September 24 Dateline

Birthdays

1717 - Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, south-west London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors.

1724 - Sir Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer and the founder of the Guinness brewery business. He was also an entrepreneur and philanthropist. At 27, Guinness's godfather Arthur Price, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Cashel, bequeathed him £100 in his will. Guinness invested the money and in 1755 had a brewery at Leixlip, just 17 km from Dublin. In 1759, Guinness went to the city and set up his own business. He took a 9,000-year lease on the 4-acre (16,000 m²) brewery at St. James's Gate from the descendants of Sir Mark Rainsford for an annual rent of £45. 

 

1896 - Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known as F. Scott Fitzgerald or simply Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is famous for his book The Great Gatsby also made into a blockbuster film. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term that he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. He published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. He achieved transient success and fortune in the 1920s, but did not receive critical acclaim until after his death. He is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

1899 - Sir William "Bill" Dobell, OBE, Australian portrait and landscape artist of the 20th century. Dobell won the Archibald Prize, Australia's premier award for portrait artists on three occasions. The Dobell Prize is named in his honour. 

1914 - Sir Andrzej Panufnik, Polish-English composer and conductor. He became established as one of the leading Polish composers, and as a conductor he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra after World War II. After his increasing frustration with the extra-musical demands made on him by the country's regime, he defected to the United Kingdom in 1954, and took up British citizenship. In 1957, he became chief conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, a post he relinquished after two years to devote all his time to composition.(A. Panufnik - Old Polish Suite, uploaded by Ivancho Rz. Accessed September 24, 2018.)

1945 - John Milford Rutter CBE, English composer, conductor, editor, arranger, and record producer, mainly of choral music. Rutter founded his own choir, the Cambridge Singers, which he conducts and with which he has made many recordings of sacred choral repertoire (including his own works), under his own label Collegium Records. He collaborated with Sir David Willcocks on five volumes of the extraordinarily successful Carols for Choirs anthology series. He was inducted as a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. My favourite quote from John Rutter: "Choral Music is not one of life's frills. It's something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community and our souls.You express, when you sing, your soul in song. And when you get together with a group of other singers, it becomes more than the sum of the parts." (For the Beauty of the Earth - John Rutter, The Cambridge Singers, City of London Sinfonia. Accessed September 24, 2019.)

 

1949 - Pedro Almodóvar Caballero, Spanish filmmaker, director, screenwriter, producer, and former actor. His films are marked by his employment of certain actors and creative personnel, complex narratives, melodrama, pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humour, strong colours, and glossy décor. Desire, passion, family, and identity are among Almodóvar's most prevalent themes. He achieved international recognition for his black comedy-drama film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and went on to more success with the dark romantic comedy film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, the melodrama High Heels and the romantic drama thriller Live Flesh. Multi-awarded, Almodóvar and his films have gained worldwide interest and developed a cult following. He is one of the most internationally successful Spanish filmmakers.

1966 - Michael J. Varhola, American author, publisher, and lecturer. He has written numerous books, games, and articles, and founded game development company and manufacturer Skirmisher Publishing LLC. He also served as the assistant editor of The Hilltop Reporter, a weekly newspaper located in Texas Hill Country. In 2003, he changed his middle name from James to Odysseus, but did not start using it publicly until 2011.

Lefties:
None known

 

 

More birthdays and historical events, September 24 - On This Day

Historical Events

1948 - The Honda Motor Company is founded in Tokyo, Japan.

1975 - Dougal Haston and Doug Scott climb to the top of Mt. Everest, the first Britons to do so.

September 23 Dateline

Birthdays

63 B.C.E. - Augustus Caesar, Roman Emperor also known as Octavian, he was the first Roman emperor, reigning from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. His status as the founder of the Roman Principate (the first phase of the Roman Empire) has consolidated a legacy as one of the most effective leaders in human history. His reign initiated an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana. The Roman world was largely free from large-scale conflict for more than two centuries, despite continuous wars of imperial expansion on the Empire's frontiers and the year-long civil war known as the "Year of the Four Emperors" over the imperial succession.

1920 - Mickey Rooney, (born Ninnian Joseph Yule Jr.), American actor, vaudevillian, comedian, producer and radio personality. In a career spanning nine decades and continuing until shortly before his death, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the silent-film era. He was the top box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941, and one of the best-paid actors of that era. Rooney performed the role of Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films in the 1930s and 1940s that epitomized mainstream America's self-image.

 
1930 - Ray Charles Robinson, American singer, songwriter, pianist, and composer. Charles was blinded during childhood due to glaucoma. Charles pioneered the soul music genre during the 1950s by combining blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic. Charles' 1960 hit "Georgia On My Mind" was the first of his three career No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. His 1962 album Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music became his first album to top the Billboard 200.

 
1938 - Romy Schneider (born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach),  German-French film and voice actress. She started her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy, and later reprised the role in a more mature version in Visconti's Ludwig. The trilogy was also made into a film "Forever My Love" with Romy Schneider and Karlheinz Böhm. Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era. (Sissi - Forever my Love (English version, part 1, part 2. YouTube, uploaded by LuckyStarAt. Accessed September 23, 2018.) 

 
1943 - Julio Iglesias (born Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva), Spanish singer, songwriter and former professional footballer. Iglesias is recognized as the most commercially successful continental European singer in the world and one of the top record sellers in music history, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide in 14 languages. It is estimated that during his career he has performed in more than 5000 concerts, for over 60 million people in five continents. In April 2013, Iglesias was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Latin Composers.

 
1959 - Jason Alexander, (born Jay Scott Greenspan), American actor, comedian, singer, and director. Alexander is best known for his role as George Costanza in the television series Seinfeld, for which he was nominated for seven consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. On stage, he appeared in several Broadway musicals, including Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989, for which he won the Tony Award as Best Leading Actor in a Musical and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. He appeared in the Los Angeles production of The Producers. He was the artistic director of "Reprise! Broadway's Best in Los Angeles", where he has directed several musicals.

 

 1961 - William Cameron "Willie" McCool, Cmdr, USN, American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, Aeronautical Engineer, and NASA Astronaut, the pilot of Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107. He and the rest of the crew of STS-107 were killed when Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the atmosphere. He was the youngest male member of the crew.  McCool was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

 
Leftie:
Actor Jason Alexander 

 

More birthdays and historical events, September 23 - On This Day

Historical Events

1846 - Neptune, thee 8th planet from the sun, is discovered by Urbain Le Verrier, a French astronomer, and John Couch Adams, a British astronomer. It is named after the Roman god of the sea because of its blue methane clouds.

1848 - John Curtis in Maine, U.S., invents the chewing gum. In his home, he boils the resin obtained from spruce trees on a stove, then pours it in a tub of ice water and strains it. He sells it as sticks wrapped in tissue paper.