Birthdays: Charles James Stuart the Old Pretender, Yamaoka Tesshu (1832- Japanese swordsman), Saul Bellow, Judy Garland, Hattie McDaniel, Frederick Loew (of Lerner & Loew), Howlin’ Wolf, Maurice Sendak, Gina Gershon is 54, Leilee Sobieski is 33, Jean Triplehorn is 53, Jurgen Prochnow, Elizabeth Hurley is 51, Britain’s Prince Phillip is 95!
1910- The first Krazy Kat comic strip- Cartoonist George Herriman was doing a strip for Hearst called "The Family Upstairs". He was amused at the idea of a friendship between a cat and a mouse. So Herriman put them in the corner playing marbles while the family quarreled. First an office boy and later editor Arthur Brisbane suggested they have their own strip. The immortality of the denizens of Coconino County follows, loved by the likes of H.L. Mencken, e.e.cummings and Jacques Kerouac. Krazy herself explains:" It's wot's behind me that I am."
1926- Artist Antonio Gaudi was run over by a streetcar while crossing in front of his famous cathedral in Barcelona. Begun in 1886 The Cathedral Sacreda Familia is still scheduled for completion- in the year 2035. 1935- A New York stockbroker and an Ohio physician, both recovered alcoholics, invent a twelve step recovery program called Alcoholic's Anonymous.
1939 - Barney Bear, cartoon character, by MGM, debuts
1944- A USO troop was entertaining soldiers in Normandy from the back of a truck but they needed a piano player. They called out to the audience if anyone could play. A shy cattle rancher’s son from Modesto California came up and played. He did so well his colonel ordered him out of the line and told him to form his own G.I. band.
Dave Breubeck’s jazz career began.
1957- “Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog” cartoon debuts on the Captain Kangaroo show.
1980- Comedian Richard Pryor had been doing so much cocaine even his dealers were worried about him. This day, while trying to freebase he exploded in flame, and ran screaming down his street. Another version of the story said he tried to commit suicide by pouring tequila on himself and setting it alight. During his long recovery in the Sherman Oaks burn unit, his nurse once put on the news and he watched CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite report his death. `He thought to himself: "If Walter Cronkite said I died, it must be true! Arghhh!" He recovered, but developed Muscular Dystrophy in the late 1990s.
1995-110,000 people jam Central Park in New York to see Disney's Pocahontas, the largest audience ever to attend an animated movie premiere.
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