Today's the Day

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

July 14th

The Feast Day of St Deusdedit, the Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 664, a victim of the outbreak of plague that coincided with the decision of the Synod of Whitby to adopt Roman customs and reject those of the Celtic Church. And of St Idus of Leinster, who was a contemporary of St Patrick, and who assisted him in the conversion of Ireland in the 5th century.

And, of course, Bastille Day, la Fête nationale commemorating the storming of the fortress prison, regarded as the symbol of royal authority, and the point of no return in the French Revolution.

Also on this Date: Henry Purcell is appointed organist of the Chapel Royal, two days after the death of the previous holder of the post, Edward Lowe (1682); Scottish explorer Alexander MacKenzie reaches the mouth of the river that now bears his name, the second longest in North America (1789 - he himself calls it "Disappointment" as it hasn't taken him to the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean as he'd been hoping); the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille sees the first celebration of the date with the Fête de la Fédération (1790 - the event is attended by the Royal Family, and begins with a Mass in which all the deputies of the National Assembly "swear to be forever faithful to the Nation, to the Law, and to the King" and the King then also swore "to maintain the Constitution as decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by myself"); the beginning of the Priestley Riots, in which mobs attack and destroy the property of dissenting intellectuals supporting the French Revolution (1791 - polymath Joseph Priestley is their first target, and he and his family only just escape their burning home); the National Convention adopt La Marseillaise as the French national Anthem (1795); the Sedition Act becomes law in the United States, making it harder for immigrants to become US citizens, easier to deport immigrants regarded as dangerous to the state, and making it a criminal offense to speak, write, or publish false information critical of the US government (1798); Edward Whymper and his team become the first men to reach the summit of the Matterhorn (1865 - it proves more difficult to become the first men to get down from the summit, and 4 of his team are killed during the descent); a conflagration destroys 47 aces of land in Chicago, most of which is populated by Jewish immigrants from Europe, killing 20 people and destroying 812 buildings (1874); Pat Garrett shoots dead Billy the Kid (1881); the Bell Tower of St Mark's Cathedral in Venice collapses, destroying the meeting house of the Logetta as it does so (1902 - there are no fatalities other than the caretaker's cat); three months after his very first flying lesson, 27-year-old aviator Hearry Atwood completes his record-breaking distance flight from Boston to Washington by becoming the first pilot to land an aircraft on the lawn of the White House (1911); the Nazis pass the Law Forbidding the Founding of New Parties, making them the only legal political party, and ending the process of Gleichschaltung begun as soon as Hitler had become Chancellor in January (1933 - on the same day, they proclaim the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, ordering compulsory sterilisation of any citizen found to have "hereditary" mental, physical, or racial "defects"); a National Monument dedicated to agricultural and environmental pioneer George Washington Carver is founded - the first such in the United States honoring a black citizen (1943); Pediatrician Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care is first published (1946 - it has sold half-a-million copies within 6 months); Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti is shot three times and seriously wounded by a Fascist student (1948); Rawya Ateya becomes the first woman MP in the Arab nations (1957); a coup d'etat by the Iraqi military deposes the Royal Family - killing its most prominent members in the process - and establishes the Iraqi Republic (1958); Jane Goodall arrives at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to begin her studies of chimpanzees in the wild (1960); Mariner 4 begins its fly-by of Mars, and takes the first close-range photographs of another planet (1965); Dennis Hopper & Peter Fonda's film Easy Rider is released (1969 - on the same day in the United States paper bills above the value of $500 are withdrawn); a far-right gunman attempts to shoot French President Jacques Chirac at the Bastille Day celebrations (2002 - he misses); Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight, starring Heath Ledger [who had died 6 months earlier] and Christian Bale is released (2008); space probe New Horizons flies a little under 2,000 miles above the surface of Pluto, becoming the first craft to explore the planet, and sending data and images back to Earth (2015 - on the same day, Harper Lee's "second" novel Go Set a Watchman is first published: it turns out to be an earlier version of he first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird); an Islamist terrorist drives a 21-ton truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people and injuring 458 others (2016).


Birthdays Today include: Angelo Ambrogini (1454); Willy Hess (1859); Gustav Klimt (1862); Gertrude Bell (1868); Gerald Finzi (1901); Irving Stone (1903); William Hanna (1910); Woody Guthrie (1912); Ingmar Bergman & Arthur Laurents (both 1918);Leon Garfield (1921); Harry Dean Stanton (1926); Ole Schmidt (1928); Sue Lawley (1946); George Lewis (1952); Unsuk Chin (1961); Matt Pritchett (1964); David Mitchell (1974).

Final Days for: Marius Petipa (1910); Alphonse Mucha (1939 - after several days of "interrogation" by the Nazi occupiers of Czechoslavakia); George Tremblay (1982); Raymond Loewy (1986); Constance Stokes (1991); Guy de Lussigny (2001); Cicely Saunders (2005); Maryam Mirzakhani (2017).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Saturday, 14th July, 1979 were:

Aubade: Saint Saens La Princesse Jaune Ovt; Chasins 3 Chinese Pictures; Dvorak 5 Slavonic Dances.
Stereo Release: Schumann "Rhenish" Symph; Bartok The Wooden Prince; Debussy Images Series 1; Sibelius Symph #3.
Berlioz Te Deum (Tagliavani/LSO/Davis)

[Richard Tarleton]

Edward Whymper and his team become the first men to reach the summit of the Matterhorn (1865 - it proves more difficult to become the first men to get down from the summit, and 4 of his team are killed during the descent)

The churchyard of the English church in Zermatt contains a high number of graves of young, twenty-something Englishmen who perished in the attempt. We spent a pleasant rest day in Zermatt after doing the Tour of Monte Rosa, a challenging long-distance Alpine walking trail - we'd crossed from the Italian side and passed by the east flank of the Matterhorn at around 11,000 feet before descenting to Zermatt.



Each of the 4 faces of the Matterhorn presents a quite different aspect - what one might call the "Alpie" view , from the north, is of course the view from Zermatt village. From east and west, it is more of a pyramid.

[LezLee]

Mention of Gerald Finzi (Birthday 1901) reminds me of a Classic FM series a few years ago where David Mellor presented a programme called 'If You Liked That, You'll Like This'. One of his guests was Esther Rantzen whose great, great, great grandfather was also Gerald Finzi's grandfather. She didn't know about this and wasn't remotely interested in being related to a famous composer. She had little comment to make about whatever music was played and was generally quite boorish.
Far more interesting and seemingly genuinely engaged was footballer Vinnie Jones and there seemed to be a chance he would listen to more classical.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Mention of Gerald Finzi (Birthday 1901) reminds me of a Classic FM series a few years ago where David Mellor presented a programme called 'If You Liked That, You'll Like This'. One of his guests was Esther Rantzen whose great, great, great grandfather was also Gerald Finzi's grandfather. She didn't know about this and wasn't remotely interested in being related to a famous composer. She had little comment to make about whatever music was played and was generally quite boorish.

And yet elsewhere Ms Rantzen has said that whilst she was growing up, her mother "delighted" in telling her stories of glamorous relatives like the novelist Ada Leverson, who had been a loyal friend of Oscar Wilde, and Gerald Finzi, the gifted composer."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1051986/Esther-Rantzen-The-moment-I-discovered-shocking-truth-killer-great-grandfather.html

[cloughie]

And yet elsewhere Ms Rantzen has said that whilst she was growing up, her mother "delighted" in telling her stories of glamorous relatives like the novelist Ada Leverson, who had been a loyal friend of Oscar Wilde, and Gerald Finzi, the gifted composer."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...andfather.html

I guess ‘That’s Life’.

[LezLee]

I have no explanation for that! Perhaps if the two occasions were a few years apart, she did a bit of revision!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I have no explanation for that! Perhaps if the two occasions were a few years apart, she did a bit of revision!

I think that's a very charitable explanation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

July 15th

How's the weather? The Feast Day of St Swithun, the 9th Century Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester, who had specifically requested that his remains be buried outside in the Winchester churchyard. His survivors, thinking that, as Swithun had been such an important figure in the spiritual and political life of Wessex at a time when it was emerging as a dominant force in English history, he deserved a more impressive resting place. They duly gave him a solemn burial inside the church building when he died on 2nd July, 863 - whereupon, it started to rain, and continued to rain, more heavily each day, for the next 40 days until the church officials got the hint, and reburied him outside, as he had wished [when, I presume, it stopped raining]. As a result, the day has become one of those "forecasting" dates, with its own little rhyme

St Swithun's day, if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun's day, if thou be fair
For forty days, 'twill rain nae mair

... and the day's weather was held crucial for the success of crops, too: in Warwickshire it was believed

You won't have jam made till the apples are christened ... We never eat or cut apples until St Swithun has christened them

... which suggests that rain was actually something that was hoped for.

Also on This Date: the Temple of Castor & Pollux is dedicated in the Roman Forum (484 BCE - today is the Ides of July); the Crusaders take Jerusalem from Muslim control (1099 - Pope Urban II, who had instigated the crusade, had declared that no Knight could consider his task achieved until he had prayed at the temple of the Holy Sepulchre - Urban dies just two weeks later; before the news of the capture of Jerusalem has reached Europe. 50 years later to the day, the reconstructed church is reconsecrated); Alexander Nevsky leads his troops to victory against invading Scandanavian forces led by Thomas, first Bishop of Finland at the Battle of the River Neva (1240); John Ball, "the mad priest of Kent" is hung, drawn, and quartered in St Albans in the presence of Richard II for questioning who was the gentleman when Adam delved & Eve span (1381 - his head is put on a spike for public display at London Bridge, and the four quarters of his corpse are displayed in four different towns); the Duke of Monmouth is beheaded for treason on Tower Hill - eventually [he taunts executioner Jack Ketch about his record for not being entirely efficient, with the result that Ketch takes several attempts before finally severing the duke's head - during which attempts, the Duke stands up from the block to reproach him - to the (possibly delighted) horror of the crowd] (1685); the trilingual Rosetta Stone is discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's invading troops (1799); four weeks after Waterloo, Napoleon surrenders himself on board HMS Bellerophon [veteran of Battles of the Nile and Trafalgar - "Billy Ruffian" to its crews] ending 22 years of warfare between France and Britain (1815); the Spanish Inquisition, founded in 1478, is disbanded (1834 - nobody expected that!); Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès files for a patent for his process of producing margarine (1869 - the low-fat version is called "Hippo-lite"); 89 protestors are shot dead by police gunmen in Vienna (1927); the first prisoners arrive at Buchenwald Extermination Camp (1937); Donald Kerst becomes the first person to accelerate electrons using a Betatron particle accelerator (1941); Werner Heisenberg has no dounbts about signing the Mainau Declaration in which he and 17 other Nobel Science Laureates [who also include Max Born and Otto Hahn] express their horror at the prospect of using Nuclear weapons in warfare (1955); 29-year-old US TV newsreader Christine Chubbuck becomes the first person to commit suicide by shooting herself in the head whilst presenting a Live news broadcast (1974); the first joint US-Soviet space mission is launched (1975 - effectively bringing the Space Race to an end, this was also the last launching of an Apollo CommandService Module, and of a Saturn 5 rocket: it will be another 6 years until the next US space mission); Gianni Versace is murdered on the steps of his home in Miami (1997); the first fully public version of Twitter is launched (2006); a military coup is attempted in Turkey (2016).

Birthdays Today include: Inigo Jones (1573); Rembrandt (1606); Thomas Bullfinch (1796); John Fowler (1817); Emmeline Pankhurst (1858); Walter Benjamin (1892); Noel Gay (1898); Ronald Binge (1910); Hammond Innes (1913); Jean Heywood (1921); John Lambert (1926); Jacques Derrida (1930); Julian Bream (1933); Robert Winston (1940); Geoffrey Burgon (1941); Klaas de Vries (1944); Linda Ronstadt (1946); Trevor Horn (1949); Arianna Huffington (1950); Celia Imrie (1952); Ian Curtis (1956); it is the Centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch ... and Harrison Birtwistle is 85 today.

Final Days for: Annibale Carracci (1690); Michael Bruce (1767); Jacques Duphly (1789); Gaetano Pugnani (1798); Jean-Antoine Houdon (1828); Carl Czerny (1857); General Tom Thumb (1883); Anton Chekhov (1904); Hugo von Hoffmansthal (1929); Leopold Auer (1930); Ernest Bloch (1959); Lawrence Tibbett (1960); Paul Gallico (1976); Margaret Lockwood (1990); Googie Withers (2011); Noël Lee (2013); Martin Landau (2017).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Saturday, 15th July, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Walton Portsmouth Point; Elgar The Sanguine Fan; Stenhammar Serenade.
The Week on 3: (last edition of the programme)
Charles Wesley Concertos: "last of 3 programmes" Boyce Overture in F; Wesley Concerto in g, Op2 #5; JC Bach Symphony in Bb, Op 8 #3; Wesley Concerto in C, Op2 #4
Record Release: Grieg In Autumn; Salmenhaara Sonatella; Gounod Va! je t'ai pardonne ... Nuit d'hymenee (from Romeo et Juliette); Mozart Oboe 4tet K370; Ginastera Harp Concerto, Op 25; Bach Partita #2 BWV 826; Dvorak String Quintet in Eb, Op 97; Mozart La Ci Darem; Rebel Les Elements; Schumann Frauenliebe und -leben; Brahms 3rd Piano Sonata.

[Richard Tarleton]

four weeks after Waterloo, Napoleon surrenders himself on board HMS Bellerophon [veteran of Battles of the Nile and Trafalgar - "Billy Ruffian" to its crews] ending 22 years of warfare between France and Britain (1815);

Entertaining book, "Billy Ruffian", by David Cordingley (2003). He ends with a dispiriting account of the ship's final years as a prison hulk - although the ship was in good repair it was surplus to requirements, and the navy was not sentimental (except about HMS Victory). From 1815 she was moored at Sheerness, and was towed to Plymouth where she remained (still as a prison hulk) until 1834 when she was broken up. By then, alternative arrangements in the form of, er, Australia, meant prison hulks were no longer needed

[gurnemanz]

Mainau Declaration (1955) caught my eye. Mainau is a beautiful island garden in Lake Constance which I visited when hitching with a friend round Germany in 1966. I hadn't heard about the declaration until reading the above info. Heisenberg is of course a fascinating figure about whom I have read quite a lot - nuclear physicist and concert standard pianist.
Just read the interesting Wiki article. There was a second Mainau Declaration in 2015 - on climate change.

[Joseph K]

It's Julian Bream's birthday today...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's Julian Bream's birthday today...

- don't know how I missed that one. Many thanks, JK

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

July 16th

The Feast Day of St Helier, the 6th Century "Belgian"-born hermit, who is the Patron Saint of Jersey, who died on this date in 555, and who is evoked for diseases of the skin and eyes. Marked in Jersey by an annual procession from the centre of St Helier to the Hermitage, a rock in the bay of the town on a tidal island, in which the saint sheltered, and from which he could see any approaching invaders, and send warning to the island's inhabitants. One legend has it that eventually the invaders grew fed up of this and beheaded him - a moment somewhat insensitively commemorated by the crossed axes on the island's coat-of-arms.

Also on This Date: the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Christianity culminates in papal delegates placing a bull of excommunication of the Patriarch Michael Cerularius and his followers in the altar of the Hagia Sophia (1054 - in exchange, Cerularius excommunicates the delegates); Spanish Crusaders defeat the Muslim forces of Caliph Almohad in Spain at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212 - twenty years later, Arjona in Southern Spain elects Muhammad ibn Yusuf as its leader - the last Muslim state in Spain); the Coronation of Richard II (1377); 24-year-old poet Anne Askew is burnt at the stake for heresy after several days of torture (1546 - she is a Protestant who had hoped that Henry VIII's reforms of the Church in England would go beyond what he was prepared to allow); Dauphin Charles completes his three-week March to Rheims - the Townspeople have vowed not to let the city fall to him, but he persuades them after a really good dinner, and he enters the city, ready for his Coronation as King of France the following day (1429); in an attempt to prevent the spread of Plague, Henry VI bans kissing in England (1439); the first bank promissory notes in Europe are issued in Sweden (1661); Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with all its many notes [every one of them essential] is premiered at the Burgtheater, Vienna with the composer conducting (1782); the Residence Act is signed into law by George Washington, providing for a seat of government of the United States to be created alongside the banks of the River Potomac in the District of Columbia (1790); 7 months before his death, and after 20 years as a resident in Sussex, Henry James adopts British nationality as a gesture of support in the First World War (1915 - even so, after his death the following February his ashes are taken to Massachusetts for burial in accordance with his wishes); the world's first Parking Meter is installed in Oklahoma (1935 - ?just the one??); Hitler issues Directive #16; codenamed Operation Sea Lion, it orders his generals to prepare an invasion of Britain (1940); the Vichy Government order the arrest and round-up of 13,152 Jewish citizens, confined in the Winter Velodrome stadium in Paris (1942 - the round-up continues into the next day, after which they are deported to Auschwitz - the first group of 42,000 Jews so treated, of whom only 811 survive to return after the War); the USS Indianapolis leaves San Francisco bound for the military base on Tinian Island in the Pacific - its cargo is small: the various parts of the first Atomic Bomb, "Little Boy" (1945 - earlier in the day, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon [a Plutonium Implosion fission device] has been carried out in the Jornada del Muerto ["day of the dead"] desert in New Mexico - "Now I am become Death, the destrroyer of worlds"); the City of Nazareth falls to Israeli troops under the command of Ben Dunkelman (1948 - Dunkelman then proceeds to ignore orders from his Chief of Staff to evacuate the Muslim inhabitants of the city. On the same day, the world's first aircraft hijacking occurs when pirates attempt to take control of a Macau passenger aircraft; the plane crash lands in the South China Sea, killing all but one of the 26 people aboard); 30 seriously wounded US servicemen [and one Roman Catholic chaplain] are murdered by members of the Korean People's Army during the Korean War (1950); JD Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye is published by Little. Brown & Co (1951); the launch of Apollo 11 from Cape Kennedy in Florida (1969); Sadam Hussain becomes President of Iraq (1979 - he continues in his old post as Prime Minister, and adds the role of Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of Iraq to his CV today, as well); the first fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collide with Jupiter (1994); between 23 and 27 primary school children are killed, and dozens more poisoned in North-East India after eating a school dinner whose ingredients have been contaminated with pesticides (2013).

Birthdays Today include: Joseph Wilton (1722); Joshua Reynolds (1723); Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796); Eugène Ysaÿe (1858); Roald Amundsen (1872); Goffredo Petrassi (1904); Barbara Stanwyck (1907); Ginger Rogers (1911); Serge Baudo (1927); Anita Brookner & Bella Davidovich (both 1928); Corin Redgrave (1939); Desmond Dekker (1941); Angharad Rees (1944); Pinchas Zukerman (1948); Frances Spalding (1950); Stewart Copeland (1952); Helmut Oehring (1961); ... and James MacMillan is 60 today.

Final Days for: Anne of Cleves (1557); Johann David Heinichen (1929); Giuseppe Crespi (1747); Vyacheslav Ivanov (1949); Hilaire Belloc (1953); Heinrich Böll (1985); Herbert von Karajan (1989); Robert Motherwell (1991); Stephen Spender (1995); Carol Shields (2003); Pietro Consagra (2005); Jon Lord (2012).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Wednesday, 16th July, 1969 were:

Overture ("gramophone records")
Your Midweek Choice ("A record request programme")
This Week's Composers: Purcell & RVW ("gramophone records")
Folk Songs from Canada (programme 3, Romantic Adventures & Tragedies)
Historic Organs: The Basilica, Klosterneuburg (Music by Fischer, Froberger, Kerll, Pachelbel. and Murschhauser; played by Herbert Tachezi)
Haydn's Piano Trios: 2nd of 12 programmes; In Eb (H.XV.10), and in E (H.XV. 28)
Northern Prom BBCNSO conducted by Christopher Fry, no works specified, but the concert was recorded in King George's Hall, Blackburn.

[Bryn]

Favourite Buzz Aldrin quote:

"Here's a Milky Way. The Milky Way is a galaxy in space. I've been to space. Here's a Mars bar. I'm an astronaut. This one's a Moon Pie. I've walked on the moon. What have you done?"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

July 17th

The Feast Day of Saint Cynllo, the late 5th-early 6th Century missionary, possibly born in Brittany (and an associate of St Cadfan, who brought the gospel to pre-English Britain) or possibly the brother of St Teilo, and the son of St Usyllt and grandson of Coel Hen (who originated from pre-English Cumbria/Southern Scotland). A devout Christian, it is said that Cynllo's knee-prints, created through hours of prayer, can be seen in a rock near the church that bears his name in Llangoedmor, Ceridigion, where he spent much of his life.

And of 8th Century Anglo-Saxon Saint Cynehelm, 7-year-old son of a Mercian royal family, murdered by his older sister's lover in a bid for the throne - the child singing a Te Deum just before being beheaded. The village of Kenelstowe in Worcester used to have a tradition of "crabbing the parson" on the saint's day - pelting the local parson with crab apples somehow seen as a fitting tribute to the village's eponymous saint.

It's also International Emoji Day ; World Day for International Justice; and International Firgun Day. ("Firgun" a Yiddish-originating word for a disinterested joy in someone else's success or good fortune.)

Also on this Date: Charles VII is crowned King of France, usurping the claims of Henry VI of England (1429 - 34 years later to the day, the Hundred Years' War comes to an end [after more than 116 years] with the French defeat of the English troops of the Earl of Shrewsbury at the Battle of Castillon); Mary, Queen of Scots, writes a letter to Anthony Babington, agreeing to his offer of help in overthrowing and assassinating Elizabeth I [in whose realm Mary was a refugee] (1586); Handel's Water Music by Handel is premiered - and performed at least three times - during an evening Royal excursion along the River Thames from Whitehall to Chelsea (1717 - Handel's 50 Musicians are playing, with only one break, from 8:00pm until well after midnight); Peter III of Russia is assassinated and replaced as Tsar by his widow, Catherine the Great (1762); French republicans, led by Danton and Desmoulins mount a protest demanding the removal of Louis XVI, and are fired upon by the National Guard (1791 - up to 50 of the protestors are killed); 16 Carmelite Nuns are guillotined for refusing to follow the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which required the abolition of their monastery (1794); the 15 surviving castaways on the Raft of the Medusa are rescued by the ship l'Argus, which has encountered them by pure chance (1816 - a further five of the survivors die within days of being rescued); the first issue of Punch goes on sale in London (1841); the bell from the shipwrecked HMS Lutine is recovered from the wreckage (1858 - it is hung in Lloyd's Underwriting Rooms the next year, and rung whenever news was received of an overdue ship [one ring for bad news, two for good]); George V founds the House of Windsor as a consequence of anti-German "disquiet" about the former name of the House of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha among his subjects (1917); the Russian Royal family and their servants are executed by the Bolsheviks at Yetakarinburg (1918 - on the same day, a German U-boat torpedos and sinks the RMS Carpathia: the ship that had rescued 705 survivors of the Titanic); violent street fights between Communists and Nazis in the Northern German town of Altona results in the deaths of 18 people (1932 - most of them killed by police gunmen); an attempted military coup against the democratically-elected left-wing coalition government marks the start of the Spanish Civil War (1936); 320 people are killed when two ships laden with ammunition for the War explode in Port Chicago near San Francisco Bay (1944); the Potsdam Conference begins, in which the Allied leaders [Truman, Stalin, Atlee & Churchill] decide the fate of Germany and Europe after the War (1945); Disneyland opens in California (1955); in a military coup in Iraq, the Ba'ath Party overthrows the government of Abdul Rahman Arif [which had itself taken power in a military coup 10 years beofe] (1968 - Sadam Hussein becomes Vice-President. On exactly the same day, the animated film of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine is released); the Apollo & Soyuz spacecraft launched yesterday make the first space docking of craft from the Soviet Union and the USA (1975); the first Stealth Bomber, the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, makes its first flight (1980); an earthquake in Papua New Guinea triggers a tsunami which destroys 10 villages and kills 668 people and injures more than 9,000 others injured (2006); Bono is made a Commander of the French Order of Arts & Letters (2013 - Bono); pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels shoot down a passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpar as it flies over Ukrainian airspace, killing all 298 people on board (2014 - the missile used is Russian-made, and had been transported to the rebels earlier that very day).

Birthdays Today include: Isaac Watts (1674); Ephraim Shay (1839); Donald Francis Tovey (1875); Benjamin Dale (1885); Erle Stanley Gardner (1889); Berenice Abbott (1898); James Cagney (1899); Christina Stead (1902); Phyllis Diller (1917); Gordon Gould (1920); John Paynter (1931); Wojciech Kilar & Niccolò Castiglioni (both 1932); Peter Schickele & Donald Sutherland (both 1935); Tim Brooke-Taylor (1940); Dawn Upshaw (1960); Jeremy Hardy (1961); ... and Angela Merkel is 65 and Spencer Davis 80 today.

Final Days for: Adam Smith (17990); Carl Tausig (1871 - aged just 29); Henri Poincaré (1912); George William Russell (1935); Gabriel Pierné (1937); Florence Fuller (1946); Billie Holiday (1959); John Coltrane (1967); Lamberto Gardelli (1998); Rosalyn Turreck (2003); Edward Heath (2005); Mickey Spillane (2006); Walter Cronkite (2009); Otto Piene & Elaine Stritch (both 2014); John Taylor (2015).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 17th July, 1979 were:

Overture: RVW The Wasps Ovt; Bridge Summer; Elgar The Sanguine Fan; Britten A Time There Was; Offenbach La Vie Parisienne Ovt; Lalo 'cello Concerto; Fauré Barcarolle #5 in f#; Ravel La Valse.
This Week's Composer: Samuel Wesley (In exitu Israel & Duet in C).
Pierre Reach plays Debussy Estampes; Messiaen Preludes.
The Impressario Mozart's singspiel in an English translation by Dory Previn, recorded in 1966 conducted by her then hubby.
'cello & Piano recital by Rohan de Saram & Yitkin Seow (Rubbra Sonata in g; Janacek Pohadka; Trevor Hold Canticle)
Midday Concert BBCWSO/Del Mar (Mozart Don Giovanni Ovt; Nielsen Clarinet Conc [with Janet Hilton]; Daniel Jones Symph #8)