Wednesday, February 12, 2014

A00007 - Clotilde, Queen of the Visigothic King Amalaric

*Clotilde, the queen of the Visigothic King Amalaric, was born around this year.
Clotilde (or Chrodechildis) (c. 500–531) was the daughter of King Clovis I of the Franks and Queen Clotilde and the queen of the Visigothic King Amalaric. She was born circa 500.
Clotilde married Amalaric in 511, and ties between both families were initially positive. Clotilde was a Catholic, while Amalaric and his fellow-Visigoths were Arians. Clotilde refused to adopt her husband's religious practices and complained to her kin that she was persecuted for her faith. Amalaric was subsequently kicked out from Narbonne. War ensued in 531 between Clotilde's brother, King Childebert I, and her husband, at Barcelona, Spain. Amalaric was eventually defeated and killed and Clotilde returned to Francia with the Frankish army, but died on the journey and was buried at Paris.

A00006 - Conal, Irish Bishop

*Conal, an Irish bishop, is believed to have died in this year.

Conal (also known as Conall or Conall Stickler) was an Irish bishop who flourished in the second half of the fifth century and ruled over the church of Drum, County Roscommon, the place being subsequently named Drumconnell, after Conal.
Attracta is said to have prophesied that the episcopal churches of Conal (Drumconnell) and Dachonna (Eas Dachonna) would be reduced to poverty, owing to the fame of a new monastic establishment. This prophecy was strikingly fulfilled, inasmuch as Drum and Assylin soon after ceased to be episcopal sees, while in 1148 the great Cistercian Abbey of Boyle was founded.
Conal died about the year 500, and his feast is celebrated on May 22, though some assign the March 18 or February 9 as the date.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A00005 - Fedelmid Find, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ireland

*Fedelmid Find, a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh diocese, Ireland and Primate of All Ireland from 558 to 578, is believed to have been born in this year.



Fedelmid Find (Also called Feidlimid Fin, Fethlin Fionn, Feidhlimidh Finn, Feidlimidh, Fedlimid, Fedilmid, Feidilmed) b. c.500 - d.30 October 578, was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh diocese, Ireland and Primate of All Ireland from 558 to 578.

Saint Fedelmid Find was a descendant or grandson of Fáelan and was born c. 500 in a place called Domnach Nemand. He was presumably a younger son as he was destined for the church rather than succeeding to the family estate. He probably did not have a wife or children as he is referred to as “virginal” in the Martyrology of Gorman.
On the death of Saint Fiachra mac Colmain, the Archbishop of Armagh on July 25, 558, Fedelmid Find was appointed as the 11th Archbishop in succession to Saint Patrick. Fedelmid Find reigned as Archbishop for 20 years.

Fedelmid Find died in 578. After his death Fedelmid Find was venerated as a saint and his feast was celebrated on the 30th of October, the day of his death.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

A00004 - Maximilian Schell, Oscar Winning Actor of Judgment at Nurem berg

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Maximilian Schell in “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Alfred Assmann/European Pressphoto Agency
Maximilian Schell, the ruggedly handsome Austrian-born actor who won an Academy Award for his role in “Judgment at Nuremberg,” died early Saturday in Innsbruck, Austria. He was 83. 
Patricia Baumbauer, his agent, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. She said he was hospitalized for a “sudden illness” but gave no more details. 
Stanley Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961), a drama recounting the Nazi war-crime trials in Germany, had an all-star cast, including Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift. But Mr. Schell’s performance as the eloquent and ultimately furious German defense lawyer was the only one honored by the Academy. The film had begun on TV on “Playhouse 90.”
He went on to earn two more Oscar nominations, for the title role in “The Man in the Glass Booth” (1975), a drama inspired by the trial in Israel of the Holocaust criminal Adolf Eichmann, and “Julia” (1977), based on a Lillian Hellman story about the underground in Nazi Germany. 
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Mr. Schell won his Oscar in 1962. Associated Press
In the late 1960s, Mr. Schell became a director. Two of his films — “The Pedestrian” (1973), about a German businessman’s wartime past, and“Marlene” (1984), a documentary about Marlene Dietrich — received Oscar nominations. He also went on to direct opera, including “Der Rosenkavalier”for the Los Angeles Opera in 2005.
 Mr. Schell acknowledged that his career had perhaps been dominated by Nazi-era subjects and characters, and that he had been typecast. He was also an SS captain in “The Odessa File” (1974); a Nazi officer in two 1977 films, “A Bridge Too Far” and “Cross of Iron”; and a Nazi captain, alongside Marlon Brando, in “The Young Lions” (1958), his American film debut.
“There does seem to be a pattern” in his films, Mr. Schell said in a 1975 interview with the film critic Roger Ebert, adding later, “I think there’s an area of subject matter here that has to be faced and seriously dealt with.”
The Third Reich was part of his own experience.
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He was the younger brother of Maria Schell, in the background of the photograph, an international film star who died in 2005.Frank Rumpenhorst/DPA, via Associated Press
 Maximilian Schell was born in Vienna on Dec. 8, 1930, one of four children of Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a Swiss-born playwright and pharmacy owner, and the former Margarethe Noé von Nordberg, an Austrian actress. The family, Roman Catholic, moved to Zurich after 1938. 
 Mr. Schell made his film debut in “Kinder, Mütter und ein General” (“Children, Mother and a General,” 1955) and appeared in several other West German films before leaving in 1958 for the United States, where his sister Maria Schell was already building a Hollywood movie career. Mr. Schell’s acting roles did go well beyond World War II and Germany. He played Lenin in “Stalin,” a 1992 television film; and the title character in “Peter the Great,” a 1986 mini-series. He also appeared in the films “Topkapi” (1964), about a jewel theft in Turkey; “The Freshman,” a 1990 Mafia comedy; and “Deep Impact” (1998), a comet-disaster movie.
He did three plays on Broadway; his debut was “Interlock” (1958), with Rosemary Harris.  
His last film, “Les Brigands,” a multinational production filmed in French, is in postproduction. 
Mr. Schell married Natalya Andreychenko, a Russian actress, in 1985; they divorced in 2005. His survivors include Iva Mihanovic, a German-Croatian soprano, whom he married in August; and a daughter, Nastassja Schell, from his first marriage. Maria Schell died in 2005.
Ultimately, Mr. Schell evolved into an international character actor — distinguished and perhaps a bit world-weary. “The world doesn’t change. The balance of evil will always be the same,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2001, when he was preparing to appear in a stage version of “Judgment at Nuremberg.” “I think all the poets and artists have always written for peace and love, and it hasn’t changed much in the last two or three thousand years. But we hope.”

Friday, October 18, 2013

A00003- Wadih el-Safi, Lebanese Singer and Songwriter

Wadih el-Safi, 91, a Favorite Singer in the Arab World


Khaled Al-Hariri/Reuters
Wadih el-Safi at a concert in his honor in Damascus in 2010.




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Wadih el-Safi, a Lebanese singer and composer whose strong and clear voice propelled him to fame throughout the Arab world, died in Beirut on Friday. He was 91.


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His death was reported by the state-run National News Agency.
Mr. Safi, whose real name was Wadih Francis, helped spread colloquial Lebanese Arabic outside his country, becoming known to many Arabs as “the man with the golden voice.” Over seven decades he worked with well-known Arab composers and singers like Mohammed Abdul-Wahhab, Farid al-Atrash and Fayrouz.
He was much beloved in Lebanon, which has issued postage stamps bearing his likeness. “His passing is a loss to the nation and every Lebanese home,” President Michel Suleiman said in a statement on Saturday. “He embodied the nation through his art.”
The son of a police officer, Mr. Safi was born on Nov. 1, 1921, in the mountain village of Niha. He lived in near poverty in the village until his family moved to Beirut when he was 9. There, he enrolled in a Catholic school and began singing with its choir. At 12 he dropped out and began working and singing to help the family make ends meet.
When he turned 17, his brother Toufic showed him an announcement about a signing competition at state-run Lebanon Radio. He placed first out of 40 contestants and began working at the station. He later traveled to Brazil, where he spent time before returning to Lebanon.
Mr. Safi left Lebanon at the start of the 1975-90 civil war, traveling first to Egypt, then Britain, and finally, France.
In addition to Lebanese, Mr. Safi held Egyptian, Brazilian and French citizenships.
Survivors include his wife, Melfina Francis, and six sons and daughters.
***
Wadih El Safi (Arabic: وديع الصافي‎, born Wadi' Francis) (November 1, 1921 – October 11, 2013) was a Lebanese singer songwriter, and actor. He became a Lebanese cultural icon, and was often called the "Voice of Lebanon". Born in Niha, Lebanon, Wadih El Safi started his artistic journey at the age of seventeen when he took part in a singing contest held by Lebanese Radio and was chosen the winner among fifty other competitors.
Wadih El Safi was a classically trained tenor, having studied at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music. He became nationally known when, at seventeen, he won a vocal competition sponsored by the Lebanese Broadcasting Network. El Safi began composing and performing songs that drew upon his rural upbringing and love of traditional melodies, blended with an urban sound, and creating a new style of modernized Lebanese folk music.
In 1947, El Safi traveled to Brazil, where he remained until 1950.
El Safi toured the world, singing in many languages, including Arabic, Syriac, French, Portuguese and Italian.
In the spring of 1973, El Safi recorded and released a vinyl single with the songs "Grishlah Idi" (lyrics by Ninos Aho) and "Iman Ya Zawna" (lyrics by Amanuel Salamon), first one in Western Syriac and second one in Eastern Syriac. The music arrangements were done by Nuri Iskandar and the songs were produced especially for an Aramean Festival, which occurred in the UNESCO building in Beirut at that time where El Safi participated as a singer.
El Safi has written over 3000 songs. He is well known for his mawawil (an improvised singing style) of 'ataba, mijana, and Abu el Zuluf. He has performed and recorded with many well-known Lebanese musicians, including , Fairouz, and Sabah.
In 1990, Wadih El Safi underwent open heart surgery. In 2012, he broke his leg and had to have surgery to mend the fracture. After the surgery, his health declined quickly. In 2013, he was admitted to hospital, suffering from pulmonary consolidation. On October 11, 2013, he fell ill at his son's home and was rushed to the Bellevue Medical Center where he died. His funeral was held at Saint George Maronite Cathedral, Beirut on October 14, 2013.
The discography of Wadih El Safi as a singer includes the following:
  • Best of Wadi – Vol. 1
  • Best of Wadi – Vol. 2
  • Best of Wadi – Vol. 3
  • Inta Omri
  • The Two Tenors:Wadi Al Safi Aad Sabah Fakhri
  • Wadih El-Safi and José Fernandez
  • Wetdallou Bkheir
  • Rouh ya zaman al madi atfal qana
  • Chante Le Liban
  • Wadi El Safi / Legends Of The 20th Century
  • Mersal El Hawa
  • Mahrajan Al Anwar
  • Youghani Loubnan
  • Ajmal El Aghani
The discography of Wadih El Safi as a composer includes the following:
  • Cantiques de l'Orient
  • Psaumes Pour Le 3ème Millénaire


The discography of Wadih El Safi as a sideman includes the following:
  • Music of Arabia, Hanaan and her ensemble (withWadih El-Safi on oud)

Monday, August 12, 2013

A00002 - Peter M. Flanigan, Investment Banker and Nixon Aide

Peter M. Flanigan, Banker and Nixon Aide, Dies at 90

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Peter M. Flanigan, a Wall Street investment banker who became one of President Richard M. Nixon’s most trusted, influential and well-connected aides on business and economic matters, died on Monday in Salzburg, Austria. He was 90.
Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
Peter M. Flanigan in 1990.

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His family announced the death.
Mr. Flanigan, an executive at the venerable investment house Dillon, Read & Company, was an early and strong supporter of Nixon before being appointed principal presidential assistant for financial matters. His facility in advancing business interests in regulatory agencies led Time magazine to label him “Mr. Fixit.”
His wide-ranging assignments included securities regulation, antitrust matters, and agricultural and environmental policies. Administration officials compared his influence on business issues to Henry A. Kissinger’s on foreign affairs.
“He’s the guy who people in our industry turn to,” a steel executive told The New York Times in 1972. “And we wouldn’t turn to him unless he came through.”
Mr. Nixon applauded his contributions to international economic policy and to the country’s moving to an all-volunteer Army. But some saw him as the face of an administration that had cozied up to business interests. Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, acknowledged Mr. Flanigan’s influence by calling him a “mini-president.” He also called him the “most evil” man in Washington.
Mr. Flanigan was sharply criticized in Congress for his role in the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue an antitrust case against the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation as an illegal conglomerate. He had arranged for a colleague at Dillon, Read to draft a financial analysis that helped persuade the administration to drop antitrust charges.
At a hearing in 1972, Senator Thomas F. Eagleton, a Missouri Democrat, characterized Mr. Flanigan’s interventions on behalf of business as “the Flanigan factor.” The senator accused him of holding back enforcement actions by the Environmental Protection Agency against the Anaconda Corporation and the Armco Steel Corporation.
Mr. Eagleton called Mr. Flanigan “the mastermind, the possessor of the scuttling feet that are heard faintly, retreating into the distance in the wake of a White House ordered cave-in to some giant corporation.”
The White House press secretary, Ronald L. Ziegler, responded that the president wholly supported Mr. Flanigan. He demanded “concrete evidence that Mr. Flanigan has gained personally in any way.” Senator Norris Cotton, a New Hampshire Republican, called Mr. Eagleton’s charges “flimsy.”
Mr. Flanigan was unruffled. “I’ve gotten, as my wife says, a little leathery,” he told The Washington Post. “It’s an election year, and I note who’s making these charges.”
He left the administration in June 1974, just weeks before the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign. Mr. Flanigan himself was not linked to the scandal. President Gerald R. Ford, Nixon’s successor, nominated him to be ambassador to Spain, but the Senate did not vote on his appointment before a scheduled recess. Some senators said that Mr. Flanigan had arranged for prestigious ambassadorships to go to big Nixon contributors. Mr. Flanigan asked that his nomination not be resubmitted.
Peter Magnus Flanigan was born on June 21, 1923, in Manhattan and raised there. His father, Horace Flanigan, who was known as Hap, was chairman of the Manufacturers Trust Company, later Manufacturers Hanover. His mother, the former Aimee Magnus, was a granddaughter of Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch.
Mr. Flanigan was a Navy carrier pilot in World War II, then graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. He joined Dillon as a statistical analyst. He took a break in 1949-50 to work in London for the Marshall Plan, the initiative to rebuild war-ravaged Europe, then returned to Dillon. He became a vice president in 1954.
Mr. Flanigan became active in New York Republican politics in the mid-1950s and was named chairman of New Yorkers for Nixon in 1959 as Nixon, then vice president, was seeking the 1960 presidential nomination. Mr. Flanigan became national director of Nixon volunteers in 1960.
Nixon wrote in his memoirs in 1978 that Mr. Flanigan was one of a small group of Republicans who had raised money for him to campaign for Republican candidates in the 1966 midterm elections as an early step toward Nixon’s seeking the 1968 nomination.
In 1968, he was Nixon’s deputy campaign manager. After Nixon’s victory, Mr. Flanigan was a talent scout for the transition team. He served as a presidential assistant until 1972, when he was named director of the Council of International Economic Policy.
Mr. Flanigan’s first wife, the former Brigid Snow, died in 2006.
Mr. Flanigan is survived by his second wife, Dorothea von Oswald, whom he married five years ago and with whom he lived in Wildenhag, Austria, and Purchase, N.Y. He is also survived by his daughters Sister Louise Marie, Brigid and Megan; his sons Tim and Bob; and 16 grandchildren.
After his White House service, Mr. Flanigan returned to Dillon, where he was managing director until 1992. The passion of his latter years was education, notably starting a program to help inner-city Roman Catholic schools. He was chairman of the Alliance for School Choice. His great love was St. Ann’s Roman Catholic School in East Harlem, to which he gave more than $250,000.
His visits there were appreciated. “I want to make something of myself,” Lawrence King, a seventh grader, told The Times in 1992. “It’s important to have someone to look up to.”

Thursday, July 25, 2013

A00001- Jack Curran, Legendary Archbishop Molloy Basketball Coach

Jack Curran, a Mentor in Two Sports, Dies at 82


Robert Caplin for The New York Times
Curran in 2008. He coached basketball and baseball over 55 years at Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens.


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Jack Curran, who coached generations of baseball and basketball players for 55 years at Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens, winning more than 2,600 games, certainly among the most victories that any scholastic coach anywhere has compiled, died late Wednesday or early Thursday at his home in Rye, N.Y. He was 82.

Vic DeLucia/The New York Times
Curran with Kenny Anderson in 1986. Anderson was among a handful of Curran’s players who went on to play in the N.B.A.
His death was confirmed by Richard Karsten, president of Molloy. Curran had lung and kidney problems, and had broken a kneecap in a fall in February.
“But we were expecting him back in a few weeks, in time to coach the baseball season,” Karsten said.
In 1958, Curran was living in West Springfield, Mass., and working as a building supplies salesman when one morning, over coffee in a diner, he read in a newspaper that St. John’s University, his alma mater, had hired Lou Carnesecca as an assistant basketball coach. Carnesecca had been the baseball and basketball coach at Molloy; Curran applied for the newly vacant jobs, was hired and held onto the positions for 55 years.
Molloy was a powerhouse under his leadership. His teams won 22 Catholic school New York City championships, 5 in basketball and 17 in baseball. Four times — in 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1987 — Molloy won both in the same year.
Curran coached Brian Winters, Kenny Smith, Kenny Anderson and Kevin Joyce, all of whom played in the N.B.A. The current Mets outfielder Mike Baxter played baseball at Molloy for Curran.
Over all, Curran’s record was 972-437 as a basketball coach and 1,708-523 as a baseball coach, the school said.
“He won everything except World War III,” Carnesecca, who spent 24 seasons as the head coach at St. John’s, said about Curran in a 2008 interview in The New York Times. “No one in the country has Jack’s record in both sports, no one.”
Curran, who never married, leaves no immediate survivors. His place of birth could not be confirmed. The school said he was born on Sept. 6, 1930, the son of a New York City police officer, Thomas Curran, and his wife, Helen, who worked for a time in the police commissioner’s office. They lived in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, the school said, but moved to the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, where Jack grew up.
He graduated from All Hallows High School in the Bronx and went on to St. John’s, where he studied English and pitched for the baseball team. For three years he played minor league baseball, pitching for teams in the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies organizations.
As a coach, Curran was known for emphasizing fundamentals, for maintaining discipline and for setting the performance bar at an extraordinarily high level for both his players and the officials — he could be tough on the referees and the umpires.
“Yes, but he was rarely profane or abusive,” said Tom Konchalski, a friend and a widely acknowledged expert on scholastic basketball in New York City. “In 55 years he only had four or five technicals. But yeah, all the top coaches, you try to win the game, so you ride the refs.”
In baseball, Curran was true to his playing roots, stressing pitching, defense and smart play. In basketball, he was more adaptive to the skills of his players.
“When he had his best teams, in the late ’60s, early ’70s, they were running, pressing teams,” Konchalski said. “He liked to pressure, push the ball up the floor. Later on he went to more set plays, and played more zone, because he didn’t think he had the players.”
He was also known for his strong Roman Catholic faith and for generous deeds away from the playing field. In 1969, he turned down an opportunity to take the basketball head coaching job at Boston College because his mother was dying and he was caring for her.
“He was the most selfless man I knew,” the Mets’ Baxter, who played for Curran from 2000 to 2002, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “He was so faithful and he just cared so much about the kids on his team, both on and off the court and the field. It really separated him; whether you were playing for him as a junior or senior or whether you were in college or looking for jobs, he would make sure to help you anyway he could. That never stopped to the last day.”