Animation Fun Facts for Feb 11, 2013

Birthdays: Thomas Edison, Leslie Nielsen, Eva Gabor, Tina Louise-Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, Rudolph Firkusny, Joe Mankewicz, Sidney Sheldon, Burt Reynolds, Sergio Mendes of the band Brazil 66, Al Eugster, Brandy Norwood, Bobby Picket -who recorded the Monster Mash, Jennifer Aniston is 44, Sheryl Crow is 51, Sarah Palin is 49 1936- Famed German Expressionist animator Oskar Fishinger escaped Nazi Germany for the U.S. 1948- Famed Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein died of a heart attack. 1963- Bell Jar author Sylvia Plath laid out bread and butter and two glasses of milk for her children, then stuck her head into an oven and committed suicide. Her poet husband Ted Hughes who had abandoned her, waited until 1998 to tell his side of the story. Hughes wrote stories for his children like The Iron Giant. 1976-Chuck Jone’s TV special "Mowgli’s Brothers." 1995- Disney Studios planned neighborhood suburban community Celebration opened. 2003- A small satellite named U-Map, while studying the faint glow at the center of the Universe, calculated the exact age of our Universe to be 13.7 billion years old. That stars first appeared at 200 million years after the Big Bang, and that the Universe will ultimately expand forever, not crunch back in on itself or explode in one big cataclysm. Since then, more scholars now believe ours may not be the only Universe. 2005- Playwright Arthur Miller died at 90.