Today's the Day

[Petrushka]

Happy Birthday for yesterday ,Pet .

Is it still December for full retirement ?

Today actually, ts. Yes, the plan is to carry on working until the end of the year when the State Pension kicks in. Don't want to but it makes financial sense.

[Edgy 2]

All the best Pet

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

6th June

On this Date: following a sermon given by Archdeacon Ferrand Martinez of Ecija, demanding that all Spanish jews should be forced to convert to Christianity, a mob in Seville attack and destroy homes belonging to Jewish citizens and murder 4,000 of them (1391); Joseph Bonaparte is crowned King of Spain (1808); 20-year-old Canadian traveller, Alexis St Martin is accidentally shot in the stomach in Michegan - he is treated by US Army surgeon William Beaumont, who cannot completely heal the serious wound, but who is able, because of this, to make observations and discoveries about the human digestive system (1822 - Beaumont nevertheless saves St martin's life and he lives another 58 years); the republican rebellion in Paris is defeated by the National Guard (1832); the YMCA is founded in London by George Williams (1844); the Great Fire of Seattle destroys the main business district of the city, causing around £550million worth of damage in today's values (1889 - there is only one fatality; a young boy called James Goin); the Chicago "L" elevated rail system opens (1892); Colorado State Governor, Davis H Waite, orders the State Militia to protect striking miners involved in the Cripple Creek Strike (1894 - the only time in US history that the any militia have been used to support labourers); Mount Novarupta is created in Alaska following the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century (1912); Southwark Bridge in London is opened (1921); crime writer Edgar Wallace becomes Britain's first radio sports reporter, reporting on that year's Derby (1923); Schönberg's Monodrama Erwartung is premiered at the New German Theatre in Prague, with Zemlinsky conducting and Marie Gutheil-Schoder the soloist (1924 - fifteen years after it had been written); Strauss' opera Die Ägyptische Helena is premiered at the State Opera House in Dresden conducted by Fritz Busch (1924); the first drive-in cinema is opened in Camden, New Jersey (1933); Sigmund Freud arrives in London, having been driven out of his home in Vienna by the Nazis (1938); D-day: Operation Overlord begins with Operation Neptune - the landing of 155,000 troops on the Normandy beaches (1944 - there are 4,414 Allied deaths in this first day, and around 19,000 casualties on both sides altogether); the first Berlin International Film Festival opens with a showing of Hitchcock's Rebecca (1951); the iconic statue of Yuriy Dolgorukiy is unveiled in Soviet Square in Moscow, the city he founded in 1147 (1954); the first stage performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron is given at the State Theatre in Zurich, conducted by Rosbaud (1957); Robert Kennedy dies 26 hours after being shot (1968); Soyuz 11 is launched on its mission to board the first Space Station, Salyut-1 (1971 - on the same day, the Battle of Long Khanh, between Australian troops and Viet Cong & North Vietnamese forces, begins); the three-year-long Lebanese War begins with Israeli troops invading Lebanon (1982); the grave of Wolfgang Gerhard, who had drowned after suffering a stroke whilst swimming in 1979, is exhumed, proving that Gerhard was in fact Auschwitz murderer Josef Mengele (1985); an asteroid, about 10meters in diameter, explodes in the upper atmosphere over the Mediterranean Sea with an explosive force slightly bigger than the Nagasaki Atomic bomb (2002 - the explosion occured during a military standoff between India and Pakistan, and had the asteroid been closer to those countries, it might have triggered a nuclear war);

Birthdays Today include: Pierre Corneille (1606); Giacomo Antonio Perti (1661); John Trubull (1756); Alexander Pushkin (1799); John Stainer (1840); Robert Falcon Scott (1868); Siegfried Wagner (1869); Thomas Mann (1875); Ninette de Valois (1898); Aram Khachaturian (1903); Isaiah Berlin (1909); Vincent Persichetti (1915); Iain Hamilton (1922); Serge Nigg (1924); Torsten Andersson and Klaus Tennstedt (both 1926); Billie Whitelaw (1932); Harvey Fierstein (1954); Björn Borg (1956); ... and Louis Andriessen is 80 today.

Final Days for: Jeremy Bentham (1832); Henri Vieuxtemps (1881); James Agate (1947); Louis Lumiere (1948); Carl Jung (1961); Yves Klein (1962); Stan Getz (1991); Douglas Lilburn (2001); Anne Bancroft (2005); Billy Preston (2006); Esther Williams and Tom Sharpe (both 2013); Peter Shaffer (2016).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Wednesday, 6th June 1979 were:

Your Concert Choice: Vivaldi Lute Concerto in D (RV 93); Purcell "Halcyon Days" (from The Tempest); Bach Toccata & Fugue in E (BWV 566); Rosetti Symphony in C; Beethoven 3 Equali; arrBritten The Foggy, Foggy Dew; Rachmaninoff Pno Conc #3 (every last demisemiquaver of it, with Cali's neighbour doing the honours).
This Week's Composer: Ockeghem (Requiem)
Craig Sheppard: Brahms Variations Op21, #1 & #2.
Music for Organ played by Martin Neary (works by Buxtehude, de Grigny, John Bull, Sweelinck, and McCabe.
Song Recital by Meryl Drower [not "Merlydrower" as on the Genome] and John Fraser (works by Schumann, Britten, and Ravel)
BBCNSO conducted by Raymond Leppard: Spohr Symphony #7; Sibelius Night Ride & Sunrise; Debussy La Mer.

[Richard Tarleton]

Joseph Bonaparte is crowned King of Spain (1808)

He kept begging to be allowed to go home.......

"Napoleon was close for most of his life to his intelligent but weak elder brother Joseph, whom he made first King of Naples and then King of Spain, but who was politically more of a burden to him than a benefit" - Andrew Roberts

"According to Corsican custom Joseph was the head of the family, and Napoleon tried to give him his due, but although he felt great affection for him, he could not hide his contempt for his weakness" - Adam Zamoyski

Napoleon's most loyal sibling was his promiscuous sister Pauline. His brothers, through whom he tried to rule various parts of Europe, were a rum lot.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 7th

The Feast Day of St Colman of Dromore, the Late 5th-Early 6th-Centruy Irish bishop who is patron saint of Dromore (having established the first wattle and daub church there around 514CE) ... and who wasn't martyred, didn't perform any miracles during his lifetime or after it, but was just a decent, hard-working cleric.

In the Roman Empire, today was the beginning of the Vestalia - a week-long holiday celebrating the goddess of the hearth & home. On this first day of the festival, the curtain which covered the inner sanctum of the Temple of Vesta, the penus Vestae [behave you boys at the back], was opened, and at any time of the festival, mothers were allowed to bring offerings to the goddess in the hope of having their families blessed for the rest of the year. Donkeys were sacred to Vesta, as the braying of one had frightened off fertility god Priapus, who had been about to rape her - so donkeys adorned with flowers and bread were allowed in the temple also - which accounts for the last day of the festival being Quando Stercum Delatum Fas ("when dung can be removed") after which, the curtain was once again firmly closed, and the temple given a thorough clean and purification.

It was also Ludi Piscatorii - a holiday for the Empire's fishermen. (There is an International Fishermans' Day these days, too - but not until later in the month.)

Also on this Date: the week-long Siege of Jerusalem begins (1099); the 17-day Tournament-cum-Summit Meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold between Henry VII and Francis I of France begins (1520); James VI/I dissolves the eight-week long "Addled Parliament" which had achieved precisely nothing except to widen the quarrel between the King [who wanted more revenue raised by taxes] and Parliament [who didn't want to give it to him] (1614 Charles I gives Royal Assent to the Petition of Rights, listing the liberties that no monarch had any right to infringe (1628); Louis XIV is crowned (1654); 1,600 people are killed and 3,000 other injured when an earthquake devastates the village of Port Royal in Jamaica (1692); Richard Henry Lee proposes a resolution [the Lee Resolution] calling for a complete severance from Great Britain to the US Congress (1776 - it is seconded by John Adams [not that one: the historically important one]); citizens in Grenoble throw roof tiles and other domestic objects at royal troops (1788 - this Day of the Tiles marks the starting point of the French Revolution); the Reform Act gains royal assent (1832 - the bill "to correct divers Abuses that have long prevailed in the Choice of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament" has been a long time a-coming [beginning in the 1760s at least]: there were a lot of members who depended on those divers abuses); Abraham Lincoln announces the Lyons–Seward Treaty, an Anglo-American alliance to supress the Slave Trade (1862); Homer Plessy defies Louisiana's segregation laws on trains and by travelling First-Class in the "Whites Only" section of a train, and is immediately arrested (1892); Hugo Wolf's opera Der Corregidor is premiered at the National Theatre in Mannheim (1896 - with Karl Marx amongst the cast); RMS Lusitania is launched on the first of its 201 successful Atlantic crossings (1906); Delius' A Mass of Life is given its first complete performance in the Queen's Hall London, conducted by Beecham (1909); Allied forces detonate 19 mines underneath German troops in the Battle of Messines, killing nearly 3,000 German troops (1917 - a further 7,000 are taken prisoner); British troops open fire on Maltese Nationalists, killing four of them (1919 - the date is still a public holiday in Malta); the Lateran Treaty, in which the Vatican City becomes an independent state, is ratified in the Italian parliament (1929); Weill's "sung ballet" Die sieben Todsünden is premiered at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées (1933); the Norwegian government and Royal Family go into exile in London (1940 - they return exactly five years to the day later); the Battle of Midway ends with the American defeat of the Japanese sea and air forces in the [rather inappropriately named] Pacific (1942); 20 Canadian Prisoners-of-War are murdered by the "Hitler Youth" SS Panzer division at Ardennes Abbey near Caen (1944 - the first of 156 such murders during the Normandy Landings campaign); Britten's Peter Grimes is premiered at the Sadlers Wells theatre, London, conducted by Goodall (1945); the BBC resumes its televison broadcasting (1946); Czech Socialist President Edvard Beneš resigns rather than sign the constitutional treaty that will give power to the Communist Party (1948 - they take control anyway, and wage a smear campaign against him for the rest of his life; which isn't long: he dies 4 months later); the US Supreme Court prohibits states from making contraception illegal for married couples (1965); the US Supreme Court overturns the conviction of Paul Cohen for Disturbing the Peace by wearing a T-shirt with the logo "Fuck the Draft" in a California Courthouse (1971 - on the same day, the crew of Soyuz 11 dock with and board the Soviet Space Station Salyut 1); Rodion Shchedrin's Dead Souls is given its first stage performance at the Kirov Theatre in Moscow, conducted by Svetlanov (1977 - on the same day 500,000,000 people worldwide watch the celebrations of Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee; none of them get to see the Sex Pistols performing their God Save the Queen on the River Thames as the police prevent them); the Israeli Air Force destroy an Iraqi Nuclear reactor under construction (1981); Elvis Presley's house Graceland is opened to the public (1982); for Americans, the time for one second of the morning of this date reads 01:23:45 6-7-89 (1989); the United Nations creates the Blue Line, defining the boundary between Israel and Lebanon (2000); Tony Blair wins his second term as Prime Minister in the UK General Election (2001); the police shut down and seal off the House of Commons after a man throws a white powder across the Central Lobby, sparking an Anthrax Attack scare (2006 - it was flour); and, this time last year, Science magazine reports that tests on drill samples taken from the surface of Mars by the Curiosity Rover reveal organic molecules of benzene and propane.

Birthdays Today include: Gaetano Berenstadt (1687); Georgiana Cavendish (1757); Beau Brummell (1778); Leopold Auer (1845); Paul Gaugin (1848); Charles Rene Mackintosh (1868); Knud Rasmussen (1879); George Szell (1897); Elizabeth Bowen (1899); Jessica Tandy (1909); Marion Post (1910); Franz Reizenstein (1911); Dean Martin (1917); James Ivory (1928); Virginia McKenna (1931); Ian St John (1938); Yuli Turovsky (1939); Tom Jones and Ronald Pickup (both 1940); Liam Neeson (1952); Prince (1958); Damien Hirst (1965); Olli Mustonen (1967); Helen Baxendale (1970); Bear Grylls (1974); Anna Kournikova (1981).

Final Days for: Robert [the] Bruce (1274); Luigi Schiavonetti (1810); Friedrich Hölderlin (1843); David Cox (1859); Patrick Bronte (1861); Antonio Valero de Bernabé (1863); Jean Harlow (1937); Alan Blumlein (1942); Alan Turing (1954); Jean Arp (1966); Dorothy Parker (1967); EM Forster (1970); Philip Guston, Henry Miller, and Elizabeth Craig (all 1980); Hugh Hopper (2009); Christopher Lee (2015).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Wednesday, 7th June, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Alfven Swedish Rhapsody #1; Barber Summer Music; Josef Starzer Divertimento in C; Beethoven Andante favori; Haydn Symphony #91.
Composer of the Week: Chabrier (Larghetto for Horn & Orchestra; Dix pieces pittoresques for piano, with four of them in orchestral versions)
Piano 4 Hands: Poulenc Sonata; Satie En habit de cheval; Hahn Piece en forme d'aria et bergerie; Satie Apercus désagréables; Ravel Ma mere l'oye (Nettle/Markham Duo)
BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Simon Joly: Walton The Quest; Coates The Enchanted Garden.
Midweek Choice: Suppe Morning, Noon, & Night Ovt; Mendelssohn Concerto in Eb for 2 pianos & orch; Mozart Masonic Funeral Music (preceded by a recording of John Heath-Stubbs reading his own 'Mozart and Salieri'); Bruckner #7.

[vinteuil]

Birthdays Today include: Gaetano Berenstadt (1687); Georgiana Cavendish (1757); Beau Brummell (1778); Leopold Auer (1845); Paul Gaugin (1848); Charles Rene Mackintosh (1868); Knud Rasmussen (1879); George Szell (1897); Elizabeth Bowen (1899); Jessica Tandy (1909); Marion Post (1910); Franz Reizenstein (1911); Dean Martin (1917); James Ivory (1928); Virginia McKenna (1931); Ian St John (1938); Yuli Turovsky (1939); Tom Jones and Ronald Pickup (both 1940); Liam Neeson (1952); Prince (1958); Damien Hirst (1965); Olli Mustonen (1967); Helen Baxendale (1970); Bear Grylls (1974); Anna Kournikova (1981).

... also John Rennie (1731).

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

Also me (1952)...


.

[Petrushka]

Also me (1952)...

Happy birthday, Vints!

[johncorrigan]

Tom Jones and Ronald Pickup (both 1940);

It's funny having two people here with the same birthdate, ferney, but it's not unusual.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Happy birthday, Vints!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 8th

The Feast Day of St William of York, who was twice Archbishop of York (the first time, he'd got the job because of the favouritism of the King, which the Pope didn't approve, so the job went to his rival, Murdac - William got his job back after Murdac and the Pope died, but only enjoyed his reapponitment for 18 months before his enemies had the communion wine he was taking at Mass poisoned. After a fire damaged much of the minster area where he was buried, his tomb was untouched, and a "sweet smell" was reproted coming from it - so he was made a saint.

And it's World Brain Tumour Day, initiated by the German Brain Tumour Association with the motto "Knowledge creates the Future" - and World Oceans Day, initiated by the UN ten years ago "launching new campaigns and initiatives, special events at aquariums and zoos, outdoor explorations, aquatic and beach cleanups, educational and conservation action programs, art contests, film festivals, and sustainable seafood events".

Also on this Date: the Battle of Antioch, in which Roman emperor Macinus is defeated by the forces of Heliogabalus, who replaces him as emperor (218); Attilla the Hun invades Italy (452); Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne for the first time (793); Edward the Confessor becomes King of England (1042); the Archbishop of York and Thomas Mowbray are executed on the orders of Henry IV pt2 (1405); Lakagígar, a volcano near the village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur in Iceland begins an 8-month-long eruption which kills over 9,000 people directly, and initiates a 7-year-long famine (1783); Franz-Josef I of Austria is crowned King of Hungary, following the establishment of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867); Herman Hollerith applies for a patent for his punchcard tabulating machine, to help railway companies prevent cutomers transferring tickets (1887 - from this humble beginning, the computer punch cards of the late 20th Century begin, and the company Hollerith begins in 1911 becomes IBM in 1924); the Antiquities Act, enpowering the right of the President to grant protected status to buildings, monuments, and land, comes into force (1906); Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé is premiered by the Ballet Russes, at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, conducted by Monteux (1912); Grace Cook, head of Meteor research at the British Astronomical Association, confirms the Nova first observed in the constellation Aquila ("the eagle") by Polish surgeon and amateur astronomer Zygmunt Laskowski (1918 - it is the brightest Nova observed since 1604, and takes 20 years to fade to its current, "settled" brightness - it consists of a binary star, formed by a White Dwarf a little more massive than the Sun, and a Red dwarf, about a fifth the mass of the Sun); Hindemith's opera Neues vom Tage is premiered at the Kroll Opera, Berlin, conducted by Klemperer (1929 - with soprano Grete Stückgold saving money on the costume bill - on the same day, Labour MP Margaret Bondfield becomes the first woman member of a British cabinet when Ramsey MacDonald appoints her Minister of Labour); following weeks of cheese sandwiches, the chorus of the Frankfurt Opera cry out "Oh for Tuna!" at the premiere of Orff's Carmina Burana (1937); Operation Alphabet, the evacuation of Allied troops from Norway, is completed (1940); Japanese submarines torpedo the Australian cities of Newcastle and Sydney (1942); 1984 is published (1949 - on the same day an FBI report names people it suspects of being members of the Communist Party: the list includes Danny kaye, Edward G Robinson, Helen Keller, and Dorothy Parker); Britten's Gloriana is premiered at Covent Garden, conducted by John Pritchard (1953 - on the same day, the US Supreme Court rules that it is illegal for restaurants in Washington DC to refuse to serve black customers); the combined Israeli Air Force and Navy attack what they believe is an Egyptian ship in international waters, killing 34 crew, and injuring 171 others during the Six-Day War - it was, in fact, US spy ship Liberty, which had been monitoring the War (1967); Brian Jones announces his leaving The Rolling Stones (1969 - “I want to play my kind of music, which is no longer the Stones music”); a South Vietnamese napalm attack severely burns 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc, the photo of whom, running naked and screaming away from the scene becomes a front-page image in newspapers across the world (1972 - she is now a Canadian citizen, and still receiving treatment for the scars on her back and arms); the Argentinian Air Force bomb British transport ships at Bluff Cove as part of the Falklands War (1982 - 56 soldiers are killed and 150 injured, including Simon Weston of the Welsh Guards); the original Ghostbusters and Gremlins films both go on general release (1984); the New Zealand government declares the country a Nuclear-free zone (1987); a janitor at Ikeda primary school in Osaka, Japan, stabs 8 children to death and injures 15 others (2001); the first Transit of Venus since 1882 occurs (2004); an unemployed temp worker drives a truck into a crowd in the Akihabara shopping centre in Tokyo, killing 3 of them and injuring 2 others; he then stabs at least 12 people, killing four of them (2008 - later that day, an explosion at the Karl Marx Coal Mine in the city of Yenakiieve in the Ukraine, causes a collapse which traps 37 workers, killing 13 of them. The mine was officially closed for violations of safety regulations); American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling are found guilty of spying in North Korea and sentenced to 12 years hard labour (2009 - they had crossed the Chinese/Korean border without visas; they were pardoned 2 months later when Bill Clinton paid an official visit to the country); 10 Taliban-affiliated militants attack Jinnah International Airport in Karachi with automatic weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers, killing 26 people and injuring 18 others before being killed by Security forces (2014); and it's two years since the last General Election.

Birthdays Today include: Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625); Tomaso Albinoni (1671); John Smeaton (1724); Robert Schumann (1810); John Everett Millais (1829); Alicia Boole Stott (1860); Frank lloyd Wright (1867); Erwin Schulhoff (1894); Bruno Bartolozzi (1911); Francis Crick (1916); Karel Goeyvaerts (1923); Ray Illingworth (1932); Joan Rivers (1933); Millicent Martin (1934); Gillian Clarke (1937); Nancy Sinatra (1941); Sara Paretsky (1947); Emmanuel Ax (1949); Tim Berners-Lee (1955); Lindsay Davenport (1976); Kanye West (1977);

Final Days for: the prophet Muhammad [عليه السلام] dies (632 CE); Harthacnut (1042); the Black prince (1376); Elizabeth Woodville (1492); Thomas Paine (1809); Sarah Siddons (1831); Andrew Jackson (1845); Conchise (1874); George Sand (1876); Gerard Manley Hopkins (1889); Erik Chisholm (1965); Gordon Jacob (1984); Charles EM Pearce (2012).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Sunday, 8th June, 1969 were:

What's New? "a weekly programme of recent gramophone records".
Bach Cantatas: BWV 75, Die Elenden sollen essen.
Your Concert Choice: "gramophone records"
Music Magazine presented by Julian Herbage (with features on Tosca by Philip Hope-Wallace; Margaret Ritchie by Anthony Lewis; RVW & the Bible, by Ursula VW)

... followed by a broadcast of Tosca, conducted by Edward Downes, with Marie Collier in the title role.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 9th

The Feast Day of Ephrem the Syrian, the 4th Century cleric and author of over 400 hymns, who died on this date in 373 (particularly revered in Syriac Orthodox Church, where his Feast is celbrated on 28th Jan). And of St Columba, the 6th Century Irish missionary who evangelised in Western Scotland, founding the Abbey on Iona and who died on this date in 597; he is (one of) the patron Saints of Scotland and Ireland (and Derry in particular; his gaelic name is Colm Cille - "the dove of the Church") and of poets and bookbinders. His name can be evoked against floods (which might be useful this weekend). And a couple of Northumbrian oddities: both St Aidan of Lindisfarne and the Venerable Bede are commemorated on this date in the Lutheran Church of America.

And, unofficially (how could it be otherwise?) it's National Sex Day (presumably in America, by the same "token", we have to wait until 6th September?)

Also on this Date: a coup d'etat in Athens overthrows the democratic government and replaces it with an oligarchy of 400 wealthy citizens (411BCE); Roman Emperor Nero marries his first wife, Claudia Octavia, daughter of his stepfather, I Claudius (53CE - exactly 15 years later to the day, he commits suicide, depriving the world of a great artist); Duccio's altarpiece, Maesta ("majesty") is unveiled in Siena Cathedral (1311); the 7 month-long Congress of Vienna closes (1815); Schumann's 'cello Concerto is premiered in Oldenburg, with Ludwig Ebert the soloist (1860 - 4 years after the composer's death); Indian NationalistBirsa Munda dies of cholera in a British prison in Bengal whilst on trial for insurrection (1900 - he is 24 years old); Mahler conducts the first complete performance of his Third Symphony with the Orchester des Allgemeines, Krefeld, and the Deutschen Musikvereins (1902); Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski is ousted by a military coup (1923 - he is tortured and murdered five days later); the first trans-pacific flight is completed when monoplane Southern Cross lands in Brisbane, Australia (1928 - it had set off from California 10 days earlier); Walt Disney's cartoon film The Wise Little Hen is released, marking the first appearance of Donald Duck (1934); the Nazi occupiers hang 99 citizens from lampposts and balconies in the city of Tulle in reprisal for Resistance activities (1944); the International Council on Archives is founded in Paris (1948); lawyer Joseph Welch, council for the US Army at the McCarthy hearings into Communist infiltration of the Army, turns on Joseph McCarthy and asks him "have you left no sense of decency?" (1954 - a further turning point against the Senator's period of influence); a de Haviland Heron aircraft carrying Elizabeth II lands in Gatwick Airport, marking the official opening of the rebuilt site (1958); the world's first nuclear-powered submarine carrying ballistic missiles, the USS George Washington, is launched (1959); Martinu's opera The Greek Passion is premiered by the Zurich Opera, conducted by Paul Sacher (1961 - 2 years after the composer's death: it is to Arthur Bliss' eternal shame that the premiere hadn't been given at Covent Garden conducted by kubelik whilst Martinu was still alive); Canyon Lake Dam in the Black Hills of South Dakota bursts after prolonged heavy rainfall, causing a flood that kills 238 deaths and 3,057 injuries (1972 - the damage to property is worth around £750million in today's values); the Mormon Church opens its priesthood to non-white men for the first time (1978); Margerat Thatcher wins her second term as Prime Minister of the UK (1983); the Kumanovo Agreement is signed, ending the Kosovo War (1999).

Birthdays Today include: Peter the Great (1672 - the same birthday as his immediate predecessor, Feodor III, born in 1661); George Stephenson (1781); Otto Nicolai (1810); Johann Gottfried Galle (1812); Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836); Bertha von Suttner (1843); Carl Nielsen and Alberic Magnard (both 1865); Cole Porter (1891); Skip James (1902); Walter Kraft (1905); Ingolf Dahl (1912); Les Paul (1915); Eric Hobsbawm (1917); Franco Donatoni (1927); Robert Geraint Gruffydd (1928); Jackie mason (1931); Nell Dunn (1936); Charles Wurinen (1938); Jon Lord (1941); James Kelman (1946); Michael J Fox (1961); Johnny Depp (1963); Natalie Portman (1981); ... and Ileana Cotrubas is 80 today (as is Art Historian Eric Fernie - no relation).

Final Days for: Aimoin of St-Germain-de-Pres (889); Philippe de Vitry [the original - and best - Philip Glass] (1361); Thomas Tomkins [the original - and best - Tom Tom] (1656); Charles Dickens (1870); Adolf Busch (1952); Robert Donat (1958); Camille Guérin (1961); Jacques Villon (1962); John Creasey (1973); Miguel Ángel Asturias (1974); Claudio Arrau (1991); Iain Banks and Bruno Bartoletti (both 2013 - the latter the day before his 87th birthday); Rik Mayall (2014); and Adam West (2017).


And the Radio3 schedules for the morning of Saturday, 9th June, 1979 were:

Aubade: Dukas Sorceror's Apprentice; Fillmore The Trombone Family; Kabalevsky Piano Concerto #3; Debussy/Blisser Petite Suite.
Record Review introduced by John Lade: the Music of Percy Grainger BaL-ed by Christopher Palmer; miscellaneous new records reviewed by Robert Philip
Stereo Release: Prokofiev Pno Sonata #2 (Berman); Bach "Orch" Suite #1 (EC/Pinnock); Brahms #4 (CO/Maazel)
Robin Ray ("his choice of records").

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 10th

On This Date: Barbarossa, Frederik I, drowns whilst leading his troops to fight Saladin in the Third Crusade (1190 - exact details aren't known: he may have been thrown from his horse and the weight of his armour meant he was drowned in very shallow water; Islamic sources say that he was thrown into the water and the sudden cold caused him to have a heart attack); Royalist troops destroy the Jacquerie [the French Peasants' Revolt] at the Battle of Mello (1358 - their leader, Guillaume Cale is betrayed by false promises made by the King); Thomas Cromwell is arrested at a Royal Council Meeting (1540 - he is beheaded, without trial, six weeks later, "many lamented but more rejoiced"); Bridget Bishop becomes the first of 19 people found guilty and hanged at the Salem Witch Trials (1692); the Battle of Glen Shiel results in the defeat of the forces loyal to the Old Pretender, and ends the Jacobite Rebellion of 1719; 100,000 people are killed in the Sizuan province of China when a landslide dam bursts on the River Dadu (1786); the first Oxford v Cambridge Boat Race is held on the Thames (1829 - Oxford wins; Cambridge win the next race - which is held 7 years later); 11 convict and ex-convict colonialists in New South Wales murder between 28 and 35 unarmed native Australians at the Myall Creek massacre (1838 - they had beheaded children and forced others to run for their lives, hacking at them with machetes: seven of the murderes are hanged for their crime); the first issue of the Chicago Tribune goes on sale (1847); Tristan Und Isolde is premiered at the Royal National Theatre in Musich, conducted by von Bulow (1865 - with husband and wife Ludwig and Malvina Schnorr in the title roles); the League for the Defense of the Rights of the Albanian Nation is founded in the town of Prizren, opposing the Treaties of San Stefano and of Berlin, which had divided Albanian citizens into other States (1878); the Rembrandt House Museum opens to the public (1911); the two-and-a-half year long Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire begins (1916); Italian Socialist MP Giacomo Matteotti is kidnapped and murdered by Mussolini's Fascists (1924 - 10 days earlier in the Italian parliament, he had denounced Fascist fraud and intimidation); Dr Robert Smith and Bill Watson found Alcoholics Anonymous, using this date as the last in which either of them drank anything alcoholic (1935); Italy declares War on France and Britain (1940 - President Roosevelt describes this as "a stab in the back" - on the same day, Norway surrenders to nazi occupation); Hitler and Himmler order the total destruction of the Czech village of Lidice, in revenge for the assassination of Heydrich (1942 - 173 men are shot dead, 184 women and 88 children are sent to Chelmno Extermination camp - a very few other children are sent to SS officer families to be "Germanized", and 11 men not at home on the day of the massacre are arrested and killed on their return. Lidice is twinned with Coventry); 642 inhabitants of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane are murdered by the Waffen SS on suspicion that the Resistance had captured an SS officer (1944 - the destroyed village remains in ruins as a War Memorial, the surviving inhabitants rehoused in a nearby newly-built village - on the same day, the SS murder 214 inhabitants of the Greek village Distomo in revenge for an attack by Greek Partisans); President Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act, with the intention of closing the gender pay gap in the United States (1963); West Virginian Democrat Senator, Robert Byrd ends a 14-hour filibustering address to the US Senate in which he has attempted to prevent the Civil Rights Act from being legislated (1964); the Six-Day War comes to an end (1967); 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard is kidnapped as she walks to a bus stop (1991 - she has been taken by a sex offender and his wife, and is not recovered for over 18 years); NATO's 78-day airbombing of Yugoslavia ends when Serbian President Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw his troops from Kosovo (1999); Kevin Warwick performs the the first direct and purely electronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans via the internet (2002); NASA launches Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit (2003);

Birthdays Today include: Abu al-Wafa' al-Buzjani (940); James Francis Edward Stuart ["James VIII/III" or "the Old Pretender" according to preference] (1688); Hermann Schlegel (1804); Gustave Courbet (1819); Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843); Sarah Grand (1854); André Derain (1880); Frederick Loewe (1901); Robert Still and Howlin' Wolf (both 1910); Ralph Kirkpatrick and Terrence Rattigan (both 1911); Tikhon Khrennikov (1913); Saul Bellow (1915); Judy Garland (1922); Lionel Jeffries (1926); Maurice Sendak (1928); Eileen Cooper (1953); Rich Hall (1954); Mark-Anthony Turnage (1960); Shunsuke Sato (1984).

Final Days for: Alexander the Great (323 BCE); Martin Agricola (1556); Luís de Camões (1580); Thomas Hearne (1735); Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1799); André-Marie Ampère [after whom, of course, was named the Picnic Basket] (1836); Ernest Chausson (1899); Arrigo Boito (1918); Antoni Gaudi (1926); Frederick Delius (1934); Marcus Garvey (1940); Timothy Birdsall (1963); Spencer Tracy (1967); Michael Rennis (1971); Adolph Zukor (1975); Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1982); Louis L'Amour (1988); Les Dawson (1993); Hammond Innes (1998); Bernard Williams (2003); Ray Charles (2004); Georges Mathieu (2012);


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Saturday, 10th June, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Weber Ruler of the Spirits Ovt; Lebrun Oboe Concerto #1 in d minor; Grieg Homage March; Beethoven Appassionata.
The Week on 3: Simon Milner's preview of the week ahead's highlights.
Martin Roscoe: Brahms 6 Pieces op 118; Donanyi 4 Rhapsodies Op 11
Saturday Review presented by Richard Osborne: Schubert Symphony #5 BaL-ed by Stephen Dodgson; new orchestral releases reviewed by Michael Kennedy.
Record Release: Rachmaninoff The Rock; Mozart Pno Conc in Bb (K595); Bruckner #9; Grieg Pno Conc

[Padraig]

[B]The Feast Day of of St Columba, the 6th Century Irish missionary who evangelised in Western Scotland, founding the Abbey on Iona and who died on this date in 597; he is (one of) the patron Saints of Scotland and Ireland (and Derry in particular; his gaelic name is Colm Cille - "the dove of the Church") and of poets and bookbinders.

This was a free day for St Columb's boys, God bless him, where the school motto was Quaerite Primum Regnum Dei.

Heaney captured Columba's soft spot for Derry in his poem

II Is aire charaim Doire

Derry I cherish ever.
It is calm, it is clear.
Crowds of white angels on their rounds
At every corner.

from Colum Cille Cecinit

Human Chain 2010

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 11th

St Barnabas' Day - the companion of St Paul, and one of those earliest Apostles who hadn't been one of the 12 disciples. His feast day was enjoyed in England because of its coincidence with Midsummer Day in the Julian Calendar. Church records from the 15th & 16th Century give evidence of the popularity of marking the feast: Churches decorated with garlands of roses, lavender, and woodruff. Girls would go around houses collecting money and other gifts for the church - and, in London, "to pay for bread, wine, and ale for the singers of the King's Chapel, and for the clerks of the town". Such activities seem to have died out with Cromwell (if not before) and the change of calendar made the old rhyme ...

Barnaby bright, Barnaby bright
The longest day and the shortest night

... somewhat redundant.

It's also the Feast Day of St Riagail, Abbott of Bangor, who was murdered by "the men from the North" (Vikings, rather than Anglesey) on this date in 881.

Also on this Date: Cassandra says "I told you so!" as the Achaens indulge in a bit of horseplay and destroy the city of Troy (1184 BCE - mebbe); a sudden violent thunderstorm enables Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius to turn the tables on the Quadi forces that had surrounded his own, and had looked set to crush them (173); Albert I becomes the first Margrave of Brandenburg (1157); at the Battle of Jargeau, Joan of Arc begins the first offensive campaign against the occupying English troops (1429); James III of Scotland is defeated and killed by rebel troops [including his own son] at the Battle of Sauchieburn (1488); a fortnight before his Coronation, Henry VIII marries Catherine of Aragon (1509); Denmark becomes the first Scandanavian country to incorporate the Nordic Cross into its national flag (1748); the Battle of Machias, the first naval engagement in the American War of Independence, begins (1775); Russian explorer Gerasim Izmailov reaches Alaska, beginning the Russian colonisation of the territory (1788); ethnic tensions between English-Americans and Irsih-Americans erupts in the Broad Street Riot in Boston (1837); the original version of Honegger's Le Roi David [incidental Music for chamber ensemble - no singing] is premiered at Mézières village theatre (1921); the International Surrealist Exhibition opens at the New Burlington Gallery in London (1936); following a secret, day-long trial, part of Stalin's anti-Trotskyite Great Purge, nine of the Soviet Union's most important military leaders are shot in the back of the head (1937 - this act significantly weakens Soviet military leadership, resulting in the ease with which the Nazis were able to advance so far into Russia exactly 4 years later); 83 spectators are killed and more than another hundred injured when two cars collide at the 24hr Le Mans motor race (1955); five days of rioting by the majority Sinhalese against minority Tamil citizens in the Gal Oya valley in Ceylon (1956 - the Tamils are attacked with knives and clubs, leaving 150 dead and over 100 injured); Stockhausen's Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano & percussion is premiered by David Tudor, Christopher Caskel, & the compoer in Cologne, as part of the 32nd ISCM Festival (1960 -on the same day, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream is premiered [on the date that would have been Midsummer in Shakespeare's time] at the Aldeburgh Festival conducted by the Composer); the racist Governor of Alabama stands in front of the entrance to the State University, physically blocking the way for two black students to register (1963 - the students register later when they are accompanied past the Governor by National Guard troops); in a public protest against South Vietnamese religious intolerance, 66-year-old Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức douses himself in petrol and self-immolates in the centre of Saigon (1963 - the event is photographed and reported around the world, and other Buddhist monks follow his example in the next few months, until the US Army remove the South Vietnamese President, six months later); eight schoolchildren, aged between 9 - 12, and two of their teachers are murdered by an unemployed Security Officer at a Catholic Elementary School in Cologne - twenty-two other people are injured in the massacre, and the murderer kills himself with poison before the police can arrest him (1964); Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P hoisington officially become the first women Generals in the US Army (1970); Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial goes on general release in the USA (1982); the first three black British MPs [Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, and Bernie Grant] are elected in the 1987 General Election ( - this is the election in which Thatcher becomes the first Prime Minister in 160 years to win three consecutive terms in office); Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park goes on general release in the USA (1993); the NASA/ESA space probe Cassini-Huygens makes its closest approach to Phoebe, one of Saturn's smaller, irregular-shaped moons (2004); heavy monsoon rains create a mudslide in the Bangladesh city of Chittagong that kills 130 people, injures more than 150 others (2007 - 8,000 people have to be evacuated); the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope is launched (2008); Greek public service broadcaster EPT is unilaterally shut down by the Greek government amidst allegations of "waste" (2013 - it is re-opened by the new government exactly two years later to the day); ... and, this time last year, Trump and Kim meet in Singapore.

Birthdays Today include: Barnabe Googe (1540); Lodovico Zacconi (1555); Ben Jonson (1572); George Wither (1588); Francesco Antonio Vallotti (1697); John Constable (1776); Millicent Fawcett (1847); Richard Strauss (1864); Alexandre Tansman (1897); Jacques Cousteau and Carmine Coppola (both 1910); Risë Stevens (1913); Richard Todd (1919); Shelly Manne (1920); William Styron (1925); Carlisle Floyd (1926); Kit Pedlar (1927); Athol Fugard (1932); Gene Wilder (1933); Robin Warren (1937); Lynsey de Paul (1950); ... and Hugh Laurie is 60 today, and Jackie Stewart and Rachel Heyhoe Flint are both 80.

Final Days for: Samuel Whitbread (1796); Heinrich Baermann (1847); Klemens von Metternich (1859); Théodore Dubois (1924); Robert E Howard (1936); John Wayne (1979); Chesley Bonestell (1986); Brigitte Helm (1996): Catherine Cookson (1998); DeForest Kelley (1999); Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (2014); Ornette Coleman and Ron Moody (both 2015).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Wednesday, 11th June, 1969 were:

Overture: "gramophone records"
Your Midweek Choice: "gramophone record requests"
This Week's Composer: Tchaikovsky (Pno Conc #1 [Ashkenazy/LSO/Maazel])
Orchestral Concert: "gramophone records"
Organ Recital by Alan Harverson from St Mary's Priory Church, London
Aldeburgh Festival: the Barry Tuckwell Horn 4tet (Barry Tuckwell, Terry Jones, Anthony Halstead, & Anthony Chiddell); Alan Schiller, piano.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 12th

The Feast Day of St Ternan, the 5th Century Scottish bishop, "Bishop of the Picts", and founder of a monastery near the Aberdeenshire town of Banchory. He is remembered by the bell that he brought to the monastery from Rome, and which now resides [mebbe] in the Presbyterian Church that bears his name in Banchory; in an annual Fair held in Banchory on the closest Saturday to his Feast Date; and in the Milking Croon of South Uist, sung by dairymaids to soothe cows whilst they [the cows] were being milked.

It's also World Day Against Child Labour, initiated by the International Labour Organization to raise awareness of, and take measures to prevent, exploitation of children, especially those from poor backgrounds.

And, in the United States, Loving Day.

Also on this Date: at the Battle of Augsburg, the Magyar army defeats the forces of the East Franks, by tricking them with a fake retreat (910 - the Frankish army is so devastated that they have to pay Tribute to the Magyars, who suffered such few losses that they were able to fight and destroy the other major German forces at the Battle of Rednitz just 10 days later); in the Disputation of Paris, four Rabbis defend the Talmud against chrges that it contained blasphemous passages about Jesus, Mary, and Christianity (1240 - the outcome resulted in the burning of around 10,000 handwritten Jewish manuscripts); the Kentish rebels reach Blackheath in the "Peasants'" Revolt (1381 - John Bull gives his "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?" speech); the Battle of Jargeau comes to an end as Joan of Arc's troops defeat the 700 English troops led by William de la Pole, who is taken prisoner); the city of Helsinki, now the capital of Finland, is founded by King Gustav I of Sweden (1550); Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers is unveiled in Piazza Navona in Rome (1651); the Battle of Ballynahinch, the last of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, begins; the private premiere of Mozart's Paris Symphony is given in the home of Count Karl Heinrich Joseph von Sickingen (1776); Karl Drais makes a journey of over 4 miles on his latets invention, the Laufmaschine ["running machine"]; a "Dandy Horse" or earliest type of bicycle (1817 - it has been suggested that the invention was prompted by the shortage of horses after the Napoleonic Wars, and after and widespread crop failures and food shortages which meant that horses were required for ... other purposes); the French colonization of Algeria begins (1830); the Philippines declare their Independence from Spain (1898 - Spain does not recognise the proclamation, and 7 months later, cedes contol of the Philippines to the United States); Turkish and Ottoman troops murder up to 100 Greek citizens living in the town of Phocaea, forcing the remaining 6,200 to flee (1914 - one of the most vicious acts in a policy of ethnic cleansing by the Young Turk Government); Pfitzner's opera Palestrina is premiered at the Prinzregententheater, Munich, conducted by Bruno Walter (1917); Scottish and French troops surrender to General Erwin Rommel after battling at Saint-Valery-en-Caux (1940 - cavalry forces had been pitted against Panzer tanks; further resistance was indeed futile); on her 13th birthday, Anne Frank is given a diary (1942); Nazi troops raze the Jewish ghetto in the Polish town of Brzeżany to the ground, and march the inhabitants to the town's Jewish cemetery before shooting them all (1943); Part One of Prokofiev's War & Peace is premiered at the Maly Theatre in Leningrad, conducted by Samuil Samosud (1946); Civil Rights activist and WW2 veteran Medgar Evers is murdered outside his house by a Ku Klux Klansman (1963 - the murderer escapes justice in two trials [both with whites-only jurors] and is only convicted 31 years later); Nelson Mandela is sentenced to Life Imprisonment for sabotage in South Africa (1964); the US Supreme Court rules that State Laws forbidding inter-racial marriage unconstitutional, and therefore unenforcable (1967); the Indian High Court rules Indira Gandhi's election victory in 1971 is void because of malpractice (1975 - she refuses to resign and imposes a State of Emergency); Steven Spielberg's film Raiders of the Lost Ark is released in the United States (1981); at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Ronald Reagan challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down" the Berlin Wall (1987 - four years later to the day, Boris Yeltsin replaces Gorbachev as Russian leader following the first democratic elections of the post-soviet era); the Sri Lankan Army murders 152 Tamil civilians in the village of Kokkadichcholai in Eastern Sri Lanka in revenge at the killing of two soldiers earlier in the day (1991); Nicole Brown Simpson, estranged wife of OJ Simpson is stabbed seven times and has her throat cut (1994 - her husband is found not guilty of the murder after a lengthy trial, is made to pay his wife's family $19.5million [or $33.5million, depending which line on WIKI you read] in damages for ... err ... not being guilty; and later publishes a book in which he explains in detail how he might have done what he was found not guilty of doing); a UN peacekeeping begins operating in Kosovo (1999 - in the 20 years since, 200 NATO soldiers have been killed serving in Kosovo); Vladimir Putin presents Alexandr Solzhenitsyn with the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his hunamitarian Work at a ceremony in the Grand Kremlin Palace (2006); a 29-year-old Security Guard, under investigation by the FBI for his claims that he was a member of both Hezbollah and ISIL, shoots dead 49 poeple and injures another 53 at the Pulse Gay Nightclub in Florida (2016 - he is himself shot dead by police marksmen); American college student Otto Warmbier dies in Cincinnati Medical Center Hospital after being in a Persistent Vegetative State for the past 17 months following an assault in the North Korean prison where he had been imprisoned for stealing a poster from his hotel (2017).

Birthdays Today include: Harriet Martineau (1802); Charles Kingsley (1819); Johanna Spyri (18227); Egon Schiele (1890); Bill Naughton (1910); Maurice Ohana (1913); Peter Jones & Dave Berg (both 1920); Vic Damone & Richard M Sherman (both 1928); Brigid Brophy & Anne Frank (both 1929); Chick Corea, Roy Harper, & Reg Presley (all 1941); Len Wein (1948); Oliver Knussen (1962);

Final Days for: Æthelflæd (918); Thomas Farnaby (1647); Walter Leigh (1942); Jimmy Dorsey (1957); John Ireland (1962); Hermann Scherchen (1966); Herbert Read (1968); Edmund Wilson (1972); Billy Butlin (1980); Karl von Frisch (1982); Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1995); Thomas Wilson (2001); Gregory Peck (2003); György Ligeti (2006); Al Williamson (2010); Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen (2012); Ernest Tomlinson (2015); and Janet Waldo (2016).



And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 12th June, 1979 were:

Overture: "The bells of Solesmes Abbey are followed by a series of pieces on the same theme by Byrd, Purcell, Marais, Liszt, Grieg, Damase. Delibes and finishing with organ music by Louis Couperin , Lebegue and Mulct"; [followed after the News by] Nicolas Chedeville Sonata in c minor, Op 7; Lanner The Mozartians; Smetana Hakon Jarl; Weber/Liszt Polacca brillante.
Composer of the Week: Bach (Mass in F, BWV 233; Trio Sonata in d minor BWV527).
Music for Brass & Choir: Gibbons O clap your hands; Byrd 6-part Fantasia; Gibbons Lift up your heads, O Lord in thy wrath; Purcell Funeral music for Queen Mary; Dallapiccola Tempus destruendi, tempus aedificandi; Gabrieli 4-part Canzona Timor et Tremor, 5-part Canzona O Domine Jesu Christe; Anthony Payne Phoenix Mass.
Piano Recital by Shoshana Rudiakov (Scriabin, Sonata #2 & 3 Etudes from Op42; Chopin Sonata #3)