Birthdays
1714 - Christoph Willibald Gluck, German opera composer and harpsichord & voice teacher of French queen Marie Antoinette. He gained prominence at the Habsburg court at Vienna where he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed. Gluck introduced more drama by using simpler recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. (Iphigénie en Tauride, Pinchgut Opera Production. Accessed February 11, 2015. Iphigénie en Tauride. Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2015 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5). Uploaded by Lukas Hemleb. Accessed March 24, 2020.)
1877 - Hermann Hesse (born Hermann Karl Hesse), German-born poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1956 - Jerry Hall, American model and actress. Hall had been on 40 magazine covers including Italian Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Her long blonde hair and height of six feet quickly made her one of the most visible and photographed models of the day. In 2016, Hall won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fashion Group International Dallas. She was a muse for artists Francesco Clemente, Ed Ruscha and Lucian Freud. Hall modeled for Andy Warhol many times. Hall also appeared in movies and London West End stage.
1990 - Margot Elise Robbie, Australian actress and film producer. She has received nominations for two Academy Awards and five BAFTA Awards. Robbie gained critical praise and nominations for the BAFTA Award and Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying the disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in the biopic I, Tonya (2017). This acclaim continued for her roles as Queen Elizabeth I in the period drama Mary Queen of Scots, Sharon Tate in the comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and a fictional Fox News employee in the drama Bombshell. She received BAFTA Award nominations for all three and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the lattermost. In 2017, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2019, she was ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses.
Lefties:
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More birthdays and historical today, 2 July - On This Day.
Historical Events
1644 - The Battle of Marston Moor is fought. It is the first major batttle of the English Civil War between the King Charles I and forces of Parliament. The victory is for the Roundheads, the parliamentary forces under Cromwell.
1819 - In Great Britain, the Factory Act is passed, banning children under 9 years old from working in cotton mills, and limiting children between the ages of 9 and 16 to 12 hours work a day.
1881 - The 20th U.S. President James Garfield, is shot in the back while waiting for a train. He dies from the wounds on September 19. Charles Guiteau, his assassin, is hanged on June 30, 1882.