Birthdays: Benjamin Disraeli, Josh Gibson- the Home Run King of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Pat Weaver-TV exec who created the Today Show and father of Sigourney Weaver, Frank Zappa, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Florence Griffith Joyner, Chris Evert, Phil Roman, Jane Fonda is 83, Paul Winchell born Pinkus Wilchinski, Keifer Sutherland is 54, Samuel L. Jackson is 72, Jane Kaszmarek, Judy Delphy is 51, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 70
Happy Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year.
1375- The writer Boccaccio died, not of the plague, and not during a wild party like in his book the Decameron.
1913- THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE-The first Crossword Puzzle appeared in the New York World.
1914- The premiere of the first feature length film comedy- Tilly’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and a young Charlie Chaplin.
1925- Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic masterpiece Battleship Potemkin premiered in Moscow. The films pioneering use of montage and allegorical imagery intercut inspired a generation of filmmakers.
1933- Twentieth Century Fox signed 5 year old Shirley Temple to a seven year contract.
1937- Walt Disney's " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" had its grand premiere at the Carthay Circle Theater. The first feature length American cartoon, it became the box office champ of 1938, earning 4 times more than any other film that year.
1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner of the Three Stooges, was killed in a bar fight, while celebrating the birth of his son.
1940- Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (44) died of a heart attack at Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham's house. She had just left the house to buy him some candy. She left him thumbing through his Princeton alumni newsletter. His last words to her were 'Hershey bars will be fine..."
1944- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros premiered in Mexico City. It opened in the US in February.
1959- Joe Oriolo’s TV remake of Felix the Cat debuted on TV.
1968- The Apollo 8 spacecraft was launched to the Moon. Besides winning the Space Race, and doing the famous Christmas Night reading of Genesis from lunar orbit, Apollo 8 had one board one of the very first mini-computers. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was one cubic foot in size, had stored memory of 5 bytes, a language (DSKY) and a digital display. It’s the forerunner of the personal computer.
1969- Famed football coach Vince Lombardi coached his last game- Dallas beat Washington 20-10.
1971- Richard William's animated TV special "A Christmas Carol" with Alastair Sim reprising his Scrooge.
1973- Ray Harryhausen’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad premiered.
1979- Disney’s Sci-Fi film The Black Hole opened in theaters.
1982- Thom Riley, one of the stars of the TV cop show ChiPS was busted for driving stoned on Quaaludes.
1989- Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 official Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled- beakon. In 2007 President George W. Bush sent out Hanukkah cards featuring the White House Christmas tree.
2012- The Walt Disney Company spent $4.06 billion to buy Lucasfilm, ILM and the Star Wars rights. George Lucas retired to do philanthropic pursuits.
2089- According to Ridley Scott, today the good ship Prometheus lands on the Original Planet.
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