Tuesday

Sep. 15, 1998

Little Orphan Annie

by James Whitcomb Riley

TUESDAY 9/15

Today's Reading: "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916).

Today is observed as BATTLE OF BRITAIN DAY, marking the end of the heaviest bombing raid by the German Luftwaffe, in 1940.

The environmental organization GREENPEACE was founded on this day in 1971 by 12 members of the Don't Make A Wave committee, which was based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was on its way to Alaska to protest U.S. nuclear testing.

Opera singer JESSYE NORMAN was born in Augusta, Georgia, on this day in 1945. She made her operatic debut in Berlin as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhaöser at age 24 and established herself as one of the most versatile and respected sopranos in the world.

Singer and pianist BOBBY SHORT was born in Danville, Illinois, in 1926.

Armored tanks were introduced into warfare by the British in 1916, on the Somme in France, during World War I.

Film director JEAN RENOIR (GRAND ILLUSION; THE RULES OF THE GAME) was born in Paris, in 1894.

Poet and novelist CLAUDE McKAY was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, on this day in 1890. After moving to the U.S., he became a leading member of the Harlem Renaissance, publishing novels such as Home to Harlem (1928)—the best selling novel then written by an African American—and Banana Bottom (1933), and the poetry volumes Spring in New Hampshire (1920) and Harlem Shadows (1922).

It's the birthday of mystery writer AGATHA CHRISTIE, in Torquay, England, in 1890, who created Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and eccentric crime-solver Miss Jane Marple. After giving up on a singing career because of shyness, she wrote the first of her more than 60 detective stories when she was 30 years old. It introduced Poirot and was called "The Mysterious Affair at Styles." Her play The Mousetrap (1952) ran continuously for more than 21 years at a London theater. The films adapted from her novels include Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile.

Humorist Robert Benchley was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1889.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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