Birthdays: Torquato Tasso, Marius Pretipa, Raoul Walsh, Charlie Ruggles, Lawrence Welk, Samuel “Shemp” Howard, British PM Harold Wilson, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Bobby McFerrin, Sam Donaldson, Antonin Scalia, Jerry Zucker, Vannevar Bush- MIT scientist who in 1945 predicted the personal computer. Joey Buttafuco, Jules Engel, Douglas Adams, Rupert Murdoch is 92, Rob Paulsen is 67, Terence Howard is 54
1889- The California Legislature split Orange County from LA County.
1918- THE GREAT SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC- This day the first noticeable rise in a strange new flu occurred at Camp Funston Kansas. It was called the Spanish flu because even though it broke out all around the world, Spain was did not have wartime press censorship, so they reported it first.
In only one year this new flu virus killed 21 million people around the Earth, 640,000 in the U.S. alone- everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to young Walt Disney got sick. In places as far away as China, India and Russia thousands died. The epidemic killed as many people as the just concluding Great War. Then it disappeared as rapidly as it appeared. Experts believed it mutated into less lethal versions. Covid-19 which emerged in 2020 has killed 6 million, in the USA is over one million deaths.
1927- The first Roxy Theater opens at 50th st. & Seventh Ave. in New York. Roxy was a nickname of theater owner Samuel L. Rothafel who pioneered the movie palace and is called the father of De-Luxe presentation. There were soon Roxy theaters in cities from Hollywood to Sydney Australia.
1943- The Broadway musical team of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened their first collaboration “Away We Go!”
1971- Philo Farnsworth died of pneumonia at 64. The young Utah native in 1922 had invented the television set, but by the 1960’s he was forgotten, broke and addicted to painkillers. The only recognition he got was as a contestant on the quiz show I Got a Secret. He won a check for $80 and a carton of Winston cigarettes. Today Farnsworth is considered one of the true inventors of television, along with John Logie-Baird.
1971- THX 1138- Frances Ford Coppola convinced Warner Bros to release a fleshed-out feature version of a USC college thesis film by a young guy named George Lucas.
1977- Film director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home after he got her stoned on quaaludes. Polanski was charged with statutory rape. He jumped bail and fled Hollywood for exile in Paris. LA courts have been trying unsuccessfully to get him extradited ever since.
1984 - NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, adapted and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was released in Japan. When the Walt Disney company agreed to distribute the film, they released it in Europe with time cuts, about ten minutes. Miyazaki sent the studio a beautiful antique samurai sword. On the blade he engraved, “ No Cuts”.
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