Today's the Day

[Cockney Sparrow]

We've stayed at Clough Williams-Ellis's fantastical Italianate village Portmeirion on the edge of Snowdonia ........

Clough Williams-Ellis was a proponent of rammed earth construction (the right kind of earth - proportions of sand, clay etc). Rammed between shutter forms, then when finished weatherproofed by render. IIRC there are a lot of rammed earth buildings at Portmeirion. Thanks for this post, it reminds me I have always intended to stay at or visit Portmeirion.

[Padraig]

Kenneth MacKellar sings his own arrangement of She Moved Through The Fair. Very interesting piece as it's an 'artificial' folk song (or so I call them). The tune is certainly traditional, but it was published in Herbert Hughes's Irish Country Songs in 1909, with words by the poet Padraic Colum. Hughes did this a lot, most famously with W. B Yeats's Down By The Sally Gardens (in the same collection - also I Know Where I'm Going). This has a noble tradition, most famously with Robert Burns and Thomas Moore, who wrote new words to old tunes.

Very useful observation which helps allay my own puzzlement at times with certain songs.

[Richard Tarleton]

Clough Williams-Ellis was a proponent of rammed earth construction (the right kind of earth - proportions of sand, clay etc). Rammed between shutter forms, then when finished weatherproofed by render. IIRC there are a lot of rammed earth buildings at Portmeirion. Thanks for this post, it reminds me I have always intended to stay at or visit Portmeirion.

And thank you - didn't know that. One is royally looked after there - service at all levels astonishingly good.

[teamsaint]

We've stayed at Clough Williams-Ellis's fantastical Italianate village Portmeirion on the edge of Snowdonia often )enough to count as regulars

- last year the family gathered there for our mother's wake as she'd expressed a wish for her ashes to be scattered on the shore of the Menai Strait, close to her birthplace. It's an amazing place - you can stay in a village room or apartment, or in the hotel at the bottom of the hill which has a stunning view over the estuary. The village was the setting for the 1966-7 cult TV series The Prisoner, which still seems to have devotees worldwide (I only ever managed about half an episode, but one can see how it became a cult).

What a wonderful place to say farewell, RT.

I’d love to go there, haven’t ever got round to it, and the prices in the cottages can be a bit steep. Maybe for my next round number birthday.......


Loved the series too, wonderful stuff, and like the best drama, seemingly more relevant now than then.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 10th

The Commemoration Day of William of Occam (or "Ockham", or "Ocham"); the 14th Century friar and philosopher, who remains famous for giving his name to (certainly) and formulating (possibly) the abductive heuristic law of parsimony known as "Occam's Razor", which recommends that, if a problem has a number of possible solutions, the one requiring the fewest assumptions should be chosen. He did a lot more, besides, and his work on Aristotle (essentially questioning theories in his work - quite a novel approach in the 14th Century) was his most influential work in the decades following his life. His political theories were influential, too, arguing for a distinct separation of Church and State Law, and for the limitation of the Pope's influence on secular matters such as property laws.

And it's Siblings Day - an initiative originating in the United States to create an equivalent to Mother's Day and Father's Day. Grandparents Day is on 6th October - next up: Cousins Day, Uncles Day, Aunts Day, In-Laws Day, Orphans Day, Surrogates Day, Sperm Donors Day - the card sales possibilties are endless (as indicated by the absence of apostrophes).

Also on this Date: Halley's Comet makes its closest approach to Earth so far [a bit over 3,000,000 miles] (837); the first area of Jewish segregation to be called a "Ghetto" is established in Venice (1516 - it exists until Napoleon invades 280 years later); Mount Tambora, an Indonesian volcano dormant for centuries, violently erupts with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7 [the joint highest ever recorded] and begins a six-month long expulsion of ash, lowering temperatures and creating harvest failures throughout the world, and resulting in epidemics of Typhus and Cholera (1815 - the following year was referred to as "The Year Without a Summer"); Byron persuades Coleridge to publish Kubla Khan (1816 - two days later, publisher John Murray pays Coleridge £80 for it [and other writings] - about £8000 today); in reprisal for preventing the Greek uprising, Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hung outside the Cathedral after celebrating Easter Sunday Eucharist on the orders of the Ottoman Sultan (1821 - his body is left on public display for two days before being flung into the Bosphorus, and his execution is followed by the massacre of the Greek population of Constantinople); the 10,500 inhabitants of the beseiged city of Messolonghi [where Byron had died two years earlier] abandon their homes - most of them are killed in attacks by the 40,000-strong Ottoman army (1826); the first edition of the New York Tribune is published (1841); Walter Hunt receives a patent for his invention of a Safety Pin (1849 - he sells the patent almost immediately for $400 [just over £900 today] - which more than covers the $15 he owes to a friend; the company that bought the patent go on to make millions from sales); Brahms' German Requiem is premiered in Bremen Cathedral, with the composer conducting, and Stockhausen the baritone soloist (1868 - it is Good Friday); Chabrier's Gwendoline is premiered in Brussels (1886); the Titanic sets sail on its maiden voyage (1912); 133 workers [most of them women and girls] are killed in an explosion at Eddystone Armaments Factory in Pennsylvania (1917); Mexican government forces shoot deat Revolutionar leader, Emiliano Zapata (1919); The Great Gatsby is published (1925 - on the same day, Stalin renames the Russian city of Tsaritsyn "Stalingrad"); George Antheil's First Symphony, Zingareska, is premiered in New York (1927); Vaughan Williams' Fourth Symphony [as it later becomes called] is premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Adrian Boult (1935); the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state, is created in occupied Yugoslavia by Hitler and Mussolini (1941); Rudolf Vrba (aged 19) and Alfred Wetzler (26) escape from Auschwitz; they had been hidden in a wood pile for the past four days to fool the Nazis into thinking they would be further away when they made their actual escape, and had dowsed the wood with tobacco and gasolene to deter the guard dogs (1944 - they are aided by the Polish resistance and "ordinary" Polish citizens; their subsequent report of conditions in the Extermination Camp is so shocking that it takes some months before it reaches the public); John Osborne's The Entertainer [written in response to Laurence Olivier's request for an "angry middle-aged man" role] is premiered at the Royal Court Theatre (1957 - on the same evening, Sidney Lumet's film 12 Angry Men is released in Beverly Hills); Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving The Beatles (1970); the US Table Tennis Team become the first Americans delegation to China in 22 years (1971); the Yinqueshan Han Slips, ancient Chinese texts written on bamboo strips and buried for over 2000 years, are found when construction workers unearth Han dynasty tombs in Shandong Province, China (1972); forty days into his hunger strike, Bobby Sands is elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, winning by 450 votes (1981); an explosion at Ojhri Camp [used as a weapons storage facility by the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan] kills at least 90 people and injures more than a thousand others (1988); the Good Friday Agreement is signed in Belfast (1998); a Polish Air Force plane, carrying 96 people - including the Polish President, his wife, the Chief of the Polish General Staff Staff, the President of the National Bank of Poland, a former Polish President and his wife, 18 members of the Polish Government, senior members of the Polish Military, senior members of the Polish Clergy, and relations of victims of the Katyn massacre - crashes, killing everybody on board (2010); and, this time last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies for five hours about Data security to the US Congress, answering such gruelling and penetrating questions as "Is Twitter the same thing as what you do?", "What do I do if I don't want to receive adverts for chocolate?" and "How do you sustain a business that doesn't charge users?" [answer "Senator, we run Ads" "Oh, I see! That's great!"].

Birthdays Today include: John Whitehurst (1713); William Hazlitt (1778); William Booth (1829); Joseph Pulitzer (1847); Eugen d'Albert (1864); George William Russell (1867); George Arliss (1868); Frances Perkins (1880); Bernardo Houssay (1887); Victor de Sabata (1892); Ben Nicholson (1894); Jaroslav Tomasek (1896); Claude Bolling (1930); Omar Shafif (1932); Patrick Garland (1935); Paul Theroux (1941); Lesley Garrett (1955); Yefim Bronfman (1958); Gordon Buchanan (1972); ... and both Max von Sydow and Liz Sheridan are 90 today.

Final Days for: Algernon Charles Swinburne (1909); Emiliano Zapata Salazar (1919); Kahlil Gibran (1931); King Oliver (1938); Oskar Lindberg (1955); Arthur Benjamin (1960); Stuart Sutcliffe (1962); Evelyn Waugh (1966); Nino Rota (1979); Peter Jones (2000); Norbert Brainin (2005); Richard Arnell (2009); Richard Hoggart and Sue Townsend (both 2014); and Richie Benaud (2015).

And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 10th April, 1979 were:

Overture: Rimsky-Korsakov Procession of the Nobles; Tchaikovsky 3rd Suite for Orchestra; Wieniawski Concert Polonaise in D
Morning Concert: "A Morning in Japan" - Sullivan Overture: The Mikado (!); Strauss Japanese Festival Music; Puccini Love Duet (Madam Butterfly, Act 1); Holst Japanese Suite.
This Week's Composer: Beethoven (Sonatine in c, for mandolin and cembalo; Duo in Eb, for viola and cello; Horn Sonata; Violin Sonata in G, Op 30 #3 [Kreisler & Rachmaninoff]; Folksong arrangements: Sally in our alley; The Pulse of an Irishman; Auld Lang Syne)
Concert Club: Bruckner Intermezzo for String Quintet; Brahms Sextet in B flat. Op 18; Mendelssohn Octet (with an Interval talk by Peter Gelhorn on "Mozart in the Theatre").
Schumann: Fantasy in C (Barbara Nissman)

[Richard Tarleton]

Mount Tambora, an Indonesian volcano dormant for centuries, violently erupts with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7 [the joint highest ever recorded] and begins a six-month long expulsion of ash, lowering temperatures and creating harvest failures throughout the world, and resulting in epidemics of Typhus and Cholera (1815 - the following year was referred to as "The Year Without a Summer")

From Wikipedia:

That year [1815-16] became the second-coldest year in the northern hemisphere since 1400,[32] while the 1810s were the coldest decade on record, a result of Tambora's eruption and other suspected volcanic events between 1809 and 1810.[48] (See sulfate concentration chart.) Surface-temperature anomalies during the summers of 1816, 1817 and 1818 were −0.51, −0.44 and −0.29 °C, respectively.[32] Along with a cooler summer, parts of Europe experienced a stormier winter,[5] and the Elbe and Ohře Rivers froze over a period of twelve days in February 1816. As a result, prices of wheat, rye, barley and oats rose dramatically by 1817.[49]
This climate anomaly has been cited as a reason for the severity of the 1816–19 typhus epidemic in southeast Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.[5] In addition, large numbers of livestock died in New England during the winter of 1816–1817, while cool temperatures and heavy rains led to failed harvests in the British Isles. Families in Wales travelled long distances as refugees, begging for food. Famine was prevalent in north and southwest Ireland, following the failure of wheat, oat and potato harvests. The crisis was severe in Germany, where food prices rose sharply. Demonstrations at grain markets and bakeries, followed by riots, arson and looting, took place in many European cities. It was the worst famine of the 19th century.[5]

The deficiencies of history as taught - and understood for that matter - in school and university when I was studying it - never once, in my extensive reading on this period 50 years ago, at school and university, did I come across any reference to Mount Tambora. History was political, economic, diplomatic, military, social - and I even taught it for a while, until I realised the life was not for me. Geography, climate, anthropology, all sorts of other disciplines which now help to shape our understanding of the past, I only discovered the relevance of years later, with the help of authors like Jared Diamond, recently Yuval Noah Harari, and others.

[greenilex]

Is this an example of scholarly “species-ism”, the belief that anything not related to Man must be unimportant?

We still have delusions of omnipotence where geophysics and the natural order are concerned.

[LMcD]

American actor and director Harry Morgan was born 10.04.1915. He had a small part in 'High Noon' (ooh, matron.....), but of his many other roles the best remembered is probably that of Colonel Sherman T Potter in M*A*S*H. (My thanks to Tim Vine who mentioned Mr Morgan's birth date on this afternoon's 'Countdown').

[Padraig]

Brahms' German Requiem is premiered in Bremen Cathedral, with the composer conducting, and Stockhausen, the baritone, soloist (1868 - it is Good Friday);

10 April 1998 The Good Friday Agreement signed.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

10 April 1998 The Good Friday Agreement signed.

Indeed it was; in Belfast


As mentioned.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 11th

The Feast Day of St Guthlac of Crowland, a late seventh/early eighth Century English hermit from Lincolnshire, who had been a soldier as a young man, and served in the army of Aethelbert of Mercia, became a Monk at Repton, then a hermit on the island of Croyland in the Fens. He was much afflicted by marsh fever, and believed himself to be possessed by demons "ferocious in appearance, terrible in shape with great heads, long necks, thin faces, yellow complexions, filthy beards, shaggy ears, wild foreheads, fierce eyes, foul mouths, horses' teeth, throats vomiting flames, twisted jaws, thick lips, strident voices, singed hair, fat cheeks, pigeons breasts, scabby thighs, knotty knees, crooked legs, swollen ankles, splay feet, spreading mouths, raucous cries" ... and, worst of all, spoke "Welsh". Undeterred, pilgrims came from miles to seek his advice and blessing, including future King Aethelbald, who promised to build an Abbey if Guthlac's prediction that Aethelbald would become king ever came true. It did, two years after Guthlac's death (which he had also predicted correctly), and the new King was as good as his word; Crowland Abbey was the result.

It's also World Parkinson's Day, dedicated to raising awareness of and support & funds for research into Parkinson's Disease.

Also on this Date: the Battle of Ravenna (1512); William and Mary are crowned joint sovereigns of England, Ireland, and Scotland (1689); the third [and most important] parts of the Treaty of Utrecht, ending the War of the Spanish Succession the following year is signed (1713); Bach's Passio Domini nostri J.C. secundum Evangelistam Matthæum is "premiered" in the Church of St Thomas in Leipzig (1727); Beethoven's Archduke Trio is premiered at The Roman Emperor Inn, in Vienna by the composer with Ignaz Schuppanzigh, and Josef Linke (1814 - according to Spohr, who attanded a rehearsal, On account of his deafness there was scarcely anything left of the virtuosity of the artist which had formerly been so greatly admired. In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys until the strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of notes were omitted, so that the music was unintelligible unless one could look into the pianoforte part. I was deeply saddened at so hard a fate ); the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, an institute of higher education for African-American women, is founded in Atlanta, Georgia (1881 - later renamed Spelman College); the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam opens (1888); the city of Tel aviv is founded, named after a city in Thomas Herzl's utopian Zionist novel, Oldnewland (1909); responding to a Morse Code call for assistance from the rebelling prisoners, the US 3rd Army liberates the Buchenwald Extermination Camp (1945 - at exactly 3:15pm; the time now permanently on display on the clock at the entrance to the Camp); President Truman relieves General MacArthur of his Command of the American forces in the Korean War after the General has contradicted the President's stated policies (1951 - on the same day, the Stone of Scone, taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist Students, is discovered in Arbroath Abbey); a bomb on board the Kashmir Princess, a chartered Air India plane, sends it crashing into the South China Sea, killing most of the passengers and crew in an assassination attempt on Chinese premier Zhou Enlai - Zhou is not on board (1955); the trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem (1961); 271 people are killed, and over a thousand injured in a group of 47 Tornadoes devastate Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Winsconsin, Iowa, and Illinois (1965); German student leader Rudi Dutschke is shot in the head by Josef Bachmann, who had been "inspired" by the assassination of Martin Luther King (1968 - Dutschke survives the attack, and recurperates in the UK, where he begins a correspondance with Bachmann, which continues until the latter's suicide in prison two years later; Dutschke suffered brain damage, and was ill for much of the rest of his life, dying eleven years later after an epileptic seizure); Apollo 13 is launched (1970); Apple 1 - the company's first product - goes on sale (1976); the Tanzanian Army enters Kampala, and Idi Amin is deposed (1979); the worst violence of the Brixton Riot results in over 300 injuries [most of them sustained by the police], over a hundred vehicles set alight, and 150 buildings damaged - 82 people are arrested (1981); at a secret meeting at the residence of Lord Mishcon, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan sign the London Agreement, outlining the framework for an international peace conference (1987); Customs Officers in Middlesbrough seize the barrel of a supergun, intended for Iraq (1990); an Al-Qaeda member drives a gas truck fitted with explosives into the El Ghriba synagogue in Tunisia, killing 19 people and injuring more than 30 others (2002 - on the same day in Caracas, a quarter of a million people march to the Presidential Palace to demand the resignation of Hugo Chavez; 19 of them are killed by the President's guards); 11 people are killed and more than 200 others injured when a bomb is exploded in the main Metro station in Minsk, Belarus (2011).

Birthdays Today include: Septimu Severus (145); Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682/3); Christopher Smart (171722); Charles Hallé (1819); Ferdinand Lassalle (1825); Dan Maskell (1908); John Levi (1912); Norman McLaren (1914); Alberto Ginastera (1916); Francesco d'Avalos (1930); Joel Gray (1932); Bob Harris (1946); Andrew Wiles (1953); Jeremy Clarkson (1960); Mark Lawson (1962); ... and Cerys Matthews is 50 today.

Final Days for: Llewellyn the Great (1240); Primo Levi (1987); Bruno Hoffmann (1991); Kurt Vonnegut (2007); Don Blackman (2013).

And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 11th April 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Rossini, Le Cenerentola Ovt; Bach, Concerto for 2 Violins; Sibelius Karelia Suite; Mendelssohn, Rondo Capriccioso; Mozart, Clarinet Concerto.
Composers of the Week: Glazunov and Taneyev ("Winter" from The Seasons; Arab Dance and Closing Scene from "Raymonda"; Chant du Menestrel - Schezo from Symphony #4; Symphony #1).
Mendelssohn: S4tet in a minor, Op13
Langham Chamber Orchestra: Mozart Concert arias: Chi sa, chi sa, qual sia (K 582), Ch'io mi scordi di te (K 505); Haydn Symphony No 91 in Eb
A Flute-Player's Paradise: Chaminade, Concertino, Op 107; Martinu, Scherzo; Laszlo Sary, Pezzo concertato; Faure, Morceau de concours; Messaien, Le Merle noir; Bartok, Three Folk Songs.
Concert from Lancaster: Lutoslawski, Mi-Parti; Schumann, Piano Concerto in A minor; Sibelius Symphony No 3 in C.

[Padraig]

Also on this Date: 11 April William and Mary are crowned joint sovereigns of England, Ireland, and Scotland (1689);

William went on to further glory at the Boyne in 1690 and the rest is history.

http://www.finnegansweb.com/wiki/index.php/Orange_Toast

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 12th

International Day of Human Space Flight, Cosmonaut's Day, Yuri's Night - all celebrating the first manned space flight made by Yuri Gagarin 58 years ago today.

And it's the Feast Day of Saint Erkembode, of whom "little is known" (according to WIKI) other than that his name means "recognised envoy" who lived in the late 7th-early 8th Centuries and was Bishop of the immense diocese of Therouanne which stretched from Ypres to the Somme. He might have been born in Ireland, and travelled to Northern France to become a monk. As tribute to his many travels, early pilgrims to his tomb would leave the shoes that they had worn to get there - nowadays, parents of crippled children leave their children's shoes on his tomb, in the hope that he will intercede in a cure for them.

Also on this Date: the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople, looting, murdering, and raping the citizens, and fundamentally weakening the city's defences, leaving it open to conquest by Islamic forces (1204); the first Union Flag is adopted for use on English and Scottish ships (1606); Weber's Oberon is premiered at Covent Garden (1826); Flaubert's Madame Bovary is first published in Novel form, having been serialised the previous year, and the author put on trial [and acquited] for obscenity in January (1857); the Battle of Fort Sumter begins, marking the start of the American Civil War (1861); during which, on this date three years later occurs the Massacre of Fort Pillow, in which Confederate Army soldiers murder 221 black Union Army servicemen and their white officers who have surrendered and laid down their arms (1864); the Ballet Russes premiere The Good-Humoured Ladies in Rome, with Music taken from Scarlatti Sonatas orchestrated and arranged by Vincenzo Tommasini (1917); Generalissimo Chiang Kei-shek orders the massacre of Chinese Communists and suspected Communists - up to 10000 people are violently killed (1927); From the House of the Dead, in a version mostly by Janacek, is premiered in Brno (1930); the Ballet-Russes de Monte Carlo premiere George Balanchine's Cotillon, with Music arranged from Chabrier piano Music by Vittorio Rieti (1932); Frank Whittle tests the first Jet engine in Rugby (1937 - that's the Warwickshire town; he wasn't trying it during a sports event); Canadian troops liberate the Dutch Transit Camp of Westerbork, freeing 876 Jewish prisoners abandoned by their Nazi guards (1945 - on the same day, Richard Strauss finishes the manuscript of Metamorphosen); Bill Hayley and the Comets record Rock Around the Clock in Pythian Temple Studios, New York (1954); following extensive research and testing, Jonas Salk's Polio Vaccine is declared "safe and effective" (1955); with the comment "Poyekhali!" ["let's go!"] Yuri Gagarin is launched into space in Vostok 1 (1961 - apparently he was whistling a song especially written for the occasion by Shostakovich on re-entry); Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre is premiered (in Swedish) in Stockholm (1978); Columbia, the first Space Shuttle, is launched on its first mission (1981); Schnittke's 4th Symphony is premiered in Moscow (1984); EuroDisney opens in Paris (1992); and ABT-450, "a novel protease inhibitor for the treatment of Hepatitis C" is made public (2014).

Birthdays Today include: Marc Antoine Muret (1526); Christian IV of Denmark (1577); Pietro Nardini (1722); Joseph lanner (1801); Alexander Ostrovsky (1823); Edward Walter Maunder (1851); Robert Delauney (1885); Lily Pons (1898); Oliver Postgate (1925); Thomas Helmsley (1927); Jean-Francois Paillard (1928); Bryan Magee (1930); Tiny Tim (1932); Montserrat Caballé (1933); Alan Ayckbourn (1939); Herbie Hancock (1940); Bobby Moore (1941); Bill Bryden (1942); Lisa Jardine (1944); David Cassidy (1950); Nicholas Sackman (1950); Claire Danes (1979); and Saoirse Ronan is 25 today.

Final Days for: Nicola Amati (1684); Pietro Metastasio (1782); Charles Burney (1814 - five days after his 88th birthday); Charles Messier (1817); Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood (1866); Feodor Chaliapin (1938); Franklin D Roosevelt (1945); Josephine Baker (1975); Joe Louis (1981); Alan Paton (1988); Sugar Ray Robinson (1989); Boxcar Willie (1999); Werner Schroeter (2010 - five days after his 65th birthday) ... and, ten years ago today, Edward Harper.


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Saturday, 12th April, 1969 were:

The Saturday Concert (a repeat of an evening concert broadcast two years earlier)
Record Review: Recent Orchestral releases (reviewed by Noel Goodwin); a postscript to the Beethoven Piano Concertos (by Joseph Cooper).
Jazz Record Requests introduced by Steve Race

[antongould]

International Day of Human Space Flight, Cosmonaut's Day, Yuri's Night - all celebrating the first manned space flight made by Yuri Gagarin 58 years ago today.

And it's the Feast Day of Saint Erkembode, of whom "little is known" (according to WIKI) other than that his name means "recognised envoy" who lived in the late 7th-early 8th Centuries and was Bishop of the immense diocese of Therouanne which stretched from Ypres to the Somme. He might have been born in Ireland, and travelled to Northern France to become a monk. As tribute to his many travels, early pilgrims to his tomb would leave the shoes that they had worn to get there - nowadays, parents of crippled children leave their children's shoes on his tomb, in the hope that he will intercede in a cure for them.

Also on this Date: the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople, looting, murdering, and raping the citizens, and fundamentally weakening the city's defences, leaving it open to conquest by Islamic forces (1204); the first Union Flag is adopted for use on English and Scottish ships (1606); Weber's Oberon is premiered at Covent Garden (1826); Flaubert's Madame Bovary is first published in Novel form, having been serialised the previous year, and the author put on trial [and acquited] for obscenity in January (1857); the Battle of Fort Sumter begins, marking the start of the American Civil War (1861); during which, on this date three years later occurs the Massacre of Fort Pillow, in which Confederate Army soldiers murder 221 black Union Army servicemen and their white officers who have surrendered and laid down their arms (1864); the Ballet Russes premiere The Good-Humoured Ladies in Rome, with Music taken from Scarlatti Sonatas orchestrated and arranged by Vincenzo Tommasini (1917); Generalissimo Chiang Kei-shek orders the massacre of Chinese Communists and suspected Communists - up to 10000 people are violently killed (1927); From the House of the Dead, in a version mostly by Janacek, is premiered in Brno (1930); the Ballet-Russes de Monte Carlo premiere George Balanchine's Cotillon, with Music arranged from Chabrier piano Music by Vittorio Rieti (1932); Frank Whittle tests the first Jet engine in Rugby (1937 - that's the Warwickshire town; he wasn't trying it during a sports event); Canadian troops liberate the Dutch Transit Camp of Westerbork, freeing 876 Jewish prisoners abandoned by their Nazi guards (1945 - on the same day, Richard Strauss finishes the manuscript of Metamorphosen); Bill Hayley and the Comets record Rock Around the Clock in Pythian Temple Studios, New York (1954); following extensive research and testing, Jonas Salk's Polio Vaccine is declared "safe and effective" (1955); with the comment "Poyekhali!" ["let's go!"] Yuri Gagarin is launched into space in Vostok 1 (1961 - apparently he was whistling a song especially written for the occasion by Shostakovich on re-entry); Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre is premiered (in Swedish) in Stockholm (1978); Columbia, the first Space Shuttle, is launched on its first mission (1981); Schnittke's 4th Symphony is premiered in Moscow (1984); EuroDisney opens in Paris (1992); and ABT-450, "a novel protease inhibitor for the treatment of Hepatitis C" is made public (2014).

Birthdays Today include: Marc Antoine Muret (1526); Christian IV of Denmark (1577); Pietro Nardini (1722); Joseph lanner (1801); Alexander Ostrovsky (1823); Edward Walter Maunder (1851); Robert Delauney (1885); Lily Pons (1898); Oliver Postgate (1925); Thomas Helmsley (1927); Jean-Francois Paillard (1928); Bryan Magee (1930); Tiny Tim (1932); Montserrat Caballé (1933); Alan Ayckbourn (1939); Herbie Hancock (1940); Bobby Moore (1941); Bill Bryden (1942); Lisa Jardine (1944); David Cassidy (1950); Nicholas Sackman (1950); Claire Danes (1979); and Saoirse Ronan is 25 today.

Final Days for: Nicola Amati (1684); Pietro Metastasio (1782); Charles Burney (1814 - five days after his 88th birthday); Charles Messier (1817); Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood (1866); Feodor Chaliapin (1938); Franklin D Roosevelt (1945); Josephine Baker (1975); Joe Louis (1981); Alan Paton (1988); Sugar Ray Robinson (1989); Boxcar Willie (1999); Werner Schroeter (2010 - five days after his 65th birthday) ... and, ten years ago today, Edward Harper.


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Saturday, 12th April, 1969 were:

The Saturday Concert (a repeat of an evening concert broadcast two years earlier)
Record Review: Recent Orchestral releases (reviewed by Noel Goodwin); a postscript to the Beethoven Piano Concertos (by Joseph Cooper).
Jazz Record Requests introduced by Steve Race

No England Test cricketers ferney ..... I need one ....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No England Test cricketers ferney ..... I need one ....

I don't really "do" sports, anton, so only names so familiar that even I've heard of them get included. Please feel free to add suggestions of your own.