Animation Fun Facts for June 30, 2018

Birthdays: Buddy Rich, Lena Horne, Czeslaw Milosz, Susan Hayward, Deanna Durbin, Howard Hawks, William Goldman, Martin Landau, Essa-Pekka Salonen, David Alan Grier, Vincent D’Onofrio, Monica Potter, Mike Tyson is 51, Michael Phelps, Rupert Graves is 55

1856- Charles Dickens does his first public reading from his works in London.

1933- A group of actors met in secret at Frank (the Wizard of Oz) Morgan’s house, and form the Screen Actors Guild. The secrecy was because studios threatened to blacklist anyone who so much as breathed the word union. Among the founding members that night are James Cagney, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Frederic March, Robert Montgomery and Boris Karloff.

1936- Margaret Mitchell's bestseller “Gone With the Wind" first published.

1936- the 40 hour work week was made a federal law. 

1937- Congress voted to shut down the Federal Theater Program, the division of the government funded WPA that produced plays for Depression wracked poor people. The FTP produced cutting edge works of Orson Welles, Clifford Odets and Eugene O’Neill and at it’s height reached 25 million people. But conservative senators thought it had become too radicalized by lefties. Theater actors working in L.A. on a hit production of Pinocchio held a mock funeral for the puppet. Over it’s casket was the headstone FTP: Born 1934, Killed by an Act of Congress, June 30th 1937.

1940- Female Cartoonist Dale Messick takes over the Brenda Star comic strip and adds the trademark sparkles.

1948- Bell Laboratories announced the Transistor, a possible substitute for radio-vacuum tubes. So early computers can shrink from the size of a building to the size of a bus. In 1980 the silicon chip reduced the same computing power to the size of your fingernail.

1950- The Goofy short Motor Mania released.

1975- Just 4 days after divorcing Sonny Bono, Cher married rocker Gregg Allman.

1996 - Margaux Hemingway, considered the first modern Supermodel, committed suicide at 41. Her grandfather Ernest Hemingway committed suicide, and his father before him.

1989- Spike Lee’s movie Do The Right Thingopened. 

Animation Fun Facts for June 29, 2018

Birthdays: Bernard Hermann, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Slim Pickens, Nelson Eddy, Gary Busey, John Hench, Little Eva, Harmon Killabrew, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Anna Sophie-Mutter, Leroy Anderson, Maria Conchita Alonso, Robert Evans, Matthew Weiner, Brett McKenzie, Roger Allers, Ray Harryhausen

1801-  Beethoven confessed to a friend that he was going deaf.

1935- Disney short Who Killed Cock Robin?Directed by Dave Hand. 

1936- Pope Pius XI published an encyclical warning of the evils of Motion Pictures. “They glorify Lust and Lascivious behavior.”

1940 – ROBIN THE BOY WONDER- According to Batman Comics, this day mobsters rubbed out a circus highwire team known as the Flying Graysons, leaving their son Dick an orphan. He was taken in by millionaire Bruce Wayne so Batman could have his Robin.

1940- First day shooting on the film Citizen Kane.

1950- The Hollywood Ten are given jail sentences for contempt of Congress.

1956- Marilyn Monroe married author Arthur Miller.

1967-Actress Jane Mansfield and her dog were killed in a car crash when their car slammed into a parked tractor-trailer. Her children including Marisa Hargitay were in the back seat but unhurt.

Ever since then all high chassis trucks now have an iron brace in the back.

1968 - "Tip-Toe Thru' The Tulips With Me" by Tiny Tim peaks at #17.

1978- Actor Bob Crane, best known as the star in the television series Hogan’s Heroes, was found beaten to death with an electric cord wrapped around his neck in a Scottsdale Arizona hotel room. Around his body were a large library of his home made porno tapes.

2007- Pixar’s Ratatouillepremiered, directed by Brad Bird.

2007- Steve Jobs introduced the iphone, initiating the era of the smartphone. 

Animation Fun Facts for June 28, 2018

Birthdays: King Henry VIII, Luigi Pirandello, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Dillinger, Richard Rogers, Gilda Radner, Cartoonist George Booth is 92, Leon Panetta, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kathy Bates is 70, John Cusack is 52, Mel Brooks is 92

  

1868- Artist Claude Monet was so broke and depressed he jumped in the Seine River. After splashing around for a while, he decided its silly to drown himself so he swam to the riverbank and went for a drink. He outlived all the Impressionist painters of his generation, dying in 1926.

1928- Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines recorded West End Blues.

1955- Walt Disney sends a memo to his studio employees to please come to the grand opening day of Disneyland Park on July 17. He was concerned not enough people would show up the first day and it would look bad on the TV cameras. He shouldn’t have worried. 100,000 people came that first day.

1975- Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling died during open heart surgery. He was 50. His last movie script was called The Man, about resistance of the Washington powerful to the first black president of the United States.

Animation Fun Facts for June 27, 2018

Birthdays: Swedish King Charles XII "the Madman of the North", Helen Keller, Norma Kamali, Charles Stuart Parnell, Bob" Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan, Emma Goldman,  Marine General Chesty Puller, Walter Johnson, Ross Perot, Isabella Adjani is 63, Lauren Hill, Alice McDermott, J.J. Abrams is 52, Tony Leung Chu Wai is 56, Toby McGuire is 43. Katherine Beaumont the voice of Alice in Alice in Wonderland, and Wendy in Peter Pan is 80.

1922 - Newberry Medal 1st presented for kids literature, the first winner was Hendrik Van Loon.

1949 - "Captain Video & His Video Rangers," debut on DUMONT-TV.

1962- Daryl F. Zanuck showed up at the quarterly meeting of the exec board of 20^thCentury Fox, and in a celebrated corporate showdown, he wrested back control of the company he founded in 1935, but had lost control of.

1966- TV soap opera Dark Shadows premiered. Barnabas Collins was the first vampire to have issues with his job, and so became the ancestor of the modern romantic vampires of True Blood and Twilight.

1967- In London, Barclay’s Bank sets up an automated teller machine, which they called a Robot Teller, but we know today as the first ATM.

1984- Hollywood introduced the PG-13 rating to indicate graphic violence, invented for the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

1995- Boyishly proper British actor Hugh Grant is busted for soliciting sex from a Sunset Blvd. street hooker named Divine Brown. Grant had just released a film called “ The Englishman Who went up a Hill and Came down a Mountain". Pundits had fun changing the title to "The Englishman who went to L.A. a Hugh, and Came Back a John."

2007- British Prime Minister Tony Blair stepped down after ten years. His security police  nickname in office was Bambi.

2008- Pixar’s WALL-Eopened in theaters.

Animation Fun Facts for June 26, 2018

Birthdays: Peter Lorre- born Laszlo Lowenstein, Pearl Buck, Abner Doubleday, Babe Deidrickson-Zacharias, Willy Messerschmidt, Claudio Abbado, Woolie Reitherman, Gregg LeMond, Vittorio Storaro, Colonel Tom Parker, Pat Morita, Chris Isaak, Derek Jeter, Paul Julian, Chris O’Donnell, Sean Hayes is 48

1496- Michelangelo Buonarotti arrived in Rome to look for work. Coming from the city of Florence he was treated as the citizen of a foreign country. 

1870- Atlantic City inaugurated its ocean side boardwalk; the first of it's kind in the US.

1888- Scots writer Robert Louis Stevenson shipped out from San Francisco to wander the South Pacific, and finally settle in Samoa.

1922- Montgomery’s Country House opened in the Los Feliz Area of LA. In 1926 it changed its name to The Tam O’ Shanter.  In the 1930s it was the nearest bar to Walt Disney’s Hyperion Studio, so animators called it “ the commissary”. It is still in business today. Walt Disney’s favorite table is marked.

1924 - The Ziegfeld Follies opened on Broadway.

1925- Charlie Chaplin has a lavish Hollywood premiere for his new film The Gold Rush.

He had edited the film in secret in an upstairs hotel room in Salt Lake City to keep away from the public and his wife’s bill collectors.

1925- From his Soho London flat, John Logie Baird invented an early form of television. The Boob Tube has no one single Tom Edison-like inventor but many claimants. The Englishman joined the ranks of others who claimed to have invented TV first, including Philo Farnsworth, Bell Labs, Vladimir Zworkin, and Dr. Lee DeForrest.

1959- Disney short Donald in Mathmagic Landpremiered with the film Darbie O’Gill and the Little People.

1964 - Beatles release "A Hard Day's Night" album.

1965-"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds hits number one on the US pop charts. Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics. William Shatners version became the most well known.

1977 - Elvis Presley does his last public performance, in Indianapolis.

1984- Campy singer Tiny Tim married Miss Vicky on the Johnny Carson show during a live broadcast.

1997- a novel called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,"the product of five years work by a new writer named J.K. Rowling with her own drawings, was published by Bloomsbury in the UK with a print run of five hundred copies. It became a world wide phenomenon. In 5 years J.K. Rowling was the richest woman in England after the Queen.

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Animation Fun Facts for June 25, 2018

Birthday: George Orwell, Marc Charpentier, Lord Louis Mountbatten, General Hap Arnold, Cajun musician Clifton Chenier, Sidney Lumet, Walter Brennan, Willis Reed, George Abbott, Carly Simon, June Lockhart, Alex Toth, Peyo (the creator of the Smurfs), Jimmy Dyne-o-Mite Walker, George Michaels, Mike Myers is 55, Ricky Gervais is 57.

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1870- Toi Yo ta Hoooo! Richard Wagner's opera Die Walkure premiered in Munich. 

1910- First performance of Stravinsky's ballet "Firebird" by Diagheilev and his Ballet Russe.  Stravinsky used to refer to the dancers as "A bunch of knock-kneed Lolitas".

1934- Milt Kahl's first day at the Walt Disney Studios. It was said he was the first artist to ever show Walt a real portfolio of drawings to get hired.

1940- Young actor, and liberal labor activist Ronald Reagan married his first wife, actress Jane Wyman.

1949- Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short“ Longhaired Hare” premiered.

1951- After losing a power struggle to Dory Schary, Louis B. Mayer announced he was stepping down as head of MGM. Mayer in his time was the most powerful man in Hollywood. He kept an all white office modeled after Mussolini’s in Rome. 

1951 - 1st color TV broadcast-CBS' Arthur Godfrey from NYC to 4 cities.

1953- The film Robot Monsterpremiered. It has attained cult film status as being one of the worst motion pictures ever made.

1956- The last Packard automobile was produced.

1967- The "Our World" Beatles concert, the first television event to attempt a worldwide satellite linkup. They sing and record "All You Need is Love" live in front of an audience of 400.

1973- White House counsel John Dean testifies to the Congressional Watergate Committee "There is a Cancer on the Presidency." For the first time one of President Nixon's closest advisers hinted publicly that the President himself was personally involved in the Watergate scandal. 

1978- The Rainbow Flag, symbolizing LGBT rights first flown.

1981- Bill Gates and Paul Allen file papers to incorporate their company Microsoft.

1982- Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film Blade Runner opened.

1980- Disney’s film Herbie Goes Bananas, premiered.

1997- Disney's animated film Hercules opened in theaters.

2009- Michael Jackson, called the King of Pop, died after his personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray administered a powerful sedative named Propofol to help him sleep and stopped his heart instead. He was 50 and been performing on stage since the age of 5.

Animation Fun Facts for June 24, 2018

Birthdays: Earl Kitchener, the Sirdar of Omdurman, Roy O. Disney, E.I. Dupont, Ambrose Bierce, Jack Dempsey, John Ciardi, Mick Fleetwood,  Billy Casper, Michelle Lee, Claude Chabrol, Chief Dan George, Pete Hamill, Peter Weller, Sherry Springfield, Phil Harris- singer and voice of Baloo in Disney’s Jungle Book, Little John in Robin Hood and O'Malley in the Aristocats.

1901- The first exhibit in a Paris salon on the Rue Lafitte of a Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso. 

1945- Meet the Press debuted on radio. Two years later it moved to television and it remains TV’s longest running program.

1949 - "Hopalong Cassidy" becomes the1st network western on television-NBC.

1963 - 1st demonstration of a home video recorder, at BBC Studios, London

1970 – The movie "Catch 22" opened in movie theaters.

1997- Brian Keith, actor (Family Affair, Dirty Dingus McGee), shot himself at 75. He was suffering from incurable cancer and tired of the pain fighting the disease.

Animation Fun Facts for June 23, 2018

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Augustus, Josephine Bonaparte, Alan Turing, Bob Fosse, James Levine, Dan Ogilvy of Ogilvy & Mather, Joss Whedon, Dr. Alfred Kinsey the sex researcher, Edward VIII, aka the Duke of Windsor, Selma Blair, Justice Clarence Thomas, Frances MacDormand is 61

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1868- Christopher Latham Scholes patents the typewriter. In 1873, he sold his patent to the Remington Company who had made rifles.  In 1874 Mark Twain secretly admitted to a friend that he enjoyed writing on the newfangled technology.

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1963- In Disneyland the Enchanted Tiki Room opened with the first animatronics (the birds).

1972- Title IX passed by the US Government. It called for women’s collegiate sports to be funded equally as the men’s sports. 

1976- Work completed on Toronto’s CN Tower. Called then the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

1979- The Knack released the single My Sharona.

1989- Tim Burton’s film " Batman" opened.

1989- Disney’s Honey I Shrank the Kidsopened with the Roger Rabbit short Tummy Trouble.

Animation Fun Facts for June 22, 2018

Birthdays: Captain George Vancouver, Eric Maria Remarque, John Dillinger, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Mike Todd, Billy Wilder, Joe Papp, Bill Blass, Oskar Fischinger, Pistol Pete Maravich, Klaus Maria Brandauer is 74, Ed Bradley, Emmanuelle Seigner, Prunella Scales, Meryl Streep is 68, Konrad Zuse, Kris Kristofferson, Matt Doherty, 

Floyd Norman is 83.

1342 – According to JRR Tolkeins’ book the Hobbit, this day Bilbo Baggins returned to his home in the Shire with the one true Ring.

1894 - Harry Houdini marries Bessie Rahner. She remained devoted to him even after his death. Every Halloween for twenty years she held a séance to try and contact him.

1966 – The Mike Nichols film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"opened. Based on the play by Edward Albee and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It was the first American movie to use four letter cuss words. Just a year before comedian Lenny Bruce had gone to jail for saying the same words, although everyone including President Johnson swore in everyday parlance.

1969- Singer actress Judy Garland OD’s on sleeping pills. She was 47. Whether it was an accident or a suicide we will never know. A pillhead from early age, she had gotten hooked when MGM chief Louis B. Mayer ordered studio nurses to put her on amphetamines so she would have the energy to finish the Wizard of Oz.  Fellow contract actress June Allyson explained- “You didn’t argue when the nurses brought them to you. They told us they were vitamins!” 

1977- Walt Disney’s The Rescuersopened in theaters.

1996- Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame opened.

Animation Fun Facts for June 21, 2018

Birthdays: Martha Washington, Alexander Pope, Berkeley Breathed, Al Hirschfeld, Al Martinez, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judy Holliday, Benazir Bhutto, Jane Russell, Mariette Hartley, Bernie Koppel, Rick Sutcliffe, Maureen Stapleton, Joe Flagherty, Juliet Lewis, Tony Scott, Chris Pratt is 39, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge is 36. 

1871- The Los Angeles Star newspaper announced the first trainload of pretzels had reached town!

1893- The FERRIS WHEEL -George Washington Ferris, Jr. decided that the Columbia Exhibition, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery, needed to surpass the French Eiffel Tower (introduced in 1889 during the centennial celebration of the French Revolution). So he created his wheel so each compartment could hold 12 people plus a butler in a parlor-like atmosphere and rotate them 250 feet in the air.  People were afraid they would gasp for oxygen up so high but it was a big hit anyway. 

1907 - E W Scripps founded United Press Agency.

1939- Eugene O’Neill’s wife Carlotta wrote in her diary- “Gene kept me up all night talking about his outline for a new play about his family”- The Long Days Journey into Night. It took him two years to write and it almost killed him.

1948- The Mark I computer,built at the Victoria University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program this day. The first computer that could store a program and re-open it.

1948- Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3-rpm long playing record, the LP. Inventor Peter Goldmark was annoyed that he had to change his 78 rpm records several times to hear just one Brahms Symphony. He decided to invent a way to fit all of a symphony on one side of a record.  His immediate supervisors told him to stop it because people would not throw away all their 78 rpm records to replace them with his. So Goldmark went over their heads to CBS chief William Paley and Paley loved the idea. RCA and David Sarnoff tried to compete with the 45-rpm record, but all it was good for was singles. The 33 1/3 dominated recording until replaced by the Compact Disc in the 1980’s.

1965- The Byrds release record Hey Mr. Tambourine Man. 

1978 - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's musical "Evita," premieres in London.

1988- Who Framed Roger Rabbit?premiered at Radio City Music Hall.  It opened generally three days later.

2002- Lilo & Stitch premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for June 20, 2018

Birthdays: Wolf Tone, Jacques Offenbach, Lillian Hellman, Errol Flynn, Audie Murphy,

Andre Watts, Cyndee Lauper, Bob Vila, Chet Atkins, Stephen Frears, Brian Wilson, Robert Rodriquez, John Goodman, Martin Landau, John Mahoney, Nicole Kidman is 50

1936- Mickey short Moving Daypremiered.

1940- Artist Alberto Vargas signs a contract with Esquire Magazine to paint the ‘Vargas Girls’ pin ups that made the magazine famous. He replaced artist George Petty who was demanding $1,500 a week. Vargas was paid $75 a week. Today an original Vargas goes for $350,000.

1941-Walt Disney's "the Reluctant Dragon" premiered, with cartoonist's pickets around the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Police actually have to close part of Hollywood Blvd. out of concern for what the rampaging animators might do. Future UPA producer Steve Bosustow drove up in a limo and picketed in tuxedo and top hat. His chauffeur was Maurice Noble, the designer of the RoadRunner cartoons. Ironically the movie was part documentary about how wonderful life was working at the Disney studio.

1947- Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, the gangster creator of modern Las Vegas, was murdered while reading his evening paper in his Beverly Hills home. He had bought the mansion from opera singer George London for his girlfriend actress Virginia Hill. The order to whack Bugsy was probably given by his old friend Mayer Lansky. The Mob was fed up with Bugsy’s cost overruns to build Las Vegas. The second owner of his Flamingo casino, Gus Greenbaum, had his throat cut with a butcher knife. Despite all, the Flamingo and the Las Vegas Strip went on to become a great success.

1948- The Ed Sullivan Show "Toast of the Town" later to be “the Ed Sullivan Show” premiered. Sullivan's show was the showcase that brought new acts like Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Signor Winces and the Rolling Stones into the average American living room. Prior to this, Mr. Sullivan was a columnist and radio show personality who co-authored "Red Channels", a book accusing dozens of his Show Biz compatriots as Communists..

1975- Steven Spielberg’s movie Jawsopened, bringing back the monster-hit event movie. 

Animation Fun Facts for June 19, 2018

Birthdays: Euclid, Blaise Pascal, King James I Stuart, Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor, Moe Howard, Kathleen Turner, Lou Gehrig, Guy Lombardo, Mildred Natwick, Charles Coburn, Pat Butram, Louis Jourdan, Pauline Kael, Salman Rushdie, Dame Mae Whitty, Lucie Sloane, Ang Sung Soo Chi, Paula Abdul is 56, Zoe Saldana is 40, Gena Rowlands is 88

1921- Distributer Amadee van Beuren announced production of a new series of "Aesop’s Fables" cartoons to be done by former Bray director Paul Terry. Terrytoons studio is born.

1923 - "Moon Mullins," a Comic Strip, debuts.

1934-The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, created.

1941 - Cheerios Cereal invented. Originally called Cheeri-Oats, it was changed to Cheerios in 1945. 

1952 - "I've Got A Secret" debuts on CBS-TV with Garry Moore as host.

1956- The comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis announce their breakup.

1960- Freedomland amusement park opened in New York City. 

1963- The Ray Harryhausen fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts premiered.

1973 The Rocky Horror Show stage show opened in London. The film version became a midnight cult classic. Writer Richard O’Brien himself plays the bald doorman Riff-Raff. Let’s do the Time Warp Again.

1978 – Garfield the Cat, created by Jim Davis, 1st appears as a comic strip.

1983- Don Bluth’s video arcade game Dragons Lair debuted.

1987 - Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream & Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia announce a new Ice Cream flavor, Cherry Garcia.

1987 –David Geffen Records signed their 1st artist -Donna Summer.

1998- Disney’s Mulan opened in theaters. 

Animation Fun Facts for June 18, 2018

Birthdays: M C Escher, Charles Gounod, James Montgomery Flagg, Kay Kayser, William Lassell 1799- English astronomer who discovered Neptune's moon Triton,  Richard Boone,  Jeanette MacDonald, Key Luke, Isabella Rosselini, E.G. Marshall, Roger Ebert, Eduard Daladier, Carol Kane, Sammy Kahn,  The Quay Brothers, Paul McCartney is 76

1898 - 1st amusement pier opens in Atlantic City, NJ

1913- composer Cole Porter graduated from Yale.

1931- The Metropolitan Museum of NY had in its collection a little blue statue of a Hippo from the tomb of the Egyptian Steward Senbi from the Twelfth Dynasty. People nicknamed it Willie and this day an article about it with a color picture appeared in Punch Magazine. Soon museum craftsmen made little replicas of Willie that they gave as gifts to donors and eventually started selling to the public. The massive retail business in museum reproductions and merchandise we have today, all began with little Willie the Hippo.

1959 - 1st TV telecast transmitted from England to US.

1967- At the Monterey Pop Rock festival Jimi Hendrix electrified the audience then finished his set by burning and smashing his guitar on stage. Until then musicians didn’t behave in such a way towards their instruments. Ravi Shankar was particularly shocked.

1980 –"We are on a mission from God." John Landis movie " The Blues Brothers" with Dan Ackroyd & John Belushi premiered.

Animation fun facts for June 17, 2018

Birthdays: King Edward I "Longshanks", John Wesley the founder of the Methodists, , Wally Wood, Ralph Bellamy, Dean Martin, Barry Manilow, Joe Piscopo is 68, Newt Gingrich, Martin Bormann, Jason Patric, Ken Loach, Greg Kinnear is 55, Venus Williams, Thomas Haden Church is 58, Will Forte is 48

1893- Cracker Jacks invented by RW Reuckheim. Their name came from Teddy Roosevelt sampling the caramel corn, and exclaimed “These are Crackerjack!”- popular slang back then for something very good.

1919 - "Barney Google" cartoon strip, by Billy De Beck, premiered.

1946- The first mobile telephone was installed in an automobile in St. Louis, Missouri.

1964- The first Universal Studios tram car tour. Carl Laemmle had been inviting tourists in for a nickel to watch movies be filmed as early as 1915.

1968- Ohio Express’ single “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my Tummy” went gold.

Animation Fun Facts for June 16, 2018

Birthdays: Stan Laurel, Willy Boskovsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Nelson Doubleday, Brian Eno, animator Pete Burness, Martha Graham, Erich Segal, Jack Albertson, Helen Traubel, Ron LeFlore, Laurie Metcalf, Sonia Braga is 68, John Cho is 46.

1902- A musical play of L Frank Baum’s fantasy story the Wizard of Oz premiered at Chicago’s Grand Opera House. When Baum was writing down the stories at one point he was stuck for a name for the magical kingdom. He looked down at his desk files that were labeled A-N and O-Z. 

1903 – The Pepsi Cola Company formed.

1920- International Telephone and Telegraph incorporates- IT&T.

1932- Broadway star Mae West heads west for Hollywood to make movies.

1943- 54 year old actor Charlie Chaplin married his fourth wife, 18 year old Oona O’Neill. In Hollywood, Chaplin’s nickname was “Chickenhawk Charlie” for his fondness for underage girls. Oona did remain his wife until the end of his life in 1971.

1947 –The 1st regular broadcast network news show began-Dumont's "News from Washington".

1952- The CBS television comedy My Little Margie premiered. It starred Gale Storm and Charlie Farrell. 

1955- Disney’s Lady and the Tramp premiered.

1959- Actor George Reeves, who played the 1950s television Superman, went upstairs during a dinner party and shot himself with a Luger pistol.  Actor Gig Young, who was a friend of Reeves, said the actor 's career was going well and his love life was fine. He never believed the actor would shoot himself. Gig Young shot himself in 1981. 

1960- Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Psycho" premiered. 

1967- The film “The Dirty Dozen” debuted.

1987- Italian porn star Ciccolina announced that since all politicians were whores and she was a whore, she would run for office. This made sense to Italians who this day elected her overwhelmingly to a seat in Parliament.

Animation Fun Facts for June 15, 2018

Birthdays: Edward the Black Prince of England, Rachael Donelson Jackson- Andy Jackson’s First Lady, Edvard Grieg, Saul Steinburg, Mario Cuomo, Jim Varney, Wade Boggs, Waylon Jennings, Xaviera Hollander the Happy Hooker, Jim Belushi, Roger Chiasson, Michael Barrier, Ice Cube is 49, Neil Patrick Harris is 45, Courtenay Cox is 54, Helen Hunt is 55

1849- Three months after leaving office President James K. Polk died. The President who fought the War with Mexico to get California and the southwest was a lifelong teetotaler and died of cholera from drinking bad water.  Sam Houston, who was one of the great alcoholics of American history, reacted “That’s the natural end of all Water-Drinkers!"

1945- Judy Garland married director Vincente Minnelli. Lisa Minnelli was one result.

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce married a stripper named Honey Stuart.

1969- The country music comedy TV show Hee-Hawpremiered as a summer replacement for the Smothers Brothers Hour. Hee Haw ran for two years with high ratings but CBS cancelled the show anyway. This was because CBS chief Bill Paley disliked country music.  CBS had so many shows like Mayberry RFD, Beverly Hillbillies and Hee Haw, that insiders joked that CBS stood for the Country Broadcasting System. Hee Haw had the last laugh, going on to a successful syndication run until 1997. 

1977- Everybody Disco! KC and the Sunshine band release “I’m your Boogie Man”

1994- Walt Disney’s The Lion King opened. 

1999- In San Diego, Nicholas Vitalich was arrested for slapping his wife with a large tuna.

2001- Disney’s Atlantispremiered.

2002- Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was knighted.

Animation Fun Facts for June 14, 2018

Birthdays: Tomaso Albinioni, Fighting Bob LaFollette, Margaret Bourke-White, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sam Wanamaker, Cliff Edwards the voice of Jiminy Cricket, Dorothy McGuire, Burl Ives, Gene Barry, Jerzy Kosinski, Diablo Cody is 39, 

Pres. Donald Trump is 71.

1816- Writers Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley were spending the summer at the Villa Deodati on Lake Geneva. This day among the revels, drinking, partner swapping and opium taking, Byron suggested they all write a ghost story. They all failed except for 19 year old Mary, who invented a story of a Swiss scientist who created an artificial man. She called it Frankenstein.

1822- Charles Babbage presented a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in London proposing to build a "Difference Engine" a machine that could calculate equations and print the results-i.e. a computer. His early machine required 8,000 moving parts. After ten years and a small fortune it never quite comes off, but today it is considered the ancestor of the computer.

1834- Isaac Fischer Jr. of Vermont invented sandpaper. 

1846-THE GREAT BEAR REBELLION- U.S. citizens living in Spanish California led by a school teacher named William Ide and Ezekiel Merritt declared themselves an independent country, not knowing that back east the U.S. government had already declared war on Mexico and annexed California to the U.S. Remember information took months to get back East across Indian territory and burning deserts. The Anglo-Californians seized a Sonoma military post and arrested the owner of the largest hacienda in the area, a retired Mexican General named Mariano Vallejo. Ironically Senor Vallejo himself desired AltaCalifornia to have independence from Mexico City.  

1951- Univac I, built by John W, Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert Jr. of the Remington Rand Company to be the first U.S. commercial built electronic computer, went on line for the census bureau in Philadelphia.

1959- Three new rides are debuted at Disneyland in Anaheim. The first monorail the Disneyland-Alweg Monorail System, Matterhorn Mountain and the Submarine Voyage, today called the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. Back then the submarines were named and painted to be the US navy nuclear submarines Nautilus, Triton, Skipjack, Skate, Patrick Henry, Sea Wolf, George Washington and Ethan Allen. The ride took visitors for an adventure under the North Pole, an achievement which the real USN Nautilus had just accomplished the previous year. The subs were repainted the more pacific yellow color after the Vietnam era.

1964- THE FIRST HIPPY BUS- Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, bought an old school bus, painted it psychedelic colors, took of troupe of 14 fellow free spirits called the Merry Pranksters and spent the next few months driving across the country taking LSD and staging Happenings in various cities and towns.

The Bus’s name was Further and its driver was Neil Cassidy, friend of Beatnik author Jack Kerouac. A book documenting the escapades of the "hippy bus" was "The Electric Koolaid Acid Test." Ken Kesey became interested in LSD when he volunteered for a college program to experiment with the drug, secretly funded by the CIA. The Merry Pranksters were invited in 1969 to be the security for the Woodstock Rock Festival.

1966- The Vatican officially abolished the Index of Forbidden Books. 

1989- Elderly actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills policeman who was writing her a traffic ticket.

1995, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MP3.  The researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits decided to use "mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Development on this technology started in 1987. By 1992 it was considered far ahead of its times. MP3 became the generally accepted acronym as the popular standard for digital music on the on the Internet.

Animation Fun Facts for June 13, 2018

Birthdays: Gnaeus Agricola- 40AD, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.B. Yeats, Red Grange, Basil Rathbone would be 125, Dorothy Sayers, Ralph Edwards, Paul Lynde, Tim Allen, Darla Hood, Ally Sheedy, Simon Callow, Christo, Malcolm McDowell is 75, Stellan Skarsgard is 67, the Olsen Twins are 32. 

1920-The US Government rules Americans cannot mail their children through the Parcel Post System.

1941-The American Federation of Labor the AF of L called for a nationwide boycott of all Disney products and films. This was to support the Disney Cartoonists strike.

1958- Frank Zappa graduated Antelope Valley High School.

2010- Pixar’s Toy Story III premiered.

Animation Fun Facts for June 12, 2018

Birthdays: Egon Scheile, John Roebling the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, Uta Hagen, Chick Corea, Sir Anthony Eden, Jim Nabors, Vic Damone, David Rockefeller, Irwin Allen, Marv Albert, Arthur Fellig-better known as Weegee, Sherry Stringfield,  Former President George Herbert Walker Bush is 94, if Anne Frank had survived she would be 89 today, Clyde Geronimi, Richard Sherman of the Sherman Bros is 90

1616- Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, landed in England with her husband and son Thomas. 

1949- The first LA parking ticket.

1962- In Modesto California, a teenage film student named George Lucas was almost killed in a car accident.

1963- Twentieth Century Fox premiered the Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton epic CLEOPATRA. Costing $44 million, $400 million in modern money, four times more than the average film, it remains in comparable dollars the costliest disaster in movie history.

Fox had to cut 2,000 jobs and almost went bankrupt. The area of LA known as Century City with its huge shopping mall used to be the Fox backlot before Cleopatra. 

On the plus side, Andy Warhol said Cleopatra was the most influential movie of the 1960s because suddenly every woman had to have heavy black eyeliner, light lipstick and Egyptian style straight bobbed hair and bangs.

1981- Steven Spielberg’s movie Raiders of the Lost Arkpremiered.

1999- Disney’s Tarzanpremiered.

Animation Fun Facts for June 11, 2018

Birthdays: Ben Johnson, Richard Strauss, Jacques Cousteau, Nelson Mandela, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Joe Montana, John Constable, Gustav Courbet, Vince Lombardi, Adrienne Barbeau, William Styron, Chad Everett, race car driver Jackie Stewart, Gene Wilder, Hugh Laurie is 59, Shia LeBoeuf is 32, Peter Dinklage is 49.

1878- At a small track at the Palo Alto Stock Farm, English photographer Edweard Muybridge did the first of his Animal Motion Studies. He lined up 25 cameras and filmed California Governor Leyland Stanford’s favorite mare Sallie Gardner at a full gallop. He invited the press, so none could accuse him of doctoring the photos later. They proved that when a horse was in full gallop, all four hooves leave the ground.

1927- Charles Lindbergh Day. After his historic flight, the young aviator was welcomed home to America by President Coolidge and huge throngs of well-wishers at Washington’s Navy Yard. Battleships boomed, bands blared and two dirigibles floated overhead. The radio announcer covering the event did one of the very first coast-to-coast broadcasts. He reached thirty million people. 

1928 - Alfred Hitchcock's 1st film, "The Case Of Jonathan Drew," is released

1934- the first Mandrake the Magician comic strip.

1936- Shy, quiet, 30 year old Texas writer Robert E. Howard had created the powerful warriors Conan the Barbarian, Kull and single-handedly defined the genre we now call Sword & Sorcery. This day after he learned his mother was dying and would never regain consciousness, he went into his garage and blew his brains out. Some say he had an Oedipal fixation, others that he always intended to end his life and was waiting to spare his mother the pain. On his typewriter he left a short message: "All fled, all done, so lift me upon the pyre. The feast is over and let the lamps expire."

1937 –" Getta’ yu tutsie-frutsie Ice-a Creem!" the Marx Brothers' "A Day At The Races" premiered.

1959 – The US Postmaster General banned D H Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover as pornography. He was overruled by US Court of Appeals in March 1960. 

1964 - Chicago police break up a Rolling Stones press conference.

1964 - Manfred Mann recorded Do Wah Diddy Diddy.

1966 - "Paint It, Black" by The Rolling Stones peaks at #1

1966 - Janis Joplin played her 1st gig in San Francisco.

1972- THE MOST PROFITABLE FILM IN HISTORY.  The film Deep Throat premiered. The first full length blockbuster porn film. The film was shot in just three days, by an ex-hairdresser turned director. It cost $22,500 to make and grossed $600 million. Most of that money disappeared into the coffers of the Mafia. It became a counterculture cause celebre. Jacky Kennedy saw it. Frank Sinatra screened a print for Vice President Spiro Agnew. Star Linda Lovelace later disavowed her career and claimed she did the sex scenes under duress from her husband Chuck Trainor. She died in a car accident in the 1982. Today the term Linda Syndrome denotes former porn actresses who deny their past.

1977 - Main Street Electrical Parade premiered at Disneyland.

1979- John Wayne died after a long struggle with cancer. Many believed his condition began as a result of filming the movie "The Conqueror" near the Nevada Atomic Test site. Half the crew of that film including all the stars and director died of cancer.  When Wayne made a final appearance at the Academy Awards two months earlier he had purchased a small size tuxedo to hide his emaciated frame, but he was still too thin even then so he filled it out by wearing a scuba wetsuit underneath. He was 73.

1984- In the freewheeling economy of the 1980’s tycoons conducted hostile takeovers of companies by buying a majority of their stock on margin. When Wall Street corporate raider Saul Steinberg announced he intended to target the ailing Walt Disney Company for takeover CEO Ron Miller paid him $23 million just to make him go away. The Disney shareholders are outraged at this payment of "greenmail’ and demanded Miller’s resignation, which some say was exactly as Roy Disney had planned.

1993 –Steven Spielberg’s  "Jurassic Park" opened. The film set a box office record of $931 million. It was begun with modelers and puppeteers about to do the dinosaurs with go-motion and clay. But after seeing tests using the new 3D CGI –computer graphic imaging software, Steven ordered all of ILM to do it digitally. Jurassic Park clinched the digital takeover of Hollywood and set the standard for future special effects.

2002- Fox TV’s show American Idol premiered.