April 30 Dateline

Birthdays

1662 - Queen Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland, co-reigning with her husband, King William III & II, from 1689 until her death from smallpox at the age of 32. Although their father James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic, Mary and her younger sister, Anne, were raised as Anglicans at the behest of their uncle, King Charles II. Charles lacked legitimate children, making Mary second in the line of succession. She married her Protestant first cousin, William of Orange, in 1677. 

1777 - Carl Friedrich Gauss,  German mthematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and sciences.

1870 - Franz Lehar, Austro-Hungarian composer of operettas. He is mainly known for his operettas, of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe). He composed a number of waltzes (the most popular being Gold und Silber, composed for Princess Pauline von Metternich's "Gold and Silver" Ball, January 1902).  Individual songs from some of the operettas have become standards, notably "Vilja" from The Merry Widow and "You Are My Heart's Delight" ("Dein ist mein ganzes Herz") from The Land of Smiles (Das Land des Lächelns). His most ambitious work, Giuditta in 1934 is closer to opera than to operetta. It contains the ever popular "Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß" ("On my lips every kiss is like wine").

1877 - Alice B. Toklas (Alice Babette Toklas), American-born writer and life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein, member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.

1909 - Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (born Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina), Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 until her abdication in April 1980, in favour of her daughter Beatrix. Due to Wilhelmina's failing health, Juliana took over royal duties briefly in 1947 and 1948. In September 1948 Wilhelmina abdicated and Juliana ascended to the Dutch throne. Her reign saw the decolonization and independence of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and Suriname. Despite a series of controversies involving the royal family, Juliana remained a popular figure among the Dutch. Upon her death in 2004 at the age of 94, she was the longest-lived former reigning monarch in the world. 

1933 - Willie Nelson, American musician, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie, combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger and Stardust, made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana. (Willie Nelson - Stardust. YouTube, uploaded by gringotroller. Accessed April 30, 2012.)

1943 - Bobby Vee (born Robert Thomas Velline), American singer, songwriter and musician who was a teen idol in the early 1960s and also appeared in films. According to Billboard magazine, he had thirty-eight Hot 100 chart hits, ten of which reached the Top 20. He had six gold singles in his career. He was famous for "Take Good Care of my Baby" (1961). (YouTube, uploaded by boopkid. Accessed April 30, 2015.) 

1954 - Dame Elizabeth Jane Campion, DNZM, New Zealand screenwriter, film director and producer, famous for the movie "The Piano". She is the second of seven women ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and the first and only female filmmaker to receive the Palme d'Or, which she received for the acclaimed film The Piano (1993), for which she also won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Among her other directed films An Angel at My Table and Bright Star are the most highly regarded.

 

 
Lefties:
None known
 

More birthdays and historical events today, 30 April - On This Day.

 

 

Feature:

 

Below is a video of  Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, (Act III, Scene 4). Sir Simon Rattle, conductor · Berliner Philharmoniker · Gerald Finley, bass baritone (Golaud) · Elias Mädler, boy soprano [soloist of the Tölzer Knabenchor] (Yniold) · Peter Sellars, staging / Recorded at the Berlin Philharmonie, 20 December 2015. Accessed April 30, 2018.)  Brilliant boy soprano Elias!

Historical Events

1483 - Pluto moves inside Neptune's orbit, making it the furthest planet from the sun until mid-1503.

1803 - Louisiana is sold by France to the U.S. for U.S. $15 million.

April 29 Dateline

Birthdays

1854 - Henri  Poincaré, French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist," since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.

1893 - Harold Clayton Urey, American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, as well as contributing to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.

1899 - Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death over a career spanning more than fifty years. (Duke Ellington Live. Uploaded by onemediamusic. Accessed April 29, 2013.)

1901 - Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa), 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, ruling over the Empire of Japan from 25 December 1926 until 2 May 1947, after which he was Emperor of the state of Japan until his death. He was succeeded by his fifth child and eldest son, Akihito. Hirohito and his wife, Empress Kōjun, had seven children, two sons and five daughters. By 1979, Hirohito was the only monarch in the world with the title "emperor." Hirohito was the longest-lived and longest-reigning historical Japanese emperor and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in the world.

1931 - Frank Auerbach, German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947. A strong emphasis in his work is its relationship to the history of art. Showing at the National Gallery in London in 1994 he made direct reference to the gallery's collection of paintings by Rembrandt, Titian and Rubens. Unlike the National Gallery's Associate Artist Scheme, however, Auerbach's work after historic artists was not the result of a short residency at the National Gallery, it has a long history, and in this exhibition he showed paintings made after Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, from the 1970s to Rubens's Samson and Delilah made in 1993.

1933 - Rod McKuen (Rodney Marvin McKuen), American poet, singer-songwriter, and actor. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music. He earned two Academy Award nominations and one Pulitzer nomination for his music compositions. McKuen's translations and adaptations of the songs of Jacques Brel were instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world. His poetry deals with themes of love, the natural world and spirituality. McKuen's songs sold over 100 million recordings worldwide, and 60 million books of his poetry were sold too. (Rod McKuen - You. YouTube, uploaded by bawoo ko. Accessed April 29, 2019.)

1936 - Zubin Mehta, Indian conductor of Western and Eastern classical music. He is music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. (Z. Mehta conducting Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Recorded at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, April 17, 2016, uploaded by accentusmusic. Accessed April 29, 2019. 

 
1958 - Michelle Marie Pfeiffer, American actress. Known for pursuing eclectic roles in a wide range of film genres, she has consistently received acclaim for her versatile performances. One of the most prolific actresses of the 1980s and 1990s, her accolades include a Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Film Award, as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and one Primetime Emmy Award. Pfeiffer has established herself as one of Hollywood's most bankable stars, with fifteen of her films grossing at least $100 million at the box office. Her total worldwide gross as a leading lady exceeds $2 billion. Pfeiffer has been cited among the world's most beautiful women.

1970 - Andre Kirk Agassi, American retired tennis player and former world No. 1 In singles, eight-time Grand Slam champion and a 1996 Olympic gold medalist, as well as being a runner-up in seven other Grand Slam tournaments. During the Open Era, Agassi was the first male player to win four Australian Open titles, a record that was later surpassed by Novak Djokovic when he won his fifth title in 2015, and then by Roger Federer in 2017. Agassi is 2nd of five male singles players to achieve the Career Grand Slam in the Open Era after Rod Laver and before Federer, Nadal and Djokovic and fifth of eight in history, the first of two to achieve the Career Golden Slam, and the only man to win a "Career Super Slam" (all four majors, plus the Olympic gold medal, plus at least one title at the ATP Tour World Championships).

Leftie:
Mathematician Henri Poincaré
 

More birthdays and historical events today, 29 April - On This Day.
 

Historical Events

1429 - Seventeen-year-old French peasant Joan of Arc leads a group into the city of Orleans, which has been under siege by the English.

1770 - Captain James Cook lands in Australia, in a cove he names Botany Bay.

1798 - Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation is first performed, at Schwarzenberg Palace, Vienna. The first public performance takes place on March 19, 1799.

Enjoy this video of "The heavens are telling" from Franz Josef Haydn's The Creation with The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square. Accessed April 2, 2022.