November 9 Dateline

Birthdays

1841 - Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria and her consort Albert, King of the UK of Great Britain and Ireland and the first Emperor of India, whose reign is later known as the Edwardian Period, 1901 to 1910. He was Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne for almost 60 years. During the long reign of his mother, he was largely excluded from political power, but came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite. He travelled throughout Britain performing ceremonial public duties, and represented Britain on visits abroad. His tours of North America in 1860 and the Indian subcontinent in 1875 were popular successes, but despite public approval, his reputation as a playboy prince soured his relationship with his mother. As king, Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet and the reorganisation of the British Army after the Second Boer War. He re-instituted traditional ceremonies as public displays and broadened the range of people with whom royalty socialised. He fostered good relations between Britain and other European countries, especially France, popularly calling him "Peacemaker", but his relationship with his nephew, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, was poor. The Edwardian era, which covered Edward's reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including steam turbine propulsion and the rise of socialism.

1914 - Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), Austrian-American actress, inventor, and film Producer. Aside from being a film actress, she co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum. In 1937, she fled from her wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer husband, secretly moving to Paris and then to London. There she met Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood and promoted as "the world's most beautiful woman". She became a star with her performance in Algiers, her first film made in the United States. She starred opposite famous actors like  Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart. Dismayed by being typecast, Lamarr co-founded a new production studio and starred in its films. Her greatest success was as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before the release of her final film, The Female Animal . in 1960, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Lamarr shared her concept for using “frequency hopping” with the U.S. Navy and co-developed a patent with Antheil in 1941. Today, her innovation helped make possible a wide range of wireless communications technologies, including Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. (The brilliant mind of Hollywood legend actress Hedy Lamarr. Uploaded by PBS NewsHour. Accessed November 9, 2020.)

1928 - Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey), American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with depression, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children.

1929 - Imre Kertesz, Hungarian author and recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". He was the first Hungarian to win the Nobel in Literature. His works deal with themes of The Holocaust (he was a survivor of a German concentration camp), dictatorship and personal freedom.

1934 - Carl Sagan, American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, best known for his work as a science popularizer, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. (Wiki) 

 
1982 - Jana Pittman, Australian athlete who specialises in the 400 metres run and 400 metre hurdles events. She is a two-time world champion in the 400m hurdles, from 2003 and 2007. Pittman is one of only nine athletes to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletic event. She also competed in the two-woman bobsleigh at the 2014 Winter Olympics, making her the first Australian female athlete to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympic games.

1984 - Delta Lea Goodrem, Australian singer, songwriter, and actress. She signed to Sony Music at the age of 15. Her debut album, Innocent Eyes, topped the ARIA Albums Chart for 29 consecutive weeks. It is one of the highest-selling Australian albums of all time, with over four million copies sold. Goodrem has several number-one singles and 17 top-ten hits on the ARIA Singles Chart. She has sold over eight million albums globally and overall has won three World Music Awards, 9 ARIA Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award and several other awards.

Leftie:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events, November 9 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1799 - Just returned from Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte takes over France in a coup. He is declared First Consul on November 11 and holds absolute power until his abdication in 1814.

1825 - Thomas Drummond, after watching a demonstration of light created by burning lime, sets up a limelight in front of a reflector in which the light can be seen 66 miles (106 kms) away.  He performed this on a hill near Belfast, Ireland. As a result, limelights come to be used in lighthouses and theatres.  

November 8 Dateline

Birthdays

1656 - Edmond Halley, English astronomer. He went on to study the solar system and correctly predict the existence of the comet, named after him. His prediction was not proven until 1758 after his death, when "Halley's Comet" returned.

1883 - Sir Arnold Bax, English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist.(Bax's November Woods, a symphonic tone-poem for large orchestra YouTube, uploaded by gioiellidellamusica. Accessed November 8, 2018. "Tintagel", by Arnold Bax (1883-1953). YouTube, uploaded by Scot Peacock. Accessed November 8, 2019.)

1900 - Margaret Mitchell, American writer and journalist, famous for her book Gone with the Wind, a Civil War-era novel  that becomes a movie blockbuster. For this famous novel, for which she won the National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. In recent years long after her death, a collection of Mitchell's girlhood writings and a novella she wrote as a teenager, titled Lost Laysen, have been published. A collection of newspaper articles written by Mitchell for The Atlanta Journal was also republished in book form. (Brief history: Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind. YouTube, accessed November 8, 2018.)

1922 - Christiaan Barnard, South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant on 3 December 1967 and the first one in which the patient regained consciousness. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident-victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, with Washkansky regaining full consciousness and being able to easily talk with his wife, before dying 18 days later of pneumonia. The anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system were a major contributing factor. Dr. Barnard had told Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, a claim which has been criticised as misleading. Barnard's second transplant patient Philip Blaiberg, whose operation was performed at the beginning of 1968, lived for a year and a half and was able to go home from the hospital. (Dr. Chris Barnard - Biography. Uploaded by HealthShare SA. Accessed November 8, 2015.)

1954 - Kazuo Ishiguro OBE FRSA FRSL, Japanese-born British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and praised contemporary fiction authors writing in English, having been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. Author of novels including A Pale View of the Hills, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, he was praised by the Swedish Academy for his novels. In its citation, the Swedish Academy described Ishiguro as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world". 

1954 - Rickie Lee Jones, American vocalist, musician, songwriter, producer, actress and narrator. She has recorded in various musical styles including R&B, rock, blues, pop, soul, and jazz. Jones is a two-time Grammy Award winner. She was listed at number 30 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll in 1999. Her album Pirates was number 49 on NPR's list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women.

Leftie:
None known

 

 

More birthdays and historical events, November 8 - On This Day

Historical Events

1519 - Hernando Cortes, Spanish conquistador, enters Tenochtitlan, Aztec. Soon afterwards Aztec King Montezuma II is taken and Montezuma is taken prisoner and Cortes controls the Aztec empire.

1889 - Richard Strauss's tone poem Don Juan is first performed in Weimar. (Listening Pleasure: Don Juan performed by Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Dudamel. Accessed Nov 8, 2018.)