Today, The Grandma has been reading about Udo Lattek, the German professional football player and coach, who was born on a day like today in 1935.
Udo Lattek (16 January 1935-31 January 2015) was a German professional football player and coach.
Lattek is one of the most successful coaches in the history of the game, having won 15 major titles, most famously with Bayern Munich. He also won major trophies with Borussia Mönchengladbach and FC Barcelona. In addition to these clubs, his managerial career saw him coach Borussia Dortmund, Schalke 04 and 1. FC Köln before his retirement from the game.
He is the only coach to have won all three major European club titles, and he is the only one to do so with three teams.
Lattek was born in Bosemb, East Prussia, Germany (now Boże, Poland). While Lattek was preparing for a career as a teacher, he played football with SSV Marienheide, Bayer 04 Leverkusen and VfR Wipperfürth.
In 1962, he joined VfL Osnabrück. He spent his first season at the club in the first division (the northern division of the Oberliga) and the remainder of his time in the second division, as the club did not qualify for the new Bundesliga at its inception 1963. He played primarily as a centre forward and became known for his heading ability. He scored 34 goals in 70 league matches between 1962 and 1965.
Early in 1965, Lattek was prematurely released from his playing contract to join the German football association DFB as a youth team coach alongside Dettmar Cramer, one of the assistants to head coach Helmut Schön. In this role he was also part of the coaching staff which led Germany into the final of the 1966 World Cup.
In March 1970, Lattek took over the reins of Bayern Munich as successor of the Croatian, Branko Zebec. He was recommended to the club by Franz Beckenbauer, however his appointment was controversial as he had never previously coached a club side. To a team already boasting Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller and Sepp Maier, Lattek added the young talents of Paul Breitner and Uli Hoeneß, ushering in a period of near dominance for the Bavarian club.
At the beginning of the 1975-76 season, Lattek succeeded Hennes Weisweiler at Borussia Mönchengladbach, where he stayed until 1979.
At the end of that season, Lattek quit Mönchengladbach and spent two undistinguished years with Borussia Dortmund.
In 1981, Lattek was appointed successor to Helenio Herrera at Spanish club FCBarcelona. He led the club to the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1982, defeating Standard Liège 2-1 in the final.
He is the only coach to lead three clubs to three different major European trophies.
On the field Barcelona was led by Migueli, Alexanco, Rexach, Asensi, Quini, the German Bernd Schuster, and the Dane, Allan Simonsen, Lattek's star signing from his old club, Mönchengladbach.
In the second season Diego Maradona, then 22 years of age, was signed for a record transfer fee. However Barcelona did not win any domestic titles that year, and Lattek was replaced at the end of the 1982-83 season by the World Cup winning Argentine coach, César Luis Menotti, who it was hoped would bring out the best in Maradona.
Lattek got his next managerial appointment from his former player Uli Hoeneß, who was by then in charge as commercial manager with his old side, Bayern Munich.
After the heady days at Bayern, Lattek retired for a few years.
Lattek officially retired and took up a role as TV commentator and newspaper columnist with the national broadsheet Die Welt and the bi-weekly sports magazine kicker.
Lattek retired having won 14 major trophies. He still holds the record for having managed teams to the most Bundesliga titles, six with Bayern Munich and two with Borussia Mönchengladbach.
He lived in a nursing home in Cologne, where he was known for his continuous fondness of beer (all great coaches have enjoyed a drink).
Today, The Grandma has been reading about YerbaBuena, that was renamed San Francisco on a day like today in 1847.
Yerba Buena was the original name ofthesettlement that later became SanFrancisco.
Located near the northeastern end of the SanFrancisco Peninsula, between the Presidio of SanFrancisco and the Mission San Francisco de Asís, it was originally intended as a trading post for ships visiting San Francisco Bay. The settlement was arranged in the Spanish style around a plaza that remains as the present day Portsmouth Square.
The name of the town was taken from the yerba buena (Clinopodiumdouglasii) plant, a native herb of the West Coast of North America and abundant in the region surrounding San Francisco Bay.
Franciscan missionary Pedro Font, accompanying the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition of 1775–76, applied the Spanish name to the common native herb he found abundant in the landscape.
The plant's common name, yerba buena, the same in English and Spanish, is an alternate form of the Spanish hierba buena (meaning good herb).
The earliest report of the use of Yerba Buena as a place name comes from the log of George Vancouver, who in 1792 sailed his ship HMS Discovery into SanFrancisco Bay and anchored about a league below the Presidio in a place they called Yerba Buena.
The Spanish Portolá expedition, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived overland from Mexico on November 2, 1769. It was the first documented European visit by land to the San Francisco Bay Area, claiming it for Spain as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
A second group of soldiers, this time accompanied by settlers, arrived in June 1776, led by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista De Anza. One of De Anza's officers, José Joaquín Moraga, was given the task of building a Spanish mission, Mission SanFrancisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), and a military fort, the Presidio of SanFrancisco. Moraga chose a location approximately halfway between the two sites to build housing for the workers, which became known as YerbaBuena. A supply ship arrived about two months later and the settlers began building.
In 1804, Las Californias province was split into Alta California province (upper) and Baja California province (lower), both still within the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the territory of Alta California became part of Mexico, but the faraway Mexican government paid little attention to YerbaBuena. Over the years the area between the port facilities at YerbaBuena Cove and the housing area of Yerba Buena filled in. The old plaza is today's Portsmouth Square.
In 1835, William A. Richardson, a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth, erected a homestead near the boat anchorage of Yerba Buena Cove. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, which retained the name Yerba Buena.
In early 1841, James Douglas of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), operating on the Pacific coast from Fort Vancouver, went to Yerba Buena to establish an HBC trading post. A large building on the water's edge was purchased. The HBC post had several purposes. It operated as a wholesale store, selling goods exported from Fort Vancouver such as salmon, lumber, and British manufactures in exchange for hides and tallow. The post improved diplomatic relations between the British HBC and the Mexican government of California, making the HBC's fur trapping expeditions into California's Central Valley politically acceptable.
Despite the mercantile potential of the HBC store in Yerba Buena, in 1842 it was ordered to be closed by George Simpson as part of Simpson's general reorganization of the HBC's Columbia District. The HBC store in Yerba Buena was sold in 1846, two years before the California Gold Rush transformed Yerba Buena into the major city on the North American west coast.
On July 7, 1846, US Navy Commodore John D. Sloat, in the Battle of YerbaBuena, claimed Alta California for the United States during the Mexican-American War, and US Navy Captain John Berrien Montgomery and US Marine Second Lieutenant Henry Bulls Watson of the USS Portsmouth arrived to claim YerbaBuena two days later by raising the American flag over the town plaza, which is now Portsmouth Square in honor of the ship.
Henry Bulls Watson was placed in command of the garrison there.
On July 31, 1846, Yerba Buena doubled in population when about 240 Mormon migrants from the East coast arrived on the ship Brooklyn, led by Sam Brannan.
In August 1846, Lt. Washington Allon Bartlett was named alcalde of YerbaBuena.
On January 30, 1847, Lt. Bartlett's proclamation changing the name YerbaBuena to San Francisco took effect. The city and the rest of Alta California officially became a United States military territory in 1848 by the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War.
California was admitted for statehood to the United States on September 9, 1850. The State soon chartered San Francisco as both a City and a County.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Oprah Winfrey,the American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist, who was born on a day like today in 1954.
Oprah Gail Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954), often referred to mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, televisionproducer, actress, author, and philanthropist.
She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.
Dubbed the Queen of All Media, she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire.
By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy.
Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school.
By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey's often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company.
By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and having an emotion-centered approach, she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.
Winfrey also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with her endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth about one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries.
In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and received honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.
In 2008, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication, Winfrey popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue.
In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Winfrey has won many accolades throughout her career which includes 18 Daytime Emmy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman's Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, a Tony Award, a Peabody Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, awarded by the Academy Awards and two additional Academy Award nominations. Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954; her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and Oprah stuck. She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi.
Winfrey attended Lincoln High School in Milwaukee, but after early success in the Upward Bound program, was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School.
She had won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communication. However, she did not deliver her final paper and receive her degree until 1987, by which time she was a successful television personality.
Working in local media, Winfrey was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV (now WTVF-TV), where she often covered the same stories as John Tesh, who worked at a competing Nashville station.
In 1984, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago, after being hired by that station's general manager, Dennis Swanson. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest-rated talk show in Chicago.
The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies.
It was then renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and expanded to a full hour. The first episode was broadcast nationwide on September 8, 1986. Winfrey'ssyndicated show brought in double Donahue's national audience, displacing Donahue as the number-one daytime talk show in America. Their much-publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny.
The Oprah Winfrey Show, often referred to as The Oprah Show or simply Oprah, is an American daytime syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, in Chicago, Illinois. Produced and hosted by Oprah Winfrey, it remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history.
The show was highly influential to many young stars, and many of its themes have penetrated into the American pop-cultural consciousness. Winfrey used the show as an educational platform, featuring book clubs, interviews, self-improvement segments, and philanthropic forays into world events. The show did not attempt to profit off the products it endorses; it had no licensing agreement with retailers when products were promoted, nor did the show make any money from endorsing books for its book club.
Oprah was one of the longest-running daytime television talk shows in history. The show received 47 Daytime Emmy Awards before Winfrey chose to stop submitting it for consideration in 2000.
In 2002, TV Guide ranked it at No. 49 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
In 2013, they ranked it as the 19th greatest TV show of all time.
In November 2009, Winfrey announced that the show would conclude in 2011 following its 25th and final season. The series finale aired on May 25, 2011.
Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), as distraught housewife Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
Winfrey has co-authored five books.
Winfrey publishes the magazine: O, The Oprah Magazine and from 2004 to 2008 also published a magazine called O At Home.
Winfrey's company created the Oprah.com website to provide resources and interactive content related to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity.
On February 9, 2006, it was announced that Winfrey had signed a three-year, $55-million contract with XM Satellite Radio to establish a new radio channel. The channel, Oprah Radio, features popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and O, The Oprah Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith, and Marianne Williamson.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about José Martí, the Cuban nationalist, poet,philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, publisher, and Cuban national hero, who was born on a day like today in 1895.
José Julián Martí Pérez (January 28, 1853-May 19, 1895) was a Cubannationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, andpublisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain.
He was also an important figure in Latin American literature. He was very politically active and is considered an important philosopher and political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol of Cuba's bid for independence from the Spanish Empire in the 19th century, and is referred to as the Apostle of Cuban Independence.
From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt.
Born in Havana, Spanish Empire, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He traveled extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban émigré community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895.
Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works include a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and a children's magazine.
He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers. His newspaper Patria was an important instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence.
After his death, many of his verses from the book, Versos Sencillos (Simple Verses) were adapted to the song Guantanamera, which has become a prominent representative song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Martí's ideology became a major driving force in Cuban politics. He is also regarded as Cuba's martyr.
José Julián Martí Pérez was born on January 28, 1853, in Havana, at 41 Paula Street, to Spanish parents, a Valencian father, Mariano Martí Navarro, and Leonor Pérez Cabrera, a native of the Canary Islands.
In 1869, colonial authorities shut down the school, interrupting Martí's studies. He came to resent Spanish rule of his homeland at an early age; likewise, he developed a hatred of slavery, which was still practiced in Cuba.
On October 21, 1869, aged 16, he was arrested and incarcerated in the national jail, following an accusation of treason and bribery from the Spanish government upon the discovery of a reproving letter, which Martí and Fermín had written to a friend when the friend joined the Spanish army.
In January 1871, Martí embarked on the steam ship Guipuzcoa, which took him from Havana to Cádiz. He settled in Madrid in a guesthouse in Desengaño St. #10. Arriving at the capitol he contacted fellow Cuban Carlos Sauvalle, who had been deported to Spain a year before Martí and whose house served as a center of reunions for Cubans in exile.
In 1875, Martí lived on Calle Moneda in Mexico City near the Zócalo, a prestigious address of the time.
José Martí was killed in battle against Spanish troops at the Battle of Dos Ríos, near the confluence of the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto, on May 19, 1895.
In 1881, after a brief stay in New York, Martí travelled to Venezuela and founded in Caracas the Revista Venezolana, or Venezuelan Review.
On January 1, 1891, Martí's essay Nuestra America was published in New York's Revista Ilustrada, and on the 30th of that month in Mexico's El Partido Liberal.
Martí's political ideas were shaped by his early encounter with Krausist liberalism and its defense of spirituality and solidarity.
Radical liberalism in Latin America during this time period often took on a nationalist and anti-imperialist cast, as shown by the examples of Francisco Bilbao in Chile, Benito Juárez in Mexico, José Santos Zelaya in Nicaragua, and Ramón Emeterio Betances in Puerto Rico, whom Martí deeply admired and considered one of his teachers.
Martí wrote extensively about Spanish colonial control and the threat of US expansionism into Cuba. To him, it was unnatural that Cuba was controlled and oppressed by the Spanish government, when it had its own unique identity and culture.
Martí opposed slavery and criticized Spain for upholding it. In a speech to Cuban immigrants in Steck Hall, New York, on January 24, 1879, he stated that the war against Spain needed to be fought, recalled the heroism and suffering of the Ten Years' War, which, he declared, had qualified Cuba as a real nation with a right to independence. Spain had not ratified the conditions of the peace treaty, had falsified elections, continued excessive taxation, and had failed to abolish slavery. Cuba needed to be free.
José Martí as a liberator believed that the Latin American countries needed to know the reality of their own history. Martí also saw the necessity of a country having its own literature.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Louis deFunès, the French actor and comedian, who died on a day like today in 1983.
Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza (31 July 1914-27 January 1983) was a French actor and comedian.
He is France's favourite actor, according to a series of polls conducted since the late 1960s, having played over 150 roles in film and over 100 on stage. His acting style is remembered for its high-energy performance and his wide range of facial expressions and tics. A considerable part of his best-known acting was directed by Jean Girault.
One of the most famous French actors of all time, Louis de Funès also enjoys widespread international recognition. In addition to his immense fame in the French-speaking world, he is also still a household name in many other parts of the world, including German-speaking countries, the former Soviet Union, former Eastern Bloc, Italy, Spain, Greece, Albania, ex-Yugoslavia, as well as Turkey, Iran, Israel, and Mauritius.
Despite his international fame, Louis de Funès remains almost unknown in the English-speaking world.
He was exposed to a wider audience only once in the United States, in 1974, with the release of The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, which is best remembered for its Rabbi Jacob dance scene and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
Louis de Funès has two museums dedicated to his life and acting: one in the Château de Clermont, near Nantes, where he resided, as well as another in the town of Saint-Raphaël, Southern France.
Louis de Funès was born on 31 July 1914 in Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine to parents who hailed from Seville, Spain. Since the couple's families opposed their marriage, they eloped to France in 1904.
De Funès began his show business career in the theatre, where he enjoyed moderate success and also played small roles in films. Even after he attained the status of a movie star, he continued to play theatre roles. His stage career culminated in a magnificent performance in the play Oscar, a role which he would reprise a few years later in the film adaptation.
In 1945, thanks to his contact with Daniel Gélin, de Funès made his film debut at the age of 31 with a bit part in Jean Stelli's La Tentation de Barbizon.
From 1945 to 1955, he appeared in 50 films, usually as an extra or walk-on. In 1954, he went on to star in such films as Ah! Les belles bacchantes and Le Mouton à cinq pattes.
Eventually, de Funès became France's leading comic actor. Between 1964 and 1979, he topped France's box office of the year's most successful movies seven times.
In 1968, all three of his films were in the top ten in France for the year, topped by Le Petit Baigneur.
De Funès made his final film, Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes, in 1982.
Unlike the characters he played, de Funès was said to be a very shy person in real life. Capable of an extremely rich and rapidly changing range of facial expressions, de Funès was nicknamed the man with forty faces per minute.
In the later part of his life, de Funès achieved great prosperity and success. He became a knight of France's Légion d'honneur in 1973.
In his later years, de Funès suffered from a heart condition after having two heart attacks caused by the excessive strain of his stage antics.
He died on 27 January 1983, a few months after making his final film. He was laid to rest in the Cimetière du Cellier, the cemetery situated on the Château de Clermont grounds.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about JohnLogie Baird, the Scottishinventor, electricalengineer, and innovator, who demonstrated the first live working television on a day like today in 1926.
John Logie Baird (13 August 1888-14 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926.
He went on to invent the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube.
In 1928, the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission. Baird's early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television's history.
In 2006, Baird was named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'.
In 2015 he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.
On 26 January 2017 -IEEE unveiled a bronze street plaque at 22 Frith Street (Bar Italia), London, dedicated to Baird and the invention of television.
In 2021, the Royal Mint unveiled a John Logie Baird 50p coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of his death.
Baird was born on 13 August 1888 in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire, and was the youngest of four children of the Reverend John Baird, the Church of Scotland's minister for the local St Bride's Church, and Jessie Morrison Inglis, the orphaned niece of a wealthy family of shipbuilders from Glasgow.
He was educated at Larchfield Academy (now part of Lomond School) in Helensburgh; the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College; and the University of Glasgow.
In early 1923, and in poor health, Baird moved to 21 Linton Crescent, Hastings, on the south coast of England. He later rented a workshop in the Queen's Arcade in the town. Baird built what was to become the world's first working television set using items that included an old hatbox and a pair of scissors, some darning needles, a few bicycle light lenses, a used tea chest, and sealing wax and glue that he purchased.
In February 1924, he demonstrated to the Radio Times that a semi-mechanical analogue television system was possible by transmitting moving silhouette images.
In July of the same year, he received a 1000-volt electric shock but survived with only a burnt hand but, as a result, his landlord, Mr Tree, asked him to vacate the premises. Soon after arriving in London, looking for publicity, Baird visited the Daily Express newspaper to promote his invention. The news editor was terrified and he was quoted by one of his staff as saying: For God's sake, go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him -he may have a razor on him.
In these attempts to develop a working television system, Baird experimented using the Nipkow disk. Paul Gottlieb Nipkow had invented this scanning system in 1884. Television historian Albert Abramson calls Nipkow's patent the master television patent. Nipkow's work is important because Baird, followed by many others, chose to develop it into a broadcast medium.
In his laboratory on 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed Stooky Bill in a 32-line vertically scanned image, at five pictures per second. Baird went downstairs and fetched an office worker, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to see what a human face would look like, and Taynton became the first person to be televised in a full tonal range.
In June 1924, Baird had bought from Cyril Frank Elwell a thallium sulphide (Thalofide) cell, developed by Theodore Case in the USA. The Thalofide cell was part of the important new technology of talking pictures. Baird's pioneering implementation of this cell allowed Baird to become the first person to produce a live, moving, greyscale television image from reflected light. Baird achieved this, where other inventors had failed, by applying two unique methods to the Case cell. He accomplished this by improving the signal conditioning from the cell, through temperature optimisation (cooling) and his own custom-designed video amplifier.
Baird gave the first public demonstration of moving silhouette images by television at Selfridges department store in London in a three-week series of demonstrations beginning on 25 March 1925.
On 26 January 1926, Baird gave the first public demonstration of true television images for members of the Royal Institution and a reporter from The Times in his laboratory at 22 Frith Street in the Soho district of London, where Bar Italia is now located. Baird initially used a scan rate of 5 pictures per second, improving this to 12.5 pictures per second c.1927. It was the first demonstration of a television system that could scan and display live moving images with tonal graduation.
He demonstrated the world's first colour transmission on 3 July 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with a filter of a different primary colour; and three light sources at the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate their illumination. The demonstration was of a young girl, 8-year-old Noele Gordon, wearing different coloured hats. Miss Gordon went on to become a successful TV actress, famous for the soap opera Crossroads. That same year he also demonstrated stereoscopic television.
In 1927, Bairdtransmitted a long-distance television signal over 705 km of telephone line between London and Glasgow; Baird transmitted the world's first long-distance television pictures to the Central Hotel at Glasgow Central Station. This transmission was Baird's response to a 225-mile, long-distance telecast between stations of AT&T Bell Labs. The Bell stations were in New York and Washington, DC. The earlier telecast took place in April 1927, a month before Baird's demonstration.
From December 1944, Logie Baird lived at 1 Station Road, Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, immediately north of the station, and subsequently died there on 14 June 1946 after suffering a stroke in February. The house was demolished in 2007 and the site is now occupied by apartments named Baird Court.
Logie Baird is buried beside his parents in Helensburgh Cemetery, Argyll,Scotland.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Demis Roussos, the Greek singer, songwriter and musician, who died on a day like today in 2015.
Artemios Demis Ventouris-Roussos, in Greek Αρτέμιος Ντέμης Βεντούρης-Ρούσσος (15 June 1946-25 January 2015) was a Greek singer, songwriter and musician. As a band member he is best remembered for his work in the progressive rock music act Aphrodite's Child, but as a vocal soloist, his repertoire included hit songs like Goodbye, My Love, Goodbye, From Souvenirs to Souvenirs and Forever and Ever.
Roussos sold over 60 million albums worldwide and became an unlikely kaftan-wearing sex symbol.
Roussos was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek family. His father George (Yorgos) Roussos was a classical guitarist and an engineer and his mother Olga participated with her husband in an amateur theatrical Greek group in Alexandria, her family originally came from Greece.
As a child, he studied music and joined the Greek Church Byzantine choir in Alexandria. His formative years in the ancient port city's cosmopolitan atmosphere were influenced by jazz, but also traditional Arab and Greek Orthodox music. His parents lost their possessions during the Suez Crisis and consequently decided to move to Greece.
After settling in Greece, Roussos participated in a series of musical groups beginning with the Idols when he was 17, where he met Evángelos Papathanassíou (later known as Vangelis) and Loukas Sideras, his future bandmates in Aphrodite's Child. After this, he joined the Athens-based band We Five, another cover band which had limited success in Greece.
Roussos came to a wider audience in 1967 when he joined progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child, with Vangelis and Sideras, initially as a singer but later also playing bass guitar, achieving commercial success in France and other parts of Europe from 1968 to 1972.
After Aphrodite's Child disbanded, Roussos continued to record sporadically with his former bandmate Vangelis. In 1970, the two released the film score album Sex Power (the album has also been credited to Aphrodite's Child), and later recorded the 1977 album Magic together.
Roussos also began a solo career with the song We Shall Dance in 1971, which was a top ten hit in both the Netherlands and Belgium. Initially unsuccessful, he toured around Europe and became a leading artist. His solo career peaked in the mid 1970s with several hit albums.
His single Forever and Ever topped the charts in several countries in 1973. It was No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart in 1976 Other hits by Roussos included My Friend the Wind, My Reason, Velvet Mornings, Goodbye My Love, Goodbye, Someday Somewhere and Lovely Lady of Arcadia.
His first UK single to chart was in 1975: Happy to Be on an Island in the Sun, written by Northern Irishman David Lewis, with the record reaching No. 5 on the charts. His popularity in the rest of Europe, but not the UK, came to fascinate BBC TV producer John King who made a documentary titled The Roussos Phenomenon in 1976. Philips Records released a four-song record of the same name, which was the first extended play to top the UK singles chart. He was equally successful across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Japan.
Roussos' run of hits was maintained in the 1980s mainly in France with a number two Quand je t'aime in 1988 and On écrit sur les murs in 1989, along with golden records for the albums Le Grec and Voice and Vision.
Roussos died in the morning of 25 January 2015 while hospitalised at Ygeia Hospital in Athens, Greece.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about AaronNeville, the American R&B and soul singer, who was born on a day like today in 1941.
Aaron Joseph Neville (born January 24, 1941) is a retired American R&B and soul singer.
He has had four platinum albums and four Top 10 hits in the United States, including three that reached number one on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. Tell It Like It Is, from 1966, also reached the top position on the Soul chart for five weeks.
He has also recorded with his brothers Art, Charles and Cyril as the Neville Brothers and is the father of singer/keyboards player Ivan Neville. Neville is of mixed African-American, Caucasian, and North American Indigenous (Choctaw) heritage.
The first of his singles that was given airplay outside of New Orleans was Over You (1960). Neville's first major hit single was Tell It Like It Is, released on a small New Orleans label, Par-Lo, co-owned by local musician/arranger George Davis, a friend from school, and band-leader Lee Diamond. The song topped Billboard's R&B chart for five weeks in 1967 and also reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 (behind I'm a Believer by the Monkees). It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. It was not the label's only release, as some sources claim. At least five other Par-Lo singles, three of them by Neville himself, are known to exist.
Neville released his first solo album since the late 1960s in 1986 with the independent release Orchid in The Storm.
In 1989, Neville teamed up with Linda Ronstadt on the album Cry Like a Rainstorm, How l Like the Wind which included four duets by the pair.
During 1993 and 1994, Neville expanded his repertoire as a recording artist and ventured into making country music.
Neville's next country music project involved appearing on 1994's Rhythm, Country and Blues, an album of duets featuring R&B and Country artists performing renditions of classic country and R&B songs.
Aaron's 1995 R&B flavored release, The Tattooed Heart, featuring covers of classics by Bill Withers and Kris Kristofferson went gold, while 1997's pop-orientated... To Make Me Who I Am included songwriting contributions from contemporary hitmakers Babyface and Diane Warren as well as two new duets with Ronstadt, including a cover of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
Neville signed to SonyBMG's new Burgundy Records label in late 2005 and recorded an album of songs by Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke and others for Bring It On Home...The Soul Classics, released on September 19, 2006.
Neville's career has included work for television, movies and sporting events. Neville sang the US national anthem in the movie The Fan starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Liechtenstein, the microstate, that was created on a day like today in 1719.
Liechtenstein, officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (in German Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland.
It is the sixth smallest nation worldwide. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy headed by the prince of Liechtenstein.
Liechtenstein is bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and Austria to the east and north. It is Europe's fourth-smallest country, with an area of just over 160 square kilometres and a population of 38,749. Divided into 11 municipalities, its capital is Vaduz, and its largest municipality is Schaan. It is also the smallest country to border two countries. Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked country between Switzerland and Austria.
Economically, Liechtenstein has one of the highest gross domestic products per person in the world when adjusted for purchasing power parity. The country has a strong financial sector centred in Vaduz. It was once known as a billionaire tax haven, but is no longer on any official blacklists of uncooperative tax haven countries. An Alpine country, Liechtenstein is mountainous, making it a winter sport destination.
Liechtenstein is a member of the United Nations, the European Free TradeAssociation, and the Council of Europe. Although not a member of the European Union because it was not designed with microstates in mind, it participates in both the Schengen Area and the European Economic Area. It has a customs union and a monetary union with Switzerland.
By 1200, dominions across the Alpine plateau were controlled by the Houses of Savoy, Zähringer, Habsburg, and Kyburg. Other regions were accorded the Imperial immediacy that granted the empire direct control over the mountain passes. When the Kyburg dynasty fell in 1264, the Habsburgs under King Rudolph I (Holy Roman Emperor in 1273) extended their territory to the eastern Alpine plateau that included the territory of Liechtenstein. This region was enfeoffed to the Counts of Hohenems until the sale to the Liechtenstein dynasty in 1699.
In 1396, Vaduz (the southern region of Liechtenstein) gained imperial immediacy, i.e. it became subject to the Holy Roman Emperor alone.
The family from which the principality takes its name originally came from Liechtenstein Castle in Lower Austria, which they had possessed from at least 1140 until the 13th century (and again from 1807 onwards).
The Liechtensteins acquired land, predominantly in Moravia, Lower Austria, Silesia, and Styria. As these territories were all held in feudal tenure from more senior feudal lords, particularly various branches of the Habsburgs, the Liechtenstein dynasty was unable to meet a primary requirement to qualify for a seat in the Imperial diet (parliament), the Reichstag. Even though several Liechtenstein princes served several Habsburg rulers as close advisers, without any territory held directly from the Imperial throne, they held little power in the Holy Roman Empire.
For this reason, the family sought to acquire lands that would be classed as unmittelbar (not sellable) or held without any intermediate feudal tenure, directly from the Holy Roman Emperor.
During the early 17th century Karl I of Liechtenstein was made a Fürst (prince) by the Holy Roman Emperor Matthias after siding with him in a political battle. Hans-Adam I was allowed to purchase the minuscule Herrschaft (Lordship) of Schellenberg and the county of Vaduz (in 1699 and 1712 respectively) from the Hohenems. Tiny Schellenberg and Vaduz had exactly the political status required: no feudal lord other than their comital sovereign and the suzerain Emperor.
On 23 January 1719, after the lands had been purchased, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, decreed that Vaduz and Schellenberg were united and elevated the newly formed territory to the dignity of Fürstentum (principality) with the name Liechtenstein in honour of [his] true servant, Anton Florian of Liechtenstein. On this date, Liechtenstein became a sovereign member state of the Holy Roman Empire. It is a testimony to the mere political expediency of the purchase that the Princes of Liechtenstein did not visit their new principality for almost 100 years.
By the early 19th century, as a result of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire came under the effective control of France, following the crushing defeat at Austerlitz by Napoleon in 1805.
In 1806 Emperor Francis II abdicated and dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, ending more than 960 years of feudal government. Napoleon reorganized much of the Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine. This political restructuring had broad consequences for Liechtenstein: the historical imperial, legal, and political institutions had been dissolved. The state ceased to owe an obligation to any feudal lord beyond its borders.
Modern publications generally attribute Liechtenstein's sovereignty to these events. Its prince ceased to owe an obligation to any suzerain.
From 25 July 1806, when the Confederation of the Rhine was founded, the Prince of Liechtenstein was a member, in fact, a vassal, of its hegemon, styled protector, the French Emperor Napoleon I, until the dissolution of the confederation on 19 October 1813.
Soon afterward, Liechtenstein joined the German Confederation (20 June 1815-23 August 1866), which was presided over by the Emperor of Austria.
In 1818, Prince Johann I granted the territory a limited constitution. In that same year Prince Aloys became the first member of the House of Liechtenstein to set foot in the principality that bore their name. The next visit would not occur until 1842.
Until the end of World War I, Liechtenstein was closely tied first to the Austrian Empire and later to Austria-Hungary; the ruling princes continued to derive much of their wealth from estates in the Habsburg territories, and spent much of their time at their two palaces in Vienna. Johann II appointed Carl von In der Maur, an Austrian aristocrat, to serve as the Governor of Liechtenstein. The economic devastation caused by the First World War forced the country to conclude a customs and monetary union with its other neighbour, Switzerland.
The official language is German, spoken by 92% of the population as their main language in 2020. 73% of Liechtenstein's population speak an Alemannic dialect of German at home that is highly divergent from Standard German but closely related to dialects spoken in neighbouring regions such as Switzerland and Vorarlberg, Austria. In Triesenberg, a Walser German dialect promoted by the municipality is spoken. Swiss Standard German is also understood and spoken by most Liechtensteiners.
Feudalism, serfdom, slavery -all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same -less government.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Pontifical Swiss Guard, the armed force and honour guard that protects the Pope and the Apostolic Palace, whose first contingent of arrived at the Vatican on a day like today in 1506.
The Pontifical Swiss Guard (also Papal Swiss Guard or simply Swiss Guard; in Latin Pontificia Cohors Helvetica; in Italian Guardia Svizzera Pontificia; in German Päpstliche Schweizergarde; in French Garde suisse pontificale; in Romansh Guardia svizra papala) is an armed force and honour guard unit maintained by the Holy See that protects the Pope and theApostolicPalace within the territory of the Vatican City.
Established in 1506 under Pope Julius II, the Pontifical Swiss Guard is among the oldest military units in continuous operation.
The dress uniform is of blue, red, orange and yellow with a distinctly Renaissance appearance.
The Swiss Guard are equipped with traditional weapons, such as the halberd, as well as with modern firearms. Since the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981, a much stronger emphasis has been placed on the Guard's non-ceremonial roles, and has seen enhanced training in unarmed combat and small arms.
Recruits to the guards must be unmarried Swiss Catholic males between 18 and 30 years of age who have completed basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces.
The unit's security mission is complemented by the Corps of Gendarmerie ofVatican City.
The Pontifical Swiss Guard has its origins in the 15th century. Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) had already made an alliance with the SwissConfederacy andbuilt barracks in Via Pellegrino after foreseeing the possibility of recruiting Swiss mercenaries.
The pact was renewed by Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) in order to use Swisstroops against the Duke of Milan. Alexander VI (1492-1503) later actually used the Swiss mercenaries during their alliance with the King of France.
During the time of the Borgias, however, the Italian Wars began in which the Swiss mercenaries were a fixture in the front lines among the warring factions, sometimes for France and sometimes for the Holy See or the Holy Roman Empire. The mercenaries enlisted when they heard King Charles VIII of France was going to war with Naples. Among the participants in the war against Naples was Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the future Pope Julius II (1503-1513), who was well acquainted with the Swiss, having been Bishop of Lausanne years earlier.
The
expedition failed, in part thanks to new alliances made by Alexander VI
against the French. When Cardinal della Rovere became Pope Julius II in
1503, he asked the Swiss Diet to provide him with a constant corps of
200 Swissmercenaries. This was made possible through financing by
German merchants from Augsburg, Ulrich and Jacob Fugger, who had
invested in the Pope and saw fit to protect their investment.
In
September 1505, the first contingent of 150 soldiers set off on march
to Rome, under the command of Kaspar von Silenen, and entered the city
on 22 January 1506, now regarded as the official date of the Guard's
foundation.
The
Swiss see the sad situation of the Church of God, Mother of
Christianity, and realize how grave and dangerous it is that any tyrant,
avid for wealth, can assault with impunity, the common Mother of
Christianity, declared the Swiss HuldrychZwingli, who later became a
Protestant reformer. Pope Julius II later granted the Guard the title Defenders of the Church's freedom.
The force has varied greatly in size over the years and on occasion has been disbanded and reconstituted. Its most significant hostile engagement was on 6 May 1527, when 147 of the 189 Guards, including their commander Caspar Röist, died fighting the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in the stand of the SwissGuard during the Sack of Rome in order to allow Clement VII to escape through the Passetto di Borgo, escorted by the other 42 guards. The last stand battlefield is located on the left side of St Peter's Basilica, close to the Campo Santo Teutonico, in German Graveyard.
Clement VII was forced to replace the depleted Swiss Guard by a contingent of 200 German mercenaries (Custodia Peditum Germanorum). Ten years later, Pope Paul III ordered the Swiss Guard to be reinstated and sent Cardinal Ennio Filonardi to oversee recruitment.
Anti-papal sentiment in Switzerland, however, stymied recruitment and it was not until 1548 that the papacy reached an agreement with mayor of Lucern, Nikolaus von Meggen, to swear-in 150 new Swiss Guardsmen under commander Jost von Meggen, the mayor's nephew.
After the end of the Italian Wars, the Swiss Guard ceased to be used as a military combat unit in the service of the Pope and its role became mostly that of the protection of the person of the Pope and of an Honour guard. However, twelve members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard of Pius V served as part of the SwissGuard of admiral Marcantonio Colonna at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
The office of commander of the Papal Guard came to be a special honour in the Catholic region of the Swiss Confederacy. It became strongly associated with the leading family of Lucerne, Pfyffer von Altishofen, a family which between 1652 and 1847 provided nine out of a total of ten of the commanders (the exception being Johann Kaspar Mayr von Baldegg, also of Lucerne, served 1696-1704).
In 1798, commander Franz Alois Pfyffer von Altishofen went into exile with the deposed Pius VI. After the death of the Pope on 29 August 1799, the SwissGuard was disbanded and only reinstated by Pius VII in 1800.
In 1809, Rome was again captured by the French and the guard was again disbanded. Pius VII was exiled to Fontainebleau. The guard was reinstated in 1814, when the Pope returned from exile, under the previous commander Karl Leodegar Pfyffer von Altishofen.
The guard was disbanded yet again in 1848, when Pius IX fled to Gaeta, but was reinstated when the Pope returned to Rome the following year.
After the Piedmontese invasion of Rome, the Swiss Guard declined in the later 19th
century into a purely ceremonial body with low standards. Guards on
duty at the Vatican were Swiss only in name, mostly born in Rome to
parents of Swiss descent and speaking the Roman dialect.
The
guards were trained solely for ceremonial parade, kept only a few
obsolete rifles in store and wore civilian dress when drilling or in
barracks. Administration, accommodation, discipline and organization
were neglected and the unit numbered only about 90 men out of an
authorized establishment of 133.
The
modern Swiss Guard is the product of the reforms pursued by Jules
Repond, commander during 1910-1921. Repond proposed to recruit only
native citizens of Switzerland and he introduced rigorous military
exercises. He also attempted to introduce modern arms, but Pius X only
permitted the presence of firearms if they were not functional.
Repond's
reforms and strict discipline were not well received by the corps,
culminating in a week of open mutiny in July 1913, and the subsequent
dismissal of thirteen ringleaders from the guard.
In
his project to restore the Swiss Guard to its former prestige, Repond
also dedicated himself to the study of historical costume, with the aim
of designing a new uniform that would be both reflective of the
historical Swiss costume of the 16th century and suited for military
exercise.
The result of his studies was published as Le costume de la Garde suisse pontificale et la Renaissance italienne (1917). Repond designed the distinctive Renaissance-style uniforms still worn by the modern Swiss Guard.
The introduction of the newuniforms was completed in May 1914.
The foundation of Vatican City as amodern sovereign state was negotiated in the Lateran Treaty of1929. The duties of protecting publicorder and security in the Vatican lay with the Papal Gendarmerie Corps, while the Swiss Guard, the Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard served mostly ceremonial functions. The Palatine and NobleGuards were disbanded by Paul VI in 1970, leaving the Swiss Guard as the only ceremonial guard unit of the Vatican. At the same time, the GendarmerieCorps was transformed into a central security office, with the duties of protecting the Pope, defending Vatican City, and providing police and security services within its territory, while the Swiss Guard continued to serve ceremonial functions only.
Paul VI in a decree of 28 June 1976 defined the nominal size of the corps at 90 men. This was increased to 100 men by John Paul II on 5 April 1979.
As of 2010 the guard numbered 107 halberdiers divided into three squads, with commissioned and non-commissioned officers.
Since the assassination attempt on John Paul II of 13 May 1981, a much stronger emphasis has been placed on the guard's non-ceremonial roles.
The Swiss Guard has developed into a modern guard corps equipped with modern small arms, and members of the Swiss Guard in plain clothes now accompany the Pope on his travels abroad for his protection.
On 4 May 1998, commander Alois Estermann was murdered on the day of his promotion. Estermann and his wife, Gladys Meza Romero, were killed by the young guardsman Cédric Tornay, who later committed suicide. The case received considerable public attention and became the subject of a number of conspiracy theories alleging Cold War politics or involvement by the Opus Dei prelature.
On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Swiss Guard, in April–May 2006,80 former guardsmen marched from Bellinzona in southern Switzerland to Rome, recalling the march of the original 200 Swiss guards to take up Papal service, in 1505. The march had been preceded by other celebrations in Lucerne,including a rally of veterans of the Guard and a Mass.
In a public ceremony on 6 May 2006, 33 new guards were sworn in on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica instead of the traditional venue in the San Damaso Courtyard. The date chosen marked the anniversary of the Sack of Rome when the Swiss Guard had been nearly destroyed. Present at this event were representatives of the Company of Pikemen and Musketeers of the Honourable Artillery Company of London and the Ancient and HonorableArtillery Company of Massachusetts.
In December 2014, Pope Francis directed that Daniel Anrig's term as commander should end on 31 January 2015, and that he be succeeded by his deputy Christoph Graf. This followed reports about Anrig's authoritarian style.
With the rise of Islamic terrorism in Europe and open threats against the Vatican issued by the Islamic State (ISIS), Vatican officials in 2015 collaborated with Italian authorities to improve the protection of Vatican City against attacks that cannot be reasonably defended against by the Swiss Guard and Vaticangendarms, notably against drone attacks.
In October 2019, the Swiss Guard reached a total personnel of 135. It is the result of the expansion of the Corps announced at the press conference held on the occasion of the swearing in of the new guards in 2018. Previously, according to article 7 of the regulation, the Swiss Guard was made up of 110 men.
Recruits to the guards must be Catholic, single males with Swisscitizenship who have completed basic training with the Swiss ArmedForces and can obtain certificates of good conduct.
Recruits must have a professional degree or high school diploma andmustbe between 19 and 30 years of age and at least 174 cm tall.
In 2009, the Pontifical Swiss Guard commandant, Daniel Anrig, suggested that the Guard might someday be open to recruiting women, but he added that the admission of female recruits remained far in the future.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)