Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April27, 2024

Birthdays: Ulysses S. Grant, King Edward IV, Samuel Morse, Mary Wollenstonecraft, Edward Gibbon, Anouk Aimee, Sheena Easton is 65, Sandy Dennis, Coretta Scott King, Kasey Kasem, Jack Klugman

1884- The British government declared that Christopher Wrens 1675 observatory at Greenwich would be the central meridian point for calculating time zones. This would aid in calculation of longitudes, which is crucial in navigating the world’s oceans. Starting at Greenwich, they divided the world into 24 time zones each 15 longitudinal degrees apart.

1958- The Lavender Scare. Pres Eisenhower issued Executive order 10450, banning gays and lesbians from ever holding government jobs. 5,000 govt workers and scientists were fired.  The ban was not lifted until 1977.

1964- The John Muir National Wilderness created.

1967- Twiggy Day at Disneyland. The famous English fashion model and her entourage spent a groovy day at the park.

1970- THE FIRST ATM- Automatic bank teller machine, opened at the Surety National Bank in downtown Los Angeles.

1975- Monty Python and the Holy Grail opened in US theaters.

1981- Ringo Starr married Barbera Bach, his costar on the film 'Caveman'. UngaBunga!

2005- Maiden flight of the world's largest passenger plane- the Airbus A-380.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 26,2024

Birthdays: Marcus Aurelius, French Queen Marie De Medicis, Pasquale Paoli, John James Audubon, Frederick Law Olmstead, Eugene Delacroix, Syngman Rhee, Dr. Lee DeForrest, John Grierson founder of the National Film Board of Canada, Rudolf Hess, Bobby Rydell, Anita Loos, I. M. Pei, Carol Burnett is 91, Eyvind Earle, Giancarlo Esposito is 68, Kevin James, Amos Otis, Joan Chen is 62, Jimmy Giuffre, Rocker Duane Eddy- 84, Jet Li- born Li Lian jie is 61, Victor Perrin 1916, voice actor who did the Control Voice in The Outer Limits. He also was Dr Zin in Johnny Quest, Former First Lady Melania Trump is 54

1928- Los Angeles City Hall dedicated. 

1937- GUERNICA- In Spain the Stuka bombers of the German Condor Legion, Nazi subcontractors for Franco, bombed an innocent Basque village, killing 5,000 and provoking an international outcry and a painting by Picasso. Attacking at the height of the market time, for three hours the planes bombed and strafed the helpless civilians with no military target in sight. Combatants in WWI tried to avoid harming civilians, but this act and the simultaneous Japanese attacks in China signaled a new tactic, sowing terror by treating civilians as targets. 

1940- Disney short “Tugboat Mickey”. 

1941- An organ is played for the first time at a baseball game in Chicago.

1942- The last Little Orphan Annie radio program ran on WGN Chicago. After 12 years, Ovaltine replaced it with Captain Midnight.

1954- Akira Kurosawa’ The Seven Samurai opened in Japan.

1965- Fred Smith, a student at Yale, got his economics paper back with a "c'" and a note stating the idea he espoused was impractical. The idea was an overnight air-freight service which he founded six years later as Federal Express.

1969- PAUL IS DEAD. The height of a strange rumor that excited the rock & roll world that Paul McCartney of the Beatles had died, and the news was being kept a secret. Evidence was presented in the cryptic lyrics of "I am the Walrus", songs played backwards and the record album photo where Paul is the only figure with his back to the camera. 

A primetime TV special hosted by celebrity attorney F. Lee Bailey explored the controversy. Finally, this day Paul and Linda McCartney held a news conference and declared he was very much alive and what on Earth was everyone on about? Paul McCartney is still alive today at age in his 80s.

1977- In New York City, Studio 54, the mecca of 70’s Disco culture opened.

1986- Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Conan the Republican, married Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy. 

1993- NBC announced former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live comedy writer Conan O’Brien would take David Letterman’s old Late Show spot. After a few years he moved on to replace the retiring the retiring Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. But soon Leno decided he did not want to retire just yet and bounced Conan.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for april 24, 2024

Birthdays: Daniel Defoe, William de Kooning, St. Vincent de Paul, Morgan Earp, Jack E. Leonard, Dame Ethel Smyth, Jill Ireland, Eric Bogosian, Sue Grafton, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Donner, Barbara Streisand is 82, Cedric the Entertainer is 60, Shirley MacLaine is 89, Djimon Hounsau is 60.

1184 B.C. (est.) TROY FALLS TO THE GREEKS- Despite the warnings of the seers Cassandra and Laocoon, the Trojans brought Ulysses' great wooden horse into the city, and at night the Greeks climbed out and opened the city gates to destruction. The reason we have any date for this was this day the Romans celebrated a festival commemorating the event, and they invented our calendar. 

1584- Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi asked the Heii Shrine in Edo (Tokyo) to dedicate a new heraldic design - the red disc Asahi - Rising Sun flag is created. 

1800- The U.S. Congress set up the Library of Congress. By 1814 it had three thousand volumes, but they were destroyed when a British Army burned Washington. Thomas Jefferson then donated his own private library to restart the collection. Today it numbers in the millions of volumes.

1833- The Soda Fountain was patented.

1874- Jesse James married his cousin Miss Zerelda Mimms, who he called Z. 

1901-The First American League baseball game. The Cleveland Blues vs. the Chicago White Stockings.

1913- The Woolworth Building was dedicated in lower New York. It’s cornices decorated like the campanile of Saint Marks in Venice. At the time it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. President Woodrow Wilson illuminated its electric lights by flipping a switch long distance in the White House. One person upon taking the elevator to the top floor, said “ Is God in..?”

1933- Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.

1944- Film Noir classic film Double Indemnity premiered.

1954- Handsome English actor Peter Lawford married John F. Kennedy’s sister Patricia Kennedy. This union would give JFK his link to Hollywood, Frank Sinatra and the RatPack.

1961- First day of shooting on the film King of Kings, the Christ story starring Jeffrey Hunter. Called by one critic” I was a Teenage Jesus” In 1966 Jeffrey Hunter turned down a TV series after doing the pilot episode. His wife worried that he’d be typecast. The role of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk went instead went to William Shatner.

1979- Paul McCartney happened to be in New York City and dropped in on his old mate John Lennon. They spent the day together and at one point mediated visiting the set of Saturday Night Live but changed their minds at the last minute. Paul McCarthy left in the wee hours. It was the last time he ever saw John Lennon alive. 

1981- Small companies like Apple and Commodore had dominated the personal computer market while giants like IBM stuck with large business systems. Now IBM weighed in with The IBM PC –personal computer, with basic software language DOS provided by Microsoft. It soon came to dominate the market.

1990- The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 23, 2024

Birthdays: William Shakespeare, James Buchanan, John Muir, Sergei Prokoviev, J.M.W. Turner, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen Douglas the Little Giant, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Halston, Sandra Dee, Valerie Bertinelli, Lee Majors is 84, Judy Davis, Simone Simon, Tony Esposito, Michael Sporn, Michael Moore is 70, Herve Villechais, John Oliver is 47.

1867- William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, an optical toy predating motion pictures.

1896- THE FIRST PROJECTED MOVIES IN THE U.S.- The first projection of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 28th street and Broadway in New York City. Edison had to be nagged into this by his engineer W.K.L. Dickson. Edison thought projecting movies like the Lumiere Brothers were doing in Paris would never catch on, and the future of film was in nickelodeon machines.  The movie show featured the sultry Annabella the Dancer and a boxing match, but the real hit of the evening was footage of Waves Hitting the Rocks on Shore, which made people instinctively jump to keep from getting wet.

1903- The first game of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) baseball team. They defeated the Washington Senators, 7-2.

1914- Chicago’s Wrigley Field opened. 

1931- Warner Bros movie The Public Enemy was released. Starring Jean Harlow and a Broadway dancer with a strong lower east side accent named James Cagney. It made them both stars.

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for a stunt where he dressed as a priest and solicited funds in a leper colony.

1970- Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane was inadvertently invited to a tea party at the White House by Pres. Nixon’s daughter Trisha. She had invited Slick because under her maiden name Grace Ward she was a fellow alumni of Finch College. Grace Slick and her escort Abbie Hoffman were in line to get into the event, when at the last-minute White House security recognized them and turned them away. It was too bad, because she had a plan to slip LSD into President Nixon’s tea. 

1998- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows 98 to 4,000 industry leaders. When he ceremonially opened the first window, the system crashed- Doh!

2005- The first You-Tube video was uploaded- Me at the Zoo.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 22, 2024

Birthdays: Queen Isabella I of Castille, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Immanuel Kant, Madame De Stael, Alexander Kerensky, Aaron Spelling, Eddie Albert, Glen Cambell, Betty Page would be 100, Marilyn Chambers, Rondo Hatton, Charlie Mingus, Peter Frampton, John Waters is 78, Jack Nicholson is 87

1741- Georg Frederich Handel dipped his quill into ink and began to write the Messiah.

1811- Last of the Parthenon Marbles pried off their walls in Greece and sent back to England on a British frigate. Lord Byron was on board and called Lord Elgin, the supervisor of this act, "The Spoiler". Today the Elgin marbles are still at the British Museum and the Greeks are still mad about it.

1876- Composer Peter Tchaikovsky completed his score for the ballet Swan Lake.

1935- The Bride of Frankenstein released. James Whale’s sequel to his original classis. With Elsa Lanchester. “Friend…good! Smoke….good!” Ahah Hahhah!”

1940- Writer Ernest Hemingway cabled his editor Max Perkins from Havana about a new novel he began writing. " Title is "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from passage John Donne Oxford Book of English bottom page seventy one STOP Please register immediately."

1942- Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Saboteur” premiered in Washington.

1952- The first nuclear bomb test shown on network TV -Tommy Turtle says duck and cover!

60 years ago. 1964- The opening day of the New York World’s Fair. It was in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, built on the site of the 1939 World’s Fair.

1970- The first Earth Day. The idea was started by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin "The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy," Senator Nelson said, "and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda."

1972- Magnavox announced the Magnavox Odyssey. Created by Ralph Baer in his spare time, it was the first mass retail home videogame console.

1978- Comic actors Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi debut two new characters on the Saturday Night Live TV show, Joliet Jake and Ellwood Blues. The Blues Brothers are born. On that same broadcast, host Steve Martin did his King Tut Song. “Now when I die, now don’t think I’m a nut. Don’t want no fancy funeral, just one like Old King Tut.”

1996- Christopher Robin Milne died at age 75. The young boy whose fascination with a bear in the London Zoo called Winnie inspired his father A.A. Milne to write the Winne the Pooh stories. Christopher Robin wasn’t always appreciative of all the attention. He said of his father: "Someday I’ll write some verses about him and see how He likes it!"

2001- Dreamwork’s Shrek opened in theaters. I’m making waffles! 

2021- The Mars Perseverance probe successfully collected oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 21, 2024

Birthdays: Queen Elizabeth II, Edwin S. Porter, Charlotte Bronte', John Muir, Freiderich Froebel the inventor of kindergarten-1782, Anthony Quinn, Patti Lupone, Charles Grodin, Anna Magnani, Andie MacDowell is 65, Tony Danza, Elaine May, Iggy Pop is 77, James McAvoy is 45, Rob Riggle is 54 

1910- Mark Twain died of congenital heart failure at 75 as Haley's comet appeared overhead. He once wrote: " When arriving in Heaven feel free to ask all the questions you want of Saint Peter. You may ask for his autograph, however don’t take any Kodak photos or bring your dog. Admittance to Heaven is based on favor, not merit, else the dog would be allowed to go in and you kept out."

1921- The Coconut Grove nightclub opened in Hollywood.

1938- Disney animator Bill Tytla married artists model Adrienne LeClerc.

1961- Two British teenage rock bands meet each other for the first time- The Beatles met the Rolling Stones. They partied together often and wrote songs for each other.

1964- British TV viewers double their pleasure- BBC 2 goes on the air. Their first program is Play School.

1973- The pop song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn became a number one hit on the US, Canadian and UK pop charts. The song spawned the custom of a yellow ribbon as a symbol of remembering a soldier overseas, which reached its’ peak during the Iran Hostage Crisis. That in turn spawned variations like the red AIDS ribbon, the pink breast cancer ribbon, and so on.

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a live primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. Called THE MYSTERY OF AL CAPONE’S SECRET VAULT. After wasting two hours speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room, sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles, trash and a few dollar bills.

1989- Oil executive George W. Bush became part of an ownership consortium that bought the last place baseball team the Texas Rangers." As soon as I knew they were for sale I went after them like a pit bull on a pants leg…. It doesn’t get much better than this…"

1997-The first Intergalactic Funeral.  The ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960's LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary were shot into space.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for April 20, 2024

Birthdays: Harold Lloyd, Juan Miro', Adolf Hitler, Tito Puente, Nina Foch, Gregory Ratoff, Ryan O'Neal, Daniel Day Lewis, Jessica Lange, Luther Vandross, Don Mattingly, Rosalyn Summers, Crispin Glover, Betty-Lou Gerson the voice of Cruella da Vil, George Takei is 87, Clint Howard, Carmen Electra is 49, Andy Serkis is 61, Bob Kurtz

1859- " It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times..." Charles Dicken's novel "A Tale of Two Cities" began to be published in magazine form.

1902- Marie Curie discovered radium.

1909- Mary Pickford, the first Movie Star, goes in front of a camera for the first time.

1912- A London West End theater manager and failed author named Abraham “Bram” Stoker died. He was 65. If anyone noticed him, it was because he managed the Lyceum theater where famed actor Henry King performed. Bram Stoker’s seven books and several plays made little money in his time. But a decade later a play adapted from one of his novels made him world famous. Dracula.

1925- The Warner Bros. Moving Picture Company merged with Vitagraph, and began experimenting with fixing sound on to film.

1935- Radio program “Your Hit Parade” premiered.

1938-For Hitler’s birthday was the Berlin premiere of Leni Reifenstahl’s film Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 

1939- RCA president David Sarnoff dedicated RCA pavilion at World's Fair in New York City. First U.S. news event filmed on television. Sarnoff predicted that one day everyone would have a television in their home!

1940- RCA labs demonstrated the first Electron Microscope.

1946- Walt Disney’s Make Mine Music premiered in NY.

1974 - Paul McCartney and Wings releases "Band on the Run" .

1976 - At a stage performance at City Center NYC, George Harrison secretly slipped in and sang the Lumberjack Song with the Monty Python comedy troop. John Cleese recalled: “George was wonderful. He came up on stage with us as a Mountie and sang the 'Lumberjack Song’ impeccably, and I don’t suppose 10 percent of the audience knew he was up there."

1977- Woody Allen & Diane Keaton starred in the film “Annie Hall”. Young Christopher Walken did an early cameo as Annie’s weird brother.