April 28 Dateline

Birthdays

1715 - Franz Josef Sparry, Austrian composer of the Baroque period born in Graz, studied theology at the University of Salzburg, and began his career as a composer. He wrote a Tafelmusik, his best-known work. He was director of music at Kremsmünster Abbey from 1747.

1900 - Jan Oort, Dutch astronomer, who made significant contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy. The Oort cloud, the Oort constants, and the asteroid, 1691 Oort, were all named after him. Oort determined that the Milky Way rotates and overturned the idea that the Sun was at its center. He also postulated the existence of the mysterious invisible dark matter in 1932, which is believed to make up roughly 84.5% of the total matter in the Universe and whose gravitational pull causes "the clustering of stars into galaxies and galaxies into connecting strings of galaxies". He discovered the galactic halo, a group of stars orbiting the Milky Way but outside the main disk. Oort is also responsible for important insights about comets, including the realization that their orbits "implied there was a lot more solar system than the region occupied by the planets."

1906 - Kurt Friedrich Goedel (or Gödel), Austro-Hungarian-born, and later American logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics. 

1908 - Oskar Schindler, Austro-German industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

1926 - Harper Lee (born Nelle Harper Lee), American novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner of her famous 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Lee only published two books, yet she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 for her contribution to literature. She also received numerous honorary degrees, though she declined to speak on those occasions. She assisted her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Capote was the basis for the character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird.

1928 - Yves Klein, French painter, important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and as a forerunner of minimal art, as well as pop art.(Yves Klein: With theVoid, Full Powers. Uploaded by Walker Art Center. Accessed April 28, 2020. The Life and Work of Yves Klein told by Rotraut. Uploaded by Louisiana Channel. Accessed April 28, 2020.)

1941 - Ann-Margret Olsson, Swedish-American actress, singer, and dancer. As an actress, she is known for her roles in Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, Carnal Knowledge, The Train Robbers, Tommy, and Going in Style, among others. She has won five Golden Globe Awards and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and six Emmy Awards. In 2010, she won an Emmy Award for her guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Initially billed as a female version of Elvis Presley, she has a sultry, vibrant contralto voice. She had a minor success in 1961 and a charting album in 1964, and she scored a disco hit in 1979. She recorded a critically acclaimed gospel album in 2001 and an album of Christmas songs in 2004.

Lefties:
None known

More birthdays and historical events today, 28 April - On This Day.

 

Historical Events

1920 - Azerbaijan, a country in the Caucasus, joins the Soviet Union.

1947 - Norwegian marine biologist Thor Heyerdahl sets out from Peru on the raft Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvians could have settled in Polynesia. The journey to the Tuamotu Islands takes 101 days.

April 27 Dateline

Birthdays

1759 - Mary Wollstonecraft, English writer, philosopher, advocate of women's rights, mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences. She wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. She died eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who would become an accomplished writer and author of Frankenstein.

1791 - Samuel Morse (born Samuel Finley Breese Morse), American painter and inventor. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of Morse code and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.

1822 - Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant), American military leader who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As president, Grant was an effective civil rights executive who created the Justice Department and worked with the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction to protect African Americans. As Commanding General, he led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and thereafter briefly served as Secretary of War.

1874 - Maurice Baring, OBE, English man of letters, known as novelist, essayist and poet, translator. He was also a travel writer and war correspondent. During World War I, Baring served in the Intelligence Corps and Royal Air Force. He is remembered in verse in Belloc's Cautionary Verses: "Like many of the upper class, He liked the sound of broken glass*. (* A line I stole with subtle daring.) From Wing-Commander Maurice Baring."

Lefties:
None known
 

More birthdays and historical events today, 27 April - On This Day.

 

Historical Events

1667 - Poet  John Milton, now blind and destitute, sells the publishing rights to his most famous work, the  epic Paradise Lost, for 10 British Pounds. (Here's a link, all about John Milton's Paradise Lost, uploaded by Eric Masters. © ''IntelliQuest World's 100 Greatest Books'' 1995. Accessed April 27, 2018.) 

1775 - The Tea Act is passed by the British Parliament, lowering the tea tax and allowing East India Company to monopolize the tea trade in America.