Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for July 18, 2023

Birthdays: William Makepeace Thackeray, Chill Wills, Nelson Mandela, James Brolin, Elizabeth McGovern, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Hume Cronyn, Red Skelton, Hunter H. Thompson, Clifford Odets, Paul Verhoeven, John Glenn, Syd Mead, Vin Diesel is 56

1877- Thomas Edison first recorded sound on tin foil cylinder `Mary Had a Little Lamb'

1939- MGM tried a sneak preview of the film The Wizard of Oz. Afterward they debated cutting the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow as slowing down the story. Finally, they decided to leave it in. The film debuted in August to wild success and acclaim.

1939- RKO pictures signed Orson Welles to direct movies in Hollywood. That Hollywood signed a 24 year old radio star who never made a single film, and gave him complete freedom and final cut was an amazing deal.

1950- Walt Disney’s live action film Treasure Island Premiered, with Robert Newton as Long John Silver, Capt. Jack Sparrow’s role model. Arrrr-Jim, me boy!

1964- Bob McKimson’s "A False Hare", the last Bugs Bunny theatrical short for Warner Bros for twenty years, until 1985.

1966- Bobby Fuller who made the hit song "I fought the Law and the Law Won" was found in LA in his mother’s Oldsmobile, beaten and dead from "forcible inhalation of gasoline"- huffing.

1968- Engineer Bob Noyce quit Fairchild Semiconductor and founded a new company in Santa Clara California named Intel. His partners were Andy Grove and Gordon Moore, he of Moore’s Law. It sold a new thing called microprocessors. In 1980 Intel would invent the silicon chip.

1975- Famed underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode’ experimented with breath control while doing hallucinogenic drugs. This day the creator of The Wizard of Id died of auto-asphyxiation while high. His last words were to his son, “ Mark, I’ve seen God four times, and I am going to see him again soon.” He was 33. 

1986- Aliens, the sequel directed by James Cameron, premiered. Game over, man!

1998- The movie Pokemon the First was released in Japan, stoking a Pokemon craze.

2019- A demented man set the Kyoto Animation Studio ablaze with gasoline and attacked people with a knife. 34 people died in the blaze. Many were young women for whom it was their first job.