Birthdays: Czar Peter the Great, Benny Goodman, Mel Blanc, Stepin Fetchit, Boris Pasternak, Irving Thalberg, Milt Neil, Howard Hawks, Gale Sayers, Agnes Varda, Michael J. Pollard, Wynonna, Keir Dullea is 85, Ceelo Green is 46, Idina Menzel is 50
In the US- MEMORIAL DAY
For those who are curious why America celebrates Memorial Day in May instead of November 11th like most of Europe, it is because of our Civil War.
The main Confederate field armies surrendered in early April; it took this long to quiet the entire countryside, the last fighting on May 27th. Once the countryside was finally at peace, the U.S. government declared a Day of Remembrance of the fallen. Abolitionist named James Redpath reported back to Washington that newly freed black families in Charleston South Carolina would decorate the graves of fallen union soldiers with flowers. The locals were only decorating their own Confederate graves. Later in 1868, Mary Cunningham Logan, wife of General John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union Army Veterans Organization, went to Petersburg, where she mentioned to her husband the Southerners were decorating the graves of their soldiers. The holiday was first called Decoration Day, and the first formal one was held May 28, 1868. By the end of WWI in 1918, Americans had gotten used to honoring all their war dead at the end of May, and the holidays name changed to Memorial Day.
1919- Hollywood entrepreneur Charles Tolman bought a natural declivity north of Hollywood Blvd called Daisy Dell. People had been picnicking in the grass there for years. Now Tolman wanted to build a concert amphitheater. Conductor Hugo Kirchhofer remarked “ It looks like a big bowl!” So it became the Hollywood Bowl thereafter.
1930- The Lockheed Terminal was rededicated as Burbank Airport.
1935 - Babe Ruth's last game. He went hitless for the Boston Braves against Phillies.
1955- The New York chapter of the Catholic League of Decency pressured Loews Theater on Broadway to take down a giant 30-foot billboard of Marilyn Monroe trying to push her skirt down.
1962- Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem had its first performance.
1972- Director choreographer Bob Fosse filmed a live performance of Liza Minelli’s one-woman show Liza with a Z. It was telecast in Sept. and became a sensation.
1994 - Death of Baron Marcel Bich, Italian-born French engineer and industrialist who created an empire of disposable BIC pens, lighters and razors.
2003- Pixar’s Finding Nemo opened wide.
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