January 23 Dateline

Birthdays

1752 - Muzio Clementi, Italian-British virtuoso pianist and composer, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly active in England. He settled in London in 1782 and founded the present-day technique of piano playing. He was a contemporary of Wolfgang A. Mozart. Clementi is best known for his 'Gradus ad Parnassum' collection of piano studies, and for his sonatinas. (Clementi - Gradus Ad Parnassum: Complete Piano Studies (Ct.rc.: Danielle Laval / World Premiere. YouTube, uploaded by Classical Music // Reference Recording. Accessed January 23, 2023. Such a pleasure listening to this lovely performance.) 

1832 - Édouard Manet, French Modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, and a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. (E. Manet Paintings. Uploaded by Getahun Haile. Accessed January 23, 2013.)

1899 - Humphrey Bogart, American film & stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart as the greatest male star of classic American cinema. His breakthrough from supporting roles to stardom came with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, considered one of the first great noir films. His most significant romantic lead role was with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, which earned him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Bogart and Lauren Bacall fell in love when they filmed To Have and Have Not. After their marriage, she played his love interest in Dark Passage and Key Largo. Bogart's performances in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and In a Lonely Place are now considered among his best. For his role as a cantankerous river steam launch skipper with Katharine Hepburn's missionary in the World War I adventure The African Queen, Bogart received the Academy Award for Best Actor. In his later years, significant roles included The Barefoot Contessa and Sabrina. ("I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me."- H. Bogart)

1933 - Joel Spiegelman, American composer, conductor, concert pianist, harpsichordist, recording artist, arranger, author and teacher. As a composer, Spiegelman has been widely known for his blending of techniques from traditional classical music, dodecaphonic music, aleatoric music, gospel, Russian folk, and electronic idioms. He has written original music for string quartet, piano trio, piano quintet, chamber music with percussion, solo instruments, wind ensembles, symphony orchestra, ballet, film, choral and vocal music. (Joel Spiegelman: Cry of the Bird of Passage for Symphony Orchestra. YouTube, accessed January 23, 2021.

1950 - Richard Dean Anderson, American actor and film producer. He began his television career playing Jeff Webber in the American soap-opera series General Hospital, then rose to prominence as the lead actor in the television series MacGyver. He later appeared in films such as Through the Eyes of a Killer, Pandora's Clock, and Firehouse. In 1997, Anderson returned to television as the lead actor of the series Stargate SG-1, a spin-off of the 1994 film Stargate. He played the lead from 1997 to 2005 and had a recurring role from 2005 to 2007. Since 1997, he has starred in only one film: Stargate: Continuum, released in 2008 as a sequel film after the Stargate SG-1 film The Ark of Truth. He appeared in the follow-up Stargate spin-off series Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: Universe (reprising his role from SG-1 as Major General and later Lieutenant General Jack O'Neill).

1957 - Princess Caroline of Monaco; Caroline, Princess of Hanover (Caroline Louise Marguerite Grimaldi), eldest child of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and the American actress Grace Kelly. She is the elder sister of Prince Albert II and Princess Stéphanie. Until the births of her niece and nephew, Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques, in December 2014, she had been heiress presumptive to the throne of Monaco since 2005, a position which she previously held from 1957 to 1958. Caroline is married to Ernst August, Prince of Hanover, the heir to the defunct throne of the former Kingdom of Hanover, as well as the heir male of George III of the United Kingdom. 

Lefties:
None known
 

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

 

 

Featuring Muzio Clementi, Italian pianist and composer. 

Below is Clementi's famous Sonatina in C, Op. 36 No. 1.  (Uploaded by Phillip Sear, who played it himself. Accessed January 23, 2018.)

Historical Events

1510 - Henry VIII of England, 18 years old that time, takes part incognito in a tournament at Richmond and is applauded for his jousting before revealing his identity.

1571 - The Royal Exchange in London is opened by Queen Elizabeth I. 

1849 - Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first U.S. female doctor.

1911 - Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie is refused acceptance to the all-male membership of the French Academy of Sciences. She goes on to win a second Nobel Prize.  

1964 - Dr. James Hardy, at the University of Mississippi, U.S., transplants the heart of a chimpanzee namd Bino into the chest of Boyd Rush, aged 68. IT is the first animal-to-human heart transplant. Rush dies 90 minutes later.   

1973 - U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.   

1978 - Sweden becomes the first nation in the world to ban aerosol sprays, believed to be damaging to Earth's protective ozone layer.

1999 - Australian missionary Graham Stewart Stains and his two sons area burned alive by radical Hindus while sleeping in their car in eastern India.



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 January 23, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.