Birthdays
1752 - Thomas Chatterton, English poet. His precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge. At 17, he sought outlets for his political writings in London, having impressed the Lord Mayor, William Beckford, and the radical leader John Wilkes, but his earnings were not enough to keep him, and he poisoned himself in despair. The oil painting The Death of Chatterton by Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis has enjoyed lasting fame. His unusual life and death attracted much interest among the romantic poets, and Alfred de Vigny wrote a play about him that is still performed today.
1765 - Friedrich Heinrich Himmel, German opera composer and conductor who originally studied theology at Halle before turning to music. During a stay at Potsdam he showed his self-acquired skill as a pianist before King Frederick William II, who made him a yearly allowance to enable him to complete his musical studies under Johann Gottlieb Naumann, a German composer of the Italian school, and the style of that school Himmel adopted in his operas. The first was a pastoral opera, Il primo navigatore, produced at Venice in 1794 with great success. In 1792 he went to Berlin, where his oratorio Isaaco was produced, in consequence of which he was made court Kapellmeister to the king of Prussia, and he wrote a great deal of official music, including cantatas, and a coronation Te Deum. His Italian operas were all received with great favour. Of greater importance is a Singspiel Fanchon to words by Kotzebue. Himmel's gift of writing simple melody is also observable in his Lieder, including An Alexis send ich dich (To Alexis).(Friedrich Heinrich Himmel / Ernst Pauer - Prayer (D flat major. Uploaded by Erakko Ippolitov - Piano Channel. Accessed Nov. 20, 2016.)
1889 - Edwin Hubble, American astronomer (Hubble Space Telescope) who played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. He is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of all time and he is widely recognized for the Hubble Space Telescope, named in his honour. Hubble discovered that many objects previously thought to be clouds of dust and gas and classified as "nebulae" were actually galaxies beyond the Milky Way. He used the strong direct relationship between a classical Cepheid variable's luminosity and pulsation period (discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt) for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances. He provided evidence that the recessional velocity of a galaxy increases with its distance from the Earth, a property now known as "Hubble's law", despite the fact that it had been both proposed and demonstrated observationally two years earlier by Georges Lemaître. The Hubble–Lemaître law implies that the universe is expanding.
1923 - Nadine Gordimer, South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity". Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned, and gave Nelson Mandela advice on his famous 1964 defence speech at the trial which led to his conviction for life. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
1925 - Robert Francis Kennedy, American politician and lawyer, also referred to by his initials RFK and occasionally by the nickname Bobby, who served as the 64th U.S. Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. He was, like his brothers John and Edward, a prominent member of the Democratic Party and has come to be viewed by some historians as an icon of modern American liberalism. His tenure is best known for its advocacy for the civil rights movement, the fight against organized crime and the Mafia, and involvement in U.S. foreign policy related to Cuba. He authored his account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Thirteen Days. After his brother's assassination, he remained in office in the Johnson Administration. He left to run for the United States Senate from New York in 1964 and defeated Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating. Kennedy opposed racial discrimination and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
1927 - Estelle Margaret Parsons, American actress, singer and stage director. After studying law, Parsons became a singer. She worked for the TV program Today. Parsons established her career on Broadway before progressing to film. She received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde, and was nominated for her work in Rachel, Rachel . She later directed several Broadway productions. Her television work included her most well-known role, playing Beverly Harris, mother of the title character, on the sitcom Roseanne, and its spinoff The Conners. She has been nominated five times for the Tony Award (four times for Lead Actress of a Play and once for Featured Actress). Parsons was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2004.
1956 - Bo Derek (born Mary Cathleen Collins), American actress, film producer, and model perhaps best known for her breakthrough film role in the sex comedy 10 in 1979. She was directed by husband John Derek in Fantasies, Tarzan, the Ape Man, Bolero (1984) and Ghosts Can't Do It (1989), unfortunately, all of which received negative reviews. A widow since 1998, she lives with actor John Corbett. Now in semi-retirement, she makes occasional film, television, and documentary appearances.
Lefties:
Actress Estelle Parsons
More birthdays and historical events, November 20 - On This Day
Historical Events
1805 - Ludwig van Beethoven conducts Fidelio, his only opera, in its first performance, in Vienna.
1889 - Gustav Mahler conducts his Symphony No. 1, "Titan," in its first performance, in Budapest.
1947 - Princess Elizabeth, 21 marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, 26, at Westminster Abbey in London. She is crowned Queen Elizabeth II six years later.
1948 - New Zealand's flightless takahe bird had only been seen four times between 1800 and 1900 and was presumed extinct. On this day, November 20, scientist Dr. Geoffrey Orbell located the first of what turned out to be a colony of 250 birds in the Murchison Mountains in South Island.
1962 - The U.S. lifts its quarantine of Cuba, satisfied that the U.S.S.R. had made good on its agreement to remove its missiles after the Cuban crisis.
Video Credit:
Beethoven: fidelio - Ouverture / Leonard Bernstein. YouTube, uploaded by classica e opera. Accessed November 20, 2016.
Mahler: Symphony no.1, "Titan" (Neeme Järvi/ Orchestre National de France). YouTube, uploaded by France Musique. Accessed November 20, 2020.
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 November 20, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
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