John Gay's 18th century work endures

It is the birthday of English poet and dramatist John Gay (1685), whose satirical ballad opera The Beggar's Opera (1728) featured the characters Captain Macheath, a highwayman and his lover, Polly Peachum, and inspired a modern-day musical and an enduring popular song.

Gay's satirical work skewered the government of Sir Robert Walpole, England's first prime minister, and its tolerance for the illegal activities of infamous criminal Jonathan Wild and robber Jack Sheppard. It was quite popular in its time and made Gay a wealthy man. Gay was a contemporary of poet Alexander Pope and satirist Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels), who encouraged is work.

More than 200 years later, German dramatist  Bertolt  Brecht and composer Kurt Weill were inspired to create The Threepeny Opera, based on Gay's work. They wrote the enduring song The Ballad of Mack the Knife, the best-known recording of which was made by Louis Armstrong in 1956, though a close contender could be Bobby Darin's version in 1959.

Here is Armstrong's 1959 performance of a song written in 1933 based on a work originally used to poke fun at English nobility  in 1728. Enjoy!

John Toland wrote of Hitler, WWII

John Toland

It is the birthday of author and historian John Toland (1912), whose book The Rising Sun, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. Toland conducted interviews with Japanese government officials who had survived the war and pored over personal letters and official field reports from military commanders to construct a history of the Pacific war from the Japanese perspective. His was the first such effort in English.

Toland may be best known for his Adolph Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1976), an exhaustive study of the German dictator that reprinted texts of many of his speeches, including the earliest ones before he came to power. The book provided many previously unknown details about the man. Toland tried to provide an objective view of Hitler, an effort that drew criticism and accusations of being a Nazi.

Toland also wrote Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath (1982), in which he argued that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and top government officials knew in advance that Japan planned to attack the United States but did nothing about it because they wanted war with Japan. It was a position that drew much criticism from historians and journalists.

Toland once said he considered his histories to be drama and he tried to remove himself from the storytelling and let the characters act on their own. He traveled extensively to gather personal accounts and see the places where the history took place.

Toland wanted to become a playwright. When he was 14 years old, a playwright had  come to live in his family's home. He was greatly impressed and decided that would be his career. In his senior year in college, he managed a student book store and saved up more than $5,000 to go to Yale Drama School. While he was working he was offered a job by a man from Esso, the oil company (later Exxon), to become a junior executive with a good salary and go to the South Pacific. He refused the offer and the Esso man was incredulous. "What a waste of talent," he said.

Later Toland liked to tell people he made all that money so he could write, not because he liked to make money. "Otherwise, I might have eventually become head of Exxon. Wouldn't that be terrible?"

Toland's early career as a writer was dismal. He wrote 25 plays, six novels and 100 short stories. None of them was ever published. In 1954, he finally sold a short story to American Magazine for $165.

His first published book, Ships in the Sky (1957), was about dirigibles, including the ill-fated Hindenburg, the German passenger airship that caught fire and was destroyed at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. Toland interviewed survivors and presented a harrowing account of the accident in his book.

Rousseau wrote philosophy, music

It is the 300th birthday of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712), whose book Confessions (1782) was among the first of modern autobiographies. He philosophical works influenced thought that led to the French Revolution. Rousseau wrote extensively on the nature of man, social issues, politics, child rearing, and religion. He wrote novels as well as philosophical pieces. Rousseau also found time to write music, completing seven operas. Here is music from his one-act opera Devin du Village. Enjoy!

Helen Keller: author, political activist

Helen Keller

It is the birthday of author and political activist Helen Keller (1880), whose autobiography The Story of My Life (1903) recounts her triumphant struggle to overcome her deafness and blindness and get an education. She wrote it while she was in school at Radcliffe College, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904.

Keller became deaf and blind from disease she contracted as an infant. Beginning in 1886, she was trained from childhood by Anne Sullivan, who was first her teacher, then her governess and finally her companion. Sullivan helped Keller for 49 years until her death in 1936.

Keller's account of her life and her development under the direction of Sullivan was the basis of a series of productions called The Miracle Worker. It was first presented as a Playhouse 90 television production in 1957. It became a Broadway play in 1959, and a Hollywood film in 1962, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. It was remade for TV in 1979 and 2000. The title came from friend Mark Twain, who referred to Sullivan as "the miracle worker." She was also friends with Charlie Chaplin and Alexander Graham Bell.

Politically, Keller was a socialist, radical leftist, and anti-war activist. She was a member of the Wobblies, and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. She actively campaigned for workers' rights, women's suffrage, birth control, and Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.

Keller wrote 12 books, including The World I Live In (1908), about her world; Out of the Dark (1913), about socialism; and Light in My Darkness (1934), about religion.