Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for March 6, 2025

Birthdays: Michelangelo Buonarotti, Cyrano De Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Phil Sheridan, Lou Costello, Ivan Boesky, Ring Lardner, Gabriele Garcia-Marquez, Valentina Tereschkova the first woman in space, Tom Arnold, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rob Reiner is 77, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) is 77, Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal “Shaq” is 53

 

 

1841-American John Goff Rand working for the Winsor & Newton Company of London patented artists oil paints premixed in collapsible metal tubes. Before this, artists (or their apprentices) had to mix their own pigment from ground stones and egg white, then stored the mix in pig bladders. 

 

1850- Gustav Flaubert was the French writer who was once tried for pornography for writing Madame Bovary. This day while in Egypt he kept an appointment with the countries most famous belly dancing prostitute, Kuchuk Hanem.

 

1853-  Giuseppi Verdi’s classic opera La Traviata premiered at Teatro alla Fenice in Venice. It was based on Dumas novel Le Dame Aux Camelias. Verdi wrote in his diary about the premiere:" The evening was a disaster! Was it my fault or the fault of the singers? Only time will tell..."

 

1856- Mr. Simon met Mr. Schuster while buying a piano in New York City and discovered they had a common love of books. They formed Simon & Schuster, one of the most famous publishers in the U.S.A.

 

1912- Happy National Oreo Cookie Day! The National Biscuit Company (or Nabisco) debuted the Oreo cookie. Some say it was originally a knock-off of the Hydrox cookie that had debuted four years earlier. 

 

 

1921- The film Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse premiered. The first Hollywood film to earn over one million dollars, and it made a major star out of Rudolf Valentino.

 

1933- Two days after inauguration Eleanor Roosevelt became the first First Lady to hold her own separate press conference. She insisted only female journalists could attend.

 

1936- Mr. Clarence Birdseye introduced frozen vegetables.

 

1978- Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt was shot and crippled by a lunatic. 

 

1979- The film The China Syndrome premiered. It was about an accident at an American nuclear power plant. Three weeks later the real Three Mile Island accident occurred, boosting the box office. " It's spooky, it's enough to make you religious" said star Michael Douglas.

 

1981- CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite retired.  Dan Rather succeeded him after CBS learned ABC was offering Rather big bux to jump networks. Roger Mudd, who was thought to be the real successor to Cronkite, left the network to anchor the History Channel. Dan Rather was the CBS anchor until 2004.

 

1989- Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to become Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world. They were bought by AOL in 2000 but AOL proved to be dead weight and they resumed control as TimeWarner in 2003. Recently they merged with Discovery to become Warner Discovery.

 

1992- The film The Lawnmower Man premiered. It featured early motion-capture CGI imagery, and claimed to have the first virtual reality sex scene. 

 

1998- The Big Lebowski opened in theaters. The Dude Abides…

 

2020- Walt Disney’s Onward opened in theaters. Written and directed by Dan Scanlon

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 5, 2025

Birthdays: Henry III of England, Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, Explorer Le Sieur de Cadillac the founder of Detroit, Hector Villa-Lobos, Howard Pyle, William Oughtred 1574- inventor of the Slide Rule, Red Rosa Luxemburg, Rex Harrison, Dean Stockwell, Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 69, Eva Mendes is 50

 

 

1717- On his birthday Giovanni Tiepolo joined the Guild of Saint Lawrence, the artists union in Rome.

 

 

1853- Harry Steinway & Sons began their piano making company.

 

1868- Englishman C.H. Gould patented the first stapler.

 

 

1936- Disney’s Three Orphaned Kittens won the best short Oscar at the 8^th Academy Awards.

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1954- The Creature From the Black Lagoon opened. Directed by Jack Arnold. The Gill-Man designed by Disney animator Millicent Patrick.

 

1963- Country star Patsy Cline died in plane crash near Camden Tenn. Also killed were singers Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

 

1963- The hula-hoop was patented.

 

1966- As America was still getting used to the idea of fighting in Vietnam, and anti-war sentiment was beginning, a Sgt. Barry Sadler wrote a pro-war song titled Ballad of the Green Berets, that today hit #1. “Put silver wings, on my son’s chest. Make him one of America’s Best.”

 

1994- The TV show Duckman premiered. 

 

1995- Vivian Stanstall, lead singer for the Bonzo Dog Band, died in a fire in his London flat. He had been smoking in bed.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 4, 2025

Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, Ray “Boom-Boom” Mancini, Patsy Kensit, Katherine O’Hara is 72, James Ellroy, Mykleti Williamson. Ward Kimball

 

 

1887- William Randolph Hearst bought the little San Francisco Examiner and began to build the Hearst newspaper empire. Hearst’s father was part owner of the famed Comstock Mine, and thought his son crazy for wasting his time in the penny-paper business. Hearst died in 1951 at age 88, leaving an estate of $160 million. 

 

1902- AAA the Auto Club founded.

 

1917- Jeanette Rankin became the first female member of Congress. 

 

1922- F.W. Murnau’s classic film Nosferatu, the Vampire, opened in Berlin.

 

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

 

1933- Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous speech“ The only thing we have to fear is, Fear itself.” at his first inauguration.

 

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refused the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as a protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

 

1936- First flight of the German dirigible Graf Hindenburg.

 

1938- Walt Disney made the first inquiry by mail to the English publisher of Pamela Travers’ book Mary Poppins about securing the film rights. It took 22 year before he finally got them.

 

1944- Louis Lepke Buchalter went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. Buchalter with Albert Anastasia headed the heavy enforcement arm of Lucky Lucciano’s New York Mafia Syndicate. Nicknamed “Murder Incorporated,” the Brooklyn gang committed at least 100 murders, including Dutch Schultz, and Lucciano’s mentor Joey the Boss Masseria.

 

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

 

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon Blvd. in L.A. William Holden was their best man.

 

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

 

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

 

1958- U.S.S. Nautilus, first nuclear sub, reached the North Pole under the ice cap. 

 

1960- American opera baritone Leonard Warren dropped dead on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

 

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London, actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died, had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

 

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants baseball team would stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada. 

            

1982- The Abrahams/Zucker Bros TV comedy Police Squad! premiered. 

 

1994- 375 pound comedian John Candy died of sleep apnea. He was 43.

 

1997- The senate of Brazil finally allowed women to wear slacks to work.

 

25 anniv 2000- The Japanese launch of Sony Playstation 2. It was designed to compete with Segas Dreamcast and Nintendo’s Cube. The Playstation 2 was the most anticipated videogame launch in history. 600,000 units were sold. One store in Tokyo’s Ginza had 4,000 people lined up at their door.  It remained hot for 13 years.

 

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t actually work.

 

2008- The first Simon’s Cat short cartoon appeared on YouTube. English commercial animator Simon Tofield wanted to teach himself Adobe Flash, a 2D computer animation program. He decided to make a cartoon of his cat, and his quirky behavior. He took the results and posted it on YouTube for a laugh. It got thousands of views and made him famous. Now he has a staff, sells merchandise and is working on longer films.

 

2016- Disney’s Zootopia opened, directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush.

 

2018- Pixar’s Coco won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film.

 

tom sito's animation fun facts for march 2, 2025

Birthdays: Sam Houston, Alexander Graham Bell, Kurt Weill, Desi Arnaz (Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III), Ted Geisel aka Dr. Suess, Mikhail Gorbachov, Willis O'Brian, Moe Berg, Karen Carpenter, Lou Reed, Jennifer Jones, John Cullum, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, animator Bob Givens, Jon Bon Jovi is 63, Daniel Craig is 57, animator Stephen Chiodo

 

1818- It had been thought that the Pyramids in Egypt were solid monuments with no chambers. This day Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni discovered the entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza and explored its inner corridors and burial chambers. 

 

 

1863- The Union Pacific Railroad adopted a standard track width of 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches. The width of a Conestoga wagon. This width became the standard for the United States and later for most of the railroads of the world. Although train travel was invented in Britain, Europe was slow to adapt to it, while America, Russia and India rapidly embraced a technology that could quickly cover their vast distances quickly.

 

1923- THE FIRST TIME MAGAZINE. Founders Henry Luce and Claire Booth Luce were among the more powerful of the nation’s cultural elite. Conservative to the core -to the end of their days they thought Franklin Roosevelt and Civil Rights were big mistakes, they still experimented with LSD when it was thought by Harvard professors to be mind expanding. In the late 1980's the Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time-Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate.

 

1925- The US Government started assigning numbers to motorways and planned interstate highways.  Before that roads had names like the Boston Post Road or the Baltimore to Washington Highway. 

 

1933- "KING KONG"s exclusive premiere at the new Radio City Music Hall in New York. It opened in the rest of the country in April. “Twas Beauty killed the Beast.”

 

1935- The Looney Tune Cartoon "I haven’t Got a Hat" premiered. This cartoon gave birth to the first permanent Warner Bros. cartoon star- Porky Pig. 

 

 

1940- Chuck Jones’ Elmer’s Candid Camera, where Elmer Fudd meets an early prototype of Bugs Bunny.

 

1943- Battle of the Bismarck Sea. U.S. Navy planes shot up a Japanese task force.

 

1944- Casablanca won Best Picture at the 16^th Academy Awards. Warner Bros Studio head Jack Warner rushed up to accept the Oscar, even though Hal Wallis was the producer of record.

 

1947- Crusading Hollywood union organizer Herb Sorrell was plucked off the street in Glendale by gangsters posing as police. They may not have been just posing, many movie studios hired off-duty LAPD at double-time rates to “take care” of troublesome employees. They drove Herb up to Mulholland and worked him over, leaving him by the side of the road. Shortly after leaving the hospital, Sorrell was jailed for disturbing public peace. 

 

1960- Wilt Chamberlain ("Wilt the Stilt") scored 100 points in one game for the Philadelphia Warriors. Wilt averaged a phenomenal 55 points per game that year and the NBA instituted a number of anti-Wilt regulations to ensure guys under 6'2 could get back in the game, like offensive goal tending, etc. Wilt also claimed to have put his off the court time to good use. He claims to have had slept with 3,000 women. 

 

1961- Pablo Picasso married his second wife Jacqueline. He was 80, she was 35. Jacqueline cared for the increasingly reclusive artist and kept even his family at a distance. When Picasso died in 1973, she turned away many family members from the funeral. Jacqueline committed suicide in 1986.

 

1962- The classic Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man premiered. It’s a Cookbook!

 

1965- The movie The Sound of Music opened at the Rivoli theater in Manhattan. 

 

1971- Charles Engelhard died, a venture capitalist whose wild investments and grand lifestyle made him the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger.

 

1972- Pioneer 10 space probe launched. The first satellite to the outer planets, it sent back the first closeup photos of Jupiter in 1973 and left our solar system in 1983. It carries a plaque with a representation of men and women, a map of the Earth and Richard Nixon’s signature on it. It is in deep space now and will reach the star Ross 246 in the constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 A.D.  Boy, I can hardly wait!

 

1973- The Women in Film organization founded.

 

1976- Francis Ford Coppola began shooting his epic film “Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines. The film was plagued by cost overruns, a typhoon and his Philippine Army helicopters frequently flying off to fight real guerrillas, but somehow it all got done. Today it is considered a classic.

 

1979- The Anglo-French Concord supersonic airliner service introduced. It was discontinued because of bad economics in 2003.

 

1982- Science Fiction writer Philip K. Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana, California. He was 53. The author of stories the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall and the series The Man in the High Castle were based. Dick said he was at times possessed by a super alien who appeared in his mind in a beam of pink light. His autobiography was entitled “I am alive, and you are dead.”

 

 

2014- Walt Disney’s Frozen won the best animated feature Oscar.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for march 1, 2025

Birthdays: Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis 40AD), Frederic Chopin, Augustus Saint Gaudens, Glen Miller, David Niven, Oskar Kokoschka, Roger Daltry, Robert Conrad, Deke Slayton, Yitschak Rabin. Catherine Bach, Timothy Daly, Harry Belafonte, Lupita Nyongo, Ron Howard is 71, Javier Bardem is 56, Zack Snyder is 59

 

 

1872- Congress okayed the creation of Yellowstone National Park.  In 1878 during the military campaign against the Nez Perce Indians, Chief Joseph took his warriors through the park territory frightening some early tourists.

 

1919- The March Movement- Korea declared its independence from Japan, Russia and China.

 

1924- The first Alice in Cartoonland short, “Alice’s Day at Sea” from the new Disney Brothers Studio, premiered in several theaters.

 

1930- Disney animator Ub Iwerks, the animator/designer of Mickey Mouse, quit the studio to set up his own place. Iwerks partner was Pat Powers, who’s Powers Cinephone was the process used to put sound on “Steamboat Willie”. Powers engineered the break between Ub and Walt when Disney refused to let Powers buy into a co-partnership in Disney Studio. Walt was stunned by the loss of one of his first employees and closest friends. Iwerks studio produced the Flip the Frog Cartoons, but it eventually failed, and he'll return to Disney to invent the xerox process. 

 

1937- Connecticut issued the first metal license plates for autos.

 

 

1941- The first Captain America comic book by Marvel Comics published. 

 

1946- The National Cartoonists Society formed.

 

 

1961-The Ken Doll introduced as a boyfriend to Barbie. 

 

1962- A huge tickertape parade in New York is held for astronaut John Glenn.

 

1966- The Russian probe Venera 3 landed on Venus. Although the Venera crash landed it was the first unmanned probe to land on the surface of another world.

1973- Hanna-Barbera’s feature film Charlotte’s Web premiered in theaters. Directed by Charles Nichols and Iwao Takamoto.

 

 

1978- Unemployed auto mechanics Gatchko Ganas and Roman Wardas broke into the tomb of Charlie Chaplin in Vevey Switzerland and stole his remains. They tried to hold it for ransom. The body was recovered and the two losers were soon arrested. They were trying to make enough money to open a car repair garage in France.

 

1988- Apple introduced the first commercially available CD-ROM drive for your personal computer.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Feb 28, 2025

Birthdays: Michel de Montaigne, The Marquis de Montcalm, Zero Mostel, Vasclav Nijinsky, Molly Picon, Gavin MacCleod, Bernadette Peters, Bubba Smith, Mario Andretti, Milton Caniff- the creator of Terry and the Pirates", Ben Hecht, Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel, Tommy Tune, Vincente Minelli, Linus Pauling, Dorothy Stratton, Frank Gehry, Sir John Tenniel, John Tarturro, Gilbert Gottfried, Bernadette Peters is 77.

 

1820- The birthday of Sir John Tenniel (1820-1916). The original illustrator for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass.” He was also a leading political cartoonist for Punch and the first cartoonist to ever be knighted.

 

 

1835- Dr. Elias Lohnnrot published the Finnish national epic poem Kalevala. It’s about the first man Vanjiamoimmen, who was born old and searched for the magical machine called The Samo, kept in a mountain with seven locks, guarded by seven wizards chanting Samo, Samo! Modern scholars cannot agree just what the samo was, or what it did.

 

1882- The first college store opened, the COOP, this one attached to Harvard & MIT. The COOP means Harvard Cooperative Society.

 

1896- Robert Paul demonstrates a kinetograph to the Royal Institute. The British Cinema industry is born.

 

1916- Writer Henry James died. William Faulkner said, "He was the nicest old lady I ever met." H.L. Mencken eulogized: "Henry James was an idiot, and a Boston idiot to boot, of which there is no form lower." Mencken was equally caustic of other cities.

 

 

1920 Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin debuted.

 

 

1938- Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev toured the Walt Disney Studio and performed his suite Peter and the Wolf for Walt and his music director Leigh Harline.

 

    

1940- At the Oscars ceremony Hattie McDaniel became the first black actress to win an Oscar for her supporting role in Gone With The Wind. When some criticized her for portraying a stereotype black mammy, McDaniel snapped:” I’d rather make $5000 a week playing a maid than $5 a week being a maid!”

 

1940- Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, about growing up black in America, first published.

 

 

1949- Bob Clampett’s live puppet show Time for Beanie premiered. Bill Scott was a writer and puppeteer.  Albert Einstein was a fan. Ten years later it was revived as the popular animated series Beanie and Cecil.

 

1953- Chuck Jones “Duck Amuck” premiered. 

 

1953- James Watson walked into his local pub and announced,” Barman, set them up. I’ve just discovered the secret of life!” That morning Watson & Francis Crick had indeed came upon the DNA double helix molecule. They were building on the work of fellow scientist Rosalind Franklin. It’s been argued that Franklin was the one who actually made the discovery, but she died before Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize.

 

1968- Former teen idol singer Frankie Lyman OD’s on heroin.

 

1982- BP oil tycoon J. Paul Getty had died in 1976 the richest man on earth. Getty found his immediate family so annoying he left the bulk of his estate to his little Getty Museum in Malibu California. This day after all attempts of the family to challenge his will were exhausted, the Getty Museum was endowed with two billion dollars and immediately became the richest museum on earth. 

 

1983-The last episode of the television series M*A*S*H.  It was the single most watched TV show episode in history.

 

1986- Disney animator Eric Larsen retired. Larsen had stayed on to train the next generation of animators who created the 2D Renaissance of the 1990s.

 

 

2001- Seattle rocked by a 7.0 earthquake. That’ll stir your Starbucks!

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for feb 27, 2025

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Constantine 280AD, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Steinbeck, Ralph Nader, Marion Anderson, Chelsea Clinton, Franchot Tone, William Demarest, James Worthy, Mirella Freni, Judge Hugo Black, David Sarnoff the founder of the NBC network, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Smith-creator of comic Bone, Rolly Crump, Animator Danny Antonucci, Joanne Woodward is 95.

 

 

1814- Beethoven’s 8^th Symphony premiered.

 

 

1883- Musical impresario Oscar Hammerstein patented the first practical cigar rolling machine.

 

1888- Prof. Edweard Muybridge traveled to Menlo Park NJ for a private meeting with inventor Thomas Edison. There they discussed the possibilities of combining his zoopraxiniscope with Edison’s sound recording machine to create sound movies.  It came to naught. Muybridge left, then Edison had his staff immediately try to copy their own version of Muybridge’s device. Edison concluded, “ I doubt Motion Pictures will have any commercial application beyond the science laboratory. “

 

1919- Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets first premiered in London.

 

1941-At the 13^th Academy Awards, for the first time a Walt Disney cartoon did NOT win Best Animated Short.  MGM’s The Milky Way won.

 

1956- Elvis Presley released song Heartbreak Hotel.

 

1958- Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn died of a heart attack at age 66. His ruthlessness was legend in Hollywood. He once said " I don't get ulcers, I give them!" Hedda Hopper said:' You have to get in line to hate him." The entire Columbia staff was ordered, not requested, to attend a memorial service. Looking at the large crowd around the coffin, Red Skelton quipped: "You see, like Harry always said, give the people what they want, and they'll show up."

 

1977- In Toronto, the Canadian Mounties busted Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg for heroin possession. The Stones agree to do two benefit concerts as punishment.

 

1991- The Mitchell Brothers were tops in the pornography business, producing blockbusters like Behind the Green Door and running the O’ Farrell Theater in San Francisco. This day, after doing a lot of drugs, Jim Mitchell shot his brother Arnie to death with a rifle. The Mitchell Brothers Court case marked the first use of 3D computer animation as a crime scenario tool. Jim served three years in prison, and died at home in 2007. He was buried next to his brother. 

 

1994- Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan skipped the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer so she could begin her multi-million dollar endorsements with DisneyWorld. She later blows it all when she’s caught on a hot mike during a Disney parade saying: “This is all so corny. I can’t believe I’m doing this!”

 

2005- Brad Bird’s The Incredibles won then Academy Award for best animated feature.

Chris Landreth’s Ryan beat out Disney’s Lorenzo for best animated short.

 

2013- Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story III won the Oscar for best animated feature.