Today in History.....

[jasknight12]

On April 21, 1956, Elvis Presley's 1st hit record, "Heartbreak Hotel", becomes #1 in the USA.

The single topped Billboard's Top 100 chart for seven weeks, Cashbox's pop singles chart for six weeks, was No. 1 on the Country and Western chart for seventeen weeks and reached No. 3 on the R&B chart, becoming Presley's first million-seller, and one of the best-selling singles of 1956.

"Heartbreak Hotel" had a colossal impact – both on Elvis' career and on rock & roll history. It was Elvis' first nationwide hit after a string of regional successes, and it changed the lives of countless future stars – John Lennon, George Harrison, Keith Richards and Robert Plant have all proclaimed its transformative effect.

Elton John, recalling the day he first heard the song, said, "That weekend, my mum came home with 'Heartbreak Hotel' and that changed my life. ... Elvis Presley changed everyone's life. I mean, there would be no Beatles, there would be no Hendrix. There would be no Dylan." Paul McCartney once declared it nothing less than the most important artistic creation of the modern era.

 

[jasknight12]

U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, is largely credited for organising the first Earth Day on April 22 1970, a time when it was still legal for factories to spew noxious fumes into the air or dump toxic waste into nearby streams. That's because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency didn't exist then, and there were no laws to protect the environment.

Nelson recruited Harvard University professor Denis Hayes to coordinate and promote Earth Day nationally. The event was a success.

Twenty million Americans took to the streets on April 22, 1970, demanding action on environmental pollution. That December, US Congress authorised the establishment of a new federal agency, the EPA, to ensure environmental protection. The passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other landmark environmental laws followed soon after, according to the EPA.

Earth Day went global 20 years later, mobilising 200 million people in dozens of countries and putting environmental issues on the world stage.

Now, more than 1 billion people in 192 countries are estimated to participate in Earth Day activities every year, according to Earth Day Network, a Washington, D.C. based nonprofit that organizes the event worldwide.

 

[W!nston]

Portuguese Discover Brazil

April 22, 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral is the first European to discover Brazil, landing near Monte Pascoal, claims it for Portugal

 

[W!nston]

April 23, 1867 Queen Victoria & Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel

 

[jasknight12]

William Shakespeare dies on 23 April 1616. Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been repeatedly adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

 

[W!nston]

Event of Interest

1907 Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, is opened

 

[trencherman]

Portuguese Discover Brazil

April 22, 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral is the first European to discover Brazil, landing near Monte Pascoal, claims it for Portugal

A few historians claim that the location of Brazil was already known to the Portuguese crown well before this date but held off Cabral's voyage until a more favourable treaty with Spain would give them the papal sanction to claim it. Anyway, for a good survey of Brazilian food and culture nothing can surpass Peter Robb’s A Death in Brazil. Here is the opening of Alex Bellos’ review in The Guardian:

Peter Robb brilliantly entwines Southern American food and politics in his erudite portrait of a nation, A Death in Brazil

A Death in Brazil
by Peter Robb
329pp, Bloomsbury, £16.99
As well as death (there are many besides the one of the title), this book is crammed with two other human essentials: sex and food. The deaths feature in massacres, genocides, crimes of passion, assassinations and cannibalism. Sex is found wherever Peter Robb looks, from the Portuguese marvelling at Indians' vaginas as soon as they reached South American soil, to 16th-century Inquisitors' reports of sodomy and bestiality, to the sugar plantations, where every matter of life "led subtly back to sex", and even to the author's Rio flat, where once a knife is held to his throat by an amorous intruder. The food is gorgeous, exotic and described with fantastic erudition. Robb's favourite is buchada, a goat's entrails stuffed in the animal's bladder. He writes that the dish reminds him of "the work of some unmentionable surgeon... I have rarely tasted anything more delicious."

 

[jasknight12]

30 years ago today (April 28, 1988), Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a scheduled flight between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii.

Cruising at 24,000 feet, an 18-foot section of the plane’s roof suddenly ripped off, causing an explosive decompression, creating a gaping hole in the fuselage and sucking a flight attendant out of the plane and injuring more than 60 of the 89 passengers aboard, 8 seriously.

The Boeing 737 landed safely at Kahului Airport on Maui, but it goes down as one of the most significant events in aviation history.

A National Transportation and Safety Board investigation later revealed that the incident may have been caused by the plane’s old age and poor maintenance. It also found that Aloha Airline’s short flights meant that its planes should have received maintenance twice as often as they had.

 

[jasknight12]

On April 29 1770, Captain James Cook first sets foot on Australia at Botany Bay in New South Wales.

Cook’s expedition was the first recorded observation and landing of the east coast of the Australian continent (New Holland) by Europeans. It also kicked off Britain’s interest in Australia, sowing the seeds for eventual colonisation.

 

[jasknight12]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts' The Marriage Of Figaro premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. Mozart himself directed the first two performances, conducting seated at the keyboard, the custom of the day.

The Marriage of Figaro is a comic opera and tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity.

The opera is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas.

 

[spower8]

One of my favorites! Right up there with Cosi!

 

[jasknight12]

Leonardo da Vinci dies on 2 May 1519. Leonardo was an Italian Renaissance Painter, sculptor, architect, designer, theorist, engineer and scientist. He created some of the most famous images in European art. Though many of his works were never finished, and even fewer have survived, he influenced generations of artists and he continues to be revered as a universal genius and one of the greatest painters of all time.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

 

[topdog]

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

I love that quote.

Of course, the other thing of note is that Leonardo was probably gay. Other than a couple of friendships, he had no known relationships with women. Early in his career he and several friends were arrested for sodomy when a party with a male prostitute got out of hand. Fortunately, Da Vinci was already a Medici protege, and the charges were dropped without further comment.

His main relationships were with his young male students. His student Salaì, who became a minor painter in his own right, was with Leonardo off and on for thirty years. Leonardo gave him the Mona Lisa, which Salaì owned until he died. Later Leonardo took on another favorite, a young aristocrat, Francesco Melzi, who traveled everywhere with the master and nursed him in his old age.

If you want to know more, last year's biography by Walter Isaacson is the current definitive take on the genius painter, sculptor, inventor, stage designer and engineer.

 

[jasknight12]

Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 4 May 1979. Arriving at Downing Street she said, paraphrasing the misattributed Prayer of Saint Francis:

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony;
Where there is error, may we bring truth;
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith;
And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

 

[jasknight12]

On 5 May 1891, The Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music.

Most of the greatest performers of classical music since the time Carnegie Hall was built have performed in the Main Hall, and its lobbies are adorned with signed portraits and memorabilia.

Many legendary jazz and popular music performers have also given memorable performances at Carnegie Hall including Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Violetta Villas, Judy Garland, Harry Belafonte, Charles Aznavour, Ike & Tina Turner, Paul Robeson, Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, James Gang and Stevie Ray Vaughan, all of whom made celebrated live recordings of their concerts there.

The hall has also been the site of many famous lectures, including the Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture by Booker T. Washington, and the last public lecture by Mark Twain, both in 1906.

 

[brmstn69]

On 5 May 1891, The Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music.

Most of the greatest performers of classical music since the time Carnegie Hall was built have performed in the Main Hall, and its lobbies are adorned with signed portraits and memorabilia.

Many legendary jazz and popular music performers have also given memorable performances at Carnegie Hall including Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Violetta Villas, Judy Garland, Harry Belafonte, Charles Aznavour, Ike & Tina Turner, Paul Robeson, Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, James Gang and Stevie Ray Vaughan, all of whom made celebrated live recordings of their concerts there.

The hall has also been the site of many famous lectures, including the Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture by Booker T. Washington, and the last public lecture by Mark Twain, both in 1906.

My uncle was a piano prodigy who played Carnegie Hall when he was 12 years old. Pathetic bastard is a drug addict now and hasn't even touched a piano in a decade...

 

[jasknight12]

On 6 May 1937, the airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany, bursts into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crewmen), there were 35 fatalities (13 passengers and 22 crewmen). One worker on the ground was also killed, raising the final death toll to 36.

Radio announcer Herb Morrison, who came to Lakehurst to record a routine voice-over for an NBC newsreel, immortalised the Hindenberg disaster in a famous on-the-scene description in which he emotionally declared, “Oh, the humanity!” The recording of Morrison’s commentary was immediately flown to New York, where it was aired as part of America’s first coast-to-coast radio news broadcast.

 

[jasknight12]

Ludwig Van Beethovens' Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony by the German composer. It was first performed in the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna on 7 May 1824.

It is widely viewed by critics as one of Beethoven's greatest works and one of the greatest compositions in the western musical canon.

The symphony was the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony (making it a choral symphony). The words are sung during the final movement by four vocal soloists and a chorus. They were taken from the "Ode to Joy", a poem written by Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and revised in 1803, with text additions made by the composer.

 

[jasknight12]

On 9 May 1671, Thomas Blood, an Irish adventurer known as Captain Blood, is captured trying to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London.

Blood, disguised as a priest, broke in to the Tower of London along with a few accomplices. He was eventually captured, but became a celebrity across the kingdom.

King Charles II was so impressed with Blood’s audacity that, far from punishing him, he restored his estates in Ireland and made him a member of his court with an annual pension.

Captain Blood became a colorful celebrity all across the kingdom, and when he died in 1680 his body had to be exhumed in order to persuade the public that he was actually dead.

 

[jasknight12]

Bob Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter who became an international musical and cultural icon, blending mostly reggae, ska, and rocksteady in his compositions. Diagnosed with acral lentiginous melanoma in 1977, Bob Marley died on 11 May 1981 in Miami at age 36. He was a committed Rastafari who infused his music with a sense of spirituality. He is credited with popularising reggae music around the world and served as a symbol of Jamaican culture and identity.