July 2 Dateline

Birthdays

1714 - Christoph Willibald Gluck, German opera composer and harpsichord and voice teacher of French queen Marie Antoinette. He gained prominence at the Habsburg court at Vienna where he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed. Gluck introduced more drama by using simpler recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half the length of a typical baroque opera.The strong influence of French opera encouraged Gluck to move to Paris in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian and the French (with rich chorus) opera  into a unique synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stage. Iphigénie en Tauride was a great success and is generally acknowledged to be his finest work. (Iphigénie en Tauride, Pinchgut Opera Production. Accessed February 11, 2015. Iphigénie en Tauride. Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2015 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5). Uploaded by Lukas Hemleb. Gluck: Overture to Iphigenie en Aulide. Uploaded by mvvm18. Accessed March 24, 2020.)  

1877 - Hermann Hesse (born Hermann Karl Hesse), German-born poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1956 - Jerry Hall, American model and actress. Hall had been on 40 magazine covers including Italian Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Her long blonde hair and height of six feet quickly made her one of the most visible and photographed models of the day. In 2016, Hall won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fashion Group International Dallas. She was a muse for artists Francesco Clemente, Ed Ruscha and Lucian Freud. Hall modeled for Andy Warhol many times. Hall also appeared in movies and London West End stage.

1990 - Margot Elise Robbie, Australian actress and film producer. She has received nominations for two Academy Awards and five BAFTA Awards. Robbie gained critical praise and nominations for the BAFTA Award and Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying the disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in the biopic I, Tonya (2017). This acclaim continued for her roles as Queen Elizabeth I in the period drama Mary Queen of Scots, Sharon Tate in the comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and a fictional Fox News employee in the drama Bombshell. She received BAFTA Award nominations for all three and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the lattermost. In 2017, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2019, she was ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses.

Lefties:
None known 

 

More birthdays and historical today, 2 July - On This Day.

 

 

Historical Events

1644 - The Battle of Marston Moor is fought. It is the first major batttle of the English Civil War between the King Charles I and forces of Parliament. The victory is for the Roundheads, the parliamentary forces under Cromwell.

1819 - In Great Britain, the Factory Act is passed, banning children under 9 years old from working in cotton mills, and limiting children between the ages of 9 and 16 to 12 hours work a day.

1881 - The 20th U.S. President James Garfield, is shot in the back while waiting for a train. He dies from the wounds on September 19. Charles Guiteau, his assassin, is hanged on June 30, 1882.

1900 - Jean Sibelius's symphonic poem Finlandia is first performed, by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. 

1922 - Ralph Samuelson uses the first water skis, which he invented, at Lake Pepin, Minnesota.

1937 - Amelia Earhart's plane disappears in the Pacific during her attempt to fly around the world. From New Guinea, she set out with navigator Fred Noonan in her Lockhead airplane Electra, on July 2, 1937, on the last leg of their attempt to circumnavigate the globe along the equator. After two short radio contacts in the early morning, they were never heard from again. No trace has ever been found, despite the American government's searches.

1961 - Novelist Ernest Hemingway dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Ketchum, Idaho. 

2001 - The first self-contained, battery-powered mechanical heart, AbioCor, is implanted in a patient, Robert Tools. He survives for five months.



Resources:

1. Asiado, Tel. The World's Movers and Shapers. New Hampshire: Ore Mountain Publishing House (2005)

2. Britannica. www.britannica.com
3. Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 19th Ed. London: Chambers Harrap, 2011
4. Dateline. Sydney: Millennium House, (2006)
5. Grun, Bernard. The Timetables of History, New 3rd Revised Ed. Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
6. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org



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