Voter registration drive, led by Martin Luther King Jr., started in Selma, Alabama.
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Paul Douglas Freeman has conducted outstanding classical orchestras in many countries during his long career. One of the few African American conductors in the field of classical music, he is best known for his founding of the Chicago Sinfonietta, a classical orchestra widely recognized during the past 25 years for both its ethnic and racial diversity and its attempt to broaden the appeal of classical music to “non-traditional” audiences.
Born January 2, 1936, in Richmond, Virginia, to a music-loving family of modest means, Freeman and his 11 siblings enjoyed symphony and opera radio broadcasts. Even though his father ran a small produce store, he and most of his siblings were given instruments early in their childhoods to encourage the study of classical music. Paul began piano at five, then moved on to the clarinet and cello. When his high school band conductor became ill, he directed the performance at age 17, obtaining his first experience with conducting.
Freeman entered the Eastman School of Music on a scholarship in 1952. There he met his wife Cornelia, a piano and organ major. His BA degree in 1956 was followed a year later by an MA degree. He then received a Fulbright Fellowship to study operatic and orchestral conducting at the Höchschule für Music in Berlin, Germany. Freeman returned to Eastman for a doctorate in music in 1963.
The conducting future in the United States looked uncertain in 1963: he was both black and an American where most major orchestras throughout the nation were led by European-born conductors. Gradually his career and reputation flourished. Eventually he was associated with over a hundred orchestras in 28 countries in North America, Europe, and Latin America.
By 1987 Freeman had returned to the United States and founded Chicago Sinfonietta. He also served as its first director and conductor.
When he retired 24 years later in 2011.
1788 Georgia 'The Peach State' is the 4th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1886 E. A. McIlhenny, the son of Tabasco sauce inventor Edmund McIlhenny, shot a 19 foot 2 inch alligator in Louisiana. It is said to be the largest ever recorded.
1900 U.S. Secretary of State John Hay announced the Open Door Policy to encourage trade with China.
1906 'Gulden's Mustard' trademark was registered.
1923 Secretary of the U.S. Dept of Interior, Albert Fall, resigns due to public outrage over the Teapot Dome scandal.
1923 Harry G. Tatosian of Bridgeport, Connecticut received U.S. patent No. 1,440,851 for an Ice-Cream-Cone-Rolling Machine (possibly the first).
1929 The U.S. and Canada sign a treaty to preserve Niagara Falls.
1974 President Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Consevation Act into law, requiring states to limit speed limits to 55mph. (Repealed on Nov 28, 1995).
1975 Working with Canadian zoologist Freud Urquhart, amateur naturalist Kenneth C. Brugger discovered the winter home of the Monarch butterfly in the mountains of central Mexico. The refuge he found was only about 200 square meters and contained about 20 million butterflies.
1983 'Maneater' by Daryl Hall & John Oates is #1 on the charts.
1990 Campbell's Soup introduces Cream of Broccoli soup. It becomes their most successful new soup in 55 years.
2005 H. David Dalquist, the creator of the aluminum Bundt Pan in 1950, died in Minnesota at the age of 86 (born May 25, 1918).
2005 Canada confirms a second case of mad cow disease, just days after the US planned to reopen its border to Canadian beef.
2008 Oil prices hit $100 for the first time.
2012 For the first time in more than 100 years, Americans are eating more chicken than beef. Chicken consumption per capita is 60 lbs while beef consumption is under 60 lbs.
2013 Mauritania, in western North Africa, has banned the use of plastic bags to protect the environment and the lives of land and sea animals.
2020 Post-cookout remnants of rhizomes that are at least 170,000 years old have been found in northeast South Africa, suggesting that humans may have been eating starchy carbs much earlier than previously believed.