April 15, 2019

Birthdays: Leonardo DaVinci, composer Domenico Gabrieli, Nanak I the founder of the Sikh religion 1469, Charles Wilson Peale, Theodore Rousseau, Henry James, Bessie Smith, Heinrich Klee, Kim Il Sung, Claudia Cardinale is 80, Roy Clark, Emma Thompson is 59, Hans Conried, Olympic runner Evelyn Ashford, Alice Braga is 35, Seth Rogen is 37, Emma Watson is 29

1850- The townships of Yerba Buena- Good Herbs, incorporated as the City of San Francisco.

1874- The first Paris show of Impressionist Painting. 

1924- The Rand McNally Company published the first automobile road atlas or North America.

1927- First Hollywood star's footprints in cement ceremony at Grauman's Chinese theater. Called Hollywood's most enduring publicity stunt. Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman himself are the first to leave their prints. Grauman also invented the classic Hollywood premiere with spotlights, red carpet runways and chauffeured limousines.

1934- Chief of production Darryl F. Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over an argument about employee salary cuts, to take over a struggling little movie studio called Twentieth Century Fox, which he turned into a giant.

1935- Kodachrome film developed. First as motion picture film, later for home photography.

1952- The Franklin Savings Bank issued the first credit card in the U.S. 

1953- Famed illustrator Charles R. Knight died peacefully in a Manhattan hospital. The man who inspired the lush look of such films as 1933 King Kong, his last words were to his daughter Lucy, “Don’t let anything happen to my drawings.”

1955- The First McDonald's Restaurant franchise opened in Des Plains, Ill.  Ray Kroc, a travelling milkshake machine salesman, bought into a franchise restaurant idea cooked up in 1948 by two brothers named McDonald from Santa Bernadino. He urged the brothers to go national with their pre-prepared food system, but the brothers wanted to stay local. So he offered them 1 million bucks for their idea and name (would you go to" Kroc's?") and the rest is history. 

1962-AUNTIE EM! actress Clara Blandick, 80, the Auntie Em of the Wizard of Oz, took an overdose of sleeping pills and tied a plastic bag around her head.

She had been retired for several years and was suffering from bad arthritis and failing eyesight. She left out on a table her resume and press clippings so the newspapers would get her obituary right. 

1964- Walt Disney sent attorney Robert Foster to Orlando Florida to quietly start buying up land for a planned new Disneyland Park.

1983- Tokyo Disneyland opens. 

1990- Kennan Ivory Wayans comedy show In Living Colorpremiered on FOX TV. The show made stars of Marlon Wayans, Damon Wayans, Jamie Fox, Jim Carrey and Fly-Girls Jennifer Lopez and Rosie Perez.