Today's the Day

[LezLee]

... ah yes!

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Affaire_Saint-Fiacre

.


.

I'm amazed and delighted that, except for a few words, I could understand most of that. I last did French for 'O' level in 1956! It's like remembering chunks of Shakespeare , though not necessarily the right play.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

19th August

World Humanitarian Day inaugurated by the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Foundation in 2006, and adopted by the UN to commemorate those who have lost their lives working for humanitarian causes, and to recognize the work of those still active in such causes. The date was chosen as it was on this date in 2003 that Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative for Iraq, and 21 of his colleagues were killed at the Canal Hotel Bombing in Baghdad - the hotel targeted specifically because it was the headquarters of the UN mission in Iraq.

Also on This Date: the Coronation of Edward I (1274); Richard II surrenders to Henry Bolingbroke, agreeing to abdicate if he is assured that he will be allowed to live (1399); 11 women and one man accused of witchcraft at Lancaster Castle Assizes, are found guilty (1612); 4 men and a woman are hanged after being found guilty of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts (1692 - after being pronounced dead, they are cut down and their corpses dragged by horse to a grave so shallow that the bodies cannot be completely covered); Bonnie Prince Charlie stakes his claim to the British throne by raising his Standard on the shore of Loch Shiel, beginning the Third Jacobite Rebellion (1745); the last victory of British forces in the American War of Independence occurs at the Battle Blue Licks in Kentucky (1782 - a futile show of strength as Cornwallis' surrender after the battle of Yorktown the previous year had already effectively ensured the ultimate loss of the American colonies); Benjamin Banneker sends a letter to Thomas Jefferson passionately pointing out the hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence, which permitted the "detaining by fraud and violence" of black people, a "most criminal act which you professedly detested in others, with respect to your Selves" (1791); the French Government announces that the Daguerreotype photographic process will be available free of copyright as a gift to the world (1839 - with the exception of "England, Wales, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and in all her Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad"); the New York Herald reports the discovery in January of gold in the Sierra Nevada area of California (1849 - the announcement causes the Gold Rush of the "49ers"; would-be prospectors eager to get rich quick - and of male and female prostitutes equally willing to take at least some of their profits off them); the First Sioux War breaks out when US soldiers kill Chief Conquering Bear, and are themselves slaughtered as a consequence (1854); ocean liner SS Arabic travelling from Liverpool to new York is torpedoed & sunk by a U-Boat, killing 44 passengers & crew (1915 - 3 of those killed are American citizens, sparking a diplomatic row); following a national referendum supporting the idea, Hitler assumes total powers in Germany, and adopts the title "Fuhrer" (1934); the first of the Moscow Show Trials of 16 of Stalin's opponents in the Bolshevik Party begins (1936); Operation Jubilee, an attempted assault on German-occupied Dieppe, ends in defeat for the Allied forces, with heavy casualties, particularly among Canadian soldiers (1942); the week-long Liberation of Paris begins with a civil uprising against the Nazi occupiers by paramilitaries from the Resistance (1944); democratically-elected socialist Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh (who had Nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) is deposed in a military coup d'etat jointly organised and funded by the CIA and MI6 (1953); US fighter pilot Gary Powers is sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for spying by a Soviet court (1960 - on the same day, Soviet spacecraft Korabi-Sputnik 2 orbits the earth three times with a passenger list of two dogs, 40 mice, four rats, several flies, a rabbit, and various plants, all of whom survive the ordeal: one of the dogs later has puppies [nothing to do with the space mission], and one is given as a present to First lady, Jackie Kennedy - after it has been, quite literally, vetted by security forces for any "hidden" microphones); a fire at the Cinema Rex in Iran causes the deaths of at least 420 people (1978 - the government blame Islamic Militants for starting the fire; the Islamic Militants blame the government Security Forces - it is a key factor in the start of the Iranian Revolution four months later); the Hungerford massacre (1987); Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under House Arrest whilst on holiday in an attempted coup by hard-line Communists (1991); Chechen Separatists shoot down a Russian Army helicopter, killing 127 of the 147 personnel on board (2002 - this remains the heaviest loss of life in the history of helicopter aviation); Russian and Chinese forces combine for the first time in a military exercise given the grimly ironic name Peace Mission 2005; the last US combat brigades leave Iraq and withdraw into Kuwait after more than seven years (2010); aerial photographs show that the Eastern basin of the Aral Sea, formerly the 4th largest lake in the world, has been completely drained following years of Soviet irrigation projects - the area is now known as the Aralkum Desert (2014); ... and it is a year ago that former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani [Donald Trump's legal advisor] responds to the statement "Truth is truth", made by NBC interviewer Chuck Todd, with the reply "No, it isn't truth. Truth isn't Truth."

Birthdays Today include: Íñigo López de Mendoza (1398); John Dryden (1631); John Flamsteed (1646); Samuel Richardson (1689); Orville Wright (1871); George Enescu (1881); Coco Chanel (1883); Ogden Nash (1902); Quentin Bell (1910); Gene Roddenberry (1921); Bernard levin (1928); Richard Ingrams (1937); Gerard Schwarz (1947); John Deakin (1951); Jonathan Coe (1961); ... and Ginger Baker is 80 today

Final Days for: Augustus (14); Blaise Pascal (1662); Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1889); Sergei Diaghilev (1929); David Bomberg (1957); Alistair Sim (1976); Groucho Marx (1977); Jessie Matthews (1981); Linus Pauling (1994); Pierre Schaeffer (1995 - 5 days after his 85th birthday); Donald Woods (2001); Mo Mowlam (2005); Tony Scott (2012).

And the Radio 3 Schedules for the Morning of Saturday, 19th August, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Rossini Barber of Seville Ovt; Granados El fandango de candil; Elgar/Young Spanish Lady Suite; R-K Capriccio Espagnol; Bizet Carmen Suite; Sor Minuet (from 2nd Grande Sonata Op25); Ravel Rapsodie Espagnole.
Piano Trios: Haydn Trio in Eb minor (H xv 31); Beethoven "Archduke"
Record Release: Tchaikovsky Francesca da Rimini; Bach Partita in E, BWV 1006; Bartok Conc for Orch (composer's Piano arrangement); Henze 3 Auden Songs; Schumann Pno 4tet; Brahms Symph #3.

[Padraig]

re Birthday Boy, Ogden Nash:

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

[Petrushka]

Bernard Levin (1928)

Still much missed here. Used to see him frequently at the Proms, RFH, Barbican (where I once sat next to him) and elsewhere. Greatly enjoyed his newspaper columns and still have his books, some signed. I'm sure that if he was still with us he would be casting his excoriating wit on the current situation.

[Richard Tarleton]

[ Bonnie Prince Charlie stakes his claim to the British throne by raising his Standard on the shore of Loch Shiel, beginning the Second Jacobite Rebellion (1745)

Third, surely? The first was in 1689, when James Graham of Claverhouse aka Viscount "Bonnie" Dundee, raised the Highlands for James II, resulting in the Battle of Killiekrankie in July of that year. The Jacobites won, but Dundee was killed, after which the rebellion rather fell apart. William III's troops were led by General Hugh Mackay of Scourie. Dundee's army was only half the size of Mackay's, but made up for it in ferocity, consisting as they did of MacDonalds, MacDonells, Macleans and Grants.... "Black" Alastair Dubh MacDonell, 11th Chief of Glengarry, at the head of the Glengarry men, "bore a prodigious two-handed sword, with which, at every step, he killed two men, one on each side....". But it was a Pyrrhic victory...the whole sorry tale leading to the Glencoe massacre followed....

I went to the Glenfinnan Highland Games there in 1964, in the shadow of Bonnie Prince Charlie's monument, and the Glenfinnan viaduct. Nowadays the tourists thereabouts tend to be Harry Potter fans . Those games were presided over by Donald Cameron of Lochiel, 26th Chief of Clan Cameron, who strode about the field in full rig with an eagle's hackle in his bonnet: he obligingly stood for a photo which I took with my box Brownie but which I sadly no longer have.

[gurnemanz]

Still much missed here. Used to see him frequently at the Proms, RFH, Barbican (where I once sat next to him) and elsewhere. Greatly enjoyed his newspaper columns and still have his books, some signed. I'm sure that if he was still with us he would be casting his excoriating wit on the current situation.

Re Bernard Levin. When I attended the Boulez Parsifal at the Proms in 1972, standing in the Arena I remember seeing him in the seats close by. I enjoyed him on TW3 on Saturday night.. One night someone tried to punch him.

[LMcD]

Re Bernard Levin. When I attended the Boulez Parsifal at the Proms in 1972, standing in the Arena I remember seeing him in the seats close by. I enjoyed him on TW3 on Saturday night.. One night someone tried to punch him.

If memory serves, Bernard Levin had annoyed the would-be aggressor by writing a negative review of a performance by the latter's actress wife.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If memory serves, Bernard Levin had annoyed the would-be aggressor by writing a negative review of a performance by the latter's actress wife.

Exactly so - Desmond Leslie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Leslie

... the incident can be seen just after a minute into this clip:

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

[Sir Velo]

I'm amazed and delighted that, except for a few words, I could understand most of that. I last did French for 'O' level in 1956! It's like remembering chunks of Shakespeare , though not necessarily the right play.

Google translate is a great boon isn't it?

[cloughie]

Still much missed here. Used to see him frequently at the Proms, RFH, Barbican (where I once sat next to him) and elsewhere. Greatly enjoyed his newspaper columns and still have his books, some signed. I'm sure that if he was still with us he would be casting his excoriating wit on the current situation.

I’m sure he’d have loved KD’s presentation style!...or as a fellow panelist on ‘Face the Music’.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

20th August

The date is used in the US Episcopal Church to commemorate the murder of 26-year-old white seminarian and Civil Rights activist, Jonathan Daniels who was murdered in Alabama on this day in 1965 when he shielded 17-year-old black civil rights activist Ruby Sales from a gunshot fired by a white supremacist, who also shot a black priest who was helping another girl to get away from the gunman. I say "murdered" - the gunman was indicted for "manslaughter", pleaded "self-defence" (from unarmed black people looking at him) and was acquitted by the all-white jury (Daniels and his colleagues were demanding greater enfranchisement rights in Alabama - and it is this disenfranchisement that ensures that there are no black faces on this - or any other - jury in the state). The Attorney General for Alabama, Richmond Flowers, had attempted to change the indictment to Murder, but was over-ruled by the trial judge, who also had him removed from the case.

World Mosquito Day, initiated by Dr Ronald Ross to commemorate this date in 1897 when he confirmed his discovery of the Malaria parasite in the stomach of mosquitos.

Also on This Date: the 5-day Battle of Yarmouk ends with the loss of territories belonging to the Byzantine empire to the Muslim forces (636); Richard the Lionheart orders the massacre of more than 2000 Muslim prisoners-of-war in a show of strength in front of Saladin's army (1191 - Saladin reacts in kind, ordering the deaths of over 2000 Crusader prisoners-of-war in Damascus); mathematician and former effective ruler of the Dutch republic Johan de Witt, and his brother Cornelius, are shot dead in a military coup, and their bodies mutilated and strung up on a gibbet in The Hague (1672 - WIKI delicately says that the mob "partook of their roasted livers in a cannibalistic frenzy" [whilst also immediatley reporting that "a remarkable discipline was maintained by the mob". I suppose it depends how you interpret "remarkable"]); Rossini's opera Le Comte Ory is premiered by the Paris Opera at the Salle La Peletier, conducted by Francois Habeneck (1828); Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace publish their theories of Evolution through Natural Selection in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (1858); Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is premiered in a tent in central Moscow, conducted by Ippolit Al'tani (1882 - the oringinally planned, open-air performance, with synchronised cannon fire, additional Brass Bands, and all the bells in the city pealing had to be abandoned); the German Army marches through Brussels on its way to attack France (1914 - the city is undefended, and the army walks through unhindered; the advance guard consists of three men [a Captain and two privates] on bicycles - the main guard which follows takes over 5 hours to pass through, to the distress of citizens, who are unable to cross the main road to get to shops on the other side of the street); Japan's public service broadcasting company, NHK, begins broadcasts (1926); Winston Churchill delivers his "The Few" speech in the House of Commons (1940 - he'd not originally included the "in the field of human conflict" bit, until his Chief Military assistant, Hastings Ismay suggested "Jesus & His disciples" - on the same day, an NKVD agent attacks Leon Trotsky with an ice axe in his home in Mexico City); 168 allied airmen, pronounced as "terrorists" by the Nazis, begin their imprisonment in Buchenwald Concentration Camp (1944 - all but two survive their 8-months in captivity); US merchant ship NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered civilian ship, begins its maiden voyage (1962); troops from four Warsaw Pact countries invade Czechoslavakia to crush the Prague Spring (1968 - First Secretary Dubcek is arrested: the invasion is condemned by, amongst many others - and of all people - Nicolae Cheausescu, General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party); Carl Orff's De temporum fine comoedia is premiered at the Sazlburg Festival, conducted by Karajan (1973); NASA launches Viking 1 on its mission to survey Mars and explore its surface (1975 - exactly 2 years later to the day, NASA launches Voyager 2 on its mission to study the outer planets of the Solar System); a ceasefire is called, ending the 8-year-long Iran-Iraq War (1988 - Iraq can now be "our" enemy, too); the pleasure steamer Marchioness is sunk after colliding twice with a dredger, killing 51 of its passengers (1989); the citizens of Moscow gather around the Russian Parliamentary building to defend it from a military attack from Communist reactionaries - Boris Yeltsin climbs on a tank to address the crowd (1991 - later that evening, Estonia siezes its chance to declare its reinstatement as a republic); the PLO and the Israeli government sign the Oslo Accords (1993); the US launches cruise missile attacks into Afghanistan and Sudan, in retaliation for al-Qaeda bombings of US Embassies (1998);

Birthdays Today include: Jacopo Peri (1561); Thomas Corneille (1625); HP Lovecraft (1890 - no doubt under a gibbous moon); Salvatore Quasimodo (1901); André Morell (1909); Jacqueline Susann (1918); Jim Reeves (1923); Andrei Konchalovsky (1937); Anne Evans (1941); Isaac Heyes (1942); Sylvester McCoy (1943); Robert Plant (1948); Phil Lynott (1949); James marsters (1962); David Walliams (1971); Maxim Vengarov (1974); Jamie Callum (1979); Andrew Garfield (1982);

Final Days for: Tomás Luis de Victoria (1611); J K/B V/Wanhal (1813); William Booth (1912); Fred Hoyle (2001); Phyllis Diller (2012); Elmore Leonard & Marian McPartland (both 2013); Jerry lewis (2017).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the Morning of Wednesday, 20th August, 1969 were:

Overture: "gramophone records"
Your Midweek Choice: [to quote the Genome]: "A record request programme who also directs the BERLIN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA; Tone Poem: En Saga.SibeKus VIENNAPHILHARMONIC Orchestra Conducted by SIR MALCOLM SARGENT"
This Week's Composer: Haydn (L'incontro improvviso Ovt; Per quel che ha mal di stomaco (from Lo speziale); Vln Conc in C; 6 German Dances.
Folk Songs from Canada (Episode 8: miscellaneous Work Songs)
Historic Organs: Herbert Sumsion plays Music by Wesley, Elgar, & Parry on the organ of Gloucester Cathedral.
Haydn Pno 3os played by the Oromonte Trio (3os in Eb, H xv 30; & in F H xv 4)
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, led by Roger Layton, condicted by Silvestri (Stravinsky 1945 Firebird Suite; Elgar [work unspecified] - with an interval Music by Mozart, played by the Vienna Mozart Ensemble, conducted by Boskovsky)

[Pulcinella]

And the Radio 3 Schedules for the Morning of Wednesday, 20th August, 1969 were:

Overture: "gramophone records"
Your Midweek Choice: [to quote the Genome]: "A record request programme who also directs the BERLIN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA; Tone Poem: En Saga.SibeKus VIENNAPHILHARMONIC Orchestra Conducted by SIR MALCOLM SARGENT"
This Week's Composer: Haydn (L'incontro improvviso Ovt; Per quel che ha mal di stomaco (from Lo speziale); Vln Conc in C; 6 German Dances.
Folk Songs from Canada (Episode 8: miscellaneous Work Songs)
Historic Organs: Herbert Sumsion plays Music by Wesley, Elgar, & Parry on the organ of Gloucester Cathedral.
Haydn Pno 3os played by the Oromonte Trio (3os in Eb, H xv 30; & in F H xv 4)
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, led by Roger Layton, condicted by Silvestri (Stravinsky 1945 Firebird Suite; Elgar [work unspecified] - with an interval Music by Mozart, played by the Vienna Mozart Ensemble, conducted by Boskovsky)

Would the Canadian Work songs include 'I'm a lumberjack', do you think?

Good to see the date back, to avoid confusion.
Yesterday's didn't have one.

[LMcD]

Still much missed here. Used to see him frequently at the Proms, RFH, Barbican (where I once sat next to him) and elsewhere. Greatly enjoyed his newspaper columns and still have his books, some signed. I'm sure that if he was still with us he would be casting his excoriating wit on the current situation.

I remember that he regularly used his column in the 'Times' to berate the North Thames Gas Board who had done something to upset his mother. They don't write sentences that long any more!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yesterday's didn't have one.

About how that happened it is probably an act of charity not to speculate.

[Joseph K]

Sessions for Bitches Brew began 50 years ago today!

(August 19th)