October 8 Dateline

Birthdays

1585 - Heinrich Schütz, German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach. (Listen to Schütz's sublime, beautiful music, "Schwanengesang" ("Swan Song"), with Paul Hillier conducting The Tapiola Chamber Choir. YouTube, uploaded by baroque6hiro. Accessed October 8, 2018).    

1895 - Juan Domingo Peron, Argentinian president, an Argentine army general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labor and Vice President, he was elected President of Argentina three times, serving from June 1946 to September 1955, when he was overthrown in a coup d'état, and then from October 1973 until his death in July 1974. Peronism is a political phenomenon that draws support from both the political left and political right. Peronism is not considered a traditional ideology, but a political movement, because of the wide variety of people who call themselves Peronists. 

1930 - Toru Takemitsu, Japanese composer (Toru Takemitsu: From me flows what you call time. Uploaded by Silicua hibrido. Accessed October 8, 2017.)

1939 - Paul Hogan, AM, Australian actor, comedian, writer and television presenter. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance as outback adventurer Michael "Crocodile" Dundee in Crocodile Dundee, the first in the Crocodile Dundee film series. He married American actress Linda Kozlowski, after meeting her on the set of Crocodile Dundee.

1941 - Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. ((né Burns), American civil rights activist, baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. Senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He is the founder of the organizations that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. 

 

 1943 - Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase, American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He became a key cast member in the first season of Saturday Night Live, where his recurring Weekend Update segment became a staple of the show. As both a performer and writer, he earned three Primetime Emmy Awards out of five nominations. Chase had his first leading film role in the comedy Foul Play, earning two Golden Globe Award nominations. He is also known for his portrayals of Clark W. Griswold in five National Lampoon's Vacation films and Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher in Fletch and its sequel Fletch Lives. Other prominent film titles followed. He hosted the Academy Awards twice, and briefly, had his own late-night talk show, The Chevy Chase Show. 

 

 1956 - Stephanie Zimbalist, American actress in film, television and theater,  best known for her role as Laura Holt in the NBC detective series Remington Steele. Zimbalist took roles in plays concerning 19th century artists including Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Van Gogh. She attended the Juilliard School before commencing her acting career. Her paternal grandfather, Efrem Zimbalist, was a world-famous concert violinist, music teacher at the Curtis Institute, and a composer. Her paternal grandmother, Alma Gluck, was a leading soprano of her day. Zimbalist's aunt, Marcia Davenport, was a prominent author, music journalist and historian. In 2009 she portrayed actress Katharine Hepburn in Tea at Five. Zimbalist has also released audiobooks, including The Girls, which won a Listen-Up award. She appeared in the 2006 documentary Christa McAuliffe: Reach for the Stars, and also played Christa McAuliffe in the play Defying Gravity, written by Jane Anderson.

1970 - Matt Paige Damon, American actor, producer, and screenwriter. Ranked among Forbes' most bankable stars, the films in which he has appeared have collectively earned over $3.12 billion at the North American box office, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. He came to prominence in 1997 when he and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting, which won them the Academy and Golden Globe awards for Best Screenplay and earned Damon a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Damon has also performed voice-over work in both animated and documentary films, and has established two production companies with Affleck. He has been actively involved in charitable work with organizations.

Leftie:
Actress Stephanie Zimbalist

 

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

 

 

Featuring the music of Toru Takemitsu:

From me flows what you call time. Uploaded by Silicua hibrido. Accessed October 8, 2017.

Historical Events

1871 - The Great Chicago Fire starts, killing 300 people and leaving 100,000 homeless.

1908 -  The book The Wind in the Willows, written by Kenneth Grahame, is published. It becomes a classic, introducing the world to Rat, Mole and the wonderful Mr. Toad. 

October 7 Dateline

Birthdays

1746 - William Billings, American composer, regarded as the first American choral composer, and leading member of the First New England School. Billings' music can be forceful and stirring, as in his patriotic song "Chester"; ecstatic, as in his hymn "Africa"; or elaborate and celebratory, as in his "Easter Anthem" and "Rose of Sharon". He also wrote several Christmas carols, including "Judea" in 1778 and "Shiloh" in 1781.
 

1849 - James Whitcomb Riley, American writer, poet, best-selling author. In his lifetime, known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and children's poetry. His poems tend to be humorous or sentimental. Of the approximately 1,000 poems Riley wrote, the majority are in dialect. His famous works include "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy Man". Riley's chief legacy was his influence in fostering the creation of a Midwestern cultural identity and his contributions to the Golden Age of Indiana Literature.

1885 - Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist, made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research. He developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. Although the Bohr model has been supplanted by other models, its underlying principles remain valid. He conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed in terms of contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles. The notion of complementarity dominated Bohr's thinking in both science and philosophy.

1917 - June Allyson (born Eleanor Geisman), American actress (stage, film, and television) dancer, and singer. She began her career as a dancer in short films and on Broadway. She signed with MGM and rose to fame in Two Girls and a Sailor. Her "girl next door" image was solidified when she was paired with actor Van Johnson in six films. In 1951, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss. She also hosted and starred in her own anthology series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, which aired on CBS. In the 1970s, she returned to the stage starring in Forty Carats and No, No, Nanette. In 1982, Allyson released her autobiography June Allyson by June Allyson. She later established the June Allyson Foundation for Public Awareness and Medical Research and worked to raise money for research for urological and gynecological diseases affecting senior citizens.

1931 - Desmond Mpilo Tutu, OMSG CH GCStJ, South African Anglican cleric and theologian known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.

1935 - Thomas Michael Keneally, Australian Author, a prolific novelist, playwright, and essayist. He is best known for his non-fiction novel Schindler's Ark, the story of Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, which won the Booker Prize in 1982. The book was later made into a film titled Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg, earning the director his first Best Director Oscar. Keneally's meeting with Pfefferberg and their research tours are detailed in Searching for Schindler: A Memoir. Some of the Pfefferberg documents that inspired Keneally are now housed in the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. In 1996 the State Library purchased this material from a private collector.

1939 - Clive James, AO CBE FRSL (born Vivian Leopold James), Australian author, critic, essayist, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist. He lived and worked in the UK from 1961 until his death. James began his career specialising in literary criticism before becoming television critic for The Observer, where he made his name for his wry, deadpan humour. He also earned an independent reputation as a poet and satirist. He achieved success in the UK first as a writer for television, and eventually as the lead in his own programmes. James published several books of poetry, he also collaborated on six albums with singer-songwriter Pete Atkin. James' lyrics were far from mainstream popular music, being frequently dense with poetic references. For instance, they might describe the life of a machine tool shop supervisor, as in "Carnations on the Roof". In contrast, the song "My Egoist", is translated almost entirely from a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire. Other references include Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and William Shakespeare's sonnets.(Everything I do is writing: Clive James. ABC. Accessed  October 17, 2017.)

1943 - Oliver Laurence North, American colonel and author, political commentator, television host, military historian, author, and (retired) United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he was a National Security Council staff member during the Iran–Contra affair, a political scandal of the late 1980s. It involved the illegal sale of weapons to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to encourage the release of American hostages then held in Lebanon. North formulated the second part of the plan, which was to divert proceeds from the arms sales to support the Contra rebel groups in Nicaragua, sales which had been specifically prohibited under the Boland Amendment. He was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before Congress about the scheme. North was initially convicted on three felony charges, but the convictions were vacated and reversed and all charges against him dismissed in 1991.

1952 - Vladimir Putin, President of Russia since 2012, previously holding the position from 2000 until 2008. He was also the Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. In between his presidential terms, he was also the Prime Minister of Russia under president Dmitry Medvedev.

1955 - Yo-Yo Ma, Chinese-American cellist. Born in Paris, he spent his schooling years in New York City and was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half. He graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University, and has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world. (Enjoy Yo-Yo Ma's performance of the entire Six Unaccompanied Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on the 5th of September, 2015. He played for nearly three hours. A truly remarkable performance.  Amazing!)

1959 - Simon Phillip Cowell, English principal, founder and chief executive of the British entertainment company Syco. Businessman, A&R executive, talent manager, television producer, record executive, and entrepreneur. Cowell has judged on the British television talent competition series Pop Idol, The X Factor UK and Britain's Got Talent, and the American television talent competition series American Idol, The X Factor US, and America's Got Talent.

Lefties:
Actress June Allyson
Colonel Oliver North

 

 

More birthdays and historical events, October 7 - On This Day

Historical Events

1571 - The Battle of Lepanto is fought. It is a victory against the Moslem Ottoman Empire fleet by Don John of Austria, leading a fleet of Papal forces. It is the last major battle to involve galleys, a form of sea warfare going back for many thousands of years.  

1769 - Captain James Cook discover and maps New Zealand.