February 24 Dateline

Birthdays

1766 - Samuel Wesley, English organist and composer in the late Georgian period. Wesley was a contemporary of Wolfgang A Mozart  and was called by some "the English Mozart". He was the son of noted Methodist and hymnodist Charles Wesley, the grandson of Samuel Wesley (a poet of the late Stuart period) and the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church.(Samuel Wesley (1766-1837): Twelve Short Pieces Nos. 1-3. Uploaded by einer von weitem. Accessed February 24, 2019.)

1786 - Wilhelm Carl Grimm (also known as Karl Grimm), German author and anthropologist, and the younger brother of Jacob Grimm, of the Brothers Grimm.Wilhelm took great delight in music, for which his brother had but a moderate liking, and he had a remarkable gift of story-telling. A collection of fairy tales was first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, known in English as Grimms' Fairy Tales.  From 1837–1841, the Grimm brothers joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to form a group known as the Göttinger Sieben (The Göttingen Seven). They protested against Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, whom they accused of violating the constitution. All seven were fired by the king.He died of an infection, aged 73.

1842 - Arrigo Boito, Italian opera composer (original name: Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito). He wrote essays under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio). He was also a Poet, Journalist, Novelist, Librettist and Composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's last two monumental operas Otello and Falstaff (not to mention Amilcare Ponchielli's operatic masterpiece La Gioconda) and his own opera Mefistofele. Along with Emilio Praga and his own brother Camillo Boito, he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement.

1887 - Mary Ellen Chase (Mary Peters), American novelist, scholar and educator. She is regarded as one of the most important regional literary figures of the early 20th-century. Her influence as an educator was profound. Among her famous students she counselled as professor of English at Smith College included Anne Morrow (Lindbergh), Sylvia Plath and Betty Goldstein (Friedan). Author of ten novels, she brought to life her native Maine. In 1961, she gave a speech in New York: "Perhaps our present-day fiction will give us little or nothing until we return to the verities of the human spirit ... until we again live by faith, hope, courage." She also made this observation after publication of her best-selling novel The Lovely American: "Most readers think that a novel is first of all, a story. Well, it really isn't... A novel is ... an evaluation of life. Its story is merely a means to an end."

      

1932 - Michel Jean Legrand, French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many songs. His scores for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and additional Oscars for Summer of '42 (1971) and Yentl (1983). (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Film clip. Youtube, uploaded by SirBasildeBrush. Accessed February 24, 2023. The Windmills of your Mind. Sung by Noel Harrison, accessed February 24, 2018. From Thomas Crown Affair film/ L’Affaire Thomas Crown. Youtube, uploaded by Chad Lawson. Accessed February 24, 2022.)  

 

1938 - James Farentino,  American actor. He appeared in nearly 100 television, film, and stage roles, among them The Final Countdown, Jesus of Nazareth, and Dynasty. In the 1950s and 1960s, he performed on the stage and a few TV roles. In 1978, he was nominated for an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his portrayal of Simon Peter in the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth. In 1980, Farentino starred in The Final Countdown with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, and then played Juan Perón opposite Faye Dunaway's Eva Perón in the 1981 television film Evita Perón.

1948 - Dennis Waterman, English actor and singer, best known for his tough-guy leading roles in television series including The Sweeney, Minder and New Tricks, singing the theme tune of the latter two. Waterman's acting career has spanned 60 years. He i is notable for the range of roles he played, including horror (Scars of Dracula), adventure (Colditz), comedy (Fair Exchange), comedy-drama (Minder), musical (Windy City) and sports (The World Cup: A Captain's Tale), as well as police TV series such as The Sweeney. He has appeared in 28 films but retired from acting between 2015 and 2019.

Leftie:
None known

More birthdays and historical events, February 24 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1607 - Monteverdi's opera Orfeo is first staged, in Mantua.



 

1711 - George F. Handel's opera Rinaldo, his first staged in London, is first performed.

1804 - London's Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground, leaving owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan destitute.

1839 - William Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel.  

1857 - The first shipment of perforated postage stamps is received by the U.S. Government.

1876 - Edvard Grieg's incidental music to Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt is first performed with the drama at Christiania, Oslo.

February 23 Dateline

Birthdays

1633 - Samuel Pepys, FRS, English diarist, administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament who is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man.

1685 - George Frideric Handel (born Georg Friederich Händel⁾ [(O.S.) 23 February and (N.S.) 5 March], German, later British, Baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, concerti grossi and organ concertos. He is especially famous for his oratorio "Messiah". Handel received important training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712; he became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition.

1863 - Charles Joseph Chamberlain, Ph.D., American botanist, known for pioneering the use of zoological techniques on the study of plants, particularly in the realm of microscopic studies of tissues and cells; his specialty was the cycad. He made contributions to the Botanical Gazette, and was the author of Methods in Plant Histology and The Morphology of Angiosperms. In collaboration with John M. Coulter, he wrote The Morphology of Gymnosperms.

1928 - Vasily Grigoryevich Lazarev, Soviet cosmonaut who flew on the Soyuz 12 spaceflight as well as the abortive Soyuz 18a launch in 5 April 1975. He was injured by the high acceleration of the abort and landing and was initially denied his spaceflight bonus pay, having to appeal directly to Leonid Brezhnev to receive it. Brezhnev was at the time the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lazarev held a degree in medicine and the rank of colonel in the Soviet Air Force. He never fully recovered from the injuries sustained on Soyuz 18a. He was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the title Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR and the Order of Lenin.

1940 - Peter Fonda, American actor, film director and screenwriter. He was the son of Henry Fonda, younger brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget Fonda. He was a part of the counterculture of the 1960s. Fonda was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Easy Rider, and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Ulee's Gold. For the latter, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. Fonda also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film for The Passion of Ayn Rand.

1951 - Shigefumi Mori, Japanese mathematician, known for his work in algebraic geometry, particularly in relation to the classification of three-folds.

1994 - Dakota Fanning, American actress. She rose to prominence at the age of seven for her performance as Lucy Dawson in the drama film I Am Sam, for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination at age eight, making her the youngest nominee in SAG history. Fanning played major roles in the films Uptown Girls, The Cat in the Hat, Man on Fire, War of the Worlds, Dreamer, and Charlotte's Web. She then followed with more mature roles. Fanning made her modelling debut in 2009 when she was featured on the cover of fashion magazines Elle, Vanity Fair, and Cosmopolitan, among others. She also appeared in the fashion week in New York in 2014 and at the opening ceremony of Fashion Week New York S/S 2015.

Leftie:
Actor Peter Fonda

 

More birthdays and historical events, February 23 -  On This Day

Feature:

 

In memory of Handel's birthday, I share two videos of Handel's most famous work, "Messiah" - one performed by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs (December, 2015, with Australian sign language, AUSLAN) and another, "Hallelujah" Chorus performed as a flash mob.  Whether you are a God-believer or not, this optimistic work of Handel is universal. This wonderful and majestic music reinforces that hope is universal.



On November 13, 2010, unsuspecting shoppers got a wonderful big surprise while enjoying their lunch from this awesome Christmas Flash Mob.

 

Historical Events

1455 - Traditional date for the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed from movable type.

1689 - Dutch Prince William III is proclaimed King of England.