on Skalkottas I've never really got much pleasure/satisfaction from this composer; neither the dodecaphonic works nor the Greek popular-based stuff: it just seems routine to me - and there's so much more greater Music from contemporaries Dallapiccola, Lutyens, Gerhard that really floats my boat on the high seas, with a real surge and wind in the sails, and a tang of salt in the air which [that's enough nautical metaphor - Ed].

But you're not alone in your estimation - Skalkottas has his small band of avid admirers; not least the one (whose name I have forgotten) who used to describe him as "Greece's greatest ever composer" in Tempo magazine. Hmmmph!

[cloughie]

... if ever you are in the pretty village where he was born - Saint-Félix-Lauragais - there is a particularly nice restaurant (avec chambres) with splendid views over the woad country ...

https://www.auberge-du-poids-public.fr/

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-F%C3%A9lix-Lauragais

Aldo Ciccolini is buried in Saint-Félix-Lauragais - another good reason to make a pilgrimage....

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Ciccolini

.

The restaurant makes my mouth water for a good French Sunday Dejeuner!

[edashtav]

Incidentally, ed - nobody seems to have taken you up on Skalkottas I've never really got much pleasure/satisfaction from this composer; neither the dodecaphonic works nor the Greek popular-based stuff: it just seems routine to me - and there's so much more greater Music from contemporaries Dallapiccola, Lutyens, Gerhard that really floats my boat on the high seas, with a real surge and wind in the sails, and a tang of salt in the air which [that's enough nautical metaphor - Ed].

But you're not alone in your estimation - Skalkottas has his small band of avid admirers; not least the one (whose name I have forgotten) who used to describe him as "Greece's greatest ever composer" in Tempo magazine. Hmmmph!

I don't want to hype Skalkottas, ferney, and I would place him him third if adding him to your trio, with Dallapiccola in the lead, Gerhard a good second, and Lutyens bringing up the rear in a distant fourth position. Skalkottas needs a lot of love and attention to detail from his interpreters, else his music can seem like 50 shades of Grecian grey.

[Tony Halstead]

Oops! Don't know what happened there - I had been concerned that I didn't write his forename as "Deoderant" (to "er" is human), but had completely missed the plural surname. Duly ammended.

Incidentally, ed - nobody seems to have taken you up on Skalkottas I've never really got much pleasure/satisfaction from this composer; neither the dodecaphonic works nor the Greek popular-based stuff: it just seems routine to me - and there's so much more greater Music from contemporaries Dallapiccola, Lutyens, Gerhard that really floats my boat on the high seas, with a real surge and wind in the sails, and a tang of salt in the air which [that's enough nautical metaphor - Ed].

But you're not alone in your estimation - Skalkottas has his small band of avid admirers; not least the one (whose name I have forgotten) who used to describe him as "Greece's greatest ever composer" in Tempo magazine. Hmmmph!

George Hadjinikos?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't want to hype Skalkottas, ferney, and I would place him him third if adding him to your trio, with Dallapiccola in the lead, Gerhard a good second, and Lutyens bringing up the rear in a distant fourth position. Skalkottas needs a lot of love and attention to detail from his interpreters, else his music can seem like 50 shades of Grecian grey.

Actually, I forgot Stefan Wolpe, who I'd put with my "three" - and I'd also much prefer to hear any of Humphrey Searle's Symphonies or anything by Leopold Spinner rather than Skalkottas.

Too much Music I find so much better - not enough time left to spend exploring Skalkottas any more than I already have.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 25th

The Feast of the Annunciation - when Gabriel told Mary the surprising news. "[Our] Lady['s] Day" was, from 1155 until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1751, celebrated as the start of the New Year, even though they often simultaneously called Jan 1st "New Year's Day" and gave each other presents. (Pepys' Diaries refer to every Jan 1st as "New Year's Day", but he only changes the year number on 25th March, for example.) The combination of the March "New Year", together with the eleven days' loss owing to the change of Calendar, accounts for our Tax Year beginning on 6th April - nobody ever protested "give us back our eleven days!" (contrary to folklore) - but NOBODY was going to pay their Taxes four months early!

It was also one of the key "Rent Days", a time to pay rents, salaries, debts, and make new contracts and hold Hiring Fairs, such as the one in Far From the Madding Crowd. But, because fairs and other celebrations were commonly held on this date, it was customary for employees only to go to their new employers the following Tuesday (known as "Burgening Tuesday" where the "bargain" between worker and employer made on Lady Day was honoured) - by which time, they'd have sobered up.

It was also traditional for Charity "payments" to be "doled" out on Lady's Day - one of the most familiar and longest-enduring being the Tichborne Dole; inhabitants of the inhabitants of Tichborne and Cheriton near Winchester in Hampshirew are entitled to collect their gallon of flour [half-a-gallon for children] from the Big House at Tichbourne Park. The flour is blessed by the vicar, a prayer is said for Lady Mabella [who originated the tradition in the mid 12th Century] and the flour is dispensed from the hopper ointo the sacks and pillowcases brought for the purpose. The tradition features in a 1671 painting by Gillis van Tilborgh, and there is a very nice myth about the founding of the dole, which probably dates all the way back to ... 1855. The Tichborne family is more famous these days because of the eight-year long "Tichborne Claimant" criminal proceedings against Arthur Orton, a butcher from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, who had claimed to be the missing-believed-and-probablt-actually-dead heir to the Tichborne title and fortune.

Also on this Date: the City of Venice is founded [according to "Tradition"] on the stroke of noon (421); Richard I is hit by a crossbow arrow whilst fighting the King of France [he dies twelve days later] (1199); Robert Bruce becomes King Robert I of Scotland (1306 - the "the" in the middle is probably a corruption of the French "Robert de Brus"; much the same is true of "Ouinné de Pu"); Dutch Astronomer, Christiaan Huygens discovers the largest moon of Saturn, which he calls ... "Saturn's Moon" (1655 - the name "Titan" doesn't appear for another 200 years); the "Act of Abolition of the Slave Trade" is given Royal Assent - and on the very same day, the world's first passenger railway service [horse-drawn] opens in Swansea, operated by the Oystermouth Tramroad Company (both 1807); Shelley is expelled from Oxford University for publishing his pamphlet of "The Necessity of Atheism" (1811); Dvorak's 5th Symphony is premiered in Prague by the Czech Philharmonic Orchetra conducted by Josef Cech (1879 - his 6th Symphony is premiered by the same forces exactly two years later to the day); Coxey's Army - a mass demonstration by unemployed workers - begins its march from Ohio to Washington (1894); the Sccottsboro Boys - a group of nine teenaged African-Americans - are arrested for raping a white woman, in spite of evidence demonstrating their innocence (1931); Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto is premiered in New York by Woody Herman's Band, conducted by Walter Hendl (1946); Stalin orders more than 92000 Kulaks (moderately well-off farm workers) from the Baltic States to be deported to Siberia (1949); the Treaty of Rome is signed by representatives from West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, creating the European Economic Community - on the same day, copies of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" are confiscated by US Customs for "obscenity" (1957); protected by members of the National Guard, Federal Marshalls, and FBI members, a Civil Rights March led by Martin Luther King finishes its four-day march from Selma, Alabama to the State Capital, Montgomery (1965 - this is their third attempt, the earlier ones had been disrupted by violent counter-protests); Members of the (predominantly Catholic) Derry Housing Action Committee disrupt a meeting of Unionist-led Londonderry Corporation to protest at the lack of housing provision in the city (1968); John Lennon & Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In protest in the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam (1969); Roman Catholic dissenters demanding greater religious freedom hold a Candlelit Protest against the Communist regime in Brataslava, Czechoslavakia (1988); Ward Cunnigham launches the first WIKI website, in which information can be shared and edited on the Web (1995 - it's reputedly called "Wiki", because this is a Hawaiian word for "quick"); the EU Vetinarian Committee bans the export of British Beef in response to the Bovine Spongeform Encepalopathy dangers (1996); Peter Cruddas resigns as co-Treasurer of the Conservative party after newspaper reports that he had sold access to Prime minister David Cameron (2012); the world's longest Banana Split [so far] is made in the town of Innisfail, in Queensland, Australia - quite a large fraction of the town: it was five miles long (2016); and exactly a year ago, the first non-stop flight from Perth [Austraslia, not Scotland] to London is completed in 17 hours (at 9009 miles, that's about 530mph).

Birthdays Today include: Johann Adolf Hasse (1699); Louise Finch (1760); Carl Friedrich Ebers (1770); Arturo Toscanini (1867); Bela Bartok and Mary Webb (both 1881); Haydn Wood (1882); AJP Taylor (1906); David Lean (1908); Patrick Troughton and Paul Scott (both 1920); Simone Signoret (1921); Jim Lovell (1928); Cecil Taylor (1929); David Burge (1930); Humphrey Burton (1931); Gloria Steinem (1934); Aretha Franklin and Richard O'Brian (both 1942); Paul Michael Glaser (1943); Elton John (1947); Sarah Jessica Parker (1965); and Natalie Clein (1977).

Final Days for: Johannes Nucius (1620); Nicholas Hawksmoor (1736); Turlough O'Cardan (1738); Novalis (1803); Claude Debussy (1918); Robert Newton (1956); Max Eastman and Billy Cotton (both 1969); Benjamin Meissner (1976); Walter Susskind (1980); John Snagge (1996); Kenneth Wolstenholme (2002); and Paul Henning (2005).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Tuesday, March 25th, 1969 were:

Overture: gramophone records
Morning Concert: gramophone records
This Week's Composers: Roussel and Duparc (just works by the former today - the Trio for Flute, Viola, & 'cello; Impromptu for solo Harp; Serenade for Flute, Violin, Viola, 'cello, & Harp).
Concerto: unidentified work played by pianist James Tocco, with the BBC Welsh SO (led by John Bacon) conducted by David Lloyd-Jones
Music Making: last of 13 weekly programmes played by 'cellists William and Anthony Pleeth, with pianist Margaret Good (including Music by Saint-Saens)

[Bryn]

When I was 12, my mother, who was head of the art department at a Swindon girls' secondary school, organised a school trip to Florence/Firenze and a male cousin of similar age and I were allowed to tag along. The girls were all accommodated at the convent San Marco, home of Fra Angelico's Annunciation. My cousin and I were permitter to briefly view said artwork before being swftly ushered off the premises to stay with relatives of the Mother Superior in a parallel street, one remove further from the Arno.