The Merely Mentioneds: O, P, Q

  


O

 

 

William of Ockham (born sometime in 1287, though Ockham back then was spelled Occam – it’s in Surrey; died April 10 1347 in Munich: influencing John Wycliffe on May 4 - try here 

 

John Owtred, or possibly Uhtred or Utred (1315?–1396): opposing John Wycliffe on May 4 - but my version conflicts with the one here


Katharine (Kitty) O'Shea
 (born January 30 1846, in Braintree, which is in Essex; died February 5 1921, in Littlehampton, which is in Sussex): married Charles Stuart Parnell (which is in Eireland) on June 25


Amos Klausner
 (Oz was an adopted name, which is not the same thing as a Pseudonym; read “A Tale of Love and Darkness” to understand the difference); born May 4 1939; died December 28, 2018:  touching the water and the wind on Aug 3

 

 

P



Gregory Pardlo
: a cipher and a ledger entry on June 4

 

Charles Parker Jr (nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird"); born August 29 1920; died March 12, 1955): cited by Joni on Jan 5


Harry Smith Parkes
 (born February 24 1828; died March 22 1885): providing a lame excuse for a war crime on Jan 11; his not-uninteresting life-story is told here


James Parkinson 
(born April 11 1755; died December 21 1824), “who described the shaking palsy known in Latin as paralysis agitans” on Jan 17 - bio and book here




Michael Parkinson (born March 28 1935; died August 16 2023), in whose company Muhammad Ali had one of both of their greatest triumphs: merely sparring on Jan 17

 


Yevgeny Borisovich Pasternak
: mourning his father on Oct 23; his book about him can be found here


Fu-Pao, the mother of the Chinese Emperor Shuan-Yuanhere and here - witnessing Aurora Borealis as long ago as 2600 BCE; on Dec 11


David Samuel (Sam) Peckinpah 
(born 21 February 21 1925; died December 28 1984): shooting Billy the Kid on Nov 23; here and on Thespian World


Mervyn Laurence Peake 
(born July 9 1911; lost in Castle Gormenghast on November 17 1968): set to music by Richard Rodney Bennett on June 18, and a passing comparison on Aug 19 - his website here


Pádraig Anraí Mac Piarais (Patrick Henry Pearse)
 (born November 10 1879 ; executed at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3 1916): fighting to liberate his homeland on April 24 and the Eirish page


Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz de la Peña
 (born August 20 1807; died November 18 1876): try here: yet one more of the Durand-Ruel discoveries on Feb 5; bio and paintings here


John Percival 
(born September 27 1834; died December 3 1918) educational role-modelling on May 19 and Dec 24: pdf here


Henry Percy
, 1st Earl of Northumberland, 1341-1408: here, and defending John Wycliffe on May 4; whereas Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland (circa 1714-1786) can be found here, and with his son James Smithson on Aug 10 - the genealogy of the Percy clan is on the page; Smithson is down as Macie; I wonder if dad knew he changed his surname


Dr Ronnie Perelis
, head of Yeshiva Universityquoted re Carvajal on Dec 8 - click here)


Pericles
 “The Olympian” (495-429 BCE): Jan 18 – the name (which should be written Peri-Kles) means “surrounded by glory”, so clearly it was a sobriquet, or perhaps a title: what then was his real name? No one seems to know.


Alexei Maximovich Peshkov Gorky
: among the memoirs of Victor Serge on Aug 20 bio here


Ludwig Pfeuffer
, the poet Yehuda Amichai (born May 3 1924; died  September 22 2000): I have a poem in his honour in “Welcome To My World”, purchasable here; Aug 3 and Pseudonyms as far as the blog is concerned


Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia
 (born January 22 1879; died November 30 1953): brought Duchamps "Nude Descending a Staircase" to New York for the Armory Show of Contemporary Art in 1913 - click here: what happened next can be found on April 11


Marie-Georges (Colonel ) Picquart
 (born September 6 1854; died January 19 1914): the one decent Frenchman at the time of the Dreyfus affair, and destroyed for being so; Prime Minister Jean Jaurès, Minister of War General André, a junior named Captain Targe, and the head of the second enquiry Ludovic Trarieux, were the four who salvaged both Picquart and Dreyfus’ reputations; the other mentioneds on July 12 are Major Esterhazy and Louis Grégori, and you can tell by the colour I have used for their names that I do not have anything positive to say about either of them.


Jacobus François Pienaar
: playing mixed-race rugby on June 24


Anne Wroe
's biography of Pontius Pilate can be found on May 11 (her full-time job here, and I wonder, if all her weekly and other pieces were to be published in a single book – book? encyclopedia practically! - would it require even more volumes than this Book of Days.)


Denis Piramus
, or possibly Pyramus (circa 1150-circa 1200): with Dame Marie as his non-Thisbe on Jan 13 . Bio and works here.


Rustichello da Pisa
 (born circa 1254; probably died on January 8 1324): sharing a prison cell with Marco Polo and writing down his memories for him on Jan 9 and Sept 28: text is here (do chellos get rusti? I thought they were made of wood, not metal)


Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro
 (1830-1903): dad was Jewish, mum Creole: bio here: yet one more for Durand-Ruel on Feb 5


Max Plaček
: born 1902; a fellow-prisoner at Terezin on April 1; murdered in Sachsenhausen in 1944 – his Yad Vashem biography here; his Bar Mitzvah gift for Jiri Bader here


Alan Frederick Plater
 (born April 15 1935; died June 25 2010): the golden age of TV playwrights on Dec 3 - bio here


Hugh Plat 
(sometimes spelled Platt) (1552–1608): discovered coke by heating coal on March 29 - the 1593 Broadside here


William of Poitiers
: husband of Béatritz de Diá on Jan 13


James Knox Polk
 (born November 2 1795; died June 15 1849): triggering the Gold Rush of ’49 on Dec 5 -  bio here


George Pollard Jr
 (born July 18 1791; died January 7 1870): the source of Melville’s Captain Ahab on Nov 20, though in Pollard’s case it wasn’t just one but both of his ships, the “Two Brothers” as well as the “Essex”, that sank - here and here


Harry Pollitt
 (born November 22 1890; died June 27 1960): merely mentioned on June 28;  General Secretary, later President, of the Communist Party of Great Britain over several decades


Caroline Ponsonby (Lady Caroline Lamb)
 (born November 13 1785; died January 25 1828): an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and novelist, best known for her Gothic novel "Glenarvon", which is loosely based on her 1812 affair with Lord Byron, the man she famnously described as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". Married to William Lamb, Lord Melbourne.


Elijah Robert Poole (Elijah Muhammad)
 (born October 7 1897; died February 25 1975): suspended Malcolm X on Dec 4 – bio here


Thomas Pope 
(the First Folio spells him as Poope, but we shall regard that as an unfortunate error and not pontificate about it any further): he was on the Denmark tour on Sept 2, which included performing at Elsinore, and is known to have died in 1603; bio here but much better here


Richard H Popkin
: translating Pierre Bayle on Nov 18; more of his books listed here


Oleg Konstantinovich Popov (born July 31 1930; died November 2 2016): not to be confused with the heavyweight wrestlerclowning, as he always did, on Dec 18 bio here


Giovanni Battista 
(Giambattista for short) Della Porta (born November 1 1535; died February 4 1615): describes a machine that uses steam pressure on March 29


Luigi da Porto
 (born August 10 1485; died May 10 1529): adapting Salernitano’s “Mariotto and Ganozza” as “Giulietta e Romeo” on Jan 30 – more here


Christopher George Dennis Potter
 (born May 17 1935; died of the effects of the most appalling psoriasis, augmented by cancer, on June 7 1994): the absolute peak of the golden age of TV playwrights on Dec 3 - bio here


Eugène Edine Pottier 
(born October 4, 1816; died in poverty on November 6 1887; buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery, where all the executed Communards that he managed to outlive are buried)the original-original of the “Internationale” on May 10 – and for a great website! click here


Nicolas Poussin
: see my note on Claude Lorrain, above. For Poussin here – he can be found on April 15


Juan de Prado 
(born circa 1563; died 24 May 1631): “publicly disseminating heterodox ideas and inciting others to start a riot against the rabbis” on Feb 21; “a Spanish Roman Catholic priest” according to Wikipedia! Better off going here for his bio


Adélaïde de Praël 
(1758-1794): married the banker Jean-François Perregaux in 1779, and thus became “Madame Perregaux”; she can be found, painted by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, on April 16; and her bio likewise at the Wallace Collection, but online, here


Mike Prashker
: a link to his book herethis to Merchavim; also thison the blog on June 3


Denis Charles Pratt
, or Quentin Crisp when he changed his name (born December 25 1908; died November 21 1999): portrayed by John Hurt on Jan 22


Elvis Aaron Presley
 (born January 8 1935; died August 16, 1977):  looking remarkably like Herschel Grynspan on March 19


André George Previn
 (born April 6 1929 in Berlin; died: February 28 2019): conducting "A Child Of Our Time" on March 19  


Claudius Ptolemy
: the other Ptolemy on Oct 1need to apply Bachelard to him! start here]


William Pulteney
 (Earl of Bath) (born March 22 1694; died July 7 1764): amongst the salonniers chez Elizabeth Montagu on Oct 2;  Secretary at War between 1714 and 1717, Prime Minister in 1746. The Pulteney estate can be found in Prashker’s London – it was that rather splendid patch of land between St James’ Street and the Green Park, before Buckingham Palace came along to spoil its urban rurality


Libby Purves
: hosting the catoonists at Isaac Newton’s house on Sept 27



Q

 

 

Sa'ad al-Daulah al-Qawasi: somewhat implausible but historically verifiable on March 5


Maureen Quilligan
: allegorising female authority on Jan 13


Luis Quintanilla
 (born June 21 1893; died October 16 1978): his portrait of Dos Passos is on Jan 14 (and a green traffic-light as well): more on his works here


Publius Sulpicius Quirinius (51BCE-21CE though probably we should give the Julian dates): governor of Syria on April 29 - some interesting archaeology here

 

 

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