Today's the Day

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 1st

St David's Day - and so, hapus Dydd Gŵyl Dewi to all Welsh-speaking Forumistas (with sincere apologies for any awkward use of the language - it has been nine years since I last used it in conversation ) It may be useful to know that today is also Beer Day in Iceland (celebrating the end of a 74-year long period of Prohibition) - anyone of Welsh-Icelandic ancestry is going to have a really good time tonight. (If they're stuck for ideas about what to eat, it might be useful to know that it's National Pig Day in the United States - although whether that means you should eat more pork-based products, or abstain from them completely in respect of the day, I'm uncertain.) And "Grandma Day" in Bulgaria.

Also on this date: the French Wars of Religion begin with the massacre of sixty-three Huguenot Protestants as they attend a church service in Wassy, North-East France (1562); the city of Rio de Janeiro is founded (1565); the Salem Witch Trials begin (1692); Sweden has fun with its calendar: on this date in 1700, a new one is introduced with the intention of gradually adopting the Gregorian calendar; exactly 12 years later, they abandon this and re-adopt the Julian Calendar; and exactly 41 years after that (1753) they adopt the Gregorian; Lord John Russell introduces the first Reform Bill to the House or Commons (1831); Rebecca Lee Crumpier becomes the first African-American woman to be awarded a Medical Degree (1864); Dmitri Mendeleev completes his first design of the Periodic Table (1867); Yellowstone is designated a National Park - the first such in the world (1872); Henri Becquerel discovers radioactive decay (1896); the Zimmermann Telegraph, in which secret plans for a German alliance with Mexico against the United States is printed in US newspapers (1917); the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh is kidnapped (1932); the Boulder ("Hoover") Dam is completed (1936); Captain America makes his first appearance (1941); the Bank of England is Nationalised (1946); The IMF opens for business (1947); Klaus Fuchs is convicted of giving British classified nuclear information to the Soviet Union (1950); a nuclear detonation in the Bikini Atoll results in the worst radioactive contamination created by a US test (1954); Soviet space probe Venera 3 becomes the first spacecraft to land on another planet (1966); the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank opens (1967); Bobby Sands begins his hunger strike in the Maze Prison (1981); and civil uprisings against Sadam Hussein begin in Iraq (1991).

Birthdays today include: Chopin (1810); Augustus Pugin (1812); Lytton Strachey (1880); Oskar Kokoshka (1886); Dmitri Mitropoulos (1896); Glenn Miller (1904); David Niven (1910); Robert Lowell (1917); Harry Belafonte (1927); Jacques Rivette (1928); Georgi Markov (1929); Leo Brouwer (1939); Roger Daltrey and Mike d'Abo (both 1944); Jim Crace (1946); Elliott Sharp (1951); Ron Howard (1954); and Thomas Ades (1971).

Last Days for: St David (589); Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (1244); Thomas Campion (1620); Girolamo Frescobaldi (1643); Roger North (1734); Johann Ludwig Bach (1731); Georg Christophe Wagenseil (1777); Gabriele D'Annunzio (1938); Jean Martinon (1976); Paul Scott (1978); Arthur Koestler (1983); and Jackie Coogan (1984).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Wednesday, 1st March, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Bizet L'Arlesienne Suite #2 (RPO/Beecham); Vivaldi Oboe Concerto in d minor (Heinz Holliger/I Musici); Mozart Symphony #31 (VPO/Levine); Glazunov The Seasons (SNO/Jarvi)
Composers of the Week: "Five Generations of Bachs" (works by Johann Ludwig, Johann Sebastian, and Johann Nikolaus)
From Stable to Parlour: Welsh Folk Songs arranged by Haydn
Wind Soloists of the COE: Music by Mendelssohn and Dvorak
Midweek Choice: Music by Mendelssohn, Dohnanyi, Monteverdi, Mozart (the complete Piano Concerto K467), and Delibes (the complete Act 2 of Sylvia), and lieder by Schubert.

[Pabmusic]

...It may be useful to know that today is also Beer Day in Iceland...

Every day is, etc.

[Pabmusic]

For St. David's Day. It's computerised, sadly.

https://soundcloud.com/pabmusic-445605675/daffyd-y-garreg-wen

[greenilex]

Thank you. Could you translate the title, please? I don’t have the vernacular I am afraid.

[Pabmusic]

Thank you. Could you translate the title, please? I don’t have the vernacular I am afraid.

David of the White Rock. :)

I was at school in Winchester. Winchester = Wen ('white') translated through Latin (Venta) and then Anglo-Saxon (Win). Therefore 'White fortified camp" - it's all the chalk, you see.

[french frank]

Winchester = Wen ('white') translated through Latin (Venta) and then Anglo-Saxon (Win)

I have a feeling that Latin 'Venta' comes from a pre-Roman British word indicating something like a centre, market, tribal settlement. So Winchester was Venta Belgarum, the tribal centre of the Belgae, Venta Silurum (Caerwent) of the Siluri, Venta Icenorum of the Iceni.

[Pabmusic]

I have a feeling that Latin 'Venta' comes from a pre-Roman British word indicating something like a centre, market, tribal settlement. So Winchester was Venta Belgarum, the tribal centre of the Belgae, Venta Silurum (Caerwent) of the Siluri, Venta Icenorum of the Iceni.

Before that it was Caer Gwent (white city). It's the 'wen' element that seems to have been carried into Latin (settlement of the Belgae named 'win') and thence into AS (Wintonceaster = a 'ton' with a 'ceaster' at a place called 'win'). At least that has been my understanding for (too) many years.

But I doubt this was very accurately recorded anyway. It's certainly a pre-Roman element that seems to have been passed on.

[greenilex]

Winton and Hamtun will do for me. Not sure about Romsey, tho’ clearly an island.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 2nd

St Chad's Day - the 7th Century saint, Bishop of Northumberland and jointly responsible (with his brother, St Cedd) for introducing Christianity to the Kingdom of Mercia.

On this date, the year-long First Siege of Rome by the Ostrogoth forces under King Vitiges begins (537); Charles I dissolves Parliament, condemning its "undutiful and seditious carriage", and has nine MPs arrested - his personal rule of the country lasts for eleven years (1629); the first discrete ballet staged in England, The Loves of Venus and Mars is presented by John Weaver, using Music from a variety of sources (1717); the first semaphore machines are used in Paris (1791); Haydn's "Drum Roll" Symphony is premiered in London (1795); the United States bans further imports of slaves (1807); Texas declares independence from Mexico (1836); the Russian Tsar, Nicolas I dies, and his son becomes Alexander II (1855); the first of the two-day Great Slave Auction is held in Georgia - at least 436 men, women, and children are sold (1859); Roderick McLean shoots at Queen Victoria as she boards a train, either with a toy gun, or narrowly missing her (depending on which contemporary report you read) - he spends the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum, and his action is commemorated by a poem by William McGonagall (1882); the Martha Washington Hotel - for women only - is opened in New York (1903); Oscar Straus' Ein Walzertraum premieres in Vienna (1907); Scriabin's Prometheus; the Poem of Fire is premiered in Moscow wirh Koussevitsky conducting (1911); King Kong is premiered in New York (1933); Ho Chi Minh is elected President of North Vietnam (1946); the first automated street lights are used in new Milford, Connecticut (1949); the Peace Corps are created (1961); the film of The Sound of Music is premiered in New York (1965); Baggeridge Colliery, the last working coal mine in the West Midlands, closes, ending 300 years of the industry in the area (1968); Pioneer 10, the first spaceship to leave the solar system, is launched from Cape Kennedy (1972); Compact Discs go on sale in Europe and North America (1983); the European Community agrees to have discontinued production of CFCs by the end of the century (1989 - this had been achieved by 1994); the Battle of the Rumaila Oil Field brings the First Gulf War to an end (1991); data sent from the Galileo spaceprobe indicates that Jupiter's moon, Europa, has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice (1998); and Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson are added to the Periodic Table, making Tom Lehrer's short of an extra verse (2017).

Birthdays include: Bedrich Smetana (1824); Kurt Weill (1900); Dr Seuss (1904); Marc Blitzstein (1905); Anthony Lewis (1915); Bernard Stevens (1916); Desi Arnez (1917); Robert Simpson (1921); Basil Hume (1923); Mikhail Gorbachev (1931); Bernard rands (1934); John Tusa (1936); Leif Segerstam (1944); Karen Carpenter (1950); Simone Young (1961); Jon Bon Jovi (1962); and Daniel Craig (1968).

Final Days for: Mani (274); St Chad (672); Anne of Denmark (1619); John Wesley (1791); Horace Walpole (1797); DH Lawrence (1930); Howard Carter (1939); Philip K Dick (1982); Randolph Scott (1987); Serge Gainsbourg (1991); Dusty Springfield (1999); and Malcolm Williamson (2003).

And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Sunday, 2nd March, 1969 were:

What's New: recent records.
Haydn Piano Trios: in c minor, Eb major, F major, and G major.
Your Concert Choice: listener requests.
Music Magazine: the whole programme commemorated the Centenary of Henry Wood.
Bach: 6th of 8 programmes devoted to the W-TC, played by Dennis Matthews (piano).

[gurnemanz]

St Chad (672); Anne of Denmark (1619); John Wesley (1791); Horace Walpole (1797); DH Lawrence (1930); Howard Carter (1939); Philip K Dick (1982); Randolph Scott (1987); Serge Gainsbourg (1991); Dusty Springfield (1999); and Malcolm Williamson (2003) ... That's a dinner party.

"Your Concert Choice: listener requests" ... not averse to a spot of brazen populism even then.

[greenilex]

My co-mother-in-law shares a birthday with Smetana, one of her favourite composers...many people of Czech extraction in the Mid West USA.

[Pabmusic]

My co-mother-in-law shares a birthday with Smetana, one of her favourite composers...many people of Czech extraction in the Mid West USA.

What's a 'co-mother-in-law'?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What's a 'co-mother-in-law'?

I presumed that, if one's partner had both a mother and a mother-in-law, then they'd be one's "co-mothers-in-law"?

[french frank]

What's a 'co-mother-in-law'?

I think one of two women whose children have married each other, one mother(-in-law) of the bride, the other mother(-in-law) of the groom.

Also what ferney's just said which I think means the same thing.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think one of two women whose children have married each other, one mother(-in-law) of the bride, the other mother(-in-law) of the groom.
Also what ferney's just said which I think means the same thing.

I don't think so - I would refer to one of those two women as "my Mother", not "my co-mother-in-law"?