Birthdays: Antonio Frescobaldi, Captain William Bligh, Jimmy the Greek Snyder, Joe Theismann, Cliff Robertson, Angela Cartwright, Alf Landon, Dee-Dee Sharpe who sang the 60's R&B hit the Mashed Potato, Michael Keaton, Don Mattingly, Otis Redding, Anita Ekberg, Topol, Colonel Lyman Sanders the creator of Kentucky Fried Chicken, James Hilton-writer who created the name for paradise- Shangri-La, in his novel Lost Horizons. Adam Sandler is 56, Michelle Williams is 42, Hugh Grant is 63
1776- The Continental Congress officially changed the name of the United Colonies to the United States of America.
1825- BEETHOVEN'S LAST PUBLIC APPEARANCE. Before he retired to a government appointed home, Ludwig von Beethoven was still making appearances as a conductor and pianist, even though he was now completely deaf. The fees for personal appearances were still too good to pass up. The orchestra rehearsed to play the 9th Symphony and the Missa Solemnis while ignoring his commands, starting and stopping on a signal given by the first violinist. So, Beethoven waved his arms around fruitlessly while the orchestra played. Everyone enjoyed it even though people in the first few rows could hear the Maestro wailing to the music, unaware of his own voice. When the performance ended he was still gyrating, obviously a few bars behind the orchestra and oblivious to the cheers of the audience. The soprano made him turn around and bow.
1850- California was admitted to the Union. This was at the end of a long contentious debate over whether she would come in as a slave state or free state. Slavery had already been outlawed by Mexican authorities in the territory- except in the case of Indian children.
1908- THE PATENTS TRUST- Thomas Edison, Charles Pathe and Leon Gaumont form the Motion Picture Patents Group. Called the "Trust". Their attempt to monopolize movie production and strangle off the independents had a lot to do with the early filmmakers relocating to Los Angeles. Otherwise the film capitol of the world would have been Ft. Lee, New Jersey. The only positive result of the trust was they enforced a regular industry standard for film stock of 35 mm running at 24 frames per second. It seems the Mitchell Camera Company was developing a motorized motion picture camera to replace the hand crank variety but they needed an official speed to set it at. In a contentious meeting of the Trust held at the Waldorf Astoria no one could settle on a single speed. Finally the compromise was made to make it the number of delegates in the room- 24.
1910- Alice B. Toklas moved in with Gertrude Stein at the 22 Rue de Flerus in Paris. Until Stein’s death in 1946 they ran one of the most glittering social networks of the Twentieth Century. Soirees included Picasso, Matisse, Dali, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Max Ernst, Virgil Thompson, Sherwood Anderson, Max Ernst, Guilliame Apollinaire and Carlos Santayanna. But the ultra modern was not to everyone’s taste. Even though she was also an American artist living in Paris, painter Mary Cassatt only visited once. She later told a friend:" I never saw so many horrible things, I never met so many horrible people!"
1926 – The National Broadcasting Company or NBC created by the Radio Corporation of America, RCA. Under the direction of David Sarnoff it became the powerhouse network of broadcasting, recording and later television.
1939- The first Andy Panda cartoon.
1939- The first day of shooting on Charlie Chaplin’s film the Great Dictator. The first day was the ghetto street scene. One of his distributors grumbled “By the time Chaplin finishes his movie, people won’t even remember who Hitler ever was.”
1945 - 1st bug in a computer program discovered by USN Commander Grace Hopper. A moth that had burned out some relays was removed with tweezers from a relay & taped into the log. Since then any computer glitch was called "a bug". The logbook is in the Smithsonian today. Grace Hopper retired as the first woman Rear Admiral.
1949- White Heat, with James Cagney premiered.
1950 - 1st use of TV laugh track, invented by Hank McCune.
1951 - 1st broadcast of the soap opera" Love of Life " on CBS-TV.
1956- Elvis Presley appeared on nationwide television on the Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan himself had vowed never to have the kid on his show but caved in to network pressure. He stayed home that first time, and actor Charles Laughton was the substitute host. CBS Network censors thought the gyrations of Elvis' pelvis so obscene that in many markets they blacked out the lower portion of the screen so he was covered the waist down.
1965- LA Dodger Pitcher Sandy Koufax struck out 14 Cubs to win his perfect game and 4th shutout in one season.
1966- H&B’s Space Ghost show.
1967- Jay Ward’s show George of the Jungle premiered, with Super Chicken and Tom Slick sequences.
1982- Princess Grace of Monaco, the former movie actress Grace Kelly, died in a car accident on the mountainous hill roads of Monaco. Twenty years earlier in the film To Catch a Thief, Alfred Hitchcock had her drive her car at dangerous speeds over the exact same hairpin turns.
1985- She-Ra the Princess of Power premiered on TV.
1995- Pinky and the Brain premiered.
