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April 26 Dateline

Birthdays


121 C.E. - Marcus Aurelius (Latin: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus), Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 and a stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors (a term coined some 13 centuries later by Niccolò Machiavelli), and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161.

1711 - David Hume, Scottish enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist. He is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism.

1812 - Alfred Krupp (Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach), German industrialist, a competitor in Olympic yacht races and a member of the Krupp family, prominent in German industry since the early 19th century. 

1812 - Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand (Freiherr von Flotow), German composer,  chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, a romantic comic opera in four acts set to a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese and basedon a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges. It was popular in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. (Jonas Kaufmann; "Ach! so fromm"; Martha; Friedrich von Flotow. With Marco Armiliato, conducting the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. 2007. Uploaded by liederoperagreats. Accessed April 26, 2017.)

1888 - Anita Loos (born Corinne Anita Loos), American screenwriter, playwright and author. In 1912, she became the first-ever female staff scriptwriter in Hollywood, when D.W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, as well as her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette’s novella Gigi.

1889 - Ludwig Wittgenstein (Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein), Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He taught at the University of Cambridge. During his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the relatively slim 75-page Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise) (1921) which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929), a book review, and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations.

1900 - Charles Francis Richter, American seismologist and physicist. He is most famous as the creator of the Richter magnitude scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, quantified the size of earthquakes. Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935 after developing it in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg. The quote "logarithmic plots are a device of the devil" is attributed to Richter.
 
1933 - Carol Creighton Burnett (born April 26, 1933) is an American stage, TV, and film actress, comedian, singer, and writer. She is best known for her groundbreaking comedy variety show, The Carol Burnett Show. She has also appeared on various talk shows and as a panelist on game shows. Burnett has written and narrated several memoirs, earning Grammy nominations for almost all of them, and a win for In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox. In 2005, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2013, Burnett was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2019, the Golden Globes named an award after her for career achievement in television, called the Carol Burnett Award, and Burnett its first awardee. 

Leftie:
Comedienne Carol Burnett
 
More birthdays and historical events today, 26 April - On This Day.

 
 
Feature: 

Symphony No. 1 by Jean Sibelius.  This symphony was first performed this day 26th April, 1899, in Helsinki.




Historical Events


1607 - Captain John Smith lands with colonists in Virginia, named for the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, establishing the first permanent settlement.  


1865 - John Wilkes Booth, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, is found hiding in a barn and shot dead by the cavalry.

1899 - Jan Sibelius's Symphony No. 1 is first performed, in Helsinki.

1933 - The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), Nazi Germany's secret police force, is formed. 

1954 - The Geneva Conference begins. Representatives from the U.S., Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France try to resolve problems, in particular, French Indochina and Korea.

1962 - The U.S. rocket Ranger lands on the far side of the Moon. Intended that the craft send pictures back to Earth, it suffered equipment failure.

1986 - The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurs in the Ukraine. Considered the worst nuclear accident in history took place on April 26 this year, at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Pripyat in the Ukraine, a station housing four nuclear reactors. An explosion caused by steam build-up occurred at approximately 1:24 A.M. in reactor number four.  As the blast tore off the reactor lid, and as superheated nuclear fuel met with oxygen from the air, a fire broke out. Although the Chernobyl Forum comprising the World Health Organization, United Nations, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, believe that the deaths relating the accident is around 4,000, other sources like Greenpeace believe that the numbers are much higher, with an estimated 67,000 deaths in Russia alone, as the leak also fell on neighbouring countries.

2005 - Syria withdraws the last of its troops from Lebanon, after 29 years of occupation.


Video Credit:

Sibelius's Symphony No. 1, with Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Leonard Bernstein. YouTube, uploaded by some oane. Accessed April 26, 2018. 




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. en.wikipedia.org. 
6. Oxford Dictionary of Music. Editors: Michael & Joyce Kennedy & Tim Rutherford-Johnson. Oxford: OUP, 2012.  
7. Grun, Bernard. The Timestables of History, New 3rd Revised Ed. Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
8. The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, New Updated Edition. Editor: Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1994.
9. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org


(c) June 2007. Updated 26 April 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

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