December 30 Dateline

Birthdays

1752 - Anton Kraft, Czech cellist and composer. He was a close friend of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Kraft was born in the Bohemian town of Rokycany of a German Bohemian ethnic family assimilated into Czech. (Anton Kraft - Cello Concerto in C-major, Op.4.  Movement I: Allegro Aperto; Movement II: Romance; Movement III: Rondo alla Cosacca.  Cellist: Anner Bylsma Orchestra: Tafelmusik Conductor: Jean Lamon (1805). Uploaded by KuhlauDilfeng2. Accessed December 30, 2018. )

1819 - Theodor Fontane, German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist author. His novels Irrungen, Wirrungen (Trials and Tribulations, 1888), Frau Jenny Treibel (1892) and Effi Briest (1894–95) yielded insights into the lives of the nobility and the commoners. His achievement in this regard was later described as poetic realism. In Der Stechlin (written 1895–97), his last completed novel, Fontane adapted the realistic methods and social criticism of contemporary French fiction to the conditions of Prussian life.

1865 - Rudyard Kipling, English Journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was best known for children's books and was a Nobel laureate in Literature in 1907. Kipling was born in India, which inspired much of his work. His works of fiction include The Jungle Book, Kim, and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King." He's also famous for his inspirational poem "If." (Narrated by Tom O'Bedlam, uploaded by The Motiv8, accessed December 30, 2017.)

1880 - Alfred Einstein, German-American musicologist, music editor and professor, distant cousin of scientist Albert Einstein. He was born in Munich and fled Nazi Germany after Hitler's Machtergreifung, arriving in the United States by 1939. He is best known for being the editor of the first major revision of the Köchel catalogue, which was published in the year 1936. The Köchel catalogue is the extensive catalogue of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

1895 - Leslie Poles Hartley CBE, British novelist and short story writer. Although his first fiction was published in 1924, his career was slow to take off. His best-known novels are the Eustace and Hilda trilogy (1944–47) and The Go-Between (1953). The latter was made into a film in 1971, as was his 1957 novel The Hireling in 1973. He was known for writing about social codes, moral responsibility, and family relationships. Hartley published 17 novels, 6 volumes of short stories, and a book of criticism.

1945 - Davy Thomas Jones, English musician, singer, actor and businessman, best known as a member of the band the Monkees, and for starring in the TV series of the same name. His acting credits include a Tony-nominated performance as the Artful Dodger in the original London and Broadway productions of Oliver! as well as a guest star role in a hallmark episode of The Brady Bunch television show and later reprised parody film; Love, American Style; and My Two Dads. Jones was considered a teen idol.

1975 - Tiger Woods (born Eldrick Tont Woods), American professional golfer. He is tied for first in PGA Tour wins and ranks second in men's major championships and also holds numerous golf records. Woods is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers, and one of the most famous athletes of all time.  (Tiger Woods' greatest escapes on the PGA Tour. Uploaded by PGA Tour. Accessed December 30, 2019.)

Lefties:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events, December 30 -  On This Day


Recommended Poetry:

"If"  by Rudyard Kipling.
Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Historical Events

1905 - Franz Lehar's operetta The Merry Widow is first performed in Vienna.

1916 - The 'mad monk' Grigory Rasputin is killed, a challenge and difficult thing to do. He had become a guru to the Russian tsar and  family, and was considered a bad influence on them. A group of nobles poison Rasputin's food and wine, but he survives it. Then they tried to shoot him, he collapses, and again survives and half-struggles before trying to flee the palace ground. He is shot three more times, which doesn't stop him. The final attempt is tying him up and throwing him into a freezing river. His body is found later and the official cause of death given is drowning. 

1921 - Sergei Prokofiev conducts the premiere of his opera The Love for Three Oranges, in Chicago. 

1922 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (U.S.S.R.), is formally established. 

1924 - Edwin Hubble, American astronomer, reveals that there are galaxies beyond the Milky Way. He is one of the first to postulate that the red shift he observes in the light spectrum from these galaxies is caused by the continuing expansion of the universe.  

1973 - Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publishes in Paris The Gulag Archipelago, considered his powerful literary account of the Soviet Union's prison camp system.

1999 - Former Beatles member George Harrison is stabbed several times in the chest by an intruder who broke into his home in Oxfordshire, England. He lives another two years before dying of lung cancer.



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 December 30, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. all rights reserved.