June 8 Dateline

Birthdays

1671 - Tomaso Albinoni, Italian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is also remembered today for his "Adagio in G minor", supposedly written by him, but deemed written by his cataloger, Remo Giazotto, a modern musicologist and composer.(Adagio in G minor - Albinoni. Uploaded by MoodTools. Accessed June 8, 2009.)

1810 - Robert Schumann, German composer, pianist, and conductor, influential music critic, one of the leaders of German Romanticism. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist (eventually his father-in-law), had assured him that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with Wieck, who opposed the marriage to his daughter Clara, the couple still married. Before their marriage, Clara—also a composer—had substantially supported her father through her considerable career as a pianist. Together, Clara and Robert encouraged, and maintained a close relationship with German composer Johannes Brahms.(Schumann's Fantasie Op. 17 exquisitely interpreted by Sviatoslav Richter. Uploaded by incontrario motu. Accessed June 8, 2019.)

1918 - Robert Preston (Meservey), American stage and film actor and singer of Broadway and cinema, best known and remembered for his collaboration with composer Meredith Willson and originating the role of Professor Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man and the 1962 film adaptation; the film earned him his first of two Golden Globe Award nominations. Preston collaborated twice with filmmaker Blake Edwards, first in S.O.B. and again in Victor/Victoria. For portraying Carroll "Toddy" Todd in the latter, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 55th Academy Awards. 

1925 - Barbara Pierce Bush, American former First Lady of the U.S. from 1989 to 1993 as the wife of George H. W. Bush, the 41st U.S. president, and founder of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Among her six children are George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the U.S., and Jeb Bush, the 43rd Governor of Florida. She and Abigail Adams are the only two women to be the wife of one U.S. president and the mother of another. 

1955 - Sir Tim Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA FBCS, English engineer and computer scientist. He's the Inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW). Also known as TimBL, he is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He made a proposal for an information management system on 12 March 1989, and implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the internet in mid-November the same year. He received the 2016 Turing Award "for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale". He is the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation and holder of the 3Com founders chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He is founder and president of the Open Data Institute. He has received numerous accolades for his invention and other achievements. 

1957 - Scott Adams, American cartoonist,  the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. His Dilbert series came to national prominence through the downsizing period in 1990s America and was then distributed worldwide. Adams worked in various roles at big businesses before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. He writes in a satirical, often sarcastic way about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in modern business corporations. 

1959 - Dr. Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan, Saudi philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author. A multi-awarded neuroscientist, he is an honorary fellow of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, and senior fellow and head of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy’s Geopolitics and Global Futures Programme, Switzerland, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Member of the Global Future Council on Frontier Risks at the World Economic Forum. Since 2002, Nayef Al-Rodhan has shifted his scholarly focus to the interplay between neuroscience and international relations. Through publications, he has pioneered the application of neuroscience and the neuro-behavioural consequences of the neurochemical and cellular mechanisms that underpin emotions, amorality, egoisms, fear, greed, and dominance, into the analysis and conceptualization of trends in contemporary geopolitics, global security, national security, transcultural security, and war and peace.  

1976 - Lindsay (Ann) Davenport Leach - American former professional tennis player. She was ranked World No. 1 on eight different occasions, for a total of 98 weeks. Davenport is one of five women who have been the year-end World No. 1 at least four times. She has also achieved the No. 1 ranking in doubles. In 2005, TENNIS Magazine ranked her as the 29th-greatest player (male or female) of the preceding 40 years. Davenport was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2014.

1983 - Kim Clijsters (Kim Antonie Lode Clijsters), Belgian professional tennis player. Clijsters has been a world No. 1 in both singles and doubles, having held both rankings simultaneously in 2003. She has won a total of six Grand Slam tournament titles, four in singles and two in doubles. She was renowned for her athleticism, which was highlighted by her ability to perform splits on court in the middle of points. Clijsters was very popular and well-liked as a player, having won the Karen Krantzcke Sportsmanship Award eight times. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2017.

Leftie:
Actor Robert Preston

 

More birthdays today, 8 June - On This Day. 

Historical Events

1536 - On his order, Henry VIII's daughters are declared illegitimate to allow the children of his latest wife, Jane Seymour, to inherit.  Seymour dies giving birth to her son, Edward. Though he survives to be king, Edward VI dies at the age of 15. He leaves the throne to be contested, then taken by Mary and Elizabeth in turn.

1783 - In Iceland, Laki volcano begins an 8th-month eruption which kills more than 9,000 people through lava, poisonous gas, and famine. An estimated tens of thousands in the coming months across Europe was estimated killed by sulphurous clouds.

1866 - The Canadian Parliament meets for the first time in Ottawa.

1937 - Carl Orff's scenic cantata on 13th-century poems, Carmina Burana, is first performed, in Frankfurt. 

1949 - George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is published. It is considered even more disturbing than his 1944 book Animal Farm.

1953 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Washingtron D.C. restaurants may not refuse to serve black patrons.

1968 - James Earl ray is arrested for the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.




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 and Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
6. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org



(c) June 2007. Updated June 8, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.