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Guillermo Kahlo
Guillermo Kahlo in 1920

Today is the birthday of Guillermo Kahlo (born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo; Pforzheim, Grand Duchy of Baden 26 October 1871 – 14 April 1941 Mexico City); photographer. He documented important architectural works, churches, streets, landmarks, as well as industries and companies in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century.

Kahlo married María Cardena in August, 1893. The night she died giving birth to their third child, he asked Antonio Calderón for his daughter Matilde’s hand in marriage. After the marriage, Kahlo sent his and Maria’s daughters away to be raised in a convent.

Kahlo and Calderón were the parents of painter Frida Kahlo.

He died on 14 April 1941 in Coyoacán, Mexico City.

Gallery

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  Frida Kahlo
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  Frida Kahlo
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  Construcción del Palacio Legislativo
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  Frida Kahlo
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  Frida Kahlo

Beryl Markham
Beryl Markham in 1936

And today is the birthday of Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck, Ashwell, Rutland, United Kingdom 26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986 Nairobi, Kenya, Africa); British-born Kenyan aviator (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. She wrote about her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night.

Impetuous, single-minded and beautiful, Markham was admired and described as a noted non-conformist, even in a colony known for its colourful eccentrics. She was married three times, taking the name Markham from her second husband, the wealthy Mansfield Markham. She is believed to have had an openly public affair in 1929 with Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the son of George V, but the Windsors allegedly cut the romance short. She also had an affair with Hubert Broad, who was later named by Mansfield Markham as a co-respondent in his 1937 divorce from Beryl. After her Atlantic crossing, she returned to be with Broad, who was also a great influence in her flying career.

She befriended the Danish writer Karen Blixen during the years that Baroness Blixen was managing her family’s coffee farm in the Ngong hills outside Nairobi. When Blixen’s romantic connection with the hunter and pilot Denys Finch Hatton was winding down, Markham started her own affair with him. He invited her to tour game lands on what turned out to be his fatal flight, but Markham supposedly declined because of a premonition of her flight instructor, British pilot Tom Campbell Black.

Largely inspired by Black, with whom she had a long-term affair, Markham took up flying. She worked for some time as a bush pilot, spotting game animals from the air and signaling their locations to safaris on the ground. She also mingled with the notorious Happy Valley set, a group of hedonistic, largely British and Anglo-Irish aristocrats and adventurers who settled in the “Happy Valley” region of the Wanjohi Valley, near the Aberdare mountain range, in colonial Kenya and Uganda between the 1920s and the 1940s. In the 1930s, the group became infamous for its decadent lifestyles and exploits, following reports of drug use and sexual promiscuity. The area around Naivasha was one of the first to be settled in Kenya by white people and was one of the main hunting grounds of the ‘set’. The colonial town of Nyeri, Kenya, to the east of the Aberdare Range, was the centre of Happy Valley settlers. Some of the notable members of the Happy Valley set were: The 3rd Baron Delamere and his son and heir the 4th Baron Delamere; Denys Finch Hatton; Sir Jock Delves Broughton and wife Diana Delves Broughton; Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll; Lady Idina Sackville; Alice de Janzé (cousin of J. Ogden Armour) and her husband Frédéric de Janzé.

Markham chronicled her many adventures in her memoir, West with the Night, published in 1942.