Birthdays: Ludwig Van
Beethoven, Catherine of Aragon (Henry VIII's wife number one), Marshal Gerbhard
von Blucher, Lenoid Brezhnev, Jane Austen, Margaret Mead, Noel Coward, George
Santayanna, Liv Ullmann is 79, Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean
of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K.
Dick, Miranda Otto is 50.
1871- BOSS TWEED INDICTED- William Marcy Tweed as New York
City Commissioner of Public Works was behind one of the most corrupt city
governments in U.S. history. Tweed mobilized poor and immigrant voters into
political power and bought and sold city building projects. The cost overruns
to build a simple courthouse cost more than the total cost to build the British
Parliament in London- $13 million dollars. For example he once billed the city
$14,000 for 11 thermometers.
The press tried to expose him, but it was really Thomas
Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s Weekly who helped bring the Tweed Ring down. Boss
Tweed said: "I don’t mind the newspaper articles since most of my voters
can’t read, but those damn pictures!" Tweed once offered Nast half a
million dollars to go to Europe and "study art". Nast refused. Boss
Tweed ended his life in the Ludlow Street Jail, which he himself built.
1900 -EARLY ANIMATED FILM "ENCHANTED DRAWINGS', James
Stuart Blackton was a New York World cartoonist who used to do a vaudeville act
in drag. He came to do an article on Thomas Edison then Edison put him on the
payroll. He created this and several other trickfilms. It doesn’t move much
more than his vaudeville lightning drawing act, His 1906 film Humorous Phases
of Funny Faces is considered the first animated cartoon.
1905- Variety magazine born.
1913- Young English music hall actor named Charlie Chaplin
got a job at Keystone Studios in Hollywood. His first film he would play a villain.
1935- Hollywood movie star Thelma Todd found dead in her car
in her garage in Malibu She was 30. She was a sexy comedienne who starred with
Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. She loved to party so
much she was nicknamed "Hot Toddy". She knew New York mobster Lucky
Lucciano. Was she done in by the mob, her jealous director boyfriend, was it a
suicide or did she just pass out drunk in her car garage with the motor
running? The mystery’s never been answered.
1966- The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the song ‘Hey
Joe’.
1966- Sergio Leone’s epic Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly premiered
in Rome. The last of the Man with No Name trilogy. Clint Eastwood never worked
with Leone again.
1971- Don McClean released the long version of the song
‘American Pie’.
1978- The Disney short The
Small One, directed by Don Bluth.
1980- Colonel Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken
founder, died.
1988- Shockjock Howard Stern is fined $100,000 by the FCC
for having on his radio show a man who could play the piano with his penis.
1993- Producer Aaron Spelling fired Shannon Dougherty off
the TV soap Beverly Hills 90210.
1999- Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of
Music, sued New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital for destroying her singing voice
during a routine throat operation.
2009- Roy E. Disney died, the Walt Disney nephew who oversaw
the animation resurgence of the 1990s.
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