Birthdays: Emanuel Ben Joseph or Yesuah. Called in Greek Jesus the Christ, 6-4 BC (est)
Other Birthdays: Sir Isaac Newton, Clara Barton, Humphrey Bogart, Cab Calloway, Helena Rubinstein, Rod Serling, Charles Pathe’, Jimmie Buffet, Quentin Crisp, Mike Mazurki, Conrad Hilton- Paris’ granddad, Anwar El Sadat. Larry Csonka, Burne Hogarth, Ishmail Merchant, Maurice Utrillo, Kid Ory, Barbara Mandrell, Dame Rebecca West, Clark Clifford, Annie Lennox is 67, Sissie Spacek is 71, CCH Pounder is 68, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgment was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel beneath his famous ceiling.
1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian.
1815- At a Christmas concert in Vienna, Beethoven premiered his NameDay Overture.
1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Natucket.
1870- Siegfried Idyll, written by Richard Wagner as a birthday gift to his wife Cosima, was first performed by a small ensemble outside her door as she awoke this morning at their home in Lucerne Switzerland.
1917-"Why Marry?" by Jesse Lynch Williams opened. The first play to win a Pulitzer Prize.
1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. An Arabian Nights-type fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use it for their meetings.
1931-The first BBC World Service broadcast. An address by King George V called "Around the Empire".
1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast. In the 1970s their studio space became the home of Saturday Night Live.
1940- Rogers & Hart’s musical Pal Joey opened on Broadway. It made a star out of a young dancer named Gene Kelly.
1946- Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at 67. While in his hospital bed someone saw him reading a Bible. They said:" W.C., what are you doing with that? " Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"
1957- Disney film Old Yeller premiered.
1962- The film of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird premiered with Gregory Peck, Brock Peters, and Robert Duval.
1963- Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone released. First animated feature directed by Wolfgang,” Woolie” Reitherman.
1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey, Switzerland. He was 86.
1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He told his father he was inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.
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