Travel is people. You may go abroad to see the famous sites, but
what you remember best are the people you meet. Among them, like
unexpected treasure, are a few memorable contacts that will make
your travels unique, special, and delightful. "People" is devoted to some
of those you may come in contact with during your Home at First travels.

DECEMBER, 2005

Ever feel bad for kids whose birthdays fall near Christmas.
You know, they always get shorted on presents or party time.
Well, not all of them grew up to be maladjusted, misanthropic, antisocial losers.
Here’s proof:

of Notables from Home at First destinations: England,
Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, & Norway

December 1, 1844 – Alexandra, Princess of Denmark, Princess of Wales (for almost 40 years!), and Queen Consort of Great Britain & Ireland as wife of Britain’s King Edward VII (1901-1910), and, finally, Queen Mother to King George V. Born in a house next to the Danish Royal Family’s Amalienborg Palace a few blocks from Home At First’s Copenhagen lodgings. Her sister Dagmar became Tsarina of Russia, wife of Tsar Alexander III and mother of Tsar Nicholas II. Alexandra and Dagmar’s father, King Christian IX of Denmark, was called the "Father-in-Law of Europe".

December 2, 1897 – Rewi Alley, New Zealander in communist China. Born in Springfield, not far from Home At First’s lodgings in Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand. A decorated, twice wounded veteran of World War I, Alley failed at farming in New Zealand and emigrated to China in 1927. He worked in various capacities, including flood and famine relief and, later, industrial and education reform, becoming friends with other ιmigrιs and influential Chinese, including communist revolutionaries. Facing the threat of the Japanese invasion of China, Alley developed an industrial work principal called "Gung Ho" to mobilize cooperative factories. After World War II and the Communist Revolution of 1949, Alley stayed in China, working as a poet and writer (Americans in China), despite New Zealand’s support of the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan. Once New Zealand recognized the communist People’s Republic of China (1972), the New Zealand government honored Alley with the Queen’s Service Order for making important contributions to China. He died in 1987 at the age of 90 in Beijing.

December 3: 1948 – John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne, singer/performer. Born in Birmingham, England, not far from Home At First’s lodgings in the northern Cotswolds and in Shropshire/Cheshire. Founding member and off-again-on-again singer with the heavy metal rock quartet Black Sabbath, Ozzy’s 35 year career is a study in unpredictability. Once feared by parents, educators, and organized religion as an evil influence on young people, Ozzy has been accused of driving teens to suicide, Satanism, and worse. Best known for biting off the heads of live doves and wearing garish and ghoulish Prince of Darkness drag, Ozzy’s real affinity for evil has probably been with the Devil Drink, which he has battled for years. In recent years Ozzy’s schtick has become fashionably acceptable as a kind of hip camp. Ozzy has performed before Queen Elizabeth II, has dined with President George W. Bush, has appeared in cameos in a few Hollywood films, and has been featured in a 4-year run of a TV bio-reality show about his family called The Osbournes. Ozzy has won a Grammy, been nominated for an Emmy, and in 2006 will be inducted (with Black Sabbath) into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame ("Enormously influential, the group’s songs dealt with black magic, Satanism, apocalypse, death and destruction."). Long (23 years) married to second wife Sharon Arden, his manager. They have three children.
Quote: "What is this? ... It’s music to get a brain seizure by."

December 4, 1795 – Thomas Carlyle, writer/historian/philosopher. Born in Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, not far from Home at First’s lodgings in the Scottish Borders. He was a brilliant analytical historian, but also misanthropic and often insuffable. Trained for the Presbyterian ministry, Carlyle instead became a writer of historical biographies, philosophical essays, and social commentary. His most prominent ideas were reactions against rational and naturalistic thought, proposing instead that strong, charismatic leaders are the basic stuff of history and progress. A scholar of German heroes (Schiller, Goethe, Frederick the Great) and the French Revolution (and Napoleon), Carlyle suggested that people follow great leaders much more readily than social or political theories like democracy. His ideas may have influenced top German Nazis. Died 1881.
Quote: "The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

December 5, 1903 – Cecil Frank Powell, Nobel physicist. Born in Tonbridge, Kent, England, less than an hour south of London. Powell won the 1950 Nobel Prize for Physics for his photographic confirmation of the existence of the pi-meson, the first confirmed sub-atomic particle. His work led to subsequent sub-atomic particle discoveries, providing important inferences about the physical workings inside of atoms. Died in 1969.

December 6, 1421 – King Henry VI of England. Born in Windsor Castle, England, about one hour west of London. Before the age of one Henry VI was King of England and King of France. Ultimately, he lost both crowns and then his head. In 1450 he relinquished his French crown when the army of the dauphin and Joan of Arc wrested England’s French possessions away from Henry. Henry was king during England’s first civil war, called the War of the Roses, in which two competing lines of royalty (the House of York and the House of Lancaster) tore England apartment to determine whether royal succession could run through female children. In 1461 King Henry VI (a Lancastrian) fled to Scotland, and, in 1465, was captured, and imprisoned in the Tower of London (5 minutes walk from Home At First’s London Apartments at St. Katharine’s Marina). He was replaced as king by Yorkist King Edward IV for five years, then, briefly, he was freed from the Tower and restored to the English throne for a second time in 1470. Following the massive Battle of Tewksbury (in the Cotswolds, easily visited by guests staying in Home At First’s Cotswolds cottages), Henry VI lost his crown again, then his freedom, then his life. Henry was taken to the Tower of London, where he was murdered by an unknown assailant. The War of the Roses lasted 30 years, ending only when Henry VII, a Lancastrian, married a York princess, ending the feud, and starting a new royal dynasty, the Tudors. One hundred twenty years later, during the reign of Tudor Queen Elizabeth, a young, unknown playwright from Stratford-upon-Avon—not far from Tewksbury—wrote three plays about Henry VI (Parts I, II, and III).
Quote (from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part II): "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers."

December 7, 1761 – Marie Grosholtz, a.k.a. Madame Tussaud, show exhibitor. Born in Strasbourg, France. Grosholtz learned wax modeling while a housekeeper for a physician skilled in making wax figures, who exhibited his own wax models in Paris. Among Marie’s first exhibited figures were prominent French personages including Rousseau, Voltaire, and the visiting American Ben Franklin. The French Revolution provided her (now known as Madame Tussaud following her marriage to a French engineer named Francois Tussaud) with gruesome victims of the mob and the guillotine, and her famous "Chamber of Horrors" was born. When the Napoleonic Wars between England and France broke out, Madame Tussaud left her husband and France to live in England. She created a traveling exhibition of her works and toured the British Isles, once surviving a shipwreck between Britain and Ireland, and eventually starting her first permanent wax museum on Baker Street in London in 1835, featuring the Chamber of Horrors and popular figures of the day. Madame Tussaud herself became a celebrated figure in Victorian England. She died a revered show business original in 1850. Shortly before the twentieth century the Madame Tussauds Museum moved around the corner to its present London location on Marylebone Road near Regents Park and Baker Street tube, where it remains one of London’s most popular tourist attractions, reachable in under 30 minutes from Home At First’s London Apartments at St. Katharine’s Marina.

December 8, 1542 – Mary Stuart Queen of Scots. Born in Linlithgow Palace (17 miles west of Home at First’s Edinburgh apartments and about 90 min. from Home At First’s Central Scotland cottages). Mary’s life was as extraordinary as that of any woman in history. Born daughter and heir to King James V of Scotland, Mary was the great-granddaughter of King Henry VII of England and, arguably, next in line for the English throne after Queen Elizabeth I, her cousin). She almost became the child bride of England’s Crown Prince Edward (another cousin—only son and heir to King Henry VIII), but was engaged at five years old to the even-younger Dauphin (Crown Prince) of France instead, marrying at 16 in 1558, becoming Queen of France in 1559, reigning until the death of her young husband the King Francis II in 1560. A widow at 18, Mary returned to her homeland to resume her reign as Queen of Scotland. Over the final 27 years of her life, Mary married twice more. Her second husband—to her Scottish cousin Lord Darnley from whom she bore a son—was caught up in a web of political intrigues with Scottish nobles and murdered. Her third husband, the Scottish Earl of Bothwell, probably arranged the murder of Darnley. In 1567 enemy nobles imprisoned the queen in Scotland, forcing her to abdicate her crown to her infant son, and forced her husband into exile in Denmark where he went insane and died in prison. In 1568 Mary escaped from prison in Scotland, and, fearing recapture, fled to England, seeking the aid and comfort of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. After arriving in England, Mary was imprisoned in Fotheringhay Castle west of Peterborough, north of London. Conveniently, Protestant Elizabeth—fearing Mary’s Catholicism and ties to France—used the various scandals surrounding Mary and her husbands as proof of capital crimes. For the next 19 years Mary rotted in Fotheringhay Castle. During her imprisonment Protestants attempted to suppress Catholic uprisings what amounted to a religious struggle for the British Isles. Various attempts by Catholic supporters to spring Mary from prison and exposed plots of Catholic groups to assassinate Elizabeth convinced England’s queen that the threat would subside only with Mary’s death. On February 8, 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay on orders of Elizabeth and interred in Peterborough Cathedral. Sixteen years later, Elizabeth I died and was succeeded by King James VI of Scotland. James became King James I of the United Kingdom, and the first ruler of the new Stewart dynasty. In 1612, Protestant King James I had the remains of his Catholic mother, Mary Queen of Scots, moved from Peterborough to be buried in among the kings and queens of England in Westminster Cathedral.
Quote: "In my end is my beginning."

December 9, 1608 – John Milton, poet/writer. Born in the City of London, on Cheapside, just a few blocks from Home At First’s London Apartments at St. Katharines Marina. Milton was educated at Cambridge, then studied and traveled intensively on his own before settling in to a long career as writer/poet. Milton served as a propagandist for Cromwell’s Puritan Republicans during the English Civil War. Luckily for posterity, Milton was spared execution by the Royalists once they regained power. It was during the later period of Milton’s life, after he had become blind from glaucoma, that he wrote his greatest works, especially Paradise Lost, and epic poem dealing with the struggle of good and evil. Although he died nearly penniless in 1674, his works continued to grow in popularity and influenced the next two centuries of writers and political thinkers in England and America. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Milton was usually ranked with Shakespeare as England’s greatest writers.
Quote: "The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile, stirr’d up with envy and revenge, deceiv’d the mother of mankind."

December 10, 1886 – Victor McLaglen, boxer/actor. Born in elegant Tunbridge Wells, England, about an hour south of London. Son of a bishop, he, naturally, became a boxer. McLaglen fought Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson to a draw in a 1909 exhibition and won the Heavyweight Championship of the British Army in 1918. In the 20s he became a movie actor best known for his Irish and Irish-American characters, especially in the films of John Ford. He won the Best Actor Oscar for his lead in The Informer in 1935, but is probably better known today for playing second fiddle to John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Quiet Man. Died November 7, 1959.

December 11, 1927 – Stein Eriksen, Olympic alpine skier. The great Norwegian skier became the first Olympic gold-medalist in alpine skiing from a non-alpine land when he won the giant slalom in 1952. That year the Winter Olympics took place in Oslo, Norway, and Stein confessed to having the advantage of skiing his home course. Eriksen’s father competed in the 1912 Olympic (summer) Games in Stockholm, Sweden, as a gymnast. Stein Eriksen emigrated to the US in the 1950s to pursue a successful career developing the ski industry in the mountain states, and now calls both Utah and Montana home. In 1997 he was knighted by the King of Norway for his contributions to his homeland.
Quote: "Be tough, be confident. But you will never be a whole and happy person if you aren't humble."

December 12, 1863 – Edvard Munch, artist. Born in Lφten, Norway, about 75 miles north of Oslo. Norway’s greatest artist, Munch was able to depict scenes of intensely painful emotion using extreme color, exaggerated figures, and an otherworldy nature. His work greatly influenced the rise of the German Expressionist school, yet it maintains its distinctly Norwegian stoicism. His two most famous paintings, The Scream and Madonna, were stolen by armed bandits from Oslo’s Munch Museum on a Sunday in August, 2004. They have not been recovered and are listed on the FBI’s Top Ten Art Crimes. Munch died January 23, 1944, near Oslo, Norway.
Quote: "We do not want to paint pretty pictures to be hung on drawing-room walls. We want to create art that gives something to humanity. Art that arrests and engages. Art created of one’s innermost heart."

December 13, 1533 – Erik XIV Vasa, King of Sweden. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, very near the location of Home At First’s lodgings in that city. King Erik’s life curiously mirrors that of his contemporary Mary Queen of Scots (see December 8, above). Erik was preparing to journey to London to woo and, hopefully, marry Mary’s cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, when he learned of the death of his father, King Gustavus Vasa, and his ascendancy to the throne of Sweden. He was crowned in Uppsala, Sweden, the medieval city where Home At First has lodgings. During the eight years of his reign (1560-68, virtually the same term as Mary was Queen of Scotland) Erik fought wars to expand Sweden’s territories, gaining Estonia but fighting to a draw with his Danish cousin, King Frederick II. (Mary’s antagonist was her cousin, England’s Elizabeth I.) Meanwhile, Erik’s reign was under constant threat inside Sweden by rebellious Swedish nobility led by his powerful brother, Duke John. (Mary’s struggle in Scotland was with rebellious nobles led by James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, Mary’s bastard half-brother.) When the king slipped into insanity, the nobility rebelled successfully and, in 1568 imprisoned Erik, who relinquished his crown. (Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned and deposed in 1567 in Scotland.) Erik was imprisoned for seven years and his brother, now King John III, reigned in fear of counter rebellions and attempts to free Erik. Finally, in 1575, Erik was murdered, a victim of poisoning by his jailers. (Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for 19 years in England. Queen Elizabeth I feared that Mary’s supporters would free her and try to gain the throne. In 1587 Mary was beheaded after being convicted of trumped-up charges following a short trial.)

December 14, 1546 – Tycho Brahe, astronomer/mathematician. Born in Skane (now Sweden, then Denmark) across the Ψresund straits from Copenhagen. Brahe was called "Golden Nose" for having a metal-tipped nose—he lost part of his nose in a sword duel. Brahe is one of the pillars of the science of astronomy. His contributions include the development of astronomical instruments and more exacting methods of measurement. In his Copenhagen observatory, he trained a legion of young astronomers. When he fell out of favor of Danish King Christian IV in 1597, Brahe left Denmark, becoming the royal astronomer in Prague two years later. His work deeply influenced his most famous assistant, Johannes Kepler. Dispite all his improved observations, Brahe never accepted the Copernican view that the sun—not Earth—is the center of the solar system. Brahe died in Prague in 1601. Meanwhile, back in Copenhagen, Danish King Christian IV built an observatory in the middle of the old city (the Rundetaarn, "Round Tower", within walking distance of Home At First’s Copenhagen lodgings) where numerous instruments similar to those Tycho Brahe designed may be seen today.
Quote: "Those who study the stars have God for a teacher."

December 15, 1969 – Rebecca Foss, Home At First office manager. Born in Lewisburg, PA, USA, Rebecca first traveled to England in 1981. She joined Home At First in 1993, one year before graduating from college. She became Home At First’s Office Manager in 1998. She married Russell Foss in 1994. They have two children, Jessica (1996) and Jacklyn (2000).

December 16, 1485 – Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England. Born in Spain, she was daughter of Ferdinand & Isabella of Spain (who sponsored Columbus’s voyages). At St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1501 the 16-year-old Spanish princess married Crown Prince Arthur, first son of England’s King Henry VII. When Arthur died six months later, Catherine was left a young widow with a doubtful future in a foreign country. For the next eight years Catherine’s life was in limbo. Then, suddenly, Henry VII died, and his second son—as yet unmarried—ascended to the English throne as King Henry VIII. With memories of the War of the Roses still fresh in the minds of the Tudors, King Henry VIII understood the importance of having a strong mail heir. He married his older brother’s widow—herself still childless—quickly, and he and Catherine were jointly crowned King and Queen of England in June, 1509. Catherine certainly understood the importance of her role, becoming pregnant probably at least seven times, and giving birth to four children, including two boys. Unfortunately, both boys and one daughter died at or shortly after childbirth. One daughter, Mary would survive, ultimately to become Queen Mary, known as "Bloody Mary". With no male heir and Catherine of Aragon past the childbearing age, Henry VIII decided he had to take desperate actions to gain the male heir vital to the security of the nation. When his appeal to the Pope to have his marriage to Catherine annulled was denied, Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England with the Archbishop of Canterbury becoming the head prelate. He was granted his annulment, and went on to marry five more women in his determination to sire a strong male heir. Second wife Anne Boleyn bore him a daughter, Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth I. Anne Boleyn was beheaded for treason. Third wife Jane Seymour bore Henry his son, Edward, who would live to be crowned Edward VI, but himself would die young without an heir. Jane Seymour died soon after giving birth to Edward. Next came Anne of Cleves (annulled), Katherine Howard (beheaded for treason), and Catherine Parr (who became Henry’s widow). As for Catherine of Aragon, she lived less than three years after her annulment from Henry VIII, spending her last years in drafty castles far from London as te Princess Dowager of Wales. She was buried at Peterborough Cathedral in 1536. Fifty-one years later Mary Queen of Scots (see December 8, above) was also buried in Peterborough Cathedral near the grave of her great aunt, Catherine of Aragon.

December, 17 – 1949 Paul Rodgers, blues/rock singer. Born in Middlesborough, England. First on the charts at 19 with Free (megahit: "All Right Now"), then with the Led Zeppelin sponsored Bad Company ("Feel Like Makin’ Love", "Bad Company", many others), Paul Rodgers has one of rock n’ roll’s great voices. He also has had a remarkable solo in which he has collaborated with Jimmy Page in The Firm, numerous great blues artists, and, most recently, with the remaining member of Queen. His web site claims record sales of 125,000,000 and counting.
Quote: "I’ve got Brian May’s guitar quite happily blowing my mind at the moment."

December 18, 1943 – Keith Richard(s), rock guitarist/singer. Born in Dartford, Kent, England, in suburban London. Mick Jagger’s other half in and out of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards (Keith "Richard" until 1982) is one of rock’s great characters—alternately clownish showman, self-destructive drinker/doper, tightly structured musician, and tireless promoter of his own influences (much lesser known musicians from early rock, blues, and reggae). Always playing Falstaff to Jagger’s Prince Hal, rock guitarist Richards revels in his guttersnipe image while criticizing Mick for his pretensions. When Jagger was recently knighted by Prince Charles, Richards said he did not want to go on stage with someone wearing a "coronet and sporting the old ermine," saying, "It’s not what the Stones is about, is it?" Jagger retorted, "It’s like being given an ice cream—one gets one and they all want one. It’s nothing new. Keith likes to make a fuss." Keith may be "fussy", but he sees himself as a dedicated craftsman holding true to time-honored ideals of blues and rock guitar playing as well as lifestyle.
Quote: "You can’t tell which guitars do which, the whole point is for these guitars to mesh, one can drop in and one drop out and there's no lead or rhythm per se. Ronnie (Wood, Richards’s co-guitarist on the Stones) and I call it the ancient form of weaving, like tapestry."

December 19, 1944 – Alvin Lee, blues/rock guitarist/singer. Born Graham Barnes in Nottingham England. Alvin Lee was that rarest of rock guitarists—a child prodigy. By the age of 18 he had already been a professional musician with his own band (The Jay Birds), a cult following, and an identifying, ferocious style based in blues/jazz/rock. While Lee has dabbled in many musical styles over the years, including country, folk, and country blues over a long professional career that began in the early ’60s, it was the blues/jazz/rock of his group Ten Years After that won him the most attention, as he barnstormed England and America showing off his remarkable collection licks—often played at the speed of light. During the sixties and the seventies Ten Years After went from virtual house band at London’s ground zero rock club, the Marquee, to a frequent guest on the Bill Graham Fillmore circuit in the United States. During one seven-year period Ten Years After average four US tours each year. Although Lee’s most impressive guitar work included several long, improvisational jazz-based (even big band jazz pieces like a heavily reworked Woodchopper’s Ball originally by Woody Herman’s big band), he is best known for his live performance of I’m Going Home his signature Chuck-Berry-on-speed rocker.
Quote: "It wasn't until the movie (‘Woodstock’) came out that it all changed for us. Some people say it was the start of Ten Years After, but in another way, it was the beginning of the end."

December 20, 1865 – Maude Gonne, Irish revolutionary. Born near Aldershot, Surrey, England, southwest of London. The "Irish Joan of Arc" was born in England, grew up in Dublin the daughter of and English army officer, and became politicized in France. She bore two children out of wedlock to a French journalist who encouraged her to work for Irish independence and—despite being English—become the Joan of Arc of Ireland. She converted to Catholicism, joined one secret Irish nationalist society and formed another, the Daughters of Ireland. She met and worked with the great Irish poet/playwright William Butler Yeats, who fell in love with her but whom she refused to marry for not being enough of an Irish nationalist and for not being Catholic. She played the lead in a Yeats play written for her called Cathleen ni Houlihan. She married John MacBride, who fought in a volunteer Irish force against the British in the Boer War, but their marriage ended in divorce. John MacBride later was executed following the unsuccessful Irish uprising of 1916. Maude Gonne MacBride, a Catholic woman with two children out of wedlock and a divorce, continued to fight the Irish republican cause and for women’s rights. Although Maude lived much of her early life in France, she also served time in prison in London. During the Irish war of independence in 1920, she was in Ireland, helping relief efforts for Irish prisoners and their families, for which she again was imprisoned. In 1938 her autobiography, the sarcastically titled A Servant of the Queen, came out. From the time of Irish independence until her death in 1953, Maude Gonne MacBride resided in Dublin.
Quote: "The English may batter us to pieces, but they will never succeed in breaking our spirit."

December 21, 1117? – Thomas ΰ Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket was England’s highest cleric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, from 1162-1170, during the reign of Norman King Henry II. In the first of a series of conflicts between England’s kings and the Roman Catholic Church, Henry wanted England’s priests to swear allegiance to the Crown. Mirroring Thomas More in his tragic struggle with Henry VIII 360 years later, Becket refused to accede to the king’s demands, which he knew would reduce the independence and authority of the church in England. Becket—fearing for his life—fled to France and the protection of Pope Alexander III. When negotiations between the pope and the king seemed to promise a compromise solution, Becket returned to Canterbury (an hour south of London). But the impasse very quickly arose again when the king refused to give back certain confiscated property to the church, and Becket became disinclined to agree to any compromise. The conflict came to a head with the shocking assassination of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. While the murder of Becket removed the king’s primary clerical antagonist, it really served more to erode the king’s position, and, for the moment at least, the church continued to be strong, independent, and rich. Becket was made a saint by the Catholic Church three years after his death. His feast day is the day of his death, December 29.
Quote: "It is dangerous for men in power if no one dares to tell them when they go wrong."

December 22, 1949 – Maurice & Robin Gibb, pop singers. Born in Douglas, Isle of Man (an island between England and Ireland in the Irish Sea). Twin brothers who, along with older brother Barry Gibb, formed the wildly popular Bee Gees (for "Brothers Gibb). The family lived in Manchester, England, for several years, where the boys learned music—singing and playing instruments—and often were in trouble with the police. In 1958 they Gibb family emigrated to Brisbane, Australia, in 1958. The brothers had their first musical success as a pop group in 1966, and used the profits from their Australian #1 hit to move back to England where they signed a 5-year contract with the Robert Stigwood Organization. The next 3 decades of Bee Gees success is virtually unparalleled in popular music history. They have scored number one hit records in the UK in each of decade since the 1960’s. The height of their success was the remarkable string of hit singles and albums during the disco craze of the 1970’s, which reached its zenith with the movie Saturday Night Fever, with a sound-track by the Bee Gees. Based on record sales, the Bee Gees are one of the top five most successful recording artists of all time and the only recording artists to write and produce six straight number one singles, and the first composers to have five songs in the top ten at the same time. They have had 16 Grammy nominations and have won seven Grammy Awards. In 1997 they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in both the US and Australia, and are also members of Songwriters Hall of Fame. Maurice Gibb died suddenly and unexpectedly January 12, 2003, of a heart attack following emergency stomach surgery in Miami.
Quote: "Music became an obsession, and eventually we felt more comfortable with each other then we did with anyone else. The three of us were like one person." –Robin Gibb

December 23, 1943 – Queen Silvia of Sweden. Born Silvia Renate Sommerlath, the queen is the only daughter of Walther Sommerlath, German president (1947-57) of the Brazilian subsidiary of the Swedish steel-parts manufacturer Uddeholm. Her mother, Alice Soares de Toledo, was Brazilian. Silvia grew up in Sγo Paulo, Brazil, and in Germany. In 1972 she met Sweden’s Crown Prince Carl Gustaf at the Munich Olympic Games. Upon the death of his father the King of Sweden, Carl Gustaf ascended to the throne as King Carl XVI Gustaf in 1973. In 1976 the king and Silvia were married at Stockholm’s Storkyrkan cathedral. Sweden’s famous pop group ABBA performed their hit "Dancing Queen" on Swedish TV prior to the wedding. Despite being a commoner and a German Silvia has been given the title Queen of Sweden. She has been an enormously popular monarch. She and the king have three children—two daughters and one son. The firstborn, a daughter Crown Princess Victoria, is first in line for the Swedish throne. Silvia is very active in charity causes, including several helping disadvantaged children, handicapped and elderly persons, and people with dyslexia.
Quote: "I am personally convinced that one of our greatest enemies in this work is our reluctance to acknowledge the problem fully." –Queen Silvia speaking about the sexual exploitation of children to the United Nations Special Session on Children in May, 2002.

December 24, 1167 – King John (Lackland) of England. King of England (1199-1216), he was called "Lackland" because all his father’s (Henry II) possessions went to his older brother, the popular King Richard I (Lionheart). An untrusting, duplicitous tyrant, John had trouble abroad—losing his French possessions in battle after battle—and had trouble at home—with the church (excommunicated by the Pope in 1209), with the noble class who disagreed with John about war strategy, and with his subjects whom he taxed heavily to pay for his unsuccessful wars. Ultimately John was forced by the nobles to sign the Magna Carta, the first great document in a chain of rights-guaranteeing documents in Anglo-American history leading to the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He died in 1216 while warring against the nobles, when a fast-rising tide caught his army trying to cross a vast mud flat (The Wash) in East Anglia.

December 25 – 1642 Sir Isaac Newton, mathematician/physicist/astronomer. Born in Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. Entered Cambridge University in 1661 as an undergraduate and by 1669 was chairing its mathematics department. He invented differential and integral calculus, solved complex problems involving spheres, arcs, and refraction of light, and developed a consistent set of physical laws of the universe that he called the Laws of Motion and Gravity. Doubtless, Newton was among the great geniuses of science and math, simultaneously breaking new ground as a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and alchemist. In later life he served briefly as a member of Parliament and as the Master of the Mint (at the Tower of London by Home At First’s Apartments at St. Katharine’s Marina), for which he was knighted by Queen Anne. Newton was a lifelong believer and practicing Christian—although well known to have anti-establishment views on issues such as the Trinity. Ironically, because of his December 25 birth date, secularists often celebrate a secular Christmas called "Newtonmas" with an apple tree (from his legendary gravity epiphany) instead of a fir tress. Newton is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Quote: "To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me."

December 26, 1716 – Thomas Gray, poet. Born in London about one mile from Home At First’s Apartments at St. Katharine’s Marina. Gray was one of the most lyrical of 18th century English poets. His imaginative poetry was years ahead of its time, being similar in style and content to the romantic English verse (Keats, Shelley, Byron) of the 19th century. Sample this bit from his most famous poem, Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard:
            "Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
            A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.
            Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
            And Melancholy marked him for her own."

December 27, 1879 – Sydney Greenstreet, actor. Born in Sandwich, Kent, England (about 90 minutes from London). Large (well over 300 lbs) 1940s character actor of unforgettable characters of undetermined European lineage, especially in two films with Humphrey Bogart: The Maltese Falcon (1941 – he played Kasper Gutman) and Casablanca (1942 – he played Signor Ferrari). Died January 18, 1954 in Hollywood.
Quote: "By Gad, sir, you are a character. There’s never any telling what you’ll say or do next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing." –Sydney Greenstreet as Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon.

December 28, 1707 – Charles Wesley, composer/minister. Born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England. Charles was the younger brother of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, the first successful evangelical Protestant sect of England. While Charles is best known as composer of more than 6,000 hymns (including Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and Christ the Lord Is Risen Today), he worked closely with his brother—developing Methodism at Oxford University, traveling with him in James Oglethorpe’s expedition to the Georgia (USA) colony, and returning with him to carry on their work in England. Unlike brother John, Charles did not wish to split with the Anglican Church. (They had both been ordained in the Church of England.) Charles died March 29, 1788, in London, England. He is buried in Marylebone Parish Church, London, about 30 minutes by tube (Baker Street, Regent’s Park, or Great Portland Street stations) from Home At First’s London Apartments at St. Katharine’s Marina.
Quote: "God is gone up on high with a triumphant noise."

December 29, 1809 – William Ewart Gladstone, 4-time British Prime Minister. Born and raised in Liverpool by parents of Scottish ancestry. The four-time Prime Minister of Britain was the great Liberal PM (1868-74, '80-86, '92-94) of the 19th century, championing causes like Irish nationalism, low-cost mass transportation, tax reduction, parliamentary redistricting, and the salvation of prostitutes. Oddly, Gladstone started his career as a reactionary Tory (conservative) and opposed ending slavery. He was the longtime political rival of Benjamin Disraeli and, while not one of Queen Victoria’s favorites, very popular with the working classes. When he died in 1898 at the age of 88, his coffin was carried by the London Underground to his final resting place in Westminster Abbey.
Quote: "We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace."

December 30, 1945 – (David) Davy Jones, Monkee. Born in Manchester England, the diminutive singer/actor is best known as a member of The Monkees, whose camp 60s TV show and designer pop records brought them more than minor celebrity during the time when giants like The Beatles and Stones ruled the earth. Davy was the obligatory English member of the cute n’ sassy prototype manufactured boy band. Before joining The Monkees, Jones had appeared from 11 years old on the still-running British TV soap opera, Coronation Street. A lover of thoroughbred horses, he apprenticed as a jockey at England’s Newmarket race course. He appeared as the Artful Dodger in the Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist musical play called Oliver! in London and New York, where he was nominated for a Tony Award. He auditioned for and won a role as Davy in The Monkees. Coincidentally, Davy shares a birthday (if little else) with former band mate Michael Nesmith of The Monkees. Today Davy divides his time between homes in England and Beaver Springs, Snyder County, Pennsylvania.
Quote: "The Monkees are like the mafia. You’re in for life. Nobody gets out."

December 31, 1720 – Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", The Young Pretender. Born in Rome, Italy. Pretender to throne of the United Kingdom, he was the grandson of King James II, and natural heir to the throne, but, since James II had been deposed for being a Catholic, and since his father (James III or "The Old Pretender") was a Catholic, the throne was handed to his Protestant sister Mary and her Protestant Dutch husband William of Orange, and then to his other sister, Anne, also a Protestant. After Anne died leaving no direct heir, a suitable Protestant was found in George I, Elector of Hanover, Germany. (Over 50 superior heirs were jumped over—including The Old Pretender—owing to their Catholicism.) Exiled in France, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s father attempted to raise an army and invade Scotland to forcibly take the throne. These Jacobite (from the Latin for James) uprisings (or, risings) of 1715 and 1719 failed miserably and James was banished to Italy. When James’s son The Young Pretender grew up and had gained some military experience he, too, raised an army of invasion and entered Britain via the wild Outer Hebrides in northwestern Scotland in the summer of 1745. The charismatic Bonnie Prince Charlie gained the support of many Highland Scots (Protestants as well as Catholics) and marched south, taking Edinburgh and beating a British army at the Battle of Prestonpans. Success encouraged the small army to cross the border and invade England, but, confused about the size of the opposition, they retreated into Scotland from a high water mark near Derby in the Midlands. Tired, undermanned and underequipped, the Prince’s army was trapped east of Inverness on Culloden Moor by the professional army of King George II commanded by his second son, the Duke of Cumberland. The Battle of Culloden was a total disaster for Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army and for Highland Scots throughout Scotland, who were punished severely as suspected sympathizers to the Jacobite cause. Meanwhile, Bonnie Prince Charlie managed to evade the great manhunt that sought him everywhere in Scotland. He slipped out of Britain and returned to France, where he was soon a political liability. Ultimately, he ended up a ward of the pope in Rome, where he died on January 31, 1788. He was buried next to his father, The Old Pretender, in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

— HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM HOME AT FIRST! —