January 6 Dateline

January 6 is Epiphany

Epiphany is a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ. In Western Christianity, the feast commemorates principally the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child, and thus Jesus' physical manifestation to the Gentiles. Epiphany, or the 12th day of Christmas, falls on January 6 and marks the official end to the festive season for many Christians. ... The six Sundays which follow Epiphany are known as the time of manifestation. (We Three Kings of Orient Are. Uploaded by jared82ca. Accessed January 6, 2020.) The song is sung by Jennifer Avalon, accompanied by the lyrics (in English). Both the lyrics and the music were written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr. circa 1857, then an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church, who was instrumental in organizing an elaborate holiday pageant (which featured this song) for the students of the General Theological Seminary in New York City while serving as the seminary's music director. The song tells the story of the Magi (found in the Bible's Book of Matthew Chapter 2) traveling to visit to the Christ Child, guided only by the Star of Bethlehem. Also, here's King's College Choir of Cambridge with the traditional "We Three Kings of Orient Are" hymn.  YouTube, uploaded by drwestbury. Accessed January 6, 2012.

   The Three Kings.  Image Credit: Dayton UMC

 

Birthdays

1567 - Richard Burbage,  English stage actor, theatre owner and painter, considered one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre in his time. He was a friend to William Shakespeare.

1838 - Max Bruch, German Romantic composer, teacher, and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertory. (Sharing a personal favourite, Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 Op. 26, played by Akiko Suwanai, conducted by Eliahu Inbal, with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai Turin, 1998. Uploaded by Roberto Mastrosimone. January 6, 2013.)  

1872 - Aleksander Scriabin,  Russian composer and pianist. Scriabin was influenced early in his life by the works of Frédéric Chopin, and composed works that are characterised by a highly tonal idiom. Below I've featured his Prometheus or Poem of Fire.  

1878 - Carl August Sandburg, Swedish-American writer, poet, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems, Cornhuskers, and Smoke and Steel. He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life", and at his death in 1967, then President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."

1883 - Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected this title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and is one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages. His other two notable works are The Madman and Broken Wings. (Kahlil Gibran. Poetry Foundation Org. Accessed January 6, 2018.)

1913 - Loretta Young (born Gretchen Young), American actress. She started as a child actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film The Farmer's Daughter, and received her second Academy Award nomination for her role in Come to the Stable. Young moved to the relatively new medium of television, where she had a dramatic anthology series, The Loretta Young Show, from 1953 to 1961. The series earned three Emmy Awards, and was re-run successfully on daytime TV and later in syndication. In the 1980s, Young returned to the small screen and won a Golden Globe for her role in Christmas Eve in 1986.

 
1920 - John Maynard Smith, FRS, British tiologist (theoretical and mathematical) and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution with George R. Price, and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory. 

 
1931 - Capucine (born Germaine Hélène Irène Lefebvre), French Fashion Model and Actress, known for her comedic roles in The Pink Panther and What's New Pussycat?. She appeared in 36 films and 17 television productions between 1948 and 1990. Capucine met Audrey Hepburn while modeling for Givenchy in Paris. They remained close friends for the rest of Capucine's life.

1955 - Rowan Sebastian Atkinson, CBE, English comedian, actor and screenwriter, best known for sitcoms Blackadder and Mr. Bean. Atkinson first came to prominence in the BBC sketch comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News, receiving the 1981 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance, and via his participation in The Secret Policeman's Ball. His other work includes the James Bond film Never Say Never Again, playing a bumbling vicar in Four Weddings and a Funeral. He featured in the BBC sitcom The Thin Blue Line. His work in theatre includes the 2009 West End revival of the musical Oliver!. Atkinson was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest actors in British comedy in 2007, and among the top 50 comedians ever, in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians. He received an Olivier Award for his 1981 West End theatre performance in Rowan Atkinson in Revue. He has had cinematic success with his performances in the Mr. Bean film adaptations Bean and Mr. Bean's Holiday, and also in the Johnny English film series. He appeared as the titular character in Maigret. Atkinson was appointed a CBE in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to drama and charity.

Lefties:
None known

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

 

Featuring the music of two birthday celebrant composers:

Max Bruch:  Miles Hoffmann plays Bruch's Romanze, Op.85, for viola and orchestra.



 

Aleksander Scriabin: Prometheus or the Poem of Fire, op. 60 for piano, chorus, large orchestra and "luce", a sort of color organ supposed to create the synaesthetical effects wished by the composer.

Historical Events

January 6 is Epiphany (Observed by Christians)

1838 - Samuel Morse first successfully tests the electrical telegraph.

1907 - Maria Montessori, an Italian educator, doctor, scientist, philosopher, humanitarian and feminist, opens her first school an daycare center for working-class children in Rome. 

January 5 Dateline

Birthdays

 1762 - Constanze Mozart Niesen (born Maria Constanze Cäcilia Josepha Johanna Aloysia Weber), trained Austrian singer. She married twice, her first husband being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and was later, jointly with her second husband Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, Mozart's biographer. She and Mozart had six children: Karl Thomas Mozart, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, and four others who died in infancy.

1909 - Stephen Cole Kleene, American mathematician. One of the students of Alonzo Church, Kleene, along with Rózsa Péter, Alan Turing, Emil Post, is best known as a founder of the branch of mathematical logic known as recursion theory, which subsequently helped to provide the foundations of theoretical computer science. Kleene's work grounds the study of computable functions. A number of mathematical concepts are named after him: Kleene hierarchy, Kleene algebra, the Kleene star (Kleene closure), Kleene's recursion theorem and the Kleene fixed-point theorem. He also invented regular expressions in 1951 to describe McCulloch-Pitts neural networks, and made significant contributions to the foundations of mathematical intuitionism.

1917 - Jane Wyman (born Sarah Jane Mayfield), American actress, singer, dancer, and philanthropist. She was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film Johnny Belinda. She was also the first wife of actor Ronald Reagan (later the 40th president of the United States). They married in 1940 and divorced in 1948. A popular contract player, she frequently played the leading lady, her roles including starring alongside William Hopper in Public Wedding, Ronald Reagan and Eddie Albert in Brother Rat and its sequel Brother Rat and a Baby, Dennis Morgan in Bad Men of Missouri, Marlene Dietrich in Stage Fright, and Sterling Hayden in So Big. She was also featured opposite Rock Hudson in Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows, both directed by Douglas Sirk. She was a three-time winner of a Golden Globe Award. She achieved continuing success in the television soap opera Falcon Crest (1981–1990), in which Wyman played the lead role of villainous matriarch Angela Channing.

1917 - Wieland Wagner, German opera director of Bayreuth Festival and grandson of Richard Wagner. As co-director of the Bayreuth Festival when it re-opened after World War II, he was noted for innovative new stagings of the operas, departing from the naturalistic scenery and lighting of the originals. His wartime involvement in the development of the V-2 rocket was kept secret for many years.

1926 - William De Witt Snodgrass, American poet who also wrote under the pseudonym S. S. Gardons. His first book of poems, Heart' Needle, wins the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. By the time Heart's Needle was published, in 1959, Snodgrass had already won The Hudson Review Fellowship in Poetry and an Ingram Merrill Foundation Poetry Prize. However, his first book brought him more: a citation from the Poetry Society of America, a grant from the National Institute of Arts, and, most important of all, 1960's Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

1931 - Alfred Brendel, Austrian Pianist, Poet and Author, known particularly for his performances of Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, and especially Beethoven. (Brendel plays Schubert's famous Four Impromptus, D 899, Op 90. Uploaded by Classical Vault 1. Accessed January 5, 2013.)

1931 - Robert Selden Duvall, American actor and filmmaker. He has been nominated for seven Academy Awards (winning for his performance in Tender Mercies) and seven Golden Globe Awards (winning four), and has won a BAFTA, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Emmy Award. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2005. Duvall began appearing in theater during the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s, playing Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird and appearing in Captain Newman, M.D., as Major Frank Burns in the blockbuster comedy MASH and the lead role in THX 1138, as well as Horton Foote's adaptation of William Faulkner's Tomorrow, which was developed at The Actors Studio and is Duvall's personal favorite. This was followed by a series of critically lauded performances in commercially successful films.

1932 - Umberto Eco, OMRI, Italian philologist, novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. He is widely known for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), a intellectual & historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory.

1942 - Maurizio Pollini, Italian Classical pianist, especially noted for his performances of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and also for championing modern composers such as Boulez, Luigi Nano, and Bruno Maderna.(Pollini exquisitely plays Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 "Appassionata." Uploaded by The Gold Piano. Accessed January 5, 2016.)

1946 - Diane Hall Keaton, American actress and filmmaker. Known for her idiosyncratic personality and dressing style, Keaton has received an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and the AFI Life Achievement Award. She rose to prominence with her first major film role as Kay Adams-Corleone in The Godfather, and its two sequels The Godfather Part II  and The Godfather Part III. But the films that most shaped her career were those with director and co-star Woody Allen, beginning with Play It Again, Sam; then Sleeper and Love and Death, that established her as a comic actor. Her fourth, the romantic comedy Annie Hall, won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. To avoid being typecast as her Annie Hall  persona, Keaton became an accomplished dramatic performer, starring in Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Interiors, and received three more Academy Award nominations for playing feminist activist Louise Bryant in Reds, a woman with leukemia in Marvin's Room, and a dramatist in Something's Gotta Give. Other popular films followed, including The First Wives Club and Book Club. 

Leftie:
Actress Diane Keaton

More birthdays and historical events, January 5 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1531 - Pope Clemens VII forbids King Henry VIII to remarry, indirectly, leading to the formation of the Church of England.

1896 - An Austrian newspaper reports that German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a new type of radiation called X-rays, using the mathematical designation for something unknown.

January 4 Dateline

Birthdays

1643 - Isaac Newton, English mathematician, philosopher, famous for Principia. Originally, according to the “old” Julian calendar, he was born on Christmas Day, December 25, 1642. Today, his birthday is also celebrated as January 4th.

1710 - Giovanni (Battista) Draghi, often referred to as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, an Italian Composer, Violinist and Organist. His best-known works include his Stabat Mater and the opera La serva padrona (The Maid Turned Mistress). His compositions include operas and sacred music. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 26.  (Pergolesi: Stabat Mater (complete); Voices of Music, original version, Labelle and Bragle, soloists. Uploaded by Voices of Music. Accessed January 4, 2017.)

1785 - Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm, also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German philologist, folklorist, jurist, and mythologist. He was the elder of the Brothers Grimm, the younger one being Wilhelm Grimm. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie, and the editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales. (A documentary of the Brothers Grimm, "Once Upon a Time: The Brothers Grimm".  Uploaded by Art of East & West. Accessed January 4, 2018.)

1809 - Louis Braille, French educator of the blind, inventor of Braille, named after him. The Braille he invented is a system of reading and writing for use by the blind or visually impaired. His system remains virtually unchanged to this day, and is known worldwide simply as braille. Louis Braille served as a professor at the Institute and had an avocation as a musician, but he largely spent the remainder of his life refining and extending his system. It went unused by most educators for many years after his death, but posterity has recognized braille as a revolutionary invention, and it has been adapted for use in languages worldwide.

1937 - Dyan Cannon ((born Samille Diane Friesen), American actress, film director, screenwriter, producer, and editor. She has been nominated for three Academy Awards. Cannon made her film debut in 1960 in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond. In the 1980s, Cannon, who is also a singer/songwriter, appeared in Honeysuckle Rose with Willie Nelson, Author! Author! with Al Pacino, Deathtrap with Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine, Caddyshack II, as well as several made-for-TV movies. Cannon wrote, directed, and starred in the semi-autobiographical film The End of Innocence, and had roles in Jailbirds and Christmas in Connecticut. For her contributions to the film industry, Cannon was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983 with a motion pictures star located at 6608 Hollywood Boulevard. 

 
Lefties:
None known
 

More birthdays and historical events, January 4 - On This Day

Historical Events

1881 - Johannes Brahms conducts the premiere of his "Academic Festival Overture" at the University of Breslau, which had conferred on him an honorary doctorate.




1904 - Thomas Alva Edison's movie crew films the electrocution of an elephant in front of a paying audience at Coney Island, New York.

January 3 Dateline

Birthdays

1892 - J.R.R. Tolkien, English writer and philologist, poet, and university professor best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. (Video Biography of J.R.R. Uploaded by manhead513. Accessed January 3, 2013, and J.R.R. Tolkien: A Creator of Worlds. Uploaded by Biographics. Accessed January 3, 2018.) 

1907 - Ray Milland (born born Alfred Reginald Jones), Welsh-American actor and film director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best remembered for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend and also for such roles as a sophisticated leading man opposite John Wayne's corrupt character in Reap the Wild Wind, the murder-plotting husband in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, and Oliver Barrett III in Love Story.

1942 - John Thaw, CBE, English actor who appeared in a range of television, stage, and cinema roles. He starred in the television series Inspector Morse as title character Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse, Redcap as Sergeant John Mann, The Sweeney as Detective Inspector Jack Regan, Home to Roost as Henry Willows, and Kavanagh QC as title character James Kavanagh. He appeared in a number of films for director Richard Attenborough, including Cry Freedom, where he portrayed the conservative South African justice minister Jimmy Kruger (for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor), and Chaplin alongside Robert Downey Jr..

1950 - Victoria Principal (born Vicki Ree Principal), American actress, producer, entrepreneur, and author, best known for her role as Pamela Barnes Ewing on the American primetime television soap opera series Dallas. She spent nine years on the long-running series, leaving in 1987. Afterwards, she began her own production company, Victoria Principal Productions, focusing mostly on television films. In the mid-1980s, she became interested in natural beauty therapies, and in 1989, she created a self-named line of skincare products, Principal Secret. Principal became a best-selling author, writing three books about beauty, skincare, fitness, well-being, and health: The Body Principal (1983), The Beauty Principal (1984), and The Diet Principal (1987). In the 2000s, she wrote a fourth book, Living Principal (2001). She is also a two-time Golden Globe Award nominee.

1956 - Mel Gibson, AO (born Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson), American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his action hero roles, particularly his breakout role as Max Rockatansky in the first three films of the post-apocalyptic action series Mad Max, and as Martin Riggs in the buddy cop film series Lethal Weapon. In 1995, Gibson produced, directed, and starred in Braveheart, a historical epic, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the Academy Award for Best Director, and the Academy Award for Best Picture. He directed and produced The Passion of the Christ, a biblical drama that was both financially successful and highly controversial. After several legal issues,  Gibson's public image plummeted significantly. His career saw resurgence with his performance in Jodie Foster's The Beaver, and his directorial comeback after an absence of 10 years, Hacksaw Ridge, which won two Academy Awards and was nominated for another four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Gibson, his second nomination in the category.

Lefties:
None known

More birthdays and historical events, January 3 - On This Day 

Historical Events

1871 - Henry W. Bradley claims the U.S. patent for oleomargarine, a butter.

1878 - Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 receives its American first performance, in Boston.  

January 2 Dateline

Birthdays

1563 - John Dowland (b. Jan 2?), English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep", "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and with the 20th century's early music revival, has been a continuing source of repertoire for lutenists and classical guitarists. (Barbara Bonney "Come again, sweet love doth now invite". Uploaded by acatalano2641. Accessed April 26, 2020.)

1837 - Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev, Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, member of The Five, a group of Russian composers. He is known for his work promoting musical nationalism and his encouragement of more famous Russian composers, notably Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He began his career as a pivotal figure, extending the fusion of traditional folk music and experimental classical music practices begun by composer Mikhail Glinka. Early in the 1860s Balakirev brought together the composers now known as The Five (a.k.a., The Mighty Handful) – the others were Alexander Borodin, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. As a composer, Balakirev finished major works many years after he had started them; he began his First Symphony in 1864 but completed it in 1897. The exception was his oriental fantasy Islamey for solo piano, which he composed quickly and remains popular among virtuosos. (Balakirev's Symphony No. 1 in C-major, in four movements.  Performed by the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Igor Golovschin. Uploaded by KuhlauDelfing2. Accessed January 2, 2014.)

1905 - Sir Michael (Kemp) Tippett OM CH CBE, English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. His compositional career extended over eight decades, from juvenilia and unpublished works written in the 1920s to his final works of the 1990s. He composed across many genres, from large-scale orchestral works and full-length operas to solo songs and brass band fanfares. From the mid-1930s his music began to be published and performed publicly. (Michael Tippett: Composer of our Time. Note: This was originally Aired Sunday 11:30 AM Feb 23, 1975 on CBS. Uploaded by John Randolph. Accessed January 2, 2017.)

1920 - Isaac Asimov, American writer and professor of biochemistry. He was prolific in writing science fiction and popular science. Although born in Russia, he went to the US with his family when he was three becoming a citizen at the age of eight. His first novel, Pebble in the Sky, was published when he was 30. In the same year he published I, Robot, a collection of his famous robot stories. Asimov's knowledge of science allowed him to write science fiction stories that seemed realistic and possible. 

1961 - Todd Haynes, Film director and producer, pioneer of New Queer Cinema movement of film-making in the early 1990s. His films span four decades with consistent themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurring gender roles.

1968 - Cuba Gooding, Jr.,  American actor. He appeared in A Few Good Men, Outbreak, and Jerry Maguire, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and What Dreams May Come. His other notable films include As Good as It Gets, the ensemble farce Rat Race, Radio, American Gangster (2007), Lee Daniels' The Butler, and Selma, playing civil rights attorney Fred Gray. In 2016, he portrayed O.J. Simpson in the FX drama series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, and co-starred in the sixth season of the FX anthology series American Horror Story, subtitled Roanoke.

1970 - Eric Whitacre (born Eric Edward Whitacre), American composer, conductor, and speaker known for his choral, orchestral, and wind ensemble music. In March 2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.(Eric Whitacre's The Seal Lullaby (Album version with lyrics.). Uploaded by AluminumHaste. Accessed January 2, 2015. Eric Whitacre: "When David Heard" performed by BYU Singers, from the album Water Night. Uploaded by Frank Halcomb. Accessed January 2, 2018. Glow - Eric Whitacre. YouTube, uploaded by BlueBass2. Accessed January 2, 2021.)

Lefties:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events, January 2 - On This Day

 

Featuring Balakirev's piano fantasy Islamey, interpreted by pianist Nicholas King.
 

 

Historical Events

1757 - During the Seven Years' War, Robert Clive, better known as Clive of India, captures Calcutta from the Nawab of Bengal, avenging the deaths of those who perished in the Black Hole.

1843 - Richard Wagner conducts the first performance of his opera Der fliegende Hollander, in Dresden.