Birthdays: Jim Bridger the mountain man, Nat King Cole, film
composer Alfred Newman, Mercedes McCambridge, Leslie Ann Down, Patrick Duffy,
Rudolph Nureyev, Gary Sinise, Kate Greenaway, John Sebastian, Ben Washam
(warner bros. animator), Ken Anderson (Disney animator), John Wayne Gacy, Kurt
Russell is 65, Rob Lowe is 52
1394- FREE LANCERS - Sir John Hawkwood died. During a
time-out in the Hundred Years War in France Hawkwood formed a company of
unemployed English knights and went to Italy to become
“condottierie”-mercenaries, fighting for money in the feuds between all the
little Italian city-states. Their distinctive brightly polished silver armor
gave them the name “The White Company”. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle wrote a novel by
that name about them.
This is around the time the term 'free lance' had been
coined, meaning a knight who was free of any Shield-Oath to a noble lord.
1845- Rubber Bands invented.
1901- At a grand exhibition of his paintings at
Bernheim-Jeune Palace in Paris, the world discovered the brilliance of a poor
Dutch lunatic who had shot himself a few years back- Vincent Van Gogh.
1941- The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington D.C.
1982- Politically conservative Hollywood actors led by
Charlton Heston broke with the Screen Actor’s Guild and form a rival group
called AWAG ( American Working Actor’s Guild). They were angered by SAG
president Ed Asner’s taking their union into national politics by condemning
Pres. Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America, capped by the SAG board
refusing Reagan (their former president) the Guild lifetime achievement award.
As a result Ed Asner’s hit TV show “Lou Grant” lost sponsors
and was cancelled, and Heston’s career cooled as well, beyond heading the NRA
and writing cranky letters to the L.A. Times calendar that Ben Hur wasn’t gay.
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