The Merely Mentioneds: O, P, Q

 

O


Milton Obote: the first head of state when Uganda gained independence from Britain on October 9 1962 (overthrown by Idi Amin on the GER page) [Africa]

 

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien (Dusty Springfield to you and me): singing of the preacherman's son on Sept 5

 

Philip David Ochs: just a journalist on March 15 [musical maestros and responses to bullying]

 

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; bio here [reverend writers]

 

Isabel de Olvera, a free mulatto, accompanied the Juan Guerra de Resa Expedition of 1598 which began the colonisation of what is now New Mexico [pre-Columban Americas]

 

Sylvanus Olympio: the first head of state when Togo gained independence from France on April 27 1960 [Africa]

 

John Owtred, or possibly Uhtred or Utred (1315?–1396): opposing John Wycliffe on May 4 [reverend writers]

 

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 Stewart Parnell on June 25 [Éireland]

 

Peter Seamus O'Toole: playing Lawrence of Arabia on June 24 and July 6 (needs to be added to the world as stage) 



P


Gregory Pardlo: a cipher and a ledger entry on June 4 [The Poets]

 

John Parker: Captain of the militia that led the American Revolution on April 18


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 [China page and responses to bullying]

 

James Parkinson (born April 11 1755; died December 21 1824): described the shaking palsy known in Latin as paralysis agitans on Jan 17; bio and book here [E,M&C2]


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

 

A person holding his fists up to another person

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Wolfgang Pascheles: publishing Jewish folk-tales on March 11 [serious scribes]

 

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

 

Fu-Pao, the mother of the Chinese Emperor Shuan-Yuan: saw strong lightning moving around the star Su on Dec 11; here and here [China page]

 

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


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; a passing comparison on Aug 19; his website here [serious scribes]

 

Alphonse Pellion: painting the voyage of the Uranie on May 7

 

Pádraig Anraí Mac Piarais on his birth certificate; Patrick Henry Pearse on his warrant (born November 10 1879; executed at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3 1916): fighting to liberate his homeland on April 24 [Éireland and among The Poets]

 

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

 

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

 

Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, 1341-1408: here, and defending John Wycliffe on May 4; whereas Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, c. 1714-1786 (here) can be found with his son James Smithson on Aug 10

 

Aristides Maria Pereira: first head of state when Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal on July 5 1975 [Africa]

 

Ronnie Perelis, head of Yeshiva University: quoted re Carvajal on Dec 8 - click here [serious scribes]

 

Pericles, “The Olympian” (495-429 BCE): merely mentioned on Jan 18; the name in Greek is Περικλς, which should be pronounced Peri-Kles, and  means “surrounded by glory”, so clearly it was a sobriquet, or perhaps a title: so what was his real name? No one seems to know, except that he was a member of one of the wealthiest and most aristocratic of Greek families, the Alkmaeonidai, which clan also produced, inter alia (sorry, that's Latin; μεταξύ άλλων metaxý állon in Greek) Cleisthenes, the founder of Athenian democracy; the full family tree here

 

Antonin Périvier: fathered a child with Marguerite Durand on Dec 9


Stewart Henry Perowne: married for convenience to Freya Stark on Jan 31; and worth following up, as an archaeologist especially: start here

 

Charles Perrault: his 1697 “Contes de ma mère l'oye” is on March 15 [lighter writers]

 

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Maxim Gorky): among the memoirs of Victor Serge on Aug 20; bio here [serious scribes]

 

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; standard-modelling on Aug 3, and among the Pseudonyms as well as The Poets

 

Gioacchino Giuseppe Maria Ubaldo Nicolò Piazzi, remembered as Giuseppe Piazzi, observed the dwarf planet Ceres orbiting between Mars and Jupiter on Jan 1 [scientific achievements and E,M&C2]

 

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 [illustrious illustrators]

 

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 [responses to bullying]

 

Jacobus François Pienaar: playing rainbow-coloured rugby on June 24 [responses to bullying]

 

Lynden Pindling: the first head of state when The Bahamas gained independence from France on July 10 1973 [pre-Columban Americas]

 

Denis Piramus, or possibly Pyramus (circa 1150-circa 1200): with Dame Marie as his non-Thisbe on Jan 13; bio and works here [reverend writers]

 

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; full text here [serious scribes]

 

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

 

John Pitcairn: British Major who lost the American Revolution on April 18

 

Max Plaček: 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 [illustrious illustrators]

 

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

 

Hugh Plat (sometimes spelled Platt): discovered coke by heating coal on March 29; the 1593 Broadside here [scientific achievements and E,M&C2]

 

John Playford: dancing to oranges and lemons on March 15 [serious scribes]

 

Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder): died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Aug 24 [E,M&C2]; Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger) also gets a mention on Aug 24

 

Joseph Mary Plunkett in English, Seosamh Máire Pluincéid in Éirish (born November 21 1887; executed May 4 1916): a poet and journalist, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising on April 24, he was one of the seven signatories to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic [Éireland and the page of The Poets]

 

William of Poitiers: husband of Béatritz de Diá on Jan 13 [Trobairitz and historians]

 

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 [serious scribes]

 

Harold (Harry) Pollitt (born: November 22, 1890, in Droylsden, Lancashire, England; died June 27 1960): merely mentioned on June 28; General Secretary, later President, of the Communist Party of Great Britain over several decades [political ideologues and in my novel "A Journey In Time"]

 

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 famously described as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"; alluded to on Jan 22; married to William Lamb, Lord Melbourne [lighter writers]

 

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

 

Thomas Pope (the First Folio spells him as Poope, but we shall wipe that away 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 [the world as stage]

 

Richard H Popkin: translating Pierre Bayle on Nov 18 [philosophers]

 

Oleg Konstantinovich Popov (born July 31 1930; died November 2 2016): clowning as he always did, on Dec 18. His bio here. Not to be confused with the heavyweight wrestler of the same name, who can be found here [the world as stage]

 

Martin de Porres: began his missionary and medical work among the poor in Lima, Peru in 1591; officially named patron saint of social justice in Peru by Pope Pius XII on January 10 1945, thus becoming the Americas' first canonised black clergy [pre-Columban Americas]

 

Luigi da Porto (born August 10 1485; died May 10 1529): turned “Mariotto and Ganozza” into “Giulietta e Romeo” on Jan 30; more on him here [the world as stage]

 

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 [scientific achievements and E,M&C2]

 

Eugénie Potonié-Pierre: co-founded the first women's socialist organization with Léonie Rouzade on Oct 25 (here)

 

Alan Frederick Plater: how TV drama should be written on Dec 3

 

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; tribute from "Tribune" here [the world as stage]

 

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 [musical maestros]

 

Nicolas Poussin: the last of the pre-Modernists on April 15; but see my note on Claude Lorrain; more on Poussin here [illustrious illustrators]


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 to go here and read his actual bio [philosophers]

 

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, online, here [illustrious illustrators]

 

Mike Prashker: a link to his book here; this to Merchavim; also this; on 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; his archives here [the world as stage]

 

Samuel Prescott: better late than never on April 18

 

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

 

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

 

George Cadle Price: the first head of state when Belize became independent from Britain on September 21 1981  [pre-Columban Americas]

Claudius Ptolemy: the “other Ptolemy on Oct 1; the modern world need to apply Bachelard to him! start here [E,M&C2]

 

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

 

Edward Marlborough Purcell - FitzGerald after his dad changed the family name to his wife’s while Edward was still a boy (born March 31 1809; died June 14 1883): translated the “Rubáiyát” of Omar Khayyám on March 6, though he invented the title; “Rubáiyát” in Arabic simply mean “quatrains” [The Poets]

 

Libby Purves: hosting the cartoonists at Isaac Newton’s house on Sept 27 [illustrious illustrators]



Q

 

Maureen Quilligan: allegorising female authority on Jan 13 [Trobairitz]

 

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 [illustrious illustrators]

 

Publius Sulpicius Quirinius (born 51 BCE; died 21CE, though probably we should give the Julian dates: 703 ab urbe condita for his birthday; don’t forget that zero hadn’t been invented yet when you add 72 for his deathdate): governor of Syria on April 29; some interesting archaeology here

 

 

 

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