Today's the Day

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Re "Wallburga, who was born to an aristocratic family in present-day Devonshire. With her brothers Willibald and Winnibald (her father was called Richard) she became a missionary, assisting theor Uncle, St Bonniface, in spreading the gospel in the heathen parts of the Frankish Empire (mostly now in modern-day Germany). She is the Patron Saint of Eichstatt"

I have been to Eichstätt (NB umlaut) - very pretty, very Catholic. When teaching in Bavaria I had a colleague called Wallburga. I have never come across the name in England.

No - many of the "Anglo-Saxon" names vanished after the Norman conquest: no more Aethelfriths, Willibalds, Eadfriths, Bedes, Aethelreds, Adomnans ... Alfred has hung around, but anyone calling a son Cuthbert can probably look forward to a retirement full of days wondering why the kids never come and visit.

I first encountered Wallburga when I moved here: she gives her name to a local primary school.

[Richard Tarleton]

No - many of the "Anglo-Saxon" names vanished after the Norman conquest: no more Aethelfriths, Willibalds, Eadfriths, Bedes, Aethelreds, Adomnans ... Alfred has hung around, but anyone calling a son Cuthbert can probably look forward to a retirement full of days wondering why the kids never come and visit.

I first encountered Wallburga when I moved here: she gives her name to a local primary school.

I have come across one Cuthbert - I remember a sermon, or address, or some such, by Cuthbert Bardsley, the evangelical Bishop of Coventry, in 1967. The Principal of my Oxford college was called Hrothgar Habbakuk - Beowulf meets the Old Testament. He had every reason to be grateful both to his father and to his 18thC Welsh forebears . His wife called him Hrothgar in my hearing, but he evidently plumped for his second name, John, for everyday use (he was a distinguished economist, and was knighted).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

May 1st

Beltane - associated with celebrations for the arrival of warmer weather, and the beginning of Summer. Especially welcomed by the poor masses of people for whom the hardships of Winter were particularly severe - perhaps that is why May Day celebrations became particularly associated with the socially underprivileged, culminating in this being International Workers' Day. May Day has always been viewed with suspicion by some members of the ruling classes - the first recorded description of May Day activities dates from 1240, and is a complaint by the Bishop of Lincoln about priests taking part in "games which they call the bringing-in of the May"; and Puritan John Stubbes - a sort-of 16th-Century Daily Mail - fulminated that only about a third of the Maidens who went a-Maying came home "undefiled". Maypoles ("this stinking idol") were banned by the Puritan Government in 1644 ("neither Jews nor Turks; Saracens nor Pagans, nor any other people how wicked or barbarous soever, have ever used such devilish exercises as these; nay, they would have been ashamed once to have, much less used them. Yet we that would be Christian. think them not amiss. The Lord forgive us and remove them from us").

Also on this Date: the Nea Ekklēsia ["new church"] is consecrated in Constatinople (880 - it is the first large church with the "cross-within-a-square" design that became characteristic of Orthodox churches); Norman mercenaries, supported by Henry II of England [and with the blessing of the Pope] arrive in Ireland, beginning the Norman Invasion of Ireland (1169); the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, signed by Robert I of Scotland and the English Parliament, brings the First War of Scottish Independence to a close (1328 - the peace lasts all of five years; Edward III seeks to overturn it as part of his endeavours to "prove himself" to his nobles); the 1706 Treaty of Union between England and Scotland comes into force (1707); Carl Linnaeus' Systema Naturæ [ "system of nature through the three kingdoms of nature, according to classes, orders, genera and species, with characters, differences, synonyms, places"] is first published (1758); the Wedgewood ceramics factory is founded by Josiah Wedgewood (1759); the Bavarian Illuminati is founded to "to put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice" (1776 - it is not popular with the ruling classes, who quite enjoy purveying injustice, and it is outlawed seven years later - and then the year after; two years after that; and three years after that - but the scoundrels simply wouldn't be deterred); Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro is premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna (1786); five of the Cato Street Conspiritors are publicly executed at Newgate prison in front a packed "house", some of whom have paid three guineas to see the spectacle - the men are hanged for twenty minutes, then their heads are severed from the bodies and displayed one at a time to the jeering crowd with the words "This is the head of a traitor", before being put into a coffin with the rest of the body (1820 - highlights on Channel 5); Britain's first postage stamp, the Penny Black, goes on sale for the first time (1849 - although it can't officially be used on letters until 6th May - there is a single, solitary example franked 1st May); Queen Victoria officially opens the Great Exhibition in the Crystal palace (1851); racial tensions fermented by the Union victory in the American Civil War leads to the three-day-long Memphis Riots after white police officers shoot at black citizens returning from service with the Union Army (1866 - mobs of enraged white citizens go on the rampage in black housing areas; 46 African-Americans are killed [and a further 75 injured] as against 2 white men); the Folies Bergere opens in Paris (1868); Emperor Franz Josef opens the 5th World Exposition in Vienna (1873); the Alexandra Palace opens (1875 - strictly speaking, it re-opens following the fire that had destroyed the original building, but as that had only been opened for a fortnight before it burnt down, it barely counts); Cesar Franck's Symphonic Variations are premiered in Paris with Louis Diémer solo pianist and the composer conducting (1886 - Franck had written the work as a gift to Diémer in thanks for his playing the solo piano part in Franck's Les Djinns, just over a year earlier); RMS Lusitania leaves New York on its final transatlantic voyage (1915); German troops [including future prominent members of the Nazi Party] violently bring an end to the socialist Bavarian Republic, with the deaths of over 600 people (1919); the Koppeh Dagh earthquake on Iranian/Turkmenistanian border results in the deaths of nearly 4000 people (1929); the Empire State Building opens (1931); Detective Comics #27 is published, introducing The Batman (1939); Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is released at the Palace Theater, New York (1941); 200 Greek Communists are shot by firing squad by the Nazi occupiers in the Kaiseriani region of Athens in reprisal for the killing of a German officer (1944); Joseph and Magda Goebbels commit suicide by cyanide tablets by the side of Hitler's ashes - Magda has previously stuufed cyanide tablets into the mouths of their six children (1945 - they have been made terrified by propaganda about atrocities committed by the advancing Red Army, which has also caused thousands of other German citizens to commit suicide: on this day, hundreds of people in the Pomeranian town of Demmin - whoever was in charge of propaganda in Nazi Germany had a lot to answer for; which is probably why he killed himself); 800 indigenous Australian workers in Pilbera, Western Australia begin a a three-and-a-half year strike for human rights recognition, improved working conditions and fairer wages (1946); poet Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first black writer to receive the Pulitzer Prize (1950 - in the same year, South Pacific wins a Prize); the Mr Potato Head toy goes on sale for the first time, costing 98cents (1952 - worth about £7 in today's money; which is around the price they're still sold at); Jonas Salk's Polio Vaccine is made publicly available (1956 - on the same day, "an epidemic of an unkown disease of the Central Nervous System" is announced in Japan, marking the discovery of Minimata, caused by mercury contamination of the water system); American pilot Gary Powers is shot down by the Soviet surface-air missile as he carries out a spying mission for the CIA (1960); Naomi Uemura becomes the first solo person to reach the North Pole (1978); Penderecki's "Silent Night" Symphony is premiered by the NYPO conducted by Mehta (1980); Ayrton Senna is killed in a crash as he leads the San Marino Grand Prix (1994); Tony Blair is elected Prime Minister (1997); 75 years after he had disappeared, the body of George Mallory is discovered on Mount Everest (1999 - on this same day, SpongeBob SquarePants makes his debut); President Bush II announces that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" (2003); ten countries (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia) become new members of the EU (2004); Carol Ann Duffy is appointed Poet Laureate (2009 - on the same day, same-sex marriage is legalized in Sweden); and, this time last year, the Chinese authorities ban the "subversive" cartoon, Peppa Pig.

Birthdays Today include: Johannes Stadius (1527); Marco de Gagliano (1582); Joseph Addison (1672); Arthur Welliesley (1769); Emily Stowe (1831); Calamity Jane (1852); Theo van Goch (1857); Marcel Prevost (1862); Hugo Alfvén (1872); Leo Sowerby (1895); Jón Leifs (1899); Giovannino Guareschi (1908); Walter Susskind (1913); Glenn Ford (1916); Joseph Heller (1923); Terry Southern (1924); Gary Bertini (1927); Una Stubbs (1837); Judy Collins (1939); Rita Coolidge (1945); Joanna Lumley (1946); Tim Hodgkinson (1949); Sally Mann (1951);

Final Days for: Pope Marcellus II (1555); Johann Ludwig Bach (1731); David Livingstone (1873); Ludwig Buchner (1899); Luigi Arditti (1903); Antonin Dvorak (1904); Percy Whitlock (1946); Charles Holden (1960); Spike Jones (1965); Harold Nicholson (1968); Aram Khachaturian (1978); Walter Primrose (1982); Muriel Herbert (1984); Hylda Baker (1986); Roger Cotte (1999); Henry Cooper and Ted Lowe (both 2011);


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 1st May, 1979 were:

Overture: Weelkes In Pride of May; Bach Harpsichord Concerto in D minor (BWV 1052); Debussy, (orch Busser) Symphonic Suite: Printemps; Bax Morning Song (Maytime in Sussex); Fauré Mai; Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto #5; Mozart Symphony #29; Elgar Maysong.
Rural Rhymes: "Robin Holmes reads from poets who have loved the English countryside."
This Week's Composers: the Court of Louis XIV (Charpentier Le malade imaginaire Ovt; Rondeau pour les Corinthiens; Lully Turkish Scene [Le bourgeois gentilhomme]; Alceste [excerpts]; Campra L'Europe galante [excerpts]).
Musica Nova: Birtwistle Ring a Dumb Clarion; Feldman Voice, Violin, Piano (1st performance); David Dorward Quartet for clarinet, violin, cello and piano; George Newson Valentine. (Can anyone imagine today's pale and timid R3 having the courage of its convictions to broadcast Music as fresh and new at this time in the schedules? It's not misremembered nostalgia: these were great days to be a R3 listener - to be a teenage listener was very heaven!)
BBC Welsh SO conducted by Vernon Handley: Walton Violin Concerto (with Gyorgy Pauk); Brahms' 4th Symphony.

[johncorrigan]

[ the Mr Potato Head toy goes on sale for the first time, costing 98cents (1952 - worth about £7 in today's money; which is around the price they're still sold at);

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtgS5QMTfoE

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

May 2nd

On this Date: (it seems that there is no official "Yesterday I Did What???!!!" Day)

Anne Boleyn is arrested on charges of adultery, treason, incest, and witchcraft, and imprisoned in the Tower of London (1536); John Knox arrives in Scotland (1559 - he would have arrived some weeks earlier, but Elizabeth I had refused him passage through England); the King James version of the Bible goes on sale for the first time (1611 - 10/- loose-leaf; 12/- bound, which is about £67 or £80 in today's money); the people of Madrid rise up against Napoleon's occupying troops (1808); General Stonewall Jackson, second most important leader of the Confederate Army, is shot by his own troops, who believe that the "damned yankees" are playing a trick on them (1863 - one of his arms has to be amputated, and he contracts pneumonia and dies 8 days later); the first public performance of Bruckner's Te Deum [albeit with piano duet playing the orchestral Music] is given in the Smaller Hall of the Vienna Concert Society, conducted by Joseph Schalk (1885 - on the very same day, indigenous Canadian warriors defeat a combined force of Canadian police and army regulars who had attacked their settlement - AND, the very first edition of Good Housekeeping magazine goes on sale); the Emperor of Ethiopia signs the Treaty of Wuchale, which expands the Italian colony of Eritrea (1889); Hitler replaces all independent Trades Unions with the Nazi-controlled German Labour Front (1933); Prokofiev's Peter & the Wolf is premiered in Moscow (1936 - on the same day, Emperor Haile Selassie and his family flee from Abyssinia); Thornton Wilder is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his Our Town (1938); the Anglo-Iraqi War begins, to restore Crown Prince 'Abd al-llah, who had been overthrown in a Nazi-led coup d'etat (1941); Wobbelin Concentration Camp is liberated by US troops (1945 - about a quarter of the 4000 prisoners have starved to death; the soldiers compel the local German townspeople to come and view what has been done in their name, to witness the extent of Nazi atrocity, and to help bury the dead. On the same day, US troops intercept a forced march of prisoners from Dachau Extermination Camp to the Austrian border - saving hundreds of lives in so doing); Tay Garnett's film of James M Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice with Lana Turner and John Garfield is released (1946); Arthur Miller is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his Death of a Salesman (1949); BOAC runs the world's first jet airliner passenger service from London to Johannesburg (1952); Tennessee Williams is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955); Viet Cong divers attach a bomb to the hull of US aircraft carrier USS Card, which sinks it (1964); Roger Sessions' Eighth Symphony is premiered by the NYPO conducted by William Steinberg (1968); the British ocean liner Elizabeth II sets off on her maiden voyage (1969); a fire at the Sunshine silver mine in Idaho causes the deaths of 91 miners - over half the workforce (1972); Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror becomes the only nuclear-powered submarine ever to sink an enemy ship when it torpedos Argentinian warship the General Belgrano as it is sailing away from the Falklands exclusion zone, killing 323 people on board (1982); Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George moves to the Booth Theatre on Broadway (1984); a week after the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant, the Soviet authorities start to evacuate the city itself (1986); Hungarian border guards begin dismantling the 150 mile-long electric fence along the border with Austria (1989); the European Central Bank is established (1998); in reprisals at the murder of 78 Christians by Muslims in the Nigerian town of Yelwa, a mob of Christians (who obviously hadn't read the membership rules about turning the other cheek, loving their enemies, and firgiving those who tresspass against them) attack and kill 630 Muslims (2004); Cyclone Nargis causes landfall in Myanmar, killing at least 138,373 people (2008); Osama Bin-Laden is killed by US Navy Seals (2011); and, this time last year, Basque Separatist terrorist organisation ETA announces its disbandment.

Birthdays Today include: William Camden (1551); Alessandro Scarlatti (1660); Jean-Baptiste Barrière (1707); Catherine the Great (1729); Ludwig August Lebrun (1752); Anastasio Martín Ignacio Vicente Tadeo Francisco Pellegrin Martín y Soler (1754 - he's seven years old by the time they've finished signing the birth certificate); Novalis (1772); Hans Christian Lumbye (1810); Jerome K Jerome (1859); Theodore Herzl (1860); Manfred von Richthofen (1892); Joseph Henry Woodger (1894); Lorenz Hart (1895); Henry Hall (1898); Benjamin Spock (1903); Bill Brandt (1904); Alan Rawsthorne (1905); Peggy Mount (1915); Otto Buchsbaum (1920); Satyajit Ray (1921); John Neville (1925); Horst Stein (1928); Malcolm Lipkin (1932); Michael Rabin (1936); David Suchet (1946); Philippe Herreweghe (1947); Marcus Stockhausen (1957);
David Beckham (1975); Lily Allen (1985); ... and Alan Titchmarsh is 70 today

Final Days for: Leonardo da Vinci (1519); Mary Moser (1819); Giacomo Meyerbeer (1864); Joseph McCarthy (1957); Nancy Astor (1964); J Edgar Hoover (1972); David Rappaport (1990); Michael Hordern (1995); John Eccles (1997); Justin Fashanu (1998); Oliver Reed (1999); Marilyn French (2009); Lynn Redgrave (2010); and Ruth Rendell (2015).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 2nd May, were:

Morning Concert: Barber Serenade for string orchestra; Mercadante Flute Concerto in D; Sibelius Karelia Ovt; Mozart Concerto for two pianos and orchestra (K365); Khachaturian Gayaneh (excerpts).
Composer of the Week: Ravel (Piano Concerto for the left hand; Histoires naturelles; L'Enfant et les sortileges (part 2).
George III in Cheltenham "Music which the King might have heard on his visit to the Spa in 1788." (AAM/Hogwood).
Capricorn play Berwald's Quartet in Eb
BBCSSO/Jerzy Maksymiuk: Sibelius The Oceanides; Shostakovich Piano Concerto #2 (with Howard Shelley); Musorgsky A Night on the Bare Mountain (original version); Debussy La Mer

[gurnemanz]

Michael Hordern (died May 2, 1995) was a most appealing and versatile actor with a distinguished 60 year career. I think we only saw him once - as the philosophy professor in a most enjoyable 1976 production of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, involving both mental and physical acrobatics on stage. Also a memorable occasion, being our first visit to the newly opened Lyttleton Theatre on the South Bank.

[Richard Tarleton]

Michael Hordern (died May 2, 1995) was a most appealing and versatile actor with a distinguished 60 year career. I think we only saw him once - as the philosophy professor in a most enjoyable 1976 production of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, involving both mental and physical acrobatics on stage. Also a memorable occasion, being our first visit to the newly opened Lyttleton Theatre on the South Bank.

A Pembrokeshire connection: during WW2, Michael Hordern served at the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm base at Kete, between St Anne's Head and Dale Airfield. Known as R.N. Aircraft Direction Centre, HMS Harrier, they trained to spot enemy aircraft and guide their own fighters in to shoot them down. Initially they trained with adapted Walls Ice Cream tricycles ridden around the field - as it says on the link, "One tricycle, manned by a Wren, represented a ‘Bomber’ or enemy aircraft and was pedalled in time with the metronome across the training area; her course was triangulated and reported to a dummy Fighter Direction Office. A second tricycle, the ‘Fighter’, was manned by the trainee Fighter Direction Offer who was in turn controlled by a fellow trainee in the ‘Fighter Direction Office’ and vectored to the ‘Bomber’ by radio " And we still won the war . There's a charming photo of Michael Hordern riding one of these things at a reunion in later life. Today the site belongs to the National Trust, but it's just clifftop farmland with little trace of the 100-odd huts that once stood there.

He makes a marvellous narrator on Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon".

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

May 3rd

The first of May is "May-doll day"
The second of May is "kissing day"
The third of May is "sting-nettle day"

... a Devonshire custom [at one time] it seems, for example, this record from 1880:

On the 3rd of May this year, I was passing through the village of Bovey Tracey and was struck with the peculiarity of all the children being provided with a nettle, or bunch of nettles, with which they were flogging each other. Having never seen the like before, I thought there must be some meaning in this demonstration, and on enquiring of some of the children, was informed that it was "Sting-nettle Day".

Something one might expect to read about in the newspapers on today, World Press Freedom Day, perhaps?

There's also a tradition that today was the date in 326 that St Helena discovered the three crosses upon which Christ and the two robbers were crucified (there are other dates that various denominations disagree about - and it used to be sometimes referred to, without a trace of irony, as The Day of the Invention of the Holy Cross in England - but then, some early English writers claimed that St Helena herself was born in Britain - now that is an "invention".)

For pagans and those with more scientific/materialistic preferences (and who, for whatever reason, don't relish the idea of getting thwacked by a small child wielding a bunch of nettles) today is also International Sun Day - nothing to do with Murdoch, this is an initiative started in 1978 by US President Carter specifically devoted to advocating the development and use of Solar Power.


Also on this Date: an earhquake on the island of Rhodes triggers a tsunami resulting in around 30,000 casualties (1481); Edmund Halley makes the first recorded reports of Baily's Beads during a total eclipse of the sun (1715); the city of Washington is granted a municipal government as part of the District of Coolumbi Organic Act (1802); the rebels in madrid who rose up against Napoleonic troops "yesterday" are shot by firing squad (1809 - both the uprising and the execution are depicted in two of Goya's most famous paintings); Byron swims across the Hellespont (1810); the University of Athens is established (1837); Thomas Bateman excavates an Anglo-Saxon ceremonial helmet from a barrow in Benty Grange farm in Derbyshire (1848); the May Uprising begins in Dresden - the last significantof the revolutionary events of '48-'49 in Germany, and the one which Wagner's involvement in got him exiled for the next 12 years (1849); a fire destroys more than 2,368 buildings, kills seven people and makes 10,000 people homeless in Jacksonville, Florida (1901); the release of silent film Raja Harishchandra marks the beginning of the Indian Film Industry (1913); Canadian military doctor, Major John McCrae writes the poem In Flanders Fields after having to perform a burial service for a Lieutenant killed the previous day (1915); the first of the Irish Nationalists involved in the Easter Uprising [Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas Clarke] are shot by firing squad, turning the public mood against the British military (1916); the premiere of Bloch's "Rhapsodie Hébraïque" Schelomo is given in Carnegie Hall by 'cellist Hans Kindler, with an orchestra conducted by Artur Bodanzky (1917); an attempted Bolshevik coup in Georgia is deterred by the Georgian Resistance (1920); the first fraternity organization for teenage Jewish males, Aleph Zadik Aleph, is founded in Nebraska (1924); the TUC call a General Strike in support of Miners' rights and wages to begin at one minute to midnight (1926); the Jinan Incident - an armed conflict between Japanese and Chinese Nationalists in the Shandong Province of China - begins when 12 Japanese civilians living in the area are killed in cross-fire (1928); Poulenc's Concert Champêtre receives its first public performance at the Salle Pleyel, by Wanda Landowska and the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris conducted by Pierre Monteux (1929); Margaret Mitchell is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel, Gone With the Wind (1937); around 7,000 prisoners from Nazi concentration camps being "transported" [the intention is that the ships are to be scuttled, drowning the prisoners] on three German prison ships are killed when the Royal Navy sinks them, believing them to be warships (1945 - one of the few survivors is political prisoner, Ernst Goldbaum, later a Minister in the East German Government. On this same day, Werner Heisenberg is arrested by an American task force); a new Japanese Constitution comes into effect (1947 - it grants universal suffrage, reduces the Emperor's powers to purely symbolic status, and outlaws the right to make war); the Royal Festival Hall opens (1951 - along with the Festival of Britain); Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella opens at the Imperial Theater on Broadway (1956); the Anne Frank House museum opens in Amsterdam (1960); police in Birmingham, Alabama turn fire hoses set to maximum pressure on children involved in student protests on the instructions of Commissioner for Public Safety Theophilus Connor [who enjoys being called "Bull" Connor] who encourages film crews, photographers, and white onlookers to record the event - and the setting of German Shepherd dogs on parents trying to help their children (1963 - his enthusiasm backfires, as the resulting footage causes worldwide condemnation); Saul Bellow is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel, Humboldt's Gift (1976); the very first SPAM e-Mail is sent by a marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the East Coast of America (1978); Martin Sherman's play Bent premieres at the Royal Court Theatre, London (1979); Tamil suicide bombers destroy a Sri Lamkan passenger aeroplane at Badaranaike International Airportin Colombo, killing 21 international travellers (1986); the Windhoek Declaration for the Development of a Free, Independent and Pluralistic Press is signed by African journalists at a conference in the Namibian capital (1991 - on the same day, the last ever episode of soap opera Dallas is broadcast on CBS); 45 people are killed and 665 injured in Oklahoma City by a tornedo with the highest wind speed ever recorded [so far] (1999); French citizen Zacarias Moussaoui is sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for his part in the September 11th terrorist attacks (2006); three-year-old Madelaine McCann goes missing from her holiday apartment bedroom in Portugal (2007); two Islamist gunmen shoot at security officers patrolling an exhibition at the Curtis Culwell Center in Texas of the Charlie Hebo cartoon images of Muhammad (2015 - one security guard is shot in the ankle; the gunmen themselves are shot dead by an off-duty police officer).

Birthdays Today include: Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 - any 650th anniversary celebrations planned, I wonder?); Henri Pitot (1695); Florian Leopold Gassmann (1729); Richard D'Oyly Carte (1844); Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873); Karl Abraham (1877); Marcel Dupré (1886); George Paget Thomson (1892); Dodie Smith (1896); Golda Meir (1898); Bing Crosby (1903); Léopold Simoneau (1916); Betty Comden (1917); Sugar Ray Robinson (1921); James Brown (1933); Henry Cooper and Frankie Valli (both 1934); Lindsay Kemp (1938); Sandi Toksvig (1958); Rob Brydon (1965); ... Jonathan Harvey would have been 80 today; Ben Elton is 60; and it's the centenary of Pete Seeger.

Final Days for: Elizabeth Bacon, Lady Neville [as in Byrd's Booke] (1621); Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1704); John Winthrop (1779); Adolphe Adam (1856); Narcisso Yepes (1997); Barbara Castle and Yevgeny Svetlanov (both 2002); Jackie Cooper (2011); Felix Werder (2012).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Wednesday, 3rd May 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Liszt St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds [performed by "St Francis" according to the Genome - now that's something you never hear on today's R3!]; Saint-Saens Septet in Eb; Sarasate Carmen fantasy; Haydn Symphony No 100 in G ("Military"); Respighi Fountains of Rome.
Composer of the Week: Ravel (Une Barque sur l'océan; Piano Concerto in G; La Valse; Jeux d'Eau)
BBC Singers directed by John Poole, with organist John Scott ( S Wesley, Motet Carmen funebre; Arne, Motet Libera me; Boyce, Anthem By the Waters of Babylon; S Wesley, Motet Exultate Deo)
Chopin 24 Preludes (played by Joaquin Achucarro)
Midweek Choice: Auber Le Cheval de bronze Ovt; Henry Lawes Slide Soft, You Silver Floods, and I Prithee Send Me Back My Heart; Elgar Falstaff; Gounod There Is a Green Hill; Widor Symphonie Romaine; Schubert Polonaise in Bb (D 580); Gade Symphony No 8 in B minor.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Goya - The 2nd May, 1808:

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Goya - The Third of May, 1808:

[antongould]

“Also on this Date: an earhquake on the island of Rhodes triggers a tsunami resulting in around 30,000 casualties (1481)”

We are actually on Rhodes ferney ........ lightening never strikes ..... does it ..... ????

[johncorrigan]

[I]

and it's the centenary of Pete Seeger.

Happy Birthday Pete, wherever you might be - here he is goofing off and banjoing through Grieg's Anitra's Dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW9BN6YcDG4

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

4th May

Star Wars Day - and May the Fourth be with all Forumistas - and World Naked Gardening Day (it's been celebrated since 2005; 14 years! And they said there'd be no Fuchsia in it) - and Dave Brubeck Day in the United States (where the date is written as 5/4 - presumably here it should be on the Fifth of April?)

Also on this Date: religious reformers John Wycliffe and John Huss are proclaimed heretics by the Catholic Church (1415); the Battle of Tewkesbury secures Yorkist Edward IV's reign and results in the deaths of many of his Lancastrian rivals, including Henry IV's son and would-be heir (11471); the Colony of Rhode Island becomes the first of the 13 American colonies to renounce its allegiance t the British crown (1776); Haydn's "London" Symphony is premiered at the King's Theatre in London (1795); the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War comes to an enbd as British troops invade the city of Seringapatam and kill Sultan Tipu (1799); Napoleon begins his nine-month exile on Elba (1814); the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal club for Catholics of Irish birth or descent, is founded in New York (1836); the Cornwall Railway line opens connecting Devon and Cornwall via the newly opened Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar (1859); a bomb is thrown at police attempting to disperse a workers' protest in Haymarket Square, Chicago, against police having shot and killed eight people the previous day (1886 - seven police officers and four other citizens are killed and dozens of others wounded by the blast); the first ever edition of the Daily Mail goes on sale (1896 - at a ha'penny it is half the price of other newspapers then on sale); the United States takes over the responsibility for building the Suez Canal (1904); Italy ends its Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in a dramatic way - it declares War on its former partners (1915); three more Irish nationalists [Ned Daly, Joseph Plunkett, and William Pearce] are shot by firing squad for their part in the Easter Rising (1916); students occupy Tiananman Square in Beijing to protest against the Versailles Treaty which has given Chinese territory to Japan (1919); Al Capone begins a prison sentence for Tax Evasion (1932 - on arrival, he is diagnosed with syphillis, gonorrhea, cocaine withdrawal symptoms, and a nasal septum); Ration Cards for food, and speed limitations to conserve fuel and tyre rubber are introduced in the United States (1942); MGM's film Gaslight, starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, and 18-year-old Angela Lansbury, goes on release (1944); British Troops reach the Neuengamme network of concentration camps, which had been emptied of all surviving prisoners the day before (1945); a riot resulting from an unsuccessful escape attempt from Alcaraz prison is brought to an end by US Marines, resulting in the deaths of two prison warders and and three inmates (1946); the entire Torino football team is killed in a plane crash (1949); Ernest Hemingway is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel The Old Man and the Sea (1953); Francois Traffaut's first feature length film, Les Quatre Cents Coups is released in France (1959); the first Grammy Awards are ... awarded (1961 - amongst the recipients is André Previn, for his conducting and arranging the soundtrack album of the film version of Gigi); at Kent State University, the Ohio National Guard fire live ammunition into crowds of students protesting against the Vietnam War, killing four of them and wounding nine others [one of whom is left paralysed for life as a result] (1970); environmental activists decide that the "Don't Make a Wave" name of their organization is a bit unclear - and is difficult to fit on the sides of their boats - so rename themselves "Greenpeace" (1972); Margerat Thatcher becomes Britain's first female Prime Minister (1979); HMS Sheffield is destroyed by an Argentinian Exocet missile (1982); explosions at the PEPCON chemical plant causes a huge fire which kills two workers, injures 372 others, and causes $100million worth of damage to property (1988); the Supreme Soviet in Latvia restores Latvian independence from the Soviet Union (1990); Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signs the Oslo I Peace Accord with PLO leader, Yasser Arafat (1994); Ken Livingstone is elected the first Mayor of London (2000); the Scottish National party wins a majority in the Scottish Parliament Elections (2007);

Birthdays today include: Katherine Ferrers (1634); Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655); Thomas Henry Huxley (1825); Alice Liddell (1852); Emil von Reznicek (1860); Lincoln Kirstein (1907); Gilbert Vinter (1909); Edward Cone (1917); Edo Murtic (1921); Eric Sykes (1923); Tatiana Nikolayeva (1924); Maynard Ferguson and Thomas Kinsella (both 1928); Audrey Hepburn (1929); Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931); Marisa Robles, Ron Carter, and Hans Ulrich Lehmann (all 1937); Amos Oz (1939); Graham Swift (1949); Colin Bass (1951); and Rory McIlroy (1989).

Final Days for: Lorenzo de' Medici (1519); Isaac Barrow (1677); Aimé Bonpland (1858); Edith Nesbit (1924); George Enescu (1955); Osbert Sitwell (1969); Edward Calvin Kendall (1972); Diana Dors (1984); Arthur Oldham (2003); Dom DeLuise (2009); and Dick Ayers (2014).


And the Radio 3 schedules for Sunday, 4th May, 1969 were:

What's New? "a programme of recent records conducted by Georges Pretre"
Bach Cantatas: BWV 166 and 108
Your Concert Choice: "a record request programme"
Music Magazine: features on Hans Pfitzner, Richard Strauss, Beecham's recollections of Ethel Smyth, and an interview with John Ogdon & Brenda Lucas.
(followed by a complete broadcast of Musorgsky's Khovanshchina [ed Shostakovich] which took most of the whole afternoon, interspersed with a piano recital and an orchestral concert)

[greenilex]

Twenty-five years since Oslo...our hopes were too high, we believed a real breakthrough had been made.

[Richard Tarleton]

Napoleon begins his nine-month exile on Elba (1814)

I've just read Adam Zamoyski's new biog of Napoleon, and am currently well into Andrew Roberts's which is shaping up to be the best I've read - it is "the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century"......

the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War comes to an end as British troops invade the city of Seringapatam and kill Sultan Tipu (1799)

Napoleon had written to Tipu from Egypt on Jan 25, 1799, announcing his imminent 'arrival on the shores of the Red Sea with a numerous and invincible army, animated with the desire of delivering you from the iron yoke of England' - the letter never got there, as it was intercepted (as was most of Napoleon's mail from Egypt) by the Royal Navy . The British commander at Seringapatam was a young Lieutenant General named Sir Arthur Wellesley

Soon afterwards events back in France proved more pressing, and Napoleon abandoned what was left of his army in Egypt to head for home with a handful of his generals, evading the Royal Navy, in two slow-moving Venetian frigates (Napoleon's fleet in Egypt having earlier been completely destroyed by Nelson at the Battle of Aboukir Bay).