February 11 Dateline

Birthdays

1847 - Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor and businessman, described as America's greatest inventor. He is credited with developing many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. (Story of Thomas Alva Edison, uploaded by PublicResourceOrg. Accessed February 11, 2011)

1906 - Yves Marie Baudrier, French composer. Along with André Jolivet, Olivier Messiaen and Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, he was a founder of the La jeune France group of composers. Self-taught, Baudrier had advice from Messiaen. He became a romantic and expert film composer. Honneger is the main influence on his few works, which include the orchestral Le musicien dans la cite for orchestra.

1909 - Joseph L. Mankiewicz, American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He set a record in Hollywood by winning a pair of writing and directing Academy Awards two years in a row. He won the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for A Letter to Three Wives, and both the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for All About Eve, the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six.

1917 - Sidney Sheldon, American writer, director and producer. Sheldon was prominent in the 1930s, first working on Broadway plays and then in motion pictures, notably writing the successful comedy The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer which earned him an Oscar in 1948. Working in television, created The Patty Duke Show (1963–66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70) and Hart to Hart (1979–84). After turning 50, he began writing best-selling romantic suspense novels, such as Master of the Game, The Other Side of Midnight and Rage of Angels. His 18 novels have sold over 300 million copies in 51 languages. Sheldon is consistently cited as one of the top ten best selling fiction writers of all time.

1919 - Eva Gabor, Hungarian-American actress, businesswoman, singer, and socialite. She was widely known for her role on the 1965–71 television sitcom Green Acres as Lisa Douglas, the wife of Eddie Albert's character, Oliver Wendell Douglas.

1934 - Dame Barbara Mary Quant, Mrs Plunket Greene, DBE, FCSD, RDI, English (of Welsh heritage) fashion designer and icon. She became an instrumental figure in the 1960s London-based Mod and youth fashion movements.

1936 - Burt Leon Reynolds, Jr.,  American actor, director, and producer of film and television, considered a sex symbol and icon of American popular culture. Reynolds first rose to prominence when he starred in several different television series such as Gunsmoke, Hawk, and Dan August. His breakthrough role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance. Reynolds was voted the world's number one box office star for five consecutive years (from 1978 to 1982) in the annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll, a record he shares with Bing Crosby.

1969 - Jennifer Joanna Aniston, American actress, producer, and businesswoman. The daughter of actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow, she began working as an actress at an early age with an uncredited role in the 1987 film Mac and Me. Aniston rose to international fame for her role as Rachel Green on the television sitcom Friends, for which she earned Primetime Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards. Her character became widely popular and is regarded as one of the greatest female characters in television history.


Leftie:
Thomas Alva Edison

More birthdays and historical events, February 11 - On This Day.

Below video, features the legendary Martha Argerich perform a favourite Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466. She was merely a child of 8 years old, an original broadcast from Buenos Aires "Radio Nacional" in 1950, with Alberto Castellanos and Gran Orquestra Clásica de LR1. YouTube, uploaded by Pedro Taam. Accessed February 11, 2014.

Historical Events

660 B.C.E. - Traditional founding date of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

1785 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the soloist in the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor (K. 466) in Vienna, at the Mehlgrube Casino this day in 1785. Having come directly to the concert hall from the copyists, he performs it without rehearsal. Martha Argerich passionately performs Mozart's piano concerto No. 20 - one of the most, if not the most, romantic and often considered the greatest concerto of Mozart. A beautiful interpretation by M. Argerich of this loved piano concerto with a Mozart-inspired Cadenzas by Ludwig van Beethoven. (I. Allegro II. Romance III. Allegro Assai.)Alexandre Rabinovitch, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto. Martha Argerich, piano. Palazzo Giusti, Padova, September 1998. YouTube, uploaded by Facconti. Accessed February 11, 2014.

Note: A few days after the first performance, Leopold Mozart, the composer's father, visiting in Vienna, wrote to his daughter Nannerl about her brother's recent success: "I heard an excellent new piano concert by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got here, and your brother didn't even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation." Then young Ludwig van Beethoven admired this concerto and kept it in his repertoire.  Some well-known composers also wrote cadenzas for Mozart's Concerto 20, including Beethoven (WoO 58), J. Brahms (WoO 14), F. Busoni and Clara Schumann. (Source: Wiki)

1809 - Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.

1978 - China lifts ban on works by Aristotle, Shakespeare and Dickens.

1990 - Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years, is freed from Victor Verster prison outside Cape Town, South Africa.



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 February 11, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.