Birthdays: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, George
Villiers the Duke of Buckingham- minister of James I, O'Flagherty, Donald
O'Connor, Charles Boyer, Karl Boehm, Bruno Bettleheim, Ferdinand Horvath, Ben
Gazzara, Jack "King" Kirby, Janet Evans, Ron 'Louisiana Lightning'
Guidry, Nancy Kulp, Daniel Stern, Shania Twain, Charles Solomon, Jack Black is
46, Rita Coolidge is 54.
1922- The first broadcast commercial on radio. It was for a real estate firm Queensboro
Realty lasting ten minutes and cost $100 dollars. The firm selling suburban
homes in Queens NY immediately did $100,000 worth of business. The business world
took note of this new method of advertising.
1934-Writer Upton Sinclair was nominated for Governor of
California on the Democratic ticket by over half a million votes. This shocked
the California power-elite because Sinclair was a radical whose grass roots
organization EPIC (End Poverty in California) advocated socialist solutions to
the Depression. Even FDR kept his distance from Sinclair.
Powerful forces
enlisted Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and other Hollywood conservatives to
ensure Sinclair's defeat by creating the first modern negative media campaign.
This included phony newsreels of actors dressed as hobos saying how they're
going to California to sponge off the taxpayers. Walt Disney's lawyer, Gunther
Lessing, demanded Ward Kimball take the "Sinclair for Governor" sign
off his car window.
Governor Frank
Merriam who earlier that year had ordered troops to shoot down striking San
Francisco longshoremen and their families won re-election.
1963- Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a
Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the climax of the first
' Poor People's March 'on Washington”. Organizer A. Phillip Randolph conceived
a poor people’s march taking weeks not unlike the Bonus Marchers of 1929. The
sympathetic John F. Kennedy administration prevailed upon them to keep it to
one day to reduce the chance of violence and maximize media exposure. They had planned for 100,000 but they got
400,000. Movie stars like Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, James Garner, and
Charlton Heston attended.
1990- Computer pioneer Sandy Lerner was fired from the
company she founded- Cisco Systems.
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