October 6 Dateline

Birthdays

1820 - Jenny Lind, (born Johanna Maria Lind), Swedish opera singer, often called the "Swedish Nightingale". One of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, she performed in soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe, and undertook an extraordinarily popular concert tour of the United States beginning in 1850.) She became famous after her performance in Der Freischütz in Sweden in 1838. Within a few years, she had suffered vocal damage, but the singing teacher Manuel García saved her voice. She was in great demand in opera roles throughout Sweden and northern Europe during the 1840s, and was closely associated with Felix Mendelssohn. After two acclaimed seasons in London, she announced her retirement from opera at the age of 29.

1846 - George Westinghouse, Jr., American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age of 19. Westinghouse saw the potential of using alternating current for electric power distribution in the early 1880s, putting his business in direct competition with Thomas Edison, who marketed direct current for electric power distribution. In 1911 Westinghouse received the American Institute of Electrical Engineers's (AIEE) Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system."

1887 - Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, and he designed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America.

1908 - Carole Lombard, American actress, (born Jane Alice Peters), noted for her roles in screwball comedies. She was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her 23rd on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. After a successful appearance in The Arizona Kid, she was signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures. Paramount began casting her as a leading lady, mainly in drama films. Her profile increased when she married William Powell, but the couple divorced amicably after two years. A turning point in Lombard's career came when she starred in Howard Hawks's pioneering screwball comedy Twentieth Century. She continued to appear in films forming a popular partnership with Fred MacMurray. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in My Man Godfrey. Lombard married "The King of Hollywood", Clark Gable, and the super couple gained much attention from the media.

1931 - Riccardo Giacconi, Italian-American Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid down the foundations of X-ray astronomy. He was a professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Giacconi was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002 "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources". The other shares of the Prize in that year were awarded to Masatoshi Koshiba and Raymond Davis, Jr. for neutrino astronomy. Giacconi held the positions of professor of physics and astronomy (1982–1997) and research professor (from 1998 to his death in 2018) at Johns Hopkins University, and was a university professor. During the 2000s he was principal investigator for the major Chandra Deep Field-South project with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

1942 - Britt Ekland, Swedish actress and singer. She appeared in numerous films in her heyday, including roles in William Friedkin's The Night They Raided Minsky's, and the British crime film Get Carter, which established her as a movie sex symbol. She also starred in the British cult horror film The Wicker Man and appeared as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun. Her high-profile social life and her 1964 marriage to actor Peter Sellers attracted considerable press attention, leading to her being one of the most photographed celebrities in the world during the 1970s.

Lefties:
None known

 

 

More birthdays and historical events, October 6 - On This Day

Historical Events

1600 - Jacopo Peri's opera Euridice, written for the wedding of Maria de Medici and Henry IV of France, is performed in Florence, Italy. Her uncle, Duke of Tuscany, is proxy for Henry, who was not allowed to leave his country.

1769 - Captain James Cook discovers New Zealand, amazing the Maoris with this claim. Decades of fighting follow as they argue about it.

1802 - Composer Ludwig van Beethoven, increasingly deaf at this time, writes his Will, the "Heiligenstadt Testament."

1889 - Thomas Alva Edison shows his first motion picture on a predecessor to the modern film projector.

1927 -  Opening on Broadway, the first feature-length talking movie, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.

1937 - In a letter to American writer E.B. White from Europe, cartoonist, writer and celebrated wit James Thurber writes: "Up in Warsaw, owls attacked an old woman who was just walking along the road. Owl knows what they are doing, too."

1995 - The planet Bellerophon is found orbiting 51 Pegasi.

2000 - Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia, is forced to resign after a public rebellion.



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 October 6, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.