Birthdays: George Fredrich Handel, Samuel Pepys (pronounced 'peeps'), Mayer Amschel Rothschild-1743- founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, Victor Fleming, W.E.B. DuBois, Johnny Winter, Peter Fonda, William Shirer, Allan MacLeod Cormack-inventor of the CAT Scan, Kelly MacDonald, Tom Bodet, Neal McDonough, Kristin Davis is 56, Dakota Fanning is 27.
1821- In a house in Rome’s Piazza de Espagna, 25 year old English poet John Keats died of tuberculosis. As he was dying he joked: ” I can feel daisies growing over me”. He instructed that his grave marker bear only the self-deprecating message” Here lies one Who’s Fame was Written in Water.”
1898- French writer Emile Zola was arrested and charged with libel for his J'Accuse newspaper article that exposed the cover up of the Dreyfus Scandal. He jumped bail and fled to England until the scandal brought down the government.
1927- animator Les Clark began work at the Walt Disney Studio. He was the first of Walt’s Nine Old Men.
1935- Walt Disney cartoon "The Band Concert." This was the first color Mickey Mouse cartoon.
1939 - Walt Disney receives a special Oscar for his classic 83-minute animated film SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, at the 11th Academy Awards held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Eleven-year-old child star Shirley Temple presents Walt with one statuette and seven miniature statuettes for "a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon." (Film director Frank Capra came up with the idea of a full-sized Oscar statuette with seven smaller ones descending in a row.)
1942- A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, in the dead of night a Japanese submarine surfaced off the California coast and fired it's cannon at lights it thinks is a city. In reality it's an oil refinery near Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara. The brief bombardment caused $150 dollars in damage. The sub breaks radio silence to report to Tokyo that " Enemy coast sighted. Los Angeles is in Flames." The incident fueled the panic Californians had that the West Coast was ripe for enemy invasion. The incident was lampooned in the Steven Spielberg comedy "1941."
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