tom sito's animation almanac for June 18, 2025

Birthdays: M C Escher, Charles Gounod, James Montgomery Flagg, Kay Kayser, William Lassell 1799- English astronomer who discovered Neptune's moon Triton, Richard Boone,  Jeanette MacDonald, Key Luke, Isabella Rosselini, E.G. Marshall, Roger Ebert, Eduard Daladier, Carol Kane, Sammy Kahn, The Quay Brothers, Paul McCartney is 83

 

 

1682 – Quaker leader William Penn founded Philadelphia.

 

1879 - W H Richardson, an African American inventor, patents the baby buggy or perambulator.

 

1892 - Macadamia nuts first planted in Hawaii.

 

1898 - 1st amusement pier opens in Atlantic City, NJ

 

1903 - 1st transcontinental auto trip began in SF. Arrived in NY 3-month later.

 

1913- composer Cole Porter graduated from Yale.

 

1922- The Atlantic City Séance- In his later years Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle was constantly trying to convince his good friend Harry Houdini in his belief in spiritualism. He set up a séance with a leading psychic-medium to try and communicate with Houdini’s dead mother. During the séance Houdini recognized the same tricks he used to fool people on stage and reacted angrily. The spectre of his mother spoke to him in English and Houdini’s mother only spoke Hungarian and Yiddish.

 

1923- The first Checker Cab was manufactured in Chicago. The big, boxy, durable Checkers were the most famous American city taxicabs until phased out in the 1980s.

 

1927- The last radio transmission of the flying boat carrying famous arctic explorer Roald Amundsen to the arctic circle. Norwegian Amundsen had conquered the South Pole and flew over the North Pole. He was now called out of retirement to lead an international effort to save Italian Polar explorer General Nobile, who’s zeppelin had crashed on the arctic ice. Ironically Amundsen disliked Nobile personally. Nobile and his men were rescued, but Amundsen and his plane were never found.

 

 

1953- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. married Coretta Scott.

 

1959 - 1st TV telecast transmitted from England to US.

 

1967- At the Monterey Pop Rock festival Jimi Hendrix electrified the audience then finished his set by burning and smashing his guitar on stage. Until then musicians didn’t behave in such a way towards their instruments. Ravi Shankar was particularly shocked.

 

1969- Sam Peckinpah’s film “The Wild Bunch” opened. With William Holden, Warren Oates, Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine.

 

1980 –"We are on a mission from God." John Landis movie " The Blues Brothers" with Dan Ackroyd & John Belushi premiered.

 

1983- Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman in Space. Russian Valentina Tereshkova had gone up in 1963.

 

1993- Hanna Barbera’s feature Once Upon a Forest opened. Directed by Charlie Grovernor.

 

1999- George Lucas film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The first mainstream film shot completely digital.

 

 

2021- Pixar’s Luca opened, directed by Enrico Casarosa.

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tom sito's animation almanac for June 17, 2025

Birthdays: King Edward I "Longshanks", John Wesley the founder of the Methodists, Igor Stravinsky, Don Graham, Wally Wood, Ralph Bellamy, Dean Martin, Barry Manilow, Joe Piscopo, Newt Gingrich, Martin Bormann, Jason Patric, Ken Loach, Greg Kinnear is 61, Venus Williams, Thomas Haden Church is 65, Will Forte is 55

  

 

1823- Charles Mackintosh patented the waterproof rubberized raincoat. In England, a raincoat is still called a Mackintosh.

 

 

1885- The pieces of the Statue of Liberty arrive from France. Some assembly required...

 

1893- Cracker Jacks invented by RW Reuckheim. Their name came from Teddy Roosevelt sampling the caramel corn, and exclaimed “These are Crackerjack!”- popular slang back then for something very good.

 

 

1919 - "Barney Google" cartoon strip, by Billy De Beck, premiered.

 

 

1933-Disney short Mickey’s Mechanical Man.

 

 

1946- The first mobile telephone was installed in an automobile in St. Louis, Missouri.

 

1964- The first Universal Studios tram car tour. Carl Laemmle had been inviting tourists in for a nickel to sit in bleachers and watch movies be filmed as early as 1915.

 

1968- Ohio Express’ single “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my Tummy” went gold.

  

 

2005- The Miyazaki directed hit Howl’s Moving Castle opened in the U.S., dubbed by Pixar and Pete Docter. 

 

2016- Pixar’s Finding Dori opened, the sequel to Finding Nemo, directed by Andrew Stanton

tom sito's animation almanac for June 15, 2025

Question: What is the difference between a spark and an ember?

 

Yesterday’s Question answered below: : What famous singer had a guitar inscribed "This Machine Kills Fascists."?

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History for 6/16/2025

Birthdays: Stan Laurel, Willy Boskovsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Nelson Doubleday, Brian Eno, animator Pete Burness, Martha Graham, Erich Segal, Jack Albertson, Helen Traubel, Ron LeFlore, Tupac Shakur, Laurie Metcalf, Sonia Braga is 76, John Cho is 53.

 

 

1858- Abe Lincoln said in a speech “ A house divided against itself cannot stand.” 

 

1884 - On Coney Island Amusement Pier the Switchback Railway, the country’s first roller coaster began operating.

 

1902- A musical play of L Frank Baum’s fantasy story The Wizard of Oz premiered at Chicago’s Grand Opera House. Like Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, the play was a bigger success than the original book. The shows director had heavily rewritten the story for the stage, but its success made Baum philosophical. “ The audience decides what it wants.”

 

1903 –Caleb Bradham, a pharmacist in New Bern North Carolina, created a new drink at his soda fountain. A cola drink with additional sugar and vanilla. Called at first “Brad’s Drink”, he later changed to Pepsi-Cola, because he claimed it cured stomach aches, or dyspepsia, and had cola flavor. After big sales, he bought a factory. This day The Pepsi Cola Company was formed.

 

1904- "Blume's Day" all the actions in James Joyce's "Ulysses" takes place on this one day in Dublin. This day Dubliners dress up as characters from the book and do readings.

 

1920- International Telephone and Telegraph incorporates- IT&T.

 

1932- Broadway star Mae West heads west for Hollywood to make movies.

 

 

1943- 54 year old actor Charlie Chaplin married his fourth wife, 18 year old Oona O’Neill. She was the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill. In Hollywood, Chaplin’s nickname in was “Chickenhawk Charlie” for his fondness for younger women. Oona did remain his wife until the end of his life in 1971.

 

1947 –The 1st regular broadcast network news show began-Dumont's "News from Washington”. Other networks did brief headline reports, but this was the first all-news program,

 

1951- Chuck Jones short, “Chow Hound”. Don’t forget the gravy.

 

1952- The CBS television comedy My Little Margie premiered. It starred Gale Storm and Charlie Farrell. 

 

70th Anniv 1955- Disney’s Lady and the Tramp premiered.

 

 

1959- Actor George Reeves, who played the 1950s television Superman, went upstairs after a dinner party and shot himself with a Luger pistol.  Actor Gig Young, who was a friend of Reeves, said the actor 's career was going well, he was getting his first directing jobs, and his love life was fine. He never believed the actor would shoot himself. Gig Young shot himself in 1981. 

Many of Reeves friends also wonder if it was a suicide because Reeves had been dating a socialite named Toni Mannix whose husband Eddie Mannix, VP of MGM had mob connections. Another story has Toni Mannix counting among her boyfriend’s Lucky Lucciano, the head of the NY Mafia. The bullet entrance in George Reeves body didn’t have the customary powder burns of a suicide and there were other bullet holes in the floor and ceiling. The gun in Reeves hand had been wiped clean of fingerprints. 

 

1960- Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Psycho" premiered. Based on a novel by Robert Bloch. A fan told Bloch that since she’s seen the film, she hasn’t been able to take a shower. Bloch smiled, “ Well, then it’s a good thing I didn’t have her killed on the toilet.” 

 

1963- Cosmonaut Valentina Tereschkova was the first woman to go into space.

 

 

1967- The film “The Dirty Dozen” debuted. 

 

1987- Italian porn star Ciccolina announced that since all politicians were whores and she was a whore, she would run for office. This made sense to Italians, who this day elected her overwhelmingly to a seat in Parliament.

 

 

2018- Brad Birds’ The Incredibles 2 opened in theaters.

tom sito's animation almanac for June 15, 2025


Birthdays: Edward the Black Prince of England, Rachael Donelson Jackson- Andy Jackson’s First Lady, Edvard Grieg, Saul Steinburg, Mario Cuomo, Jim Varney, Wade Boggs, Waylon Jennings, Xaviera Hollander the Happy Hooker, Jim Belushi, Neil Adams, Roger Chiasson, Michael Barrier, Dale Baer, Ice Cube is 56, Neil Patrick Harris is 52, Courtenay Cox is 61, Helen Hunt is 62, Lang Lang is 43

 

Happy Father's Day- It was organized by the Spokane Washington members of the local YMCA and Spokane Ministerial Assoc. Father’s Day was celebrated for 1st time in 1910

 

1300- Poet Dante Alighieri got a job as one of the governing priors of Florence, sort of a city council. We don’t know if it says something about his abilities at municipal governing, but he was run out of town in 1302.

 

 

1916- The Boy Scouts of America founded.

 

1938- The Fair Labor Standards Act passed. 

 

1945- Judy Garland married director Vincente Minnelli. Lisa Minnelli was the result.

 

1948- Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein premiered.

 

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce married a stripper named Honey Stuart.

 

1969- The country music comedy TV show Hee-Haw premiered as a summer replacement for the  Smothers Brothers Hour. Hee Haw ran with high ratings but CBS cancelled the show anyway. This was because CBS chief Bill Paley disliked country music.  CBS had so many shows like Mayberry RFD, Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and Hee-Haw, that insiders joked that CBS stood for the Country Broadcasting System. Hee-Haw had the last laugh, going on to a successful syndication run for decades. 

 

1977- Everybody Disco! KC and the Sunshine band release “I’m your Boogie Man”.

 

1983- Rowan Atkinson’s The Black Adder TV comedy premiered on BBC.

 

40th anniv 1985 Studio Ghibli was founded, headed by the directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki. The studio was founded after the success of the 1984 film NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND written and directed by Miyazaki for Topcraft and distributed by Toei Company. The name Ghibli was coined by Hayao Miyazaki in reference to the Caproni Ca.309 Ghibli airplane. The Italian noun "ghibli" is based on the Arabic name for the sirocco, or Mediterranean wind, the idea being the studio would "blow a new wind through the anime industry".

 

1990- Warren Beatty’s movie version of Dick Tracy opened. Accompanied by the second Roger Rabbit short Roller Coaster Rabbit. Directed by Rob Minkoff.

 

 

1994- Walt Disney’s The Lion King premiered. 

 

 

2002- Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was knighted.

tom sito's animation almanac for June 14, 2025

Birthdays: Tomaso Albinioni, Fighting Bob LaFollette, Margaret Bourke-White, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sam Wanamaker, Cliff Edwards the voice of Jiminy Cricket, Dorothy McGuire, Burl Ives, Gene Barry, Jerzy Kosinski, Diablo Cody is 46, Donald Trump is 79.

 

 

1816- Writers Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley were spending the summer at the Villa Deodati on Lake Geneva. This day among the revels, drinking, partner swapping and opium taking, Byron suggested they all write a ghost story. Byron told a tale of a vampire, Polidori. But the real winner was Shelley’s wife, 19-year-old Mary. She invented a story of a Swiss scientist who created an artificial man. She called it Frankenstein. It was published in 1819.

 

1865- A group of Englishmen climbed the Materhorn Mountain in Switzerland, inventing the sport of mountain climbing. 

 

1951- Univac I, built by John W, Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert Jr. of the Remington Rand Company to be the first U.S. commercial built electronic computer, went online for the census bureau in Philadelphia.

 

 

1959- Three new rides are debuted at Disneyland in Anaheim. The first monorail the Disneyland-Alweg Monorail System, Matterhorn Mountain, and the Submarine Voyage. (the submarine ride had been running since June 5). Disney publicity declared Disneyland now has the third largest submarine fleet in the world!

 

 

1966- The Vatican abolished the Index of Forbidden Books. 

 

1977- Skinny Carnaby Street fashion model Twiggy got married to Michael Whitney.

 

1983- The Pioneer 10 space probe left its orbit around Jupiter and headed off into deep space. NASA lost all contact in 1997. Pioneer 10 is expected to reach the solar system of the star Ross 246 in the Constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 AD. 

 

1989- Elderly actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills policeman who was writing her a traffic ticket.

 

1990- Warren Beatty’s film Dick Tracy premiered at Disneyworld. And opened generally the next day.

 

1995- MP3.  The researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits decided to use "mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Development on this technology started in 1987. By 1992 it was considered far ahead of its time. MP3 became the generally accepted acronym as the popular standard for digital music on the on the Internet.

 

2001- The Oxford English Dictionary admitted the slang expletive of Homer Simpson "D’OH!" into its august pages.

 

2024- Pope Francis met with American comedians Stephen Colbert, Chris Rock, Jimmy Fallon and Jim Gaffigan.

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tom sito's animation almanac for June 13, 2025

Birthdays: Gnaeus Agricola- 40AD, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.B. Yeats, Red Grange, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Sayers, Ralph Edwards, Paul Lynde, Tim Allen is 72, Darla Hood, Ally Sheedy, Simon Callow is 73, Christo, Ralph McQuarrie, Malcolm McDowell is 82, Stellan Skarsgard is 74, the Olsen Twins are 39, Chris Evans is 44.

 

1858- THE BIG STINK- The population of metropolitan London had been outgrowing its sewage system. The Thames was London’s main sewer, as well as its source of drinking water. But nobody realized how bad it was until the unusually hot summer of 1858. Today the temperature reached the 90f, and the stink from the river got so bad it broke up a meeting of the Prime Minister’s cabinet. Ministers ran out of Parliament holding handkerchiefs to their noses. 

 

 

1920-The US Government ruled Americans cannot mail their children through the Parcel Post System.

 

1941-The American Federation of Labor declared a nationwide boycott of all Disney products and films. This was to support the Disney Cartoonists strike.

 

1953 “ The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms “ hit theaters. Great monster effects by Ray Harryhausen.

 

1958- Frank Zappa graduated Antelope Valley High School.

 

 

1978- Ford fired Lee Iacocca from the Ford Corporation. The creator of the Ford Mustang would later move on to run Chrysler. When asked why, Henry Ford II said: “Sometimes you just don’t like somebody.”

 

1982- Bill the Cat first appeared in the comic strip Bloom County.

 

1991- Boris Yeltsin became the first and so far only popularly elected leader of Russia.

 

1997- Disney's animated film Hercules opened in theaters.

 

2010- Pixar’s Toy Story 3 premiered.

tom sito's animation almanac for June 12, 2025

Birthdays: Egon Scheile, John Roebling the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, Uta Hagen, Chick Corea, Sir Anthony Eden, Jim Nabors, Vic Damone, David Rockefeller, Irwin Allen, Marv Albert, Arthur Fellig- better known as Weegee, Sherry Stringfield, George Herbert Walker Bush, Anne Frank, Clyde “Jerry” Geronimi, Richard Sherman of the Sherman Bros

 

 

1616- Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, landed in England with her husband and son Thomas. 

 

1912- Archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt uncovered the bust of queen Nefertiti, the beauty icon, and the wife of King Akhenaten more than 3,300 years ago. It was created by the artist Thutmose of Amarna around 1345 B.C. Ludwig Borchardt did not have permission to take it to Berlin. He downplayed its importance to Egyptian authorities, then smuggled it out of the country. 

 

1942- On her birthday, Anne Frank was given a diary.

 

1949- The first LA parking ticket.

 

1952- Chief auto designer for Chevrolet Maurice Olley completed work on a sports car originally code-named the Opel, but later released as the Corvette.

 

1956- Singer/activist Paul Robeson testified to The House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He was called in after he refused to sign an affidavit that he was not a Communist.  Robeson told the committee,” My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part of it, just like you. And no Fascist-minded people, just like you, will drive me from it. Is that clear?” They had earlier asked baseball star Jackie Robinson to denounce Robeson, but instead he denounced Jim Crow laws.

 

1962- In Modesto California, a teenage film student named George Lucas was almost killed in a car accident.

 

1963- Twentieth Century Fox premiered the Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton epic CLEOPATRA. Costing $44 million, $400 million in modern money, four times more than the average film, it remains in comparable dollars the costliest disaster in movie history. The cast was put up at the swankiest hotels in Rome for months of shooting, and Liz Taylor had to have her chili from Chasens restaurant in Beverly Hills flown in. Director Joe Mankewicz said "Cleopatra was the toughest three pictures I ever made!" When Liz Taylor saw the finished film, she threw up. 

Fox had to cut 2,000 jobs and almost went bankrupt. The area of LA known as Century City with its huge shopping mall used to be the Fox backlot before Cleopatra. On the plus side, Andy Warhol said Cleopatra was the most influential movie of the 1960s because suddenly every woman had to have heavy black eyeliner, light lipstick and Egyptian style straight bobbed hair and bangs.

 

 

1981- Steven Spielberg’s movie Raiders of the Lost Ark premiered.

 

1987- President Ronald Reagan did his famous Cold War speech in Berlin “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall!” 

 

 

1999- Disney’s Tarzan premiered. Directed by Chris Buck and Kevin Lima.