Birthdays: Euripides-484BC, Victoria Woodhull, Walter Lippmann, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Mickey Rooney, Julio Inglesias, Walter Pidgeon, Louise Nevelson, Jason Alexander, Mary Kay Place, Harry Connick Jr, Bruce Springsteen is 74, William Holmes McGuffey*
*McGuffey was the educator and author of "the McGuffey Readers", a standard public school textbook so successful, that by 1860 the U.S. had an 80% literacy rate.
1846- The planet Neptune discovered by Johann Gottleib Gala. We did not know it had rings like Saturn until the Voyager 2 space probe visited in 1989.
1889- The Nintendo Company started in Kyoto, They began by making hand-painted playing cards, very popular with the Yakuza. In 1956 they transitioned to electronics, and invented Donkey-Kong, Gameboys, Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda.
1912- "Cohen Collects a Debt" Max Sennett's first film comedy featuring the Keystone Kops.
1921- The Band-Aid self-adhesive bandage introduced. A scientist at Johnson &Johnson, Earle Dickson, invented it for his wife who kept cutting herself in the kitchen. Supposedly the skin tone color, which never seemed to match anybody’s skin, was her skin coloring.
1937- Mickey Mouse cartoon The Brave Littler Tailor premiered.
1939- At the World’s Fair in New York a time capsule was buried not to be opened until the year 6939. It contains a Bible, a mail order catalog and newsreels of President Franklin Roosevelt. I hope they include an explanation of what film was, and how to use it.
1939- Sigmund Freud died at age 83. Suffering from inoperable cancer of the jaw, he had his doctor euthanize him with a lethal shot of cocaine.
1942- Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Grove start the "Manhattan Project", the building of a "cosmic-super bomb" (the A-Bomb). Hungarian Professor Leo Szilard had been pestering the U.S. government since 1938 to do something before the Hitler made one first. Finally the War Dept. gave the go ahead to collect the finest physicists in the free world to create a super bomb. Scientists like Richard Fenyman and Enrico Ferme would arrive for work at an office in downtown Santa Fe and be immediately whisked out the back in a sealed truck to the top secret lab complex at Los Alamos.
The project was so secret that they were warned if they breathed a word about it the government would make sure they "disappeared' for at least ten years! Vice President Truman had no idea of the project until he was told the night Franklin Roosevelt died. Leo Szilard was never asked to join the team because the F.B.I. considered him 'politically suspect', yet we now know at least two scientists there were Soviet spies, Dr. Karl Fuchs and Ted Hall.
1962- H& B's show The Jetsons premiered. It was the first ABC show to be presented in color. Jane! Stop this Crazy Thing! Jane!
1964- Marc Chagall painting on the ceiling of the Paris Opera House unveiled.
1969- the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" premiered. Written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill. It made fortunes for stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who later started and independent film festival called Sundance.
1984- Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells met the Disney Animation Dept. and were pitched storyboards for the film Basil of Baker Street, later called the Great Mouse Detective. Up to now their thinking had been to close the animation department and earn income from the licensing the existing library. Roy Disney was instrumental in insisting the animation division remain. That evening Eisner dictated memos to start the Disney television animation division, stagnant for over a decade.
1990- Ken Burns landmark TV series The Civil War premiered. It redefined American documentary filmmaking for a generation.
1994- Quentin Tarentino’s film Pulp Fiction premiered.
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