December 30

Author Rudyard Kipling born (1865); USSR is formed (1922); HBD Tiger Woods (1975); HBD LeBron James (1984); Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein executed (2006); RIP Oscar-winning actress Luise Rainer (2014).

Duke Elington

Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Although widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music rather than to a musical genre such as jazz.^[2]

Some of the jazz musicians who were members of Ellington's orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in the idiom. Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Some members stayed with the orchestra for several decades. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, with many of his pieces having become standards. Ellington also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, for example Juan Tizol's "Caravan", and "Perdido", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. In the early 1940s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion.^[3] With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or suites, as well as additional short pieces. Following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, in July 1956, Ellington and his orchestra enjoyed a major revival and embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era, performed in several films, scored several, and composed a handful of stage musicals.

Ellington was noted for his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and for his eloquence and charisma. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize Special Award for music in 1999.^[4]

Ellington was born on April 29, 1899, to James Edward Ellington and Daisy (Kennedy) Ellington in Washington, D.C. Both his parents were pianists. Daisy primarily played parlor songs, and James preferred operatic arias. They lived with Daisy's parents at 2129 Ida Place (now Ward Place), NW, in D.C.'s West End neighborhood.^[5] Duke's father was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on April 15, 1879, and moved to D.C. in 1886 with his parents.^[6] Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D.C., on January 4, 1879, the daughter of a former American slave.^[5][7] James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy.

When Edward Ellington was a child, his family showed racial pride and support in their home, as did many other families. African Americans in D.C. worked to protect their children from the era's Jim Crow laws.^[8]

At age seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him elegance. His childhood friends noticed that his casual, offhand manner and dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman,^[9] so they began calling him "Duke." Ellington credited his friend Edgar McEntree for the nickname. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke."^[10]

Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. "President Roosevelt (Teddy) would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play", he recalled.^[11] Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C. His first job was selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games.

Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at age fourteen. Hearing the music of the poolroom pianists ignited Ellington's love for the instrument, and he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to were Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, and Harvey Brooks.^[12]

In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Café, Ellington wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag" (also known as the "Poodle Dog Rag"). He created the piece by ear, as he had not yet learned to read and write music. "I would play the 'Soda Fountain Rag' as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot", Ellington recalled. "Listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire."^[13] In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress (1973), Ellington wrote that he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent.

Ellington continued listening to, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer.^[13] He would sometimes hear strange music played by those who could not afford much sheet music, so for variations, they played the sheets upside down.^[14] Henry Lee Grant, a Dunbar High School music teacher, gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. His attachment to music was so strong that in 1916 he turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Three months before graduating he dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training School, where he was studying commercial art.^[15]

December 23

Vincent van Gogh cuts off his ear (1888); Mormon church founder Joseph Smith born (1805); Businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker born (1867); Voyager aircraft is first to fly around the world without refueling (1986).

December 21

Did you know...
... that today is the birthday of Andy Dick (1966); Phil Donahue, talk show host (1935); Jane Fonda (1937); Samuel L Jackson (1948); Ray Romano (1957); and Frank Zappa, rock star (1940). Happy birthday to all!

December 20

Louisiana Purchase finalized (1803); RIP Sacagawea (1812); "It’s a Wonderful Life" released (1946); RIP author John Steinbeck (1968); RIP astronomer Carl Sagan (1996).

December 19

First edition of The American Crisis published by Thomas Paine (1776); French entertainer Édith Piaf born (1915); HBD National Hockey League (1917); President Eisenhower’s Christmas message is first radio broadcast from space (1958); President Clinton is impeached (1998).

December 18

Mayflower arrives at Plymouth Harbor (1620); 13th Amendment formally adopted in Constitution, abolishing slavery (1865); HBD Steven Spielberg (1946); HBD Brad Pitt (1963); RIP actress Zsa Zsa Gabor (2016).

December 17

Wright brothers make first successful airplane flight (1903); HBD Pope Francis (1936); "The Simpsons" made television debut (1989); RIP American actress Jennifer Jones (2009); North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il dies (2011).

Jane Austen

 (/ˈɒstɪn, ˈɔːs-/; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.^[2][b] Her use of biting irony, along with her realism, humour, and social commentary, have long earned her acclaim among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike.^[4]

With the publications of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, a short epistolary novel Lady Susan, and another unfinished novel, The Watsons. Her six full-length novels have rarely been out of print, although they were published anonymously and brought her moderate success and little fame during her lifetime.

A significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1833, when her novels were republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series, illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering, and sold as a set.^[5] They gradually gained wider acclaim and popular readership. In 1869, fifty-two years after her death, her nephew's publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced a compelling version of her writing career and supposedly uneventful life to an eager audience.

Austen has inspired many critical essays and literary anthologies. Her novels have inspired many films, from 1940's Pride and Prejudice to more recent productions like Sense and Sensibility (1995), Emma (1996), Mansfield Park (1999), Pride & Prejudice (2005), and Love & Friendship (2016).

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most widely recognized and admired composers in the history of Western music, and served as an important bridge between the Classical and Baroque era styles he admired and the Romantic style his music would come to personify. Beethoven was born in 1770 into a modest family in the small German provincial town of Bonn, where he would study composition and play the piano and viola until moving to Vienna in his early 20’s where he would live the rest of his life.

Beethoven was an earlier admirer of two of the most important figures of the Classical era: Franz Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Haydn in particular became a fundamental influence and figure in Beethoven’s early career, with Beethoven playing over 50 Haydn Symphonies with the Esterhazy Court Orchestra as a violist, and leaving Bonn to go study with the master himself as a pupil. As a close friend wrote him upon his departure from his hometown, it was time to go to Vienna to “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”
Moving to Vienna in 1792 proved fruitful to Beethoven, who despite some difficulties with Haydn studied with him and many others (including the often and unjustly maligned Antonio Salieri), honing his craft and undoubtedly being surrounded by Mozart’s music, his other Classical-era idol, whose influence is strongly felt in Beethoven’s piano concertos. Beethoven’s impressive piano writing and ambitious symphonies made quick splashes, and by the time he was onto his Fifth Symphony in 1808 heads of state at peace accords in Vienna would schedule their meetings around Beethoven performances so as to not miss them.
A virtuoso pianist and an often difficult man, Beethoven nonetheless impressed with his fierce individualism and determination in an age where patronage was still the norm. While he did not abandon patronage entirely as Mozart had, Beethoven rarely went out of his way to please anyone but himself. His legend grew as he kept performing and composing while becoming fully deaf, a handicap he would carry for the last 30 years of his life. Instead of his deafness impeding his composition, his individualistic style only intensified upon his discovery of his impending deafness, leading to some of his most beloved works, including his last three Piano Concertos and the immortal Fifth Symphony. This crisis made Beethoven take his Classical style and bring it to new emotional highs and lows, expanding the symphony’s length, color palate and dynamic levels, and introducing the trombones as an orchestral instrument to great effect.
He is also credited with fully embracing the expanding range of the piano in his sonatas and concertos, and for inadvertently popularizing steel-framed keyboards, as he would often leave a stream of broken wooden pianos on stages wherever he performed. The emotional depth, expanded orchestration, and immense length of his works (for his time) were all hallmarks of what would come to be known as the Romantic era, yet all of Beethoven’s works were rooted in a Classical era aesthetic of clear form and function – just through a much more emotional (and unpredictable) filter.
While the onset of his deafness may have launched Beethoven’s more emotional “Middle Period,” the beginning of the rediscovery and cataloguing of Bach’s music brought upon by Mendelssohn ended up leading to the masterworks of Beethoven’s “Late Period.” Although Beethoven had performed Bach’s Well Tempered Klavier publicly since he was 12, a new fascination formed of the Baroque master’s style after his rediscovery, and this intellectual curiosity would lead to the intensely contrapuntal masterworks of Beethoven’s later life, including the Ninth Symphony, Missa Solemnis, and his late string quartets. By the end of his brilliant career (he died in 1827), Beethoven had become the ultimate fusion composer, taking the best of the classical and Baroque eras and sending it to new dynamic, instrumental, and emotional extremes that would define the Romantic era of music in the 19th Century.

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December 16

Ludwig van Beethoven born (1770); Boston Tea Party held (1773); Author Jane Austen born (1775); Anthropologist Margaret Mead born (1901); World War II’s Battle of the Bulge began (1944).

Taylor Swift

Did you know...
... that today is the Birthday of Taylor Swift (1989)? This Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage; she has gone on to become one of the top acts in popular music. Trivia fans: Her grandmother was a professional opera singer, and Swift soon followed in her musical footsteps. Happy birthday, Taylor!

December 13

HBD diplomat George Shultz (1920); HBD actor Dick Van Dyke (1925); HBD Jamie Foxx (1967); HBD Taylor Swift (1989); 10 new countries announced to join European Union (2002); Saddam Hussein captured by American forces (2003)

Frank Sinatra

Fans of Frank Sinatra marked what would’ve been the singer’s 104th birthday on Thursday, sharing tributes to the iconic Hoboken crooner.

Sinatra, who was born in the Mile Square City on Dec. 12, 1915, died in 1998, at the age of 82, but his legacy is alive and well.
Fans (and brands) across the globe remembered Ol’ Blue Eyes by posting his voice and image on social media, making him a lasting top Twitter trend alongside the other news of the day.
The singer and actor received 11 Grammys and an Oscar in a career that spanned 60 years, during which he released 10 albums that charted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200.
Whether it was “Fly Me To the Moon” or “Luck Be A Lady," “The Girl From Ipanema” or “My Way,” the Chairman of the Board was top of mind for many.
Nancy Sinatra shared a tribute to her father in the form of his baby picture, as seen on the 2017 lullaby album “Baby Blue Eyes … May The First Voice You Hear Be Mine.”

“Happy heavenly birthday, Daddy,” she posted. “You made the world a much better place.”
Here’s a duet with Nancy and Frank in which they performed a medley of their songs.

Deana Martin, daughter of Sinatra contemporary Dean Martin, remembered her “Uncle Frank" with a clip from an old TV appearance.

Tony Bennett reminisced about his old friend by sharing a portrait he painted of the singer.

Here’s how everyone else commemorated the birth of a legend.

Some proceeded to try and rank Sinatra’s songs for the occasion.

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
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December 12

US founding father John Jay born (1745); first transatlantic radio signal sent by Guglielmo Marconi (1901); Frank Sinatra born (1915); HBD Jennifer Connelly (1970); Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore certified George W. Bush as President (2000).

December 11

King Edward VIII abdicates throne, younger brother King George VI takes crown (1937); Germany and Italy declare war on the US (1941); HBD John Kerry (1943); RIP musician Sam Cooke (1962); RIP model Bettie Page (2008).

Melvil Dewey

Did you know...
... that December 10 is Melvil Dewey's Birthday (1851)? American librarian Melvil Dewey is the one we have to thank for creating the Dewey Decimal Classification system that is used in most public and school libraries. Trivia buffs: Dewey is also known for the creation of hanging vertical files, which were first introduced at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.

December 10

Poet Emily Dickinson born (1830); Spanish-American War ends (1898); First Nobel Prize ceremony held (1901); RIP comedian Richard Pryor (2005); Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet dies (2006).

December 9

HBD actor Kirk Douglas (1916); HBD actress Dame Judi Dench (1934); “A Charlie Brown Christmas” debuts (1965); RIP diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche (1971); Smallpox declared eradicated (1979).

December 6

13th Amendment of US Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery (1865); Washington Monument completed (1884); Confederate President Jefferson Davis dies (1889); Hollywood actress Agnes Moorehead born (1900); NASA photographs suggest presence of liquid on Mars (2006).

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks

 (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".^[1]

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to relinquish her seat in the "colored section" to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws. Parks' prominence in the community and her willingness to become a controversial figure inspired the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year, the first major direct action campaign of the post-war civil rights movement. Her case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle succeeded in November 1956.^[2][3]

Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP; and Martin Luther King Jr., a new minister in Montgomery who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement and went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. She acted as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store, and received death threats for years afterwards.^[4]

Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit, where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to 1988, she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American US Representative. She was also active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US.

After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that the struggle for justice was not over and there was more work to be done.^[5] In her final years, she suffered from dementia. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, becoming the third of only four Americans to ever receive this honor. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her birthday February 4, while Ohio and Oregon commemorate the occasion on the anniversary of the day she was arrested, December 1.

Walt Disney

Did you know...
... that December 5 is Walt Disney's Birthday? Walt Disney, the creator of many wonderful movies, incredible characters, and fascinating theme parks, was born in 1901. Trivia fans: Walt Disney ate a hot dog in Disneyland and counted how many steps it took to finish it. It took him about 25 steps, which is roughly the spacing used in every Disney park today.

December 5

RIP Mozart (1791); Walt Disney born (1901); 21st Amendment ratified in US, repealing the nationwide ban on alcohol (1933); Rosa Parks helps lead Montgomery bus boycotts (1955); RIP Nelson Mandela (2013).

December 4

RIP English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1679); President Woodrow Wilson travels to Versailles for WWI peace talks, is first US president to travel to Europe while in office (1918); HBD Jay-Z (1969); HBD Tyra Banks (1973); American journalist Terry Anderson released after over six years as hostage in Lebanon (1991).

Wayne Walter Dyer

 (May 10, 1940-) Is an American self-help author, teacher, motivational speaker, lecturer and business man. Born in Detroit, Michigan he spent much of his adolescence in an orphanage.

December 3

RIP novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1894); HBD rock star Ozzy Osbourne (1948); HBD actress Julianne Moore (1960); First human heart transplant carried out (1967); Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush declare end to Cold War (1989).

December 2

RIP abolitionist John Brown (1859); HBD US Environmental Protection Agency (1970); HBD Britney Spears (1981); Benazir Bhutto becomes first female Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988); Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is killed (1993).