On This Day in History November 6th: Gustav Adolf Day is celebrated in Sweden each year on 6 November. On this day only a special pastry, with a chocolate medallion of the king, is sold. The day is also an official flag day in the Swedish calendar. In Finland, the day is celebrated as svenska dagen or ruotsalaisuuden päivä, “swedishness day,” and is a customary flag day. In both countries, November 6 is the name day for Gustav Adolf (9 December 1594–6 November 1632 O.S.), one of the few exceptional name days in the year. 1528 On this day, the Spanish conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked on a low sandy island off the coast of Texas. Starving, dehydrated, and desperate, he is the first European to set foot on the soil of the future Lone Star state. 1538 Nicolaus Hausmann (b. ca. 1479), close friend of Martin Luther and reformer of Zwickau and Anhalt, died. 1789 Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) appointed Father John Carroll (1735–1815) as the first Catholic bishop in the United States. 1801 Christian Gregor, hymnist, died (b. 1 January 1723, Dirsdorf, Silesia). He became a teacher in Herrnhut in 1742 and later a director of music in the Moravian Brethren’s congregation at Herrnhag (1748) and at Zeist (1749). In 1753 he returned to Herrnhut as treasurer of the Brethren’s Board of Direction. He was ordained diaconus in 1756, presbyter in 1767 and bishop of the Brethren’s Church in 1789. [The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, comp. W. G. Polack (Saint Louis: CPH, 1942): 513] 1850 Charles Meineke (b. 1782), German-born American church organist who wrote the tune GLORIA PATRI, died. He emigrated from Germany to England in 1810, then to America in 1822. For eight years he was organist at Saint Paul Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Meineke published several volumes of hymns during his life. 1854 John Philip Sousa did not invent the musical genre he came to personify, but even if no other composer had ever written a single piece in the same style, the standard repertoire of the American marching band would be little changed. The instantly recognizable sound of Sousas timeless pieces—The Washington Post (1889), The Liberty Bell (1893), and Stars And Stripes Forever (1896)—is permanently etched in many Americans memory banks. One of the most popular, prolific and important American composers of all time, John Philip Sousa—the March King—was born in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1854. 1860 Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois. 1893 Peter I. Tchaikovsky (b. 7 May 1840), Russian composer, died. 1935 Billy Sunday (b. 19 November 1862), American Presbyterian revivalist, died. 1977 The Barnes Lake Dam burst in Toccoa Falls, Georgia, releasing a flood of water that destroyed the campus of Toccoa Falls College. Thirty-eight students and instructors were killed in the tragedy.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 12:37:02 +0000
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