December 10 Dateline

Birthdays

1822 - Cesar Franck, Belgian-born French composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life.  Born at Liège, now Belgium. He gave his first concerts there in 1834 and studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception for an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable musical improviser, and travelled widely within France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. (A beautiful sonata composed by César Franck: Violin Sonata in A Major (Complete) interpreted by the great violinist Isaac Stern, accompanied by Alexander Zakin: piano-1959. Uploaded by viool7. Accessed December 10, 2018. Martha Argerich & Renaud Capuçon perform a Cesar Franck Sonata. YouTube, uploaded by Mac McClure. Accessed December 10, 2020.)

1830 - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, American poet. Amherst, Massachusetts beloved poet. Little known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. While Dickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems, and one letter. The poems published then were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique to her era. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends, and also explore aesthetics, society, nature and spirituality. Unpublished during her lifetime, her sister Lavinia discovered many of her poems after her death and the first collection was published in 1890. (Poetry Everywhere: "I started Early" by Emily Dickinson. YouTube, uploaded by PoetryEverywherePTV. Accessed December 10, 2021. The Life & Death of E. Dickinson, uploaded by AZ Starwatcher, accessed December 10, 2013. "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all." - E. Dickinson)

1870 - Adolf Loos (Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos), Austrian and Czechoslovak architect. He was an influential European theorist of modern architecture. His essay Ornament and Crime advocated smooth and clear surfaces, as well as the more modern aesthetic principles of the Vienna Secession, exemplified in his design of Looshaus, Vienna. Loos became a pioneer of modern architecture and contributed a body of theory and criticism of Modernism in architecture and design and developed the "Raumplan" (literally spatial plan) method of arranging interior spaces, exemplified in Villa Müller in Prague.

1908 - Oliver Messiaen, French composer, organist, and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. (Messiaen's most-performed work Quartet for the End of Time (Quatuor pour la fin du temps), uploaded by Synthnerd11, accessed December 10, 2016. Messiaen's "Theme and Variations" played by violinist Janine Jansen, uploaded by MyViolinVideos, accessed December 10, 2016.) When the Germans invaded France in June 1940, Messiaen was imprisoned in a camp near Gorlitz, Poland, thrust into miserable conditions with other prisoners of war. He composed Quartet for the End of Time and wrote: "I am convinced that joy exists, convinced that the invisible exists more than the visible, joy is beyond sorrow, beauty is beyond horror." He was released from captivity in March 1941.     

1952 - Susan Hallock Dey, American actress, retired American actress, known for her television roles as Laurie Partridge on the sitcom The Partridge Family from 1970 to 1974, and as Grace Van Owen on the drama series L.A. Law from 1986 to 1992. In 1972, Dey was credited as the author of a book titled Susan Dey's Secrets on Boys, Beauty and Popularity.

1960 - Sir Kenneth Branagh, Northern Irish actor and film director/producer and screenwriter. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and in 2015, he succeeded Richard Attenborough as its president. He has both directed and starred in several film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), for which he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director, Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Love's Labour's Lost (2000), and As You Like It (2006).

Leftie:
Actor and film director Kenneth Branagh

 

More birthdays and historical events, December 10 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1868 - The first traffic lights, with red and green gas lamps and semaphore arms, are installed near London's Parliament Houses.

1898 - The U.S. and Spain sign a peace treaty in Paris to end the Spanish-American War.

1901 - The inaugural Nobel prizes are awarded, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, the Swedish pioneer of the prestigious Nobel Prize Awards.

Nobel Prizes Award Premiere

This day, 10 December 1901, the inaugural Nobel prizes are awarded, also marking the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish brilliant chemist and advocate of this prestigious award. As we know, he invented the dynamite. The prizes award exemplary contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, medicine, and peace - presented for the first time this day in 1901.

One of the first laureates was Jean Henri Dunant, the Swiss founder of the Red Cross.  Other famous people honored through the years are Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. The laureates receive a gold medal in addition to cash.

1910 - Puccini's opera La Fanciulla del West is conducted by Arturo Toscanini in its first performance, with the Metropolitan Opera, in New York City.

1962 - John Steinbeck accepts the Nobel Prize in Literature, in Stockholm.

1996 - President Nelson Mandela signs South Africa's new democratic constitution.


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

 

(c) June 2007. Updated December 10, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.