Birthdays: Sir Robert Peel founder of London’s police force- the Bobbies, outlaw Belle Starr, John Carradine, William Burroughs, Arthur Ochs Schulzburger, Hank Aaron is 86, Tim Holt, Barbera Hershey, Charlotte Rampling, Roger Staubach, Michael Mann is 765, Bobby Brown, H. R. Giger, Red Buttons, Christopher Guest, Jennifer Jason Leigh is 58, Laura Linney is 55, Michael Sheen is 50
Gong Xi Fa Chai! Happy Year of the Pig.
1887- Verdi’s opera "Otello" debuted. Guiseppi Verdi had retired from composing after 1875, but was goaded by a new generation of composers like Arrigo Boito to take up his pen once more.
1916- Enrico Caruso recorded O Solo Mio for the Victor Talking Machine Co.
1919- Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith sign papers to form the United Artists Studio. The press teased “ The Lunatics have taken over the asylum!”
1921- The Loews State Theater in Chicago opened.
1922- The Reader’s Digest began publication.
1937- Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Timesopened in theaters. Chaplin was inspired to lampoon modern technological madness when he was invited to view the auto assembly production lines in Detroit and saw men moving like machines.
1944- British scientists at Bletchley Park booted up the Colossus Mark I, a huge early computer used to decode Hitler’s secret messages. Eleven more Colossus computers were built. After the war all but one were destroyed with sledgehammers, and the scientists put under a vow of secrecy for thirty years.
1952- New York City is the first to adopt the three light traffic lights-red, yellow, green.
1953- Walt Disney’s "Peter Pan" opened in theaters.
1956- Darryl Zanuck resigned from 20th Century Fox, the studio he built into a powerhouse. He later won back the chairmanship in 1962 only to be ousted finally in 1970 by a consortium led by his own wife and son.
1957- Mel Lazarus’ comic strip Miss Peach debuted.
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