August 25 Dateline

Birthdays

1836 - Bret Harte (born Francis Brett Hart), American short story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. He wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to Eastern U.S. then to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his 'Gold Rush' tales have been the works most often reprinted, adapted, and admired.

1918 - Leonard Bernstein, American conductor, pianist, and composer. His works include symphonies, ballets, and scores for musicals Wonderful Town West Side Story, and the operetta Candide.) Bernstein's fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic. He wrote in varied styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, in particular, the most popular and successful West Side Story, Candide, and Wonderful Town. Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death in 1990.

1930 - Sir Sean Connery, Scottish actor and producer, who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. He was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again). In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie, Murder on the Orient Express, The Man Who Would Be King, amongst many more. Sir Connery was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1989 and the “Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.  He has been polled in The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". (Top Ten Sean Connery Performances. Uploaded by WatchMojo.com. Accessed August 25, 2015.)  

1938 - Frederick Forsyth, CBE,  English author, journalist, spy, and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger and The Cobra. His works frequently appear on best-sellers lists and more than a dozen of his titles have been adapted to film. (The Day of the Jackal (film). Accessed August 25, 2019. SS Odessa Movie Highlight #18. Movie Highlights. Accessed August 25, 2015. 

 
1949 - Martin Amis, British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice (shortlisted in 1991 for Time's Arrow and longlisted in 2003 for Yellow Dog). In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.  Amis's work centres on the excesses of late-capitalist Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirises through grotesque caricature. 

 
1958 - Tim Burton, American filmmaker, artist, writer, and animator. He is known for his dark, gothic, and eccentric horror and fantasy films; also for blockbuster films, such as the superhero films Batman and its first sequel, Batman Returns, the sci-fi film Planet of the Apes, the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland, and the film adaptation of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. He wrote and illustrated the poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, a compilation of his drawings, sketches and other artwork, and a follow-up, entitled The Napkin Art of Tim Burton: Things You Think About in a Bar, containing sketches made by him on napkins at bars and restaurants he occasionally visits. (Tim Burton: A Life in Pictures. Uploaded by BAFTA Guru. Accessed August 25, 2016.

1970 - Claudia Maria Schiffer,  German model, actress, and fashion designer, based in the UK. She rose to fame in the early 1990s as one of the world's most successful models, cementing her supermodel status. She has appeared on more than 1,000 magazine covers and holds the record for the model with the most magazine covers, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. In 2002, Forbes estimated her net worth to be around US$55 million.

Leftie:
None known

 

 

More birthdays and historical events today, August 25 - On This Day

 

 

In Memoriam:  Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 - October 14, 1990), American Composer, Pianist, and Music Lecturer.  Below is a tribute to him, accessed August 25, 2017.  

Historical Events

1609 - Galileo Galilei presents his invention, the telescope, to the Venetian Senate.

1718 - French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier founds New Orleans, Louisiana.

1875 - Matthew Webb (27 years old) becomes the first person to swim the English Channel. It took him 22 hours to swim almost 39 miles (64 km), taking a zigzag course due to ocean currents, from Dover on the English side to Calais in France. Eight hours into the swim, he was stung by a jellyfish, but continued on after a shot of brandy.

1932 - Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the U.S. from Los Angeles, California to Newark, New Jersey.

1944 - The Allies liberate Paris from the Germans during World War II.  This day the Liberation of Paris from the Nazis takes place. De Gaulle, the French leader, spent the war in London, but insisted on being the first into Paris and is greeted with great joy on this day. HE is also greeted with sniper fire from German soldiers and French fascists, but he is not hurt and the Allies move in quickly to mop up the enemies.  

2005 - Hurricane Katrina hits Florida, killing three people and leaving more than 1 million residents without electricity.

2006 - Andy Green, British Royal Air Force fighter pilot, who set the world land speed record in the car Thrust SSC  in 1997, drives the world's fastest diesel - the JCB Dieselmax - at the Bonneville salt flats in America, reaching a speed of 328 mph.




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 Timestables of History, New 3rd Revised Ed. Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
6. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org



(c) June 2007. Updated August 25, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen. All rights reserved.