Search this Blog

April 7 Dateline

Birthdays


1770 - William Wordsworth, English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a Romantic, epic semi-autobiographical poem of his early years chronicling the "growth of a poet's mind" that he revised and expanded a number of times... establishing his deep love for the “beauteous forms” of the natural world. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.

1860 - W.K. Kellogg (Will Keith Kellogg), American industrialist in food manufacturing. Cereal Maker, best known as the founder of the Kellogg Company, which to this day produces a wide variety of popular breakfast cereals. He was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and practiced vegetarianism as a dietary principle taught by his church. Later, he founded the Kellogg Arabian Ranch and made it into a renowned establishment for the breeding of Arabian horses. Kellogg started the Kellogg Foundation in 1934 with $66 million in Kellogg company stock and investments, a donation that would be worth over a billion dollars in today's economy. He continued to be a major philanthropist throughout his life.

1908 - Percy Faith, Canadian conductor, arranger of popular music, bandleader, orchestrator nd composer, known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He became a naturalised American citizen in 1945. Often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format, Percy Faith became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. Though his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the swing era, Faith refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s. (Percy Faith Orchestra Plays: The Greatest Hits of all Time. Uploaded by Oldies but Goodies. Accessed April 7, 2015. Percy Faith & His Orchestra - Christmas Album. Uploaded by Santa Klaws. Accessed April 7, 2017.)

1915 - Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan), American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. She was a successful concert performer with two further sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall. Due to personal struggles with drug abuse and an altered voice, her final recordings were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958. She won four Grammy Awards, all of them posthumously, for Best Historical Album. She was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

1920 - Ravi Shankar KBE (born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury), Indian sitar virtuoso and composer. He became the world's best-known exponent of North Indian classical music, in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many other musicians throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.

1939 - Francis Ford Coppola, American film director, producer and screenwriter. He was a central figure in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. His accolades include five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or, and a British Academy Film Award. After directing The Rain People, Coppola co-wrote Patton, earning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay along with Edmund H. North. Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of The Godfather. The film revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre. The Godfather won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Mario Puzo). The Godfather Part II, which followed in 1974, became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Highly regarded by critics, the film brought Coppola three more Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, and made him the second director (after Billy Wilder) to be so honored three times for the same film.

1964 - Russell Crowe, A New Zealand citizen, but has lived most of his life in Australia. Actor, film producer, director, and musician. Crowe came to international attention for his role as the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the epic historical film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which Crowe won an Academy Award, a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, an Empire Award, and a London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Leading Actor, along with ten other nominations in the same category. Crowe's other award-winning performances include portrayals of tobacco firm whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand in the drama film The Insider and John F. Nash in the biopic A Beautiful Mind.

Lefties:
None known
 
More birthdays and historical events today, 7 April - On This Day.

 
 
Features:

William Wordsworth's most famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" read by Jeremy Irons. Uploaded by noxdl from YouTube, accessed April 4, 2017.  This poem is also known as "Daffodils." It was inspired by an event on 15 April 1802, in which Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came across a "long belt" of daffodils. It was first published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes, and revised in 1815.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud  
By William Wordsworth 
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/william-wordsworth-i-wandered-lonely-cloud-lyrics.html

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/william-wordsworth-i-wandered-lonely-cloud-lyrics.html

wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Courtesy: Poetry Foundation.


https://lyricstranslate.com/en/william-wordsworth-i-wandered-lonely-cloud-lyrics.html

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils




Historical Events

1805 - Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer, conducts the first public performance of his Symphony No.3 in E Flat Major known as the "Eroica Symphony", in Vienna.  Listen to a video of LvB's Symphony No.3 conducted by Herbert von Karajan, with London Philharmonia Orchestra.




1824 -  The Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123, is performed on April 7, in St. Petersburg, Russia, under the auspices of Beethoven's patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin. It is a solemn mass composed by Ludwig van Beethoven from 1819 to 1823. An incomplete performance was given in Vienna on May 7, 1824, when the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei were conducted by the composer. (Beethoven, Missa solemnis. Colin Davis. BBC Proms 2011. Uploaded by El Jardin de Epicuro. Accessed April 7, 2013.)

1906 - Italy's Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing more than a hundred people and losing a height of 353 feet or 107 meters.

1943 - Dr. Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist, creates LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide).

1963 - Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia becomes "President for life."

1983 - Don Peterson and Story Musgrave perform the first space shuttle spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA).

2001 - NASA launches an unmanned spacecraft to orbit Mars.


Video Credit:
 
Beethoven Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"- Karajan. YouTube, uploaded by VerachtetmirdieMeisternicht. Accessed April 7, 2017.



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 Timestables of History, New 3rd Revised Ed. Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
6. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Wiki Encyclopedia
7. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org. 



(c) June 2007. Updated April 7, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

No comments:

Post a Comment