Well known brand names are often a route to great fortunes, but it isn't always the case. It could be argued that Kodak, DuPont, or Ford are no more widely known than Sax, but there is no great wealth in the legacy of Adolphe Sax's inventive brilliance and flair for promotion. The record is not clear on the errors Sax made, but he had powerful patrons (no less than Hector Berlioz wrote articles extolling Saxhorns and Saxophones), he won prize after prize, and he had the monopoly on band instruments for the French military at a time when every single wind instrument had to be replaced. And he still managed to go bankrupt in midlife, then bounce back before dying in poverty.
Everyone knows that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated at Plimouth Plantation in 1621, but that was strictly local. The first nation-wide celebrations of a holiday called Thanksgiving came just after the US adopted its Constitution - but it was in Canada. The same day the first Roman Catholic bishop in the US was named. Today marks the pinnacle of Mohandas Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns in South Africa, although he was in jail at the end of the day.
At this time of year it's hard to avoid election news. Abraham Lincoln was elected on this day, exactly one year later Jefferson Davis was elected as the only president of the Confederacy. And late in the evening a year and a century later Dick Nixon held his "last press conference."
1789 - Father John Carroll, a Jesuit priest whose family had been active in the revolutionary cause, was appointed as the first Roman Catholic bishop for the newly independent United States by Pope Pius VI. He went to England for his consecration, returned and took up his office at Baltimore on 7 December.
1789 - Canada observed the first national Thanksgiving Day, beating the US by a full 20 days. Before George Washington's proclamation that year Thanksgiving Day had been sporadic and observed on a state or local basis.
1860 - Abraham Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth president of the US, with vice president Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. Lincoln received the highest total, 1,866,452 popular votes and a commanding 180 Electoral College votes, with four candidates in the race Lincoln polled about 40% of the total. He was the first Republican Party candidate elected to the White House.
1861 - The Confederate States of America held its only presidential election. Jefferson Davis, provisional president of the CSA since February, was unopposed and elected to a six-year term.
1913 - Mohandas Gandhi led over 2,000 protesters on a great march from Natal into the Transvaal as part of his Satyagraha, a campaign of nonviolent resistance to the South African governments treatment of Indians, specifically a requirement that they live in certain areas and register with authorities and a refusal by the government to recognize Indian marriage. The protesters were jailed and fired upon, but Gandhi was released on 18 December and by the following January all the protesters' demands had been met.
1962 - Richard Nixon tells the press, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentleman, this is my last press conference." That was the evening of his 300,000-vote loss to Pat Brown in the race for governor of California, Brown's campaign was closely supervised by the Kennedy White House.
Al Massira Day, the Anniversary of the Green March, Morocco - Celebrates the 1975 occupation of former Moroccan provinces in the Sahara by 350,000 Moroccan citizens. King Hassan organized the march, Spain quietly agreed to withdraw from its Spanish colonial territory.
1814 - Antoine-Joseph Sax, Belgian musical instrument maker - Born at Dinant, Belgium, more often called Adolphe, first son of Charles Joseph Sax who was a cabinet maker who became a wholly self-taught instrument maker. Adolphe was brought up in and around his father's shop, studied flute and clarinet at the Brussels Conservatoire, worked at improving the bass clarinet, invented a whole family of brass instruments he called Saxophones about 1840. He moved to Paris in 1842 to make his fortune, received the silver medal at the French Exhibition of 1844, patented the Saxhorn in 1845 and the Saxophone in 1846. After a competition between instruments Sax was given a monopoly on providing instruments for the French military bands, with saxophones displacing horns, oboes, and bassoons. For the Paris Industrial Exhibition he had three families ready to show, adding the Saxtubas, and took the gold medal, followed it up with the gold at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Unable to capitalize on his instruments, and plagued by competitors infringing his patents, he went bankrupt in 1852 but was back in business in time for Paris Exhibition of 1855, taking another gold. Became professor of saxophone at Paris Conservatory in 1858. In 1859 the pitch of musical instruments in France was standardized (A=435Hz) by law, requiring that all wind instruments be replaced. Anyone else would have made a fortune off this, but Sax's fortunes started to decline after 1862. Even though he won the Grand Prix at Paris in 1867 he soon lost his major patrons, by 1877 he was forced to sell his entire musical instrument collection (the catalogue listed 467 instruments). He was living in abject poverty at Paris when he died on 7 February 1894.
If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.
- Charlie Parker
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
- J. S. Bach
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument
as one goes on.
- Samuel Butler
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn
to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
- Mary Ellen Kelly
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Copyright 2000 G. Armour Van Horn, all rights reserved. This document may be distributed freely. Please forward the complete message including this copyright notice.