Birthdays: Robert Fulton, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, McClean Stevenson, Jarahwahal Nehru, Mamie Eisenhower, Brian Keith, Louise Brooks, Ellis Marsalis, Harrison Salisbury, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, Yanni,P.J. O'Rourke, George Petrovic' called KaraGeorge "Black George" Serbian nationalist 1762, Astrid Lungren the creator of Pippi Longstockings, Prince Charles is 73, Laura San Giacomo is 59, Patrick Warburton is 57, Zhang Yimou is 70
1851- Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick, or the Whale” was first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row. Melville in part was inspired by a report of an albino whale named Mocha-Dick who had sunk seven ships off the coast of Java and was reported to have " a hide white as wool". Also a New Bedford whaling ship Nantucket that was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in 1839.
For the famous author of Typee and Billy Budd, Moby Dick was a critical and financial disaster. What's now considered one of the greatest works of American literature was ridiculed in its time. Melville, broken in spirit, sank into obscurity and finished his life as a customs agent for the Port of New York. When he died, he was so forgotten the New York Times misspelled his name in it's obituary.
1883- Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, or, the Mutiny on the Hispaniola, first published. Stevenson gave us our image of a typical Pirate of the Spanish Main. His book told us about peg legs, pet parrots, skull and crossbones flag, treasure maps, and the song “ Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest. Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!”
1889- Inspired by Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days, New York World reporter Nellie Bly, real name Elizabeth Cochrane, set out to travel the world in the declared time. She did it in 72 days.
Bly was considered by Victorian society scandalously independent, she was a war correspondent, she had herself committed to a lunatic asylum to report on mistreatment of the mentally ill, she went up in a balloon and was the first woman to go down in a diving bell- bathosphere.
1922- Happy Birthday B.B.C.! the British Broadcasting Companies first regular radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results.
1943- When Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct the New York Philharmonic, 24 year old Leonard Bernstein was asked to assume the baton. Bernstein became an overnight sensation.
1957- The Supreme Court refused to review the challenge to government obscenity laws brought by Irving Klaw and his wife, producers of the Betty Page kinky pinup photos.
1959- In Holcomb Kansas, two men broke into a farm home and murdered a family of four. The subsequent trial and execution was attended by writer Truman Capote, who wrote the book “In Cold Blood”.
1960- Anthony Mann began shooting the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren with her pre-collagen Lips.
1967- Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sold his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts.
1968- Frank Sinatra announced that the smog and air pollution in Los Angeles had gotten so bad that he was moving out to the desert in Palm Springs.
1998- Pixar’s A Bugs Life Premiered.
1998- Colorful and eccentric NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman married beautiful supermodel Carmen Electra. There was some doubt at first as to the validity of the story as Rodman admitted he was blind drunk throughout and didn’t remember the ceremony. They divorced shortly after.
2003- Looney Tunes: Back in Action directed by Joe Dante, opened in theaters.
No comments:
Post a Comment