Birthdays: William Shakespeare, James Buchanan, John Muir, Sergei Prokoviev, J.M.W. Turner, Vladimir Nabokov, Senator Stephen Douglas the Little Giant, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Halston, Sandra Dee, Valerie Bertinelli, Lee Majors is 83, Judy Davis, Simone Simon, Tony Esposito, Michael Sporn, Michael Moore is 69, Herve Villechais, John Oliver is 46.
1616- After a night out partying with Ben Johnson, John Draydon and other old buddies from Ye Old Mermaid Tavern, William Shakespeare caught a fever and died on his fifty third birthday.
“Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?”
1867- William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, an optical toy predating motion pictures..
1896- THE FIRST PROJECTED MOVIES IN THE U.S.- The first projection of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 28th street and Broadway in New York City. Edison had to be nagged into this by his engineer W.K.L. Dickson. Edison thought projecting movies like the Lumiere Brothers were doing in Paris would never catch on, and the future of film was in nickelodeon machines. The movie show featured the sultry Annabella the Dancer and a boxing match, but the real hit of the evening was footage of Waves Hitting the Rocks on Shore, which made people instinctively jump to keep from getting wet.
1903- The first game of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) baseball team. They defeated the Washington Senators, 7-2.
1914- Chicago’s Wrigley Field opened.
1931- Warner Bros movie The Public Enemy was released. Starring Jean Harlow and a Broadway dancer with a strong lower east side accent named James Cagney.
1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for a stunt where he dressed as a priest and solicited funds in a leper colony.
1985- Coca Cola introduces New Coke. They decided to make the basic formula slightly sweeter to appeal to younger people. Its reception by the public was so overwhelmingly bad that the company returned to the original formula just 90 days later. The chairman of rival Pepsi Cola exulted: " We've been eye to eye for decades and I think the other guys just blinked! New Coke became a symbol for large-scale executive incompetence,
1998- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows 98 to 4,000 industry leaders. When he ceremonially opened the first window, the system crashed- Doh!
2005- The first You-Tube video was uploaded- Me at the Zoo.
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