Birthdays: Henri Matisse, General George C. Marshall, Odetta (real name Holmes Felicious Gordon), Simon Weisenthal, Virginia Davis, Pola Negri, Jules Styne, Sarah Miles, Donna Summer, Patti Smith, Elizabeth Arden, Tim Matheson, John Denver, Dianne Von Furstenberg, Psy, Ben Kingsley-born Khrishna Banji is 79, Anthony Hopkins is 85, Val Kilmer is 63, Gong Li is 57
1881- Los Angeles becomes the first U.S. city to be lit entirely by electricity.
1901-Los Angeles Angel's Flight cable tram opened. It closed down in the 1980's but was restored in 1996, then broke down a few years later.
1906-07- THE FIRST BALL DROPPING CEREMONY- Since the 1700s Newspaper services like Reuters and the London Times would post important headlines and on large signboard in front of their offices for businessmen on the street to see. Sometimes they would mark an important event like the death of a monarch by raising a flag, ringing a bell, or firing a cannon. Lowering a lantern was something ships in harbor did to synchronize their time keeping. The old Western Union building used to drop a ball at precisely noon for the same reason.
In 1905 The New York Times hosted a giant news years party from their new office tower at #1 Longacre Square, now renamed in their honor Times Square. Midnight was signaled to the crowd by the lowering of a lantern on its roof.
In 1907 an ironworker created a large ball covered with electric light bulbs that was lowered from a flagpole. The Ball-dropping ceremony was only interrupted twice in 1942 and 1943 for World War II blackouts. The Times Building was later sold and renamed the Allied Chemical Building, the Sony Building, Time/Warner, the Newsday building, and now One Time Square.
1917- EUROPE DISCOVERED JAZZ- As the first American units entered Paris to help in World War I, the New York 15th Colored Regiment serenaded the city. The band of the 15th was made up of top Harlem jazz musicians led by bandleader James Europe. The French were amazed as the band performed ragtime riffs that only gradually they recognized as La Marseillaise and Le Marche Sambre et Meuse. Local musicians accused the Harlemites of using trick instruments since no one could make sounds like that. Lieutenant James Europe went on tour with the band and Europe the continent embraced the modern new sound.
1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the Chimes of Big Ben around the world.
1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp broke into the Washington Square Arch and declared Greenwich Village the Republic of New Bohemia. Like coool, daddy.
1941- A Warner Bros memo dated this day from producer Hal Wallis office announced that the movie to be made from a play by Murray Bennett called “Everybody Goes to Rick’s” has been renamed “Casablanca”. This was to capitalize on an already popular film title “Algiers” with Charles Boyer “come with me to ze Casbah” etc..
1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in Times Square. It was his debut as a solo performer. OOHH FRANKIE!!
1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival.
1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.
1952- At the Cosmopolitan Club in East St. Louis, bandleader Johnny Johnson had a problem. Scheduled to play his regular gig at New Years, one of his trio suffered a stroke. Johnson looked around for a substitute musician and settled on a young construction worker trying to break in show business named Chuck Berry. Johnson played Boogie-Woogie piano, and Chuck Berry listened to country western on the radio and invented his own up-tempo variations. The two of them collaborating evolved a distinctly new sound we now recognize as Rock & Roll.
1955- Chuck Jone's 'One Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Spielberg called it the "Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here, was because Chuck Jones & Mike Maltese wrote it specifically for the cartoon.
1962- Romanoff’s closed. Once one of the premier hot spots on the Sunset Strip, it was a preferred hangout of Humphrey Bogart, who liked to play chess in the afternoon with Nick Romanoff when he was between films.
1965- Soupy Sales hosted one of the more successful kiddie shows on daytime TV. He often improvised his own comedy bits in between showing old cartoons. This say Soupy jokingly asked his kiddie audience to go into mommy’s purse while she was asleep, and take out all those green pieces of paper, and mail them to Soupy Sales, c/o the studio. All that week, Soupy received thousands of dollars in small envelopes. The resultant outcry from parent groups kicked Soupy off the air.
1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb, Texas. Nelson had been living on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snickers bars.
1995- The last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterston. He just decided one day to end it, before it became stale.
1997- Will Smith and Jada Pinkett marry.
1999-2000 - The Y2K MANIA. While the world prepared to celebrate the new century and the Third Millennium, the American tabloid media whipped up fear over a theory that the change from 1999-2000 would cause most computers to crash. Planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles would launch themselves, and marauders would rule the streets like something out of Mad Max. The US Government spent $65 million to prepare for the crisis. But at midnight absolutely nothing happened. Even older less sophisticated computers were unaffected, and everything ran normally. Meanwhile many of the US public shivered at home and watched the rest of the world have fun on television.
2001-2002- The European Union currency exchange went into effect. Adieu, Adios and Ciao to the French Franc, Belgian Franc, Italian Lire, German Deutschmark, Austrian Schilling, Dutch Gulden, Greek Drachma, Irish Pound, Portuguese Escudo and Spanish Peseta. Welcome the Euro.
2020- Because of the global covid pandemic, many world capitols cancelled their large public New Years celebrations, or held them virtually, like Times Square.
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