Kathleen Ferrier (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English contralto who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist. During the Second World War she performed regularly with the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts. In 1946 she made her stage debut as Lucretia in the world premiere of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, and a year later she appeared as Orfeo in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. As a recitalist, Ferrier's repertoire included works by Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar. Forming working relationships with the conductors John Barbirolli and Bruno Walter and the accompanist Gerald Moore, she became known internationally through her three tours of the United States and her many visits to continental Europe. She continued to perform and record after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1951. Among her many memorials, the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship Fund makes annual awards to aspiring young singers.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Ferrier

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1885:

The first meeting of the Colonial Defence Committee, a standing committee of the British Colonial Office, was held to discuss the defence of Barbados. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Defence_Committee

1918:

The short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was established on territory formerly part of the Russian Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcaucasian_Democratic_Federative_Republic

1951:

Korean War: The Chinese People's Volunteer Army attacked positions occupied mainly by Australian and Canadian forces, starting the Battle of Kapyong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kapyong

2016:

The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, opened for signature and was signed by 175 parties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

volcanic winter: (climatology) A reduction in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large, particularly explosive volcanic eruption. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/volcanic_winter

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them in other times, and of other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. There are some misled by a false sense of human history, who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that. By our minds we are committed, committed to a world united, before the common peril, in law and in humanity.   --Robert Oppenheimer https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer