Today is the anniversary of the Nottingham Cheese Riot which took place in 1766 during the Goose Fair. Coming at a time of food shortages and rising foodstuff prices in England, violence broke out when city residents attempted to prevent Lincolnshire merchants taking away Nottinghamshire cheeses they had bought at the fair. A warehouse, shops and a cargo boat were looted and hundreds of cheese wheels were rolled through the streets by angry rioters.
Government troops were deployed when the mayor of Nottingham, Robie Swann, was unable to restore control. One man was killed and several wounded as the military opened fire on the rioters. Order was eventually restored after several days of unrest.
Spectators and contestants at the annual Coopers Hill cheese rolling contest
Today is the birthday, in 1910, of Bonnie Parker in Rowena, Texas. Her father, Charles Robert Parker (1884–1914), was a bricklayer who died when she was four years old. Her widowed mother, Emma (Krause) Parker (1885–1944), moved her family back to her parents’ home in Cement City, an industrial suburb in West Dallas where she worked as a seamstress.
Parker was a bright child who thrived on attention. She enjoyed performing on stage and dreamt of becoming an actress.[8] In her second year in high school, Parker met Roy Thornton (1908–1937). The couple dropped out of school and married on September 25, 1926, six days before her sixteenth birthday. Their marriage was marred by his frequent absences and brushes with the law and proved to be short-lived. They never divorced, but their paths never crossed again after January 1929. When she died, Parker was still wearing the wedding ring Thornton had given her.
She and and Clyde Chestnut “Champion” Barrow were an outlaw couple who roamed the Central United States with their criminal gang during the Great Depression, committing a series of criminal acts such as store robberies, bank robberies, kidnappings and murders between 1932 and 1934. The couple were particularly infamous for their bank robberies and multiple murders, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations, and are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and three civilians.
On May 23, 1934, the couple were ambushed and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, by a law enforcement posse led by retired Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. She was 23.
Bonnie Parker, c. 1932–1933
Today is the birthday, in 1942, of Herb Fame, singer from the American vocal duo Peaches and Herb, who had the 1979 US No.1 & UK No.4 single ‘Reunited’. The song was a huge crossover smash, topping both the pop and soul charts. It spent four weeks at No.1 on both the R&B singles chart and the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1979 and sold over two million copies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMh3utpqfaY
On this day in 1791, the first performance of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute takes place two months before his death. It is a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue. It was Mozart’s last opera. It was an outstanding success from its first performances, and remains a staple of the opera repertory.
the Queen of the Night persuades Prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from captivity under the high priest Sarastro; instead, he learns the high ideals of Sarastro’s community and seeks to join it. Separately, then together, Tamino and Pamina undergo severe trials of initiation, which end in triumph, with the Queen and her cohorts vanquished. The earthy Papageno, who accompanies Tamino on his quest, fails the trials completely but is rewarded anyway with the hand of his ideal female companion Papagena.
Detail from Portrait of the Mozart Family, c. 1781
Nothing to add here…
What shall we name our business???
There are three good songs in Mozart’s the Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), and here is one of them: the Queen of the Night aria. Also known as der Hölle Rache, or the revenge of hell ^_^’ in this song, the princess has finally been rescued from the sun cult, but she has developed Stockholm syndrome and wants to go back and join them. Her mother, the queen of the night, tells her nope! Mom then asks the princess to kill Sarastro, the leader of the sun cult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HEjAkFBBz0
On this day in 1907, the foundation stone of the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, also known as Washington National Cathedral, was laid in the presence of President Theodore Roosevelt and a crowd of more than 20,000. The cathedral was completed 83 years later, after several phases of construction and years long interruptions, in the presence of President George H. W. Bush on September 29, 1990.
It is the second-largest church in the United States and the third-tallest habitable building in Washington, DC. The cathedral is the seat of both the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Over 270,000 people visit the structure annually.
On this day in 1928, Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin. This was the first antibiotic substance discovered. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin (or penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium rubens has been described as the “single greatest victory ever achieved over disease”.
Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944. In 1999, he was named in Time magazine’s list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. In 2002, he was included in the BBC’s television poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third “greatest Scot” in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace.
Fleming in his laboratory, 1943
Today is the birthday, in 1938, of Ben E King, (Benjmin Earl Nelson), soul and R&B singer with The Drifters who had the 1960 US No.1 & UK No.2 single ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’, and the 1987 UK No.1 solo single ‘Stand By Me’, (first released in 1961). King died at the Hackensack University Medical Center on April 30, 2015, at the age of 76. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTd2ylacYNU
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