1862 Claude Debussy – French composer (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, La Mer, Clair de Lune)

I think every beginning piano player is assigned learning to play Clair de Lune.







1934 Norman Schwarzkopf - US Army General who came into the public eye during Desert Storm, and author (It Doesn't Take a Hero)

I wish he had run for president after Reagan. The world might have been a lot better off.







1485 King Richard III – He was defeated and killed in the last major battle of the War of the Roses, at the Battle of Bosworth Field by Henry Tudor, the Earl of Richmond. After the battle, the royal crown, which Richard had worn into the fray, was picked out of a bush and placed on Henry's head. His crowning as King Henry VII inaugurated the rule of the house of Tudor over England, a dynasty that would last until Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603. In the 1450s, English failures in the Hundred Years War with France, coupled with periodic fits of insanity suffered by King Henry VI, led to a power struggle between the houses of York, whose badge was a red rose, and Lancaster, later associated with a white rose, hence the War of the Roses. In 1486, King Henry VII's marriage to Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV, united the houses of Lancaster and York and formally ended the bloody War of the Roses

As Joyce recently said, "enquiring minds want to know" so I looked up why it was called The War of the Roses.

Waged between 1455 and 1485, the Wars of the Roses earned its flowery name because the white rose was the badge of the Yorks, and the red rose was the badge of the Lancastrians. After 30 years of political manipulation, horrific carnage and brief periods of peace, the wars ended and a new royal dynasty emerged.