Tom Sito's animation almanac for June 3, 2023

Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Jefferson Davis, Josephine Baker, King George V, Henry Shrapnel, Allen Ginsburg, Collen Dewhurst, Alain Renais, Curtis Mayfield, Paulette Goddard, Maurice Evans, Jack Oakey, Jan Peerce, Zoltan Korda, John Dykstra, Tom Arnold, Hale Irwin, Chuck Barris, Tony Curtis

1888-The poem: "Casey at the Bat" by Edward Lawrence Thayer published in the San Francisco Examiner.

1924- Writer Franz Kafka died in Kierling Austria. He left instructions to

Friends to burn all his unfinished manuscripts including The Trial, but

Fortunately, his friends did not.

1929- Movie stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr married Joan Crawford.

1932- In a game against the Philadelphia A’s, NY Yankee hitter Tony Lazzeri hit “for the cycle” a natural cycle. This meaning his first at bat was a single, the second a double, his third a triple and his fourth at bat he hit a home run, a grand slam actually. In all 150 years of recorded baseball, only 14 batters have ever hit a natural cycle. 

1939- Movie director Alexander Korda married movie star Merle Oberon.

1946- A consumer study finds there are only 10,000 television sets in America.

 A follow up study five years later finds the number at 15 million.

1949 - Dragnet is 1st broadcast on radio (KFI in Los Angeles). It went to NBC TV in 1952. Creator Jack Webb wanted to capture the dry, non-theatrical delivery he heard real cops’ use. He ordered his actors to “stop acting, just read the lines”.  Webb wrote the scripts from real LAPD cases and starred as well. He liked to mix martinis for the cast and crew in between setups.

1965- Edward White becomes the first American to walk in space in Gemini VII. 

1967 - Aretha Franklin's "Respect" reaches #1. Sockittome, sockittome, sockittome.

1968- Artist Andy Warhol was shot in the gut three times by Valerie Solanas, author of the "SCUM Manifesto". Warhol barely lived. Solanas was institutionalized.

1971- The first artificial gene created.

1975- The Bob Fosse-Gwen Verdon musical Chicago opened on Broadway. Written by Kander and Ebb, based on a 1926 play Roxie Hart.

1976 –Galileo-Galileo Fig-a-ro!  Queen's single "Bohemian Rhapsody" goes gold.

2001-
Disney’s Atlantis the Lost Empire opened in theaters.