July 5 Dateline

Birthdays

1810 - P.T. Barnum (born Phineas Taylor Barnum), American showman, circus operator, politician, author, publisher, philanthropist and businessman remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. He is widely credited with coining the adage "There's a sucker born every minute", although no proof can be found of him saying this.

1879 - Dwight F. Davis, (born Dwight Filley Davis, Sr.), American tennis player. He is best remembered as the founder of the Davis Cup international tennis competition. He was the Assistant Secretary of War from 1923 to 1925 and Secretary of War from 1925 to 1929.

1879 - Wanda Aleksandra Landowska, Polish-French harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings, and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Johann Sebastian Bach's "Goldberg Variations" on the harpsichord. (J.S.Bach, Wanda Landowska, Harpsichord Goldberg Theme & Variations BWV 988. Uploaded by Poesia & Musica por Xavier-Perez. Accessed July 5, 2016. Wanda Landowska Plays Mozart Sonata KV332 in F Major, Recorded 1939. Accessed July 5, 2017.)

1880 - Jan Kubelik, Czech violinist, father of conductor Rafael Kubelik. Around the turn of the century, considered the greatest violinists were Ysaye, Kubelik, Joachim, Sarasate, and Kreisler. This times were before Heifetz, Huberman, and Prihoda. (Listen to Jan Kubelic play his cadenza to Paganini's Concerto No. 1. Uploaded by rareviolintreasures. Accessed July 5, 2013.)

1889 - Jean Cocteau, French writer, poet, playwright, designer, visual artist, filmmaker and critic. He is best known for his novels Le Grand Écart, Le Livre Blanc, and Les Enfants Terribles; the stage plays Le Voix Humaine (1930), La Machine Infernale (1934), Les Parents terribles, La Machine à écrire, and L'Aigle à deux têtes; and the films The Blood of a Poet, Les Parents Terribles, from his own eponymous piéce, Beauty and the Beast, Orpheus, and Testament of Orpheus, which alongside Blood of a Poet and Orpheus constitute the so-called Orphic Trilogy. He was described as "one of [the] avant-garde's most successful and influential filmmakers" by AllMovie. (J.Cocteau Documentary #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6. YouTube, uploaded by Hershel Layton. Accessed July 5, 2018.)

1891 - John Howard Northrop, American biochemist, Nobel laureate. He shared with James Batcheller Sumner and Wendell Meredith Stanley the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The award was given for these scientists' isolation, crystallization, and study of enzymes, proteins, and viruses. Northrop was was a Professor of Bacteriology and Medical Physics, Emeritus, at University of California, Berkeley. For his 1939 book, Crystalline Enzymes: The Chemistry of Pepsin, Trypsin, and Bacteriophage, Northrop was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1949.

1929 - Katherine Marie Helmond, American actress. Over her five decades of television acting, she was known for her starring role as ditzy matriarch Jessica Tate on the sitcom Soap and her co-starring role as feisty mother Mona Robinson on Who's the Boss?. She also played Doris Sherman on Coach and Lois Whelan (the mother of Debra Barone) on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Lefties:
Founder of the Davis Cup Dwight Davis
Actress Katherine Helmond

 

More birthdays and historical events today, 5 July - On This Day.
 

 

Featuring: Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles, and the films The Blood of a Poet, Les Parents Terribles, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus. His circle of friends and associates included:  Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, Gertrude Stein, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Edith Piaf, Colette, Jean Genet, Raymond Radiguet, and other famous people from the arts, classical music, literary and film industry.

Durey: Le Printemps au Fond de la Mer - Poeme of Cocteau (1920). Composer: Louis Durey (1920). Librettist: Jean Cocteau.  (Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises. Durey: Le Printemps au Fond de la Mer - Poeme Of Cocteau (1920) · Louis Durey · Jean Cocteau & Les Six.) Accessed July 5, 2018.

Historical Events

1865 - William Booth holds the first meeting of the East London Christian Mission in a tent in London's Whitechapel. In May 1878, he changes the mission's name to what is now famously known as the Salvation Army.

1946 - The Bikini is first shown at a fashion show at a Paris swimming pool. Louis Reard, its creator stated that it would cause a stir as big as an atomic bomb explosion and named it the "bikini" coined after the Pacific atoll where the U.S. detonated an atoamic bomb previously.

1956 - The British Parliament passes the first Clean Air Act to rid the cities of devastating "smog" - fog combined smoke from industries, coal and wood fires.

1977 - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, elected Prime Minister of Pakistan is overthrown in March, in a military coup led by General Muhammad Zia ul-Huq and martial law is imposed. Bhutto is hanged on April 4, 1979. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.

1980 - Bjorn Borg defeats john McEnroe in a four-hour match to win Wimbledon for a record fifth consecutive time.

1996 - Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, is born. Her existence is kept secret until February 1997. Although previous clones had been created from embryonic cells, Dolly is the first mammal to be created from adult cells. 


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



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