September 6 Dateline

Birthdays

1766 - John Dalton, FRS, (born Sept 5 or 6), English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist. He is best known for introducing the atomic theory into chemistry, and for his research into color blindness, sometimes referred to as Daltonism, in his honour. (Dalton's Atomic Theory. Uploaded by ChemSurvival. Accessed September 6, 2017.)

1836 - John Atkinson Grimshaw, Victorian-era artist, known for his city night-scenes and landscapes. Today, he is considered one of the great painters of the Victorian era, as well as one of the best and most accomplished nightscape and townscape artists of all time. His early paintings were signed "JAG", "J. A. Grimshaw", or "John Atkinson Grimshaw", though he finally settled on "Atkinson Grimshaw". (John A. Grimshaw's Paintings. YouTube, uploaded by genkou asanuma. J. Grimshaw Collection, uploaded by Sofie A. Accessed September 6, 2020.)

1877 - Charles Joseph "Buddy" Bolden, African American cornetist who was regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of ragtime music, or "jass", which later came to be known as "jazz". Learn About the Inventor of Jazz with Wynton Marsalis. YouTube, uploaded by Amanpour and Company. Accessed September 6, 2022.)

 

1886 - Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, English poet, writer, and soldier, decorated for bravery on the Western Front. He became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry described the horrors of the trenches and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those in his view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of 1917, culminating in his admission to a military psychiatric hospital; this resulted in his forming a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, known as the "Sherston trilogy".

1892 - Sir Edward Victor Appleton GBE KCB FRS, English physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate and pioneer in radiophysics. He studied, and was also employed as a lab technician, at Bradford College from 1909 to 1911. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1947 for his seminal work proving the existence of the ionosphere during experiments carried out in 1924.

1943 - Richard J. Roberts, FRS, British biochemist, molecular biologist, and Nobel Laureate. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing.

1973 - Gregory Rusedski, British and Canadian former professional tennis player. He was the British No. 1 in 1997, 1999 and 2006, and reached the ATP ranking of world No. 4 for periods from 6-12 October 1997, and from 25 May to 21 June, 1998.

1974 - Tim Henman, OBE (born Timothy Henry Henman), British retired professional tennis player. A serve-and-volley style of tennis, he was the first male player from the UK since Roger Taylor in the 1970s to reach the semi-finals of the Wimbledon Men's Singles Championship. He never reached the finals of any Grand Slam but reached six Grand Slam semi-finals and won 15 career ATP titles (11 in singles and four in doubles). He was ranked British number 1 in 1996, and from 1999 to 2005, from which point he was succeeded by Andy Murray.

Lefties:
None known

More birthdays and historical events, September 6 - On This Day

 

Feature:

 

From the brilliant and imaginative work of John Atkinson Grimshaw, composer Frederick Delius created a heart-meltingly beautiful music, "The Walk to the Paradise Garden," a heart-warming music painting in scene 5 and 6 of his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet.

Historical Events

1620 - The Pilgrims, a group of Puritans seeking religious freedom, sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower, to settle in North America. A Puritanical religious group, they had suffered in England and were looking for a place they could practise their faith. The day before they had set out in two ships, the Speedwell and Mayflower. The Speedwell leaked and had to dock in Devon at Plymouth. It's from Plymouth that the Mayflower finally leaves, landing on the east coast of North America. They seek out a suitable place to start a colony ending up in a location they also named Plymouth, in Massachusetts.

1651 - Charles II spends the night in an oak tree to avoid Cromwell's forces after losing the Battle of Worcester. After Cromwell's death in 1658, Charles II is invited to take the throne in the Restoration, 1660, in time for bubonic plague and the Great Fire of London.

September 5 Dateline

Birthdays

1187 - King Louis VIII of France, by name The Lion, was King of France from 1223 to 1226. From 1216 to 1217, he also claimed to be King of England. Louis was the only surviving son of King Philip II of France by his first wife, Isabelle of Hainaut, from whom he inherited the County of Artois.

1638 - King Louis XIV of France, known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history. Louis XIV's France was emblematic of the age of absolutism in Europe.

1735 - Johann Christian Bach, (known as JC Bach), German composer of the Classical era, the 18th child of Johann Sebastian Bach, and the youngest of his eleven sons with Anna Magdalena Wilcken, his second wife. He is also known as "The English Bach", and during his time spent living in London, he came to be known as John Bach. He is noted for playing a role in influencing the concerto styles of Haydn and Mozart. He contributed significantly to the development of the new sonata principle. 

 
1774 -  Caspar David Friedrich, 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation.

1906 - Arthur Koestler, CBE, Austro-Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest, and was educated in Austria, apart from his early school years. In 1931, Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany but resigned in 1938 after becoming disillusioned with Stalinism. He moved to Britain in 1940, and published works of reportage and memoirs. His political novel Darkness at Noon, an anti-totalitarian work gained him international fame. This book offers a fresh and unbiased account of the life and work of an enigmatic, challenging writer who continues to polarize opinion today. Koestler was also known for his stheories on creativity suggesting that  for creative work to occur, there's an internal dialogue, a process of learning and experimenting within a single person's mind.
 

1912 - John Cage, American Composer, pioneer and exponent of experimental concepts, as indeterminacy, aleatoric music, and silence ...  (J. Cage's In a landscape, played by pianist Stephen Drury. Uploaded by Slow Basslines. Accessed September 5, 2018.)

1940 - Raquel Welch, American actress and singer. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage, after which she won a contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C..

1946 - Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara), British singer-songwriter, record producer and lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. He is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music, and known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range.(Top 10 Freddie Mercury Moments. Uploaded by WatchMojo.com. Accessed September 5, 2017)

1950 - Cathy Lee Guisewite, American cartoonist who created the comic strip Cathy, which had a 34-year run. The strip focused on a career woman facing the issues and challenges of eating, work, relationships, and having a mother—or as the character put it in one strip, "the four basic guilt groups."

1951 - Michael Keaton (born Michael John Douglas), American actor. He first rose to fame for his roles on the CBS sitcoms All's Fair and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour and his comedic film roles in Night Shift, Mr. Mom, Johnny Dangerously, and Beetlejuice.

Lefties:
Composer John Cage
Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite

More birthdays and historical events, September 5 - On This Day

Historical Events

1781 - The Battle of Chesapeake Capes takes place, part of the American War of Independence against the British. A French fleet under Admiral de Grasse fights the British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves. The actual sea battle is not conclusive, but it does have the effect of denying Cornwallis the support of the Royal Navy, leading to his eventual surrender to American forces at Yorktown.

1800 - French forces surrender on Malta, after Nelson arrives in the area and prevents them being resupplied. With no way of feeding them, Nelson allowed the French soldiers to withdraw to Marseilles.