Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for May 3, 2023


Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Bing Crosby, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70’s singer Engelbert Humperdinck, Dule Hill, Christina Hendriks, Bill Sienkiewicz


1675- Massachusetts Puritans passed a law that church doors be locked during Sunday services. Too many people were leaving during long, boring sermons.


1888- The Poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer first published.


1931- E.C. Segar introduced Popeye’s friend J. Wellington Wimpy in his Thimble Theatre comic strip. Based on Segar’s old boss William Shuchert, who own a local opera house in Decatur, Illinois and ate a lot of hamburgers. “I would gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today.”


1933- Fritz Lang’s movie M released in the US. It made a star of Peter Lorre.


1936- Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio first game for the New York Yankees. He got three hits.


1948- THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theaters and producers (including the Walt Disney Company) had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. 

One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature. Many people were starting to become interested in that new television machine, anyway.


1952- President Harry Truman showed off the newly renovated White House to the newfangled network television cameras. 


1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts. 


1971- National Public Radio’s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first U.S. news program with women anchors like Susan Stanberg.


1973- Chicago’s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the tallest office building in the U.S.A.


1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time, so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. 




1991- Steve Jobs agreed to the deal between Walt Disney and Pixar to create the film Toy Story.  He insisted the Pixar logo be at the head of the film, instead of in the back roll credits. The world needs to know that Pixar are the one’s making these movies, not them. It’s all about marketing. The public will soon know who we are, more than they are.”


1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company James J. Morgan testified to a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy.


2002- Spiderman, directed by Sam Raimi, and starring Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst.


2014-Kevin McCoy created the first NFT (Non-Fungible Token) entitled “Quantum”.



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