The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a theatre in the Covent Garden
district of London, facing Catherine Street and backing onto Drury
Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four
theatres at the same location dating back to 1663. For its first two
centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's
leading theatre" and thus one of the most important theatres in the
English-speaking world. Through most of that time, it was one of a
small handful of patent theatres that were granted monopoly rights to
the production of "legitimate" drama in London. The first theatre on
the location was built on behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early
years of the English Restoration. The building that stands today
opened in 1812. It has been home to actors as diverse as Shakespearean
Edmund Kean, comedian Dan Leno, and musical composer and performer
Ivor Novello. Today, the theatre is owned by composer Andrew Lloyd
Webber and generally stages popular musical theatre. It is a Grade I
listed building.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Royal%2C_Drury_Lane
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1229:
Sixth Crusade: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II declared himself King
of Jerusalem.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor)
1438:
Albert II of Habsburg became King of the Romans in the Holy Roman
Empire.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_II_of_Germany)
1921:
The Polish-Soviet War, which determined the borders between the
Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia, formally concluded with the
signing of the Peace of Riga.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Riga)
1922:
Mahatma Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison for civil
disobedience.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi)
1965:
Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov donned a spacesuit and ventured outside the
Voskhod 2 spacecraft (mission insignia shown), becoming the first
person to walk in space.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2)
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Wikiquote of the day:
I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that
there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one
law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by
indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its
territory. -- Grover Cleveland
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland)