August 5 Dateline

Birthdays

1811 - Ambroise Thomas, French opera composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet.  (A beautiful recording of Hamlet performed by the the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and Ambrosian Opera Chorus London.)

1906 - Joan Hickson, OBE,  English actress of theatre, film and television. She was mainly known for her role as Agatha Christie's famous creation, Miss Marple, in the television series Miss Marple. She also narrated a number of Miss Marple stories on audio books. Hickson played the role of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in all 12 adaptations of the novels produced from 1984 to 1992, and received two BAFTA nominations for Best TV Actress, 1987 and 1988. When the OBE was bestowed on Hickson in June 1987, Queen Elizabeth II was reported to have said, "You play the part just as one envisages it." When Hickson retired from the role, believing that she should stop while the programme was still at the peak of its popularity, she stated that she had no intention of retiring from acting altogether.

1926 - Betsy Jolas, French composer, born in France of American parents. Her numerous works have been widely performed internationally by artists such as Kent Nagano, Anssi Karttunen, Claude Delangle, William Christie, Antoine Tamestit, Nicholas Hodges and Sir Simon Rattle, and leading ensembles and orchestras including: the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

1930 - Neil Armstrong, American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the mission's command module (CM). When Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.(Neil Armstrong - First Moon Landing. Uploaded by NTDTV. Accessed August 5, 2013. Neil Armstrong - First Man on the Moon. Uploaded by Neil Walker. Accessed August 5, 2015.)

1946 - Loni Anderson, American actress. She is known for her role as receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982), which earned her three Golden Globe Awards and two Emmy Award nominations.

Lefties: 
None known

 

 

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

Historical Events

1884 - The Statue of Liberty's cornerstone is laid on Bedloe's Island, New York.

1914 - The first electric traffic light is installed in Cleveland, Ohio. It was designed by James Hoge and had two colours, red and green. The first three-colour traffic lights are introduced six years later in New York and Detroit.

August 4 Dateline

Birthdays

 

1748 - Maximilian Johann Karl Dominik Stadler, Abbé Stadler, Austrian composer, musicologist and pianist. From 1791 he lived in Linz and from 1796 in Vienna, where he settled the estate of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and was in charge of the Imperial Music. Stadler was among the most prominent personalities of Viennese musical life at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. He befriended Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert and wrote numerous essays on Mozart. 

 
1792 - Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the major English Romantic poets, who is regarded by some as among the finest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language, and one of the most influential.. He is best known for such classic poems as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy.  A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock and his own second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

1900 - Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon), England's late Queen Mother, wife of King George VI, and the mother of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. She was queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from her husband's accession in 1936 until his death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter. She was the last empress of India.   (A Century in 100 Minutes - Queen Mother.) YouTube, Real Royalty. Accessed June 14, 2020.)

1901 - Louis Armstrong (born Louis Daniel Armstrong nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops"), was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist, and actor, one among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. He appeared in films such as High Society alongside Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and Hello, Dolly! starring Barbra Streisand. He received many accolades including three Grammy Award nominations and a win for his vocal performance of Hello, Dolly! in 1964.

1905 - Boris Alexandrovich Alexandrov, Soviet Russian composer, and, from 1946 to 1986, the second head of the Alexandrov Ensemble which was founded by his father, Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov. Alexandrov reached the rank of Major-General and was awarded the order of Hero of Socialist Labour, the Lenin Prize and the State Prize of the USSR, and named People's Artist of the USSR. Music by Alexandrov is used for the Anthem of Transnistria.

1913 - Robert Hayden, American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as US Poet Laureate. He was the first African-American writer to hold the office.

1961 - Barack Obama (born Barack Hussein Obama II), American politician and attorney, who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama was the first African American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004. During his term in office, America's reputation abroad significantly improved. His presidency has generally been regarded favorably, and evaluations of his presidency among historians, political scientists, and the general public place him among the upper tier of American presidents. Obama left office in January 2017 and continues to reside in Washington, D.C.

Leftie:
Former U.S. President Barack Obama

 

 

More birthdays aand historical events today, 4 August - On This Day.

 

Featured Poem: 

Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Music, When Soft Voices Die" 
(A tribute to English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory -
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Below is Shelley's poem "Music, When Soft Voices Die", beautifully set to music by Victor C. Johnson. YouTube, uploaded by The Lorenz Corporation. Accessed August 4, 2018.

"Music, When Soft Voices Die" is a major poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1821 and first published in Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1824 in London by John and Henry L. Hunt with a preface by his wife, Mary Shelley. The poem is one of the most anthologised, influential, and well-known of Shelley's works. (Wiki).   Many composers and musicians have set the poem to music with vocal accompaniment. The music of the video below was composed bby Victor C. Johnson for piano and choir. (Wiki)

 

Historical Events

1693 - Don Perignon invents Champagne. the monk's first words upon tasting the beverage were reportedly, "Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!"

1782 - Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Constanze Weber marry in Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral. (Mozart left Salzburg in 1781. Along with his artistic declaration of independence, Mozart married his girlfriend, Constanze, just weeks after The Abduction from the Seraglio’s premiere.