Birthdays: John Harvard 1607(founder of Harvard University), Bat Masterson, Eugene Ionesco, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Marian Mercer, Charles Schulz would be 100, Cyril Cusak, Eric Severaid, Rich Little, Sister Wendy Turnbull, Robert Goulet, Don Hahn.
1832- In New York, the John Mason started service, a streetcar pulled along iron rails by a team of horses. This replaced horse pulled wagons. It went from Princes Street to 14th St. A ticket cost 12 pennies. The last horse car tram stopped in 1926.
1865- Lewis Carroll sent a copy of the completed manuscript of his fantasy Alice in Wonderland to his 12 year old friend and inspiration Alice Liddell. Carroll later published the book with his own money. This is one of the first books written solely to amuse children, and not to educate or discipline them.
1868- At first baseball games were played in a convenient cow pasture. Today the first baseball game was played in an enclosed field. It was in San Francisco at Folsom & 25th St..
1926- Potato chips, or crisps in the UK, were invented in the 1880’s and served in restaurants and fairgrounds. This day Mrs. Laura Scudder was the first to put potato chips in a bag and sold them as a handy snack food. She sold them out of the back of her pickup truck until the business picked up. She ran her own company until 1959.
1938- Walt Disney was raised in a hard-scrabble, struggling family. He promised his parents if he ever made good, he would take care of them. After Snow White made him rich and successful, he moved his parents out to Los Angeles and gave them a beautiful home in North Hollywood. This night faulty furnace leak filled their bedroom with carbon monoxide. The housekeeper found them in the morning and dragged them out onto the lawn. Walt Disney’s father Elias barely survived but his mother Flora died. This left Walt so shattered he could never talk about it after.
1940- Woody Woodpecker first appeared in an Andy Panda cartoon "Knock-Knock.’
1945- Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded KoKo, the first bebop Jazz single. Instead of big bands as was the fashion, they used a smaller quintet. The pianist at the session didn’t have his New York union card, so after his solo, Dizzy dropped his trumpet and did the piano backup to Birds’ solo. The song was from chord variations of an old Ray Noble song “Cherokee” that Bird and Dizzy knew. The term Bop came from an earlier Lionel Hampton hit “Hey-Bop-A-ReBop”. Jazz critic Ira Gitler picked up on the witty interplay between musicians, and wrote of the new sound as BeBop.
1976- Sex Pistols Punk single “Anarchy in the UK” released.
1990- Acting on the example of Sony’s purchase of MGM-Columbia studios, Matushita (Panasonic) bought MCA- Universal studios for $6.6 billion. After a few fruitless years they sold it to the Bronfman’s group, the distillers of Seagram’s Whiskey.
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