May 10 Dateline

Birthdays

1697 - Jean Marie Leclair (Elder), French Baroque composer and violinist. He is considered to have founded the French violin school. His brothers, the lesser-known Jean-Marie Leclair the younger (1703–77) as well as Pierre Leclair (1709–84) and Jean-Benoît Leclair (1714–after 1759), were also musicians. (Listen to Leclair's Violin Sonata Op. 9, performed by Simon Standage - here.)

1899 - Fred Astaire, American dancer, singer, actor and choreographer. He is widely regarded as the most influential dancer in the history of film. (Top 10 Iconic Fred Astaire Dance Scenes. Uploaded by MsMojo. Accessed May 10, 2019).

1900 - Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin (née Payne), British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, and that stars could be classified according to their temperatures. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected by early 20th century astronomy profession because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth, that stars were made of the same blend of elements found on Earth, but Payne's creative application of astrophysics suggested otherwise... independent observations eventually proved she was correct. (Great Minds of Astronomy: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. YouTube, uploaded by SciShow Space. Accessed May 10, 2018. What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. YouTube, uploaded by Center for Astrophysics. Accessed May 10, 2021.)

1916 - Milton Babbitt, American composer and music theorist, and teacher, noted for his serial and electronic music. By the end of the 1970s he began his third creative period by shifting his focus away from electronic music. From 1985 until his death in January 2011, he served as the Chairman of the BMI Student Composer Awards, the international competition for young classical composers.

1919 - Ernst Peter Johannes Maag, Swiss pianist and conductor. He was first conductor at the Düsseldorf Opera. Maag described his association with Wilhelm Furtwängler to be the most important in his life. His first appearance at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden was in 1959, with Mozart's Die Zauberflöte; in the same year he made his debut at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. His U.S. debut was as guest conductor in 1959 of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and he made his U.S. opera debut two years later at the Lyric Opera of Chicago with Mozart's Così fan tutte. (The Legacy of Swiss Conductor, Peter Maag. Eloquence Classic. 

 
1933 - Barbara Taylor Bradford, OBE, best-selling British-American novelist. Her debut novel, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. To date, she has written 35 novels—all bestsellers. Bradford's books have sold more than 92 million copies worldwide in more than 90 countries and 40 languages. Ten of her books have been made into television mini-series and television movies, produced by her husband, Robert Bradford. Her first novel, A Woman of Substance, became an enduring best-seller and according to Reuters, it ranks as one of the top-ten best-selling novels of all time. A Woman of Substance has been followed by 28 others—all best-sellers. Bradford writes about mostly ordinary women who go on to achieve the extraordinary.

1960 - Bono (born Paul David Hewson), KBE OL, Irish singer-songwriter, businessman, and philanthropist. He is best known as the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of rock band U2.

1965 - Linda Evangelista, Canadian fashion model and one of the top supermodels from the 1990s, described as the "Chameleon" of the fashion industry. She is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential models of all time, featured on over 700 magazine covers. Evangelista is primarily known for being the longtime "muse" of photographer Steven Meisel.

1970 - Gabriela Montero, Venezuelan pianist, known in particular for her real-time improvisation of complex musical pieces on themes suggested by her audience and other sources, as well as for performances of standard classical repertoire. Montero has performed with the New York Philharmonic; debuted with Lorin Maazel, Los Angeles Philharmonic; and the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, among others. In recital, her engagements include, among others, the Edinburgh Festival, Vienna Konzerthaus, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Alte Sendersaal Frankfurt, Kennedy Centre Washington, D.C., and at the ‘Progetto Martha Argerich’ Festival in Lugano where she is invited annually.

 

Lefties:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events today, 10 May - On This Day.    

 

Historical Events

1534 - Jacques Cartier begins exploring Newfoundland. He is often described as one of the first Europeans to discover Canada.

1908 - The first Mother's Day observance takes place during church services in West Virginia and Philadelphia.

May 9 Dateline

Birthdays

1265 - Dante Alighieri, Italian poet during the Late Middle Ages. (actual date of his birth is debatable, as some biographers say it's sometime in June. Here's a brief history of Dante Alighieri. Uploaded by Nick Tvrdy. Accessed May 9, 2018.)  Dante's Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered the most important poem of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.  Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art. He is cited as an influence on John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alfred Tennyson, among many others.

1936 - Albert Finney,  English actor who worked in film, television and theatre. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining prominence on screen in the early 1960s, debuting with The Entertainer, directed by Tony Richardson, who had previously directed him in the theatre. A recipient of BAFTA , Golden Globe, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild awards, Finney was nominated for an Academy Award five times, as Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones, Murder on the Orient Express, The Dresser, and Under the Volcano, and as Best Supporting Actor for Erin Brockovich. He received several awards for his performance as Winston Churchill in the 2002 BBC–HBO television biographical film The Gathering Storm.

1936 - Glenda May Jackson, CBE, English actress and politician. A professional actress from the late 1950s onwards, Jackson spent four years as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1964. She has won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, receiving the first for her role as Gudrun Brangwen in the romantic drama film Women in Love and the second for her role as Vickie Allessio in the romantic comedy film A Touch of Class. She also received praise for her performances as Alex Greville in the drama film Sunday Bloody Sunday and Elizabeth I in the BBC television serial Elizabeth R, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards for the latter. In 2018, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in a revival of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, thus becoming one of the few performers to have achieved the "Triple Crown of Acting" in the US. 

1946 - Candice Patricia Bergen, American actress and former fashion model. She won five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for her portrayal of the title character on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown. She is also known for her role as Shirley Schmidt on the ABC drama Boston Legal. In films, Bergen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Starting Over, and for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Gandhi. starred in The Sand Pebbles, Soldier Blue, Carnal Knowledge, and The Wind and the Lion. She made her Broadway debut in the 1984 play Hurlyburly and starred in the revivals of The Best Man and Love Letters. From 2002 to 2004, she appeared in three episodes of the HBO series Sex and the City.  

 

1949 - Billy Joel (born William Martin Joel), American singer-songwriter, composer, and pianist. Commonly nicknamed the "Piano Man", he has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s, having released twelve studio albums from 1971 to 1993 as well as one studio album in 2001. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, as well as the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, with over 150 million records sold worldwide.

Leftie:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events today, May 9 - On This Day.

 

Historical Events

1754 - In Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette, the first American newspaper cartoon is published.

1812 - Gioachino Rossini's opera La Scala di seta (The Silken Ladder) is first staged, in Venice.