September 27 Dateline

Birthdays

Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici, Italian banker and politician who established the Medici family as effective rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance. His power derived from his wealth as a banker, and he was a patron of arts, learning and architecture. Despite his influence, his power was not absolute; Florence's legislative councils at times resisted his proposals throughout his life, and he was viewed as first among equals, rather than an autocrat.

 

1601 - King Louis XIII of France. (Sometimes called the Just), King of France from 1610 to 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown.  Shortly before his ninth birthday, Louis became king of France and Navarre after his father Henry IV was assassinated. His mother, Marie de' Medici, acted as regent during his minority. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie and her Italian favourites led the young king to take power in 1617 by exiling his mother and executing her followers, including Concino Concini, the most influential Italian at the French court. He relied heavily on his chief ministers, first Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes and then Cardinal Richelieu. By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu had established "the royal monopoly of force" as the ruling doctrine. His reign was also marked by the struggles against the Huguenots and Habsburg Spain.

 
1879 - Cyril Meir Scott, English composer, writer, poet, and occultist. He created around four hundred musical compositions including piano, violin, cello concertos, symphonies, and operas. He also wrote around 20 pamphlets & books on occult topics and natural health. (Cyril Scott - Piano Concerto featuring cellist Paul Watkins. Accessed September 27, 2013. Lotus Land (original recording), uploaded by OrchestraOne. Accessed September 27, 2012.) 

1917 - Louis Stanton Auchincloss, American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a novelist who parlayed his experiences into books exploring the experiences and psychology of American polite society and old money. Famous for The Romantic Egoists and The Winthrop Covenant.

1947 - Barbara Ruth Dickson OBE, Scottish singer whose hits include "I Know Him So Well", "Answer Me" and "January February". Dickson has placed fifteen albums in the UK Albums Chart and had a number of hit singles, including four which reached the Top 20 in the UK Singles Chart. She is also a twice Olivier Award-winning actress, with roles including Viv Nicholson in the musical Spend Spend Spend, and was the original Mrs. Johnstone in Willy Russell's long-running musical Blood Brothers. On TV she starred as Anita Braithwaite in Band of Gold. 

 

1958 - Shaun Paul Cassidy, American singer, actor, writer and producer. He starred in the television series The Hardy Boys Mysteries and Breaking Away. In the 1980s and 90s, Cassidy worked almost exclusively as an actor in the theater, performing on Broadway and in the West End of London. Since the mid-1990s, he has been a writer and producer in television, creating and producing a number of television series, including American Gothic, Roar and Invasion. Cassidy is the eldest son of Academy Award-winning actress Shirley Jones and Tony Award-winning actor Jack Cassidy. David Cassidy was his older half-brother.

 
1961 - Irvine Welsh, Scottish Novelist, Playwright and Short Story Writer. His novel Trainspotting was made into a film of the same name. His work is characterised by a raw Scots dialect and brutal depiction of Edinburgh life. He has written plays and screenplays, and directed several short films.

Lefties:
None known

 

 
More birthdays and historical events, September 27 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1066 - William the Conqueror crosses the channel in his ship, the Mora, and lands a fleet at Pevensey spending the night in an ancient Roman fort.

1822 - Jean-Francois Champollion, a French linguist, deciphers the Rosetta stone, a slab of granite found in Egypt that has a text in three scripts inscribed on it.

September 26 Dateline

Birthdays

1888 - T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) OM, American-born British writer and Nobel Laureate, one of the twentieth century's major poets", was also a highly distinguished essayist, publisher, playwright, editor and literary and social critic. He was a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry in such works as "The Waste Land" and "Four Quartets". T.S. Eliot is considered one of the 20th century's major poets, who attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land", "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and "Four Quartets". He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". (T.S. Eliot reads: The Waste Land. Uploaded by tim24frames. Accessed September 26, 2018.)

1898 - George Gershwin, (born Jacob Bruskin Gershowitz), American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, the songs Swanee and Fascinating Rhythm, the jazz standard I Got Rhythm, and the opera Porgy and Bess which spawned the hit Summertime. Gershwin began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. The original Broadway production of the musical Of Thee I Sing (music by George Gershwin and lyrics by brother Ira Gershwin), directed by Kaufman, opened in 1931 and ran for 441 performances, gaining critical and box office success. It has been revived twice on Broadway and in concert stagings in the U.S. and in London. In 1932, Of Thee I Sing was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In Paris, he composed An American in Paris, returned to New York City and wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, it came to be considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century and an American cultural classic. Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores. His compositions have been adapted for use in film and television, with several becoming jazz standards recorded.

1930 - Friedrich "Fritz" Karl Otto Wunderlich, German Lyric tenor, famed for his singing of the Mozart repertory and various lieder. He died in an accident when he was only 35. (Fritz Wunderlich Sings "Un' aura amorosa," ("Der Odem der Liebe") From Wolfgang A. Mozart's Così Fan Tutte. Uploaded by Edmund StAustell. Accessed September 26, 2018.)
 
1948 - Dame Olivia Newton-John, British-Australian singer, songwriter, actress, dancer, entrepreneur and activist. She is a four-time Grammy Award winner who has amassed five number-one and ten other top-ten Billboard Hot 100 singles, and two number-one Billboard 200 albums. She has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. She starred in the 1978 musical film Grease, whose soundtrack remains one of the most successful in history and features two major hit duets with co-star John Travolta: "You're the One That I Want" – which ranks as one of the best-selling singles of all time – and "Summer Nights". Her signature solo recordings include "I Honestly Love You" and "Physical", plus "Let Me Be There", "Have You Never Been Mellow", "Hopelessly Devoted to You" (also from Grease), "A Little More Love" and, from the 1980 film Xanadu, "Magic" and "Xanadu" (with Electric Light Orchestra).

1968 - James Patrick Caviezel, American actor. He portrayed Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004) and starred as John Reese on the CBS science-fiction crime drama series Person of Interest (2011-2016). Caviezel's other notable roles include Private Witt in The Thin Red Line, Detective John Sullivan in Frequency, and Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo.

1981 - Serena Jameka Williams, Tennis champion. American professional tennis player and former world No. 1 in women's single tennis. She has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most by any player in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time behind Margaret Court. The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranked her world No. 1 in singles on eight separate occasions between 2002 and 2017. She reached the No. 1 ranking for the first time on July 8, 2002. In total, she has been No. 1 for 319 weeks, which ranks third in the Open Era among female players behind Graf and Martina Navratilova.

Lefties:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events, September 26 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1580 - Sir Frances Drake circumnavigates the globe in the Golden Hind, commissioned by Queen Elizabeth. He is the first captain to do so, given that Magellan didn't complete his voyage 60 years earlier.

1847 - Shakespeare's birthplace on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon is purchased by a body of trustees to be preserved for UK.