Today's the Day

[french frank]

Pietro Cataldi (1552);

Regenerated 461 years later as the 12th Incarnation.

[greenilex]

I am thinking about a conversation between Leonardo and Nanak - both wise in very different ways. What would they write on the birthday cake?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Regenerated 461 years later as the 12th Incarnation.

Ahh - you noticed that, too?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ahh - you noticed that, too?

I notice that the Wiki entry on Cataldi gives a different year of birth - 1548 (still 15th April).



Presumably using the Gallifreyan Calendar.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 16th

World Voice Day, now in its 20th year, it is an international celebration of voice, and bringing global awareness of vocal problems and research for their cures, and training for the Artistic voice. It also encourages all those who use their voice for professional purposes to take care of their voices. (In other words, R3 presenters should take the opportunity to the shut the blazes up and just play the ryddu Music!!!)

http://world-voice-day.org/

And the Feast Day of St Bernadette of Lourdes - commemorated on the date of her death from Tubercolosis, aged 35 in 1879.

Also on this Date: Roman troops breach the walls of the Fortress of Masada thus ending the Great Jewish Revolt - they find that the inhabitants have commited mass suicide rather than subject themselves to Roman retribution (73); the citizens of Castille begin their 18-month-long revolt against the the rule of Spanish King Charles V (1520); Isaac Newton is knighted by Queen Anne, only the second scientist to be so honoured (1705 - the knighthood is probably for his political activities, rather than the monarch's bedtime reading of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica); Handel's Opera Alcina is premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (1735); the Battle of Culloden ends all chance of a return of the Stuart dynasty to regain the British throne (1746); the three-month-long Wanganui Campaign begins in new Zealand when a British junior officer accidentally shoots a Maori Wanganui leader, injuring him in the head - a small group of maoris attack a British family in retribution killing a woman and three girls - the killers are captured [by other Wanganui] and handed over to the British and hanged - other Maoris seek retribution and ... (1847); Meyerbeer's Opera Le Prophete is premiered at Dalle le Peletier, Paris (1849); the first passenger railway service is opened in India (1853); Liszt's Symphonic Poem Mazeppa is premiered in Weimar (1854); Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to pilot an aircraft across the English Channel (1912 - she dies less than three months later, when her plane ditches at 1000 ft and she falls from it - the plane itself gracefully comes to earth and gets stuck in mud); Lenin returns to Petrograd from exile in Switzerland (1917); Gandhi organises a national day of prayer and fasting in protets at the Amritsar massacre (1919); members of the Bulgatian Communist Party detonate a bomb at the St Nedelya Church in the capital Sofia, during the funeral service of an anti-Communist military leader - 150 people are killed and another 500 injured (1925); Laurel & Hardy's The Music Box - a remake of their 1927 silent film Hats Off - premieres in the US (1932); Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, carelessly licks his fingers whilst turning a page in his notebook - he has been synthsising lysergic acid compounds, and condequently takes the first LSD "Trip" (1943 - he enjoys the experience so much, that he repeats the experiment three days later, just before riding home on his bicycle. Hofmann dies in 2008, aged 102. Just sayin' ... ); the United States Army liberates the Colditz Prisoner-of-War Camp (1945); the SS Grandcamp, carrying a cargo of 2200 tons of explosives, blows up in the Port of Texas City, initiating a chain reaction of explosions on other ships and the oil storage facilities - around 600 people are killed, including all but one of the 28-strong Texas Fire Department (1947); Penderecki's Polymorphia is premiered in Hamburg by the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrzej Markowski (1962); whilst imprisoned in Alabama for defying a ban on demonstrating against racial segregation, Martin Luther King writes his Letter From Birmingham Jail, answering his white critica, and arguing the case for nonviolent resistance (1963); Apollo 16 is launched (1972); the Treaty of Accession is signed in Athens, enabling ten nations - most of them former members of the Eastern Bloc - to join the European Union (2003); an undergraduate student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University shoots 55 fellows students on campus, killing 23 and injuring the rest, before shooting himself (2007); 200 civillians are killed and over 2,000 properties destroyed in the Baga Massacre in Nigeria - witnesses blame the Nigerian Army for carrying out the massacre: the Nigerian Army blames Boko Haram (2013); and, this time last year, Kendrick Lamar becomes the first Rap performer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his album Damn.

Birthdays Today include: Frans van Mieris (1635); Hans Sloane (1660); John Hadley (1682); Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755); Ford Maddox Brown (1821); Anatole France (1844); Wilbur Wright (1867); JM Synge (1871); Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889); Federico Mompou (1893); Tristan Tzara (1896); Ray Ventura (1908); Guy Burgess (1911); Spike Milligna ["the well-known typing error"] (1918); Merce Cunnigham (1919); Peter Ustinov (1921); Kingsley Amis (1922); Henry Mancini (1924); Joan Bakewell (1933); Sarah Kirsch (1935); Dusty Springfield (1939); Joan Snyder (1940); Peteris Vasks (1946); Gerry Rafferty (1947); ... and Claire Foy is 35 today.

Final Days for: Tobias Hume (1645); Aphra Benn (1689); Jacques Cassini (1756); Nikolaus von Krufft (1818); Francisco Goya (1828); Domenico Dragonetti (1846); Marie Tussaud (1850); Johann Baptist Cramer (1858); Alexis de Tocqueville (1859); Samuel Smiles (1904); Rosalind Franklin (1958); István Kertész (1973); Youri Egorov (1988); David Lean (1991); Graham Stuart Thomas (2003); Alan Hacker (2012); and, this time last year, Jim Caine.

And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Monday, 16th April, 1979 were:

Overture: Strauss Gypsy Baron Ovt, and "Heuberger Im chambre separee" from The Opera Ball; Mozart Clarinet Concerto; Lehar Gold & Silver.
Morning Concert: Rachmaninoff Pno Conc #2; Ravel Bolero
This Week's Composer: Delius ( First Cuckoo, Late Swallows, Summer Garden)
Talking About Music with Antony Hopkins
The Busch Quartet: Brahms S4tet in c minor, Op 51 #1
Songs and Duets by Mendelssohn and Schumann

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The story "behind" Liszt's Mazeppa makes for interesting reading-between-the-lines: the eponymous Ivan Mazeppa seduces a Polish noblewoman, but is caught and overpowered by her relatives and tied naked to a wild horse that carries him to Ukraine. I can't help feeling that that's just the story he told everyone when he turned up naked and tied to a horse.

[Edgy 2]

Talking About Music with Antony Hopkins

Ah,them were't days

[Richard Tarleton]

Final Days for: Tobias Hume (1645)

An amazing life story, what we know of it. Here's Love's Farewell, in a slightly faster rendition than the equally lovely one posted a while back by the much-missed gamba.

He annoyed Dowland by championing the viol over the lute

[cloughie]

I notice that it is 46 years ago that Istvan Kertesz tragically died by drowning in Israel. He would have been 90 this year, thecsame age as Uncle Bernie! What might he have achieved - I have most, if not all his recordings - not a bad one amongst them!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

An amazing life story, what we know of it. Here's Love's Farewell, in a slightly faster rendition than the equally lovely one posted a while back by the much-missed gamba.

Almost exactly five years ago, Richard:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?11141-Today-I-Saw-amp-Heard-the-Nearest-to-Perfection

... a very poignant set of posts followed, including one of the very last contributions from salymap, too.

(And he was right - it was a breath-taking performance of an incredibly beautiful work.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 17th

The Feast Day of Donnan, Patron Saint of the Isle of Eigg, a Seventh Century Irish priest who attempted to introduce Christianity to the Picts in what is now North-West Scotland. It wasn't a success - either pirates attached the Island of Eigg where he was staying and beheaded him and 52 of his monks (but not before allowing them to complete the Mass they had started); or , in a variant of the story

A rich woman used to dwell there before the coming of Donnán and her flocks grazed there. On account of the ill-feeling she had towards Donnán and his community, she persuaded a number of bandits to kill him. When these bandits arrived in Eigg, they found them chanting their psalms in the oratory and they could not kill them there. Donnán however said to his community: 'Let us go into the refectory so that these men may be able to kill us there where we do our living according to the demands of the body; since as long as we remain where we have done our all to please God, we cannot die, but where we have served the body, we may pay the price of the body. In this way, therefore, they were killed in their refectory on the eve of Easter. Fifty-four others died together alongside Donnán.

And it's World Haemophilia Day - established by the World Federation Haemophilia, in memory of their founder, Frank Schnabel, and initiated in 1989.

Also on this Date: Martin Luther's Trial begins at the Diet of Worms (1521); Henry VIII has Thomas More imprisoned in the Tower of London for refusing to sign the Oath of Succession and refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy (1534); the Veronese Easter, when the citizens of Verona overpower Bonaparte's occupying troops (1797 - Bonaparte is elsewhere, and the rebellion is quelled a week later); Bonaparte issues the Bayonne Decree, in which he announces that all American ships arriving in Europe are to be regarded as being in British service and orders them to be seized (1808); Virginia becomes the eighth State to cede from the Union and join the Confederate States of America (1861); Mary Surratt is detained by police for questioning in the conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln - as she is arrested, Lewis Powell [the attempted murderer of Secretary of State William Seward] turns up at her Boarding House (1865 - she is Tried, found guilty, and hanged three months later); six Irish republican prisoners escape from the ship transporting them to a penal colony in Australia - they row to a ship which takes them to New York (1876); representatives of Samoa sign a Treaty of Cession, in which British and Germany interests in the government of the islands are discontinued in favour of the Government of the United States (1900); Tsarist troops shoot dead 270 workers petitioning against the harsh conditions in the gold mines in Siberia - 250 others are wounded (1912); Metro Pictures Corporation amalgamates with Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B Mayer Pictures to form Metro-Goldwin-Mayer (1924); Elmer K Bolton - a scientist at Du Pont Chemical conglomerate - invents the synthetic rubber Neoprene [the stuff used as drum practice pads] (1930); the Peak District becomes the UK's first National Park (1951); Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan introduces Premium Bonds in his 1956 Budget; the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs assault on Cuba begins (1961); Jerrie Mock completes her month-long solo flight around the world - becoming the first woman to achieve such a feat (1964); Surveyor 3 is launched; sent to explore the surface of the Moon in preparation for the Apollo Moon landings (1967); Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of murdering Robert Kennedy (1969 - six days later he is sentenced to death in the Gas Chamber, but this is commuted to Life Imprisonment three years later); Alexander Dubcek resigns as leader of Czechoslavakia eight months after the Soviet Invasion had brought an end to his Prague Spring of greater liberalisation (also 1969 - he is expelled from the Communist Party the next year); at just after 6:00pm, Apollo 13 safely splashes down in the South Pacific Ocean (1970); a month into the Bangladesh War of Independence, the provisional Government of Bagladesh is established (1971); the Cambodian Civil War comes to an end as the Khmer Rouge enters Phnom Penh, and the government capitulates - the new leader, Pol Pot immediately declares the Republic of Democratic Kampuchea, and the Campuchean Genocide begins almost immediately (1975); Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence is awarded the General Non-Fiction Pulitzer Prize (1978); Pierre Trudeau and Elizabeth II sign the 1982 Canadian Constitution Act, confirmig that Canada has formally assumed authority of its own constitution, to the continued annoyance of the government in Quebec, who refuse to recognize it; WPC Yvonne Fletcher is fatally wounded when she is shot by an unknown gunman inside the Libyan Embassy in London (1984 - all those known to be inside the building at the time of the shooting are expelled from the country, and Britain severs diplomatic relations with Libya); John E Bell undergoes minor surgery in a hospital in Baltimore to replace his old pacemaker, the battery of which has run out (1997 - he is 115 years old; the previous device had been implanted when he was 104); 40 years after his death, John Coltrane is awarded a posthumous Special Citation "for his lifetime of innovated and influential work" and “his masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz.” (2007); the very first episode of Game of Thrones is broadcast on HBO in the United States (2011); and the early-8th Century St Cuthbert Gospel, the oldest surviving book in Europe, is bought for £9,000,000 by the British Library following its largest-ever [s far] public appeal for donation (2012).

Birthdays Today include: John Ford [baptised] (1586); Johann David Heinichen (1683); Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek (1774); Thomas Hazlehurst (1816); JP Morgan (1837); Augustus Edward Hough Love (1863); Artur Schnabel (1882); Harald Sigurd Johan Sæverud and Thornton Wilder (both 1897); Nicolas Nabokov and Gregor Piatigorsky (both 1903); William Holden (1918); Lindsay Anderson (1923); Ronald Senator (1926); James Last (1929); Robert Miller (1939); Anja Silja (1940); Olivia Hussey (1951); Nick Hornby (1957); Sean Bean (1959); ... and Chris Barber is 89 today.

Final Days for: Johann Mattheson (1764); Benjamin Franklin (1790); Fromental Halévy (1862); George Jennings (1882, flushed with success); Jean Baptiste Perrin (1942); Eddie Cochran (1960); Linda McCartney (1998); Leila Berg (2012); and, five years ago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of day, 17th April 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Grieg Morning (from Peer Gynt); Sor Variations on a Theme of Mozart; Vivaldi Bassoon Concerto in F (RV 485); Delius Dance Rhapsody #2; Chopin Polonaise in Ab; Bax Dance of Wild Irravel; Alabiev The Nightingale; Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite.
Composer of the Week: Bach at Köthen (P&Fs 1-4, W-TC Bk1; 'cello Suite in G; Brandenburg #4)
Morning Sequence: Dvorak The Wild Dove; Schumann Kinderszenen; Britten The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra; Bridge String Sextet; Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op 24.
BBCSSO conducted by Jerzy Maksymiuk (Sibelius Incidental music for Pelleas et Melisande; Thea Musgrave Horn Concerto [with Barry Tuckwell]; Roberto Gerhard Don Quixote Suite.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 18th

The Feast Day of Saint Molaise of Laisrén, a Seventh Century hermit, born in Ireland, brought up on Holy Isle (the one just off Arran) where he was ordained as a Bishop and returned to Ireland to become Abbot of the Monastry in Old Leighlin, in County Carlow. He is credited with introducing the Roman way of calculating Easter to the Celtic Church at a Synod held at the Monastry in 630, nearly 40 years before similar discussions were held in England at the Synod of Whitby. Molaise is also credited with being depicted in the Irish Visionary Poem from around 640, The Vison of Laisren, in which the Saint sees a vision of his soul (which is always referred to as "she") being fought over by angels and demons ("with fiery hair, and fire coming out of every limb ... Some had a very black shape, and had fiery bulging spears in their hands; others had a dark brown shape and had fiery darts in their hands. A third number had a shaggy (?)shape, and fiery hair growing through them like the hair of a thistle, and fiery javelins in their hands").
And in Russia, it's Victory Over the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of the Ice Day (familiar from Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky cantata, if not the Eisenstein film for which the Music was originally composed); Coma Patients Day in Poland, and Independence Day in Zimbabwe.

Also on this Date: Bolesław I Chrobry is crowned as the first King of Poland (1025); work begins on the building of St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City (1506 - it is completed 120 years later); a citizens' revolt in Boston results in the removal of the authoritarian administrator Edmond Andros (1689); Paul Revere and around 40 other riders begin their "Midnight Ride" to warn the Colonial Forces in Massachusetts that British Troops were advancing (1775 - Revere begins his ride at around 10:00pm and reaches Lexington at around midnight); the Battle of Dybbøl is fought between Denmark and Prussia as part of Bismark's plan for the Unification of Germany - the defeat of the Danish forces is decisive in determining Prussian victory in the War (1864); the Greco-Turkish War begins between Greece and the Ottoman Empire (1897 - the Ottoman forces are guided by Prussian Field Marshall Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, who is called "Goltz Pasha" by the Turkish troops; the Greek Army is defeated); an earthquake in Guatemala kills up to 2000 people (1902); San Francisco is devastated by an earthquake which causes the deaths of up to 3000 people (1906); RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the Titanic to New York (1912); French President Raymond Poincaré appoints Edith Wharton Chavalier of the Legion of Honour for her tireless charitable work for refugees, the displaced, the homeless, and the injured in Paris (1916); Yankee Stadium opens in the Bronx (1923); the first women's-only World Fair opens in Chicago (1925); a quiet day in 1930 - the BBC News broadcast at 8:45pm consists of four words, "there is no news" and the remaining time of the quarter-hour bulletin is taken up with piano Music before returning to the Live broadcast of Wagner's Parsifal from the Queen's Hall; "Operation Vengeance" - a US mission to kill Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had been in charge of the Pearl Harbour attack - shoots down the admiral's plane after code breakers had determined its position (1943); Bernstein's ballet Fancy Free [choreographed by Jerome Robbins] premieres at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York (1944); the International Court of Justice meets for the first time at The Hague (1946); the Republic of Ireland severs the last vestiges of British administration by transferring the statutory role still played by the British monarch over to the President of Ireland (1948); Ezra Pound is declared "permanently and incurably insane" and is released from St Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital in Washington DC (1958 - on his release, he gives a fascist salute, and says that there's no difference which side of the walls he's on as all America is a madhouse); American Oil Tycoon, Robert P McCulloch buys London Bridge for the equivalent of around £3,250,000 in today's money (1968 - contrary to popular myth, he knows exactly what he is buying, and doesn't think it's Tower Bridge - today it stands in Lake Havusu City in Arizona); Alex Haley's Roots is awarded a Pulitzer Prize (1977); the Republic of Zimbabwe comes into existence (1980 - exactly two years to the day later, the capital city is renamed Harare); Alice Walker wins a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with her The Color Purple (1983); and it's two years today that Theresa May called a "snap" election (2017).

Birthdays Today include: Lucrezia Borgia (1480); William Harrison (1534); Thomas Middleton (1580); Giacomo Carissimi (1605, baptised); Jean-Fery Rebel (1666); Francis Baring (1740); Ludwig Berger (1777); William Debenham (194); Franz von Suppé (1819); Clarence Darrow (1857); Jean Jules Aimable Roger-Ducasse (1873); Leopold Stokowski (1882); George H Hitchings (1905); Miklós Rózsa (1907); Carl Burgos (1916); Buxton Orr (1924); Jan Kaplický (1937); Hayley Mills (1946); Kathy Acker (1947); Grigory Sokolov (1950); Eric Roberts (1956); Thomas Simaku (1958); Niall Ferguson (1964); and David Tennant (1971).

Final Days for: John Leland (1552); Luigi Alamanni (1556); Judge Jeffreys (1889); Erasmus Darwin (1802); Gustave Moreau (1898); Milton Brown and Ottotino Respighi (both 1936); John Ambrose Fleming (1945); Albert Einstein (1955); Marcel Pagnol (1974); Thor Heyerdahl (2002); Germaine Tillion (2008); Anne Williams (2012); Gordon Langford (2017); and, this time last year, Dale Winton.

And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Friday, 18th April, 1969 were:

Overture: (gramophone records)
Morning Concert: (a repeat of an evening concert given in 1966)
This Week's Composer: Haydn ("Nelson" Mass, complete)
British Concertos (no work details given)
Music Making: Chamber and solo Piano Music by Koechlin, Granados, and Szymanowski

[greenilex]

Must say though I deplore his political stance I do think Ezra Pound had a point about the US loony bin...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 19th

The Feast Day of Ælfheah, Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered by Vikings on this date in 1012 in Greenwich, when he refused to be held for ransom. It was to Aelfheah (the first Archbishop of Canterbury to die a violent death) that Thomas Becket prayed just before he himself was assassinated.

Also on this Date: the Massacre of Lisbon, where up to 4000 people suspected of being Jews were slaughtered by Christians coming from a Palm Sunday service (1506 - all Jews had been forced to convert to Roman Catholicism nine years earlier, and it was the comment of one of these converts that the vision of Christ others had claimed to have seen in a candle flame was probably just a trick of the light, that started the frenzied massacre); the Burning of Derry (1608 - Cahir O'Doherty, Lord of Inishowen in County Donegal, provoked by the increasing antagonism of the English Governor of Derry, headed a rebellion which is launched with an attack on the garrison town of Derry, which is nearly destroyed by fire - irornically, if he had wited another day, he would have heard that the British authorities had sided with him against the Governor); Charles VI, the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, in which, in the absence of a male heir, he ensures that his possessions can be inherited by a daughter [it's not so pragmatic - he hasn't got a daughter, either - but it is foresighted, as Maria Theresa is born four years later); Lieutenant James Cook becomes the first European to sight Australia (1770 - on the same day, Marie Antoinette [youngest daughter of the same Maria Theresa, pupil of Christoph Willibald Gluck, and, briefly, girlfriend of Mozart] marries Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of France - they meet for the first time a month later: during the ceremony, she has been in Austria, with her brother taking Louis' part, and Louis has stayed in Versailles - the early years of the marriage have been described as "distant"); Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide is premiered at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris (1774); the American War of Independence begins with battles in Massachusetts (1775); the Dutch Republic becomes the first nation to recognise the United States, following negotiations with John Adams, whose home in The Hague becomes the world's fist United States Embassy (1782); Gogol's The Government Inspector premieres in St Petersburg (1836); with the Treaty of London, Belgium becomes an independent, neutral nation independent of the Netherlands (1839); Berg's Violin Concerto is premiered in Barcelona by violinist Louis Krasner, with an orchestra conducted by Herman Scherchen [who has only seen the score for the first time twenty hours previously and only had a "dress rehearsal" play-through on the morning of the concert] (1936); Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children is premiered in Zurich (1941); the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins, when Jewish citizens refused to give themselves up to the SS, giving the Commander the excuse to begin the buring to the ground of the entire ghetto - a process which takes four weeks, during which 13,00 Jews are killed (1943); Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel is premiered at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway (1945); Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco (1956); Roger Sessions' opera Montezuma is premiered at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (1964); Ligeti's 'cello Concerto is premiered in Berlin by Siegfried Palm with the Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henryk Czyz (1967 - on the same day in Yugoslavia, Mihaljo Mihaljov is sentenced to four years' imprisonment for writing articles critical of Tito); the Soviet Union launches Salyut 1, the first ever Space Station (1971 - on the same day, Charles Manson is sentenced to death for the murder of Sharon Tate and four others); India launches its first satellite, naming it Aryabhata, after the Indian astronomer (1975 - the satellite is launched from Russia); Advance Australia Fair becomes the country's official National Anthem (1984); The Simpsons make their debut on the Tracey Ullman Show on the Fox network (1987); Trisha Meili is violently attacked and raped as she jogs in Central Park, leaving her in a coma for 12 days (1989 - five black men are later arrested, and, in spite of uncorroborating DNA evidence, are found guilty and given prison sentences of between six and thirteen years; in 2002, another man confesses to the crime, providing evidence that could only have been known by the real criminal, and confirmed by the DNA - and he tells police that he acted alone); the 51-day-long Waco siege, in which followers of David Koresh hold a gunfight with FBI agents, comes to an end when the Mount Carmel Center catches fire - most of the cultists refuse to leave the building, and 76 of them are killed, including 18 children under the age of 10 (1993 - exactly two years to the day later, a truck filled with explosives is eploded outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people, [19 of them babies and very young children] injuring 680 others, and causing widescale damage to surrounding buildings - the perpetrators are anti-government ex-army members); the German Parliament returns to the Reichstag building in Berlin (1999); Cardinal Ratzinger becomes Pope Benedict XVI (2005) and Fidel Castro hands power over to his brother Raul, after more than fifty years as Cuban leader (2011 - exactly seven years to the day later, Raul himself steps down); and, a day after the US Senate decides to allow Senators to bring infants onto the Senate floor and to breastfeed them during votes, 10-day old Maile Pearl Bowlsbey, daughter of Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, becomes the first baby on the Senate floor (2018).

Birthdays Today include: Christoph Bach (1613); Willem Drost (1633); Sarah Bagley (1806); Max von Schillings (1868); Germaine Tailleferre *1892); Richard Hughes (1900); Eliot Ness (1903); Dickie Bird and Jayne Mansfield (both 1933); Dudley Moore (1935); Alan Price (1942); Tim Curry (1946); Murray Perahia and Yan-Pascal Tortelier (both 1947); Ruby Wax (1953); Trevor Francis (1954); Sue Barker (1956); Graham Fitkin (1963); Natalie Dessay (1965); Veronique Jens (1966); Ashley Judd (1968); Kelly Holmes (1970); and Maria Sharapova (1987).

Final Days for: Paolo Veronese (1588); Canaletto (1768); Lord Byron (1824); Benjamin Disraeli (1881); Charles Darwin (1882); Pierre Curie (1906); Lord Berners (1950); Daphne du Maurier (1989); Frankie Howerd (1992); Octavio paz (1998); JG Ballard (2009); and Elisabeth Sladen (2011).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Thursday, 19th April, 1979 were:

Overture: Handel Arrival of the Queen of Sheba; C. P. E. Bach Flute Concerto in D minor (Wq 22); Stravinsky Petrushka Suite; Strauss Russian March; Bruch Scottish Fantasy; Borodin Polovtslan Dances.
This Week's Composer: Delius (Vln Son #2; Caprice & Elegy; Florida Suite).
Brahms Piano 5tet (Serkin/Busch4tet)
Thomas Hemsley & Friedrich Gurtler: Songs by Fauré, Hahn, and Roussel.
Saar RSO conducted by Skrowaczewski: Szymanowski Vln Conc #2 (with Szeryng); Mozart Symph #34; Bartok Mandarin Suite (with an interval talk by Basil Lam on "Authenticity").

[french frank]

The Feast Day of Ælfheah

So - what's it all about?