Happy Birthday Mozart!

No, the other one.

Maria Anna Mozart was the elder sister of the better known Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In her childhood she was tutored by her father as a musician, much the same way that Wolfgang was. In fact, in her youth she was a proficient harpsichordist and on tours with her brother she sometimes received top billing. 

But why then do we never hear of Maria as a musician? I hear you asking. Well, due to the social conventions of the time, when girls reached a marriageable age they were to focus on the marrying thing, rather than showcase their incredible talent and become famous.

There is some evidence (in letters from her brother) that she was a composer (although no manuscripts have survived) and that she maintained a close relationship with her brother throughout their adults lives (although some historians beg to differ). What historians don't differ on is that Wolfgang and Maria where extremely close as children, even creating their own language and imagining a kingdom which they ruled together (it's a sibling thing).

Maria ended up marrying a fellow by the name of Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg (say that three times fast, I dare you), who already had something like five kids from previous marriages. Maria bore him three of her own, although one of them (the eldest, a kid named Leopold after her father) was actually raised by her father. We have no idea why Leopold Jr was raised by Leopold Sr, some theories are to do with the child's health, Maria's submissiveness to her father and that it was possible that Maria was just too busy caring for so many other children that she couldn't look after a new born herself. Whatever the reason, Leopold Jr was raised by Grandad until Grandad died.

So sing a little ditty and wish a very happy birthday to the slightly lesser known of the Mozarts.

And the Birthday of the Day goes to:

Today’s Birthday of the day (chosen by picking the first name I recognized) goes to this lovely lady.

Don’t know who she is?

Shame on you and your cat.

It’s Amelia Earhart, you know, the lady pilot what went missing that time?

Amelia was a pretty accomplished person. She started flying early  and ended up being the first person of the female persuasion to fly solo across the Atlantic and the first to successfully fly from Honolulu to Oakland (apparently this flight went so well she listened to the opera once she was in range of the radio).

She made 2 attempts at flying around the world; the first did not go well. The plane decided that It wanted to stay home and made this known my breaking down.

Attempt number 2  went somewhat better. Earhart and her managed to get through 35000km of their 46000km journey. The last 11000km was all going to be over the pacific (which as we know from every movie we have ever watched, does not bode well).

Earhart and Co-pilot Fred Noonan departed from Lae on July 2 1937 heading for a tiny weensy little Island known as Howland. They never got there.

Exactly what happed we will never know, but it is thought that problems with radio navigation were the cause of everything going wrong.

One hour after Earhart’s last message the search for the missing plane and pilots began. The official search lasted for 17 days and in that time no sign of the plane or its occupants was seen.

There are so many theories floating around as to what happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. One is the known as the Crash and Sink theory, the name pretty much speaks for itself. The plane ran out of fuel, crashed and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where it still lies yet unfound.

Another is that they somehow managed to land on Gardner Island. There is… or was some physical evidence to support this theory, the most notable of which is a skeleton found in 1940, possibly belonging to a tallish woman of European decent. The bones were lost and haven’t been seen since. Other evidence found on the Island includes pieces of aluminium which could conceivably come from the type of plane Earhart was flying at the time, a piece of plexiglass which also fits the window of the type of plane and a shoe dating from the 30s, similar to the style that Amelia Earhart wore. In 2007 more bone fragments were found, but testing in 2010 was inconclusive as to whether or not they were human.

The other theories are somewhat more romantic. They were spies, thy wr captured and executed in Saipan, she turned back mid-light and ended up in New Britain, the somehow survived and Earhart ended up in New Jersey living under an assumed name. The lady whose name the theorists chose sued them by the way and was clearly not Amelia Earhart.

The list goes on.

Happy 115^th Birthday Amelia, wherever you may be.