Birthdays: Robert Fulton, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, McClean Stevenson, Jarahwahal Nehru, Mamie Eisenhower, Brian Keith,
Louise Brooks, Ellis Marsalis, Harrison Salisbury, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, Yanni,
P.J. O'Rourke, George Petrovic' called KaraGeorge "Black George" Serbian nationalist 1762, Astrid Lungren the creator of Pippi Longstockings, William Stieg, Laura San Giacomo is 61, Patrick Warburton is 59, Zhang Yimou is 72, King Charles III is 75
1851- Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick, or the Whale” was first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row. Before petroleum products, homes were illuminated by oil from refined whale blubber. This made hunting whales a lucrative trade for New Englanders. Herman Melville was inspired by a report of an albino whale named Mocha-Dick who had sunk seven ships off the coast of Java and was reported to have " a hide white as wool.” Melville also knew of a New Bedford whaling ship Essex that was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in 1839.
For the famous author of Typee and Billy Budd, Moby Dick was a critical and financial disaster. What's now considered one of the greatest works of American literature was ridiculed in its time. Melville, broken in spirit, sank into obscurity and finished his life as a customs agent for the Port of New York. When he died, he was so forgotten the New York Times misspelled his name in it's obituary.
1883- Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, or, the Mutiny on the Hispaniola, first published. He wrote a friend,” It's quite silly and horrid fun – and what I want is the best book about Buccaneers that can be had" Stevenson gave us our image of a typical Pirate of the Spanish Main. His book told us about peg legs, pet parrots, skull and crossbones flag, treasure maps, and the song “ Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest. Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!”
1883- London’s World newspaper printed an exchange of telegrams between writer Oscar Wilde and painter James MacNeil Whistler. “ When you and I are together we never talk about anything but ourselves.”-Wilde. Whistler:” No, no, Oscar. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me.”
1889- Inspired by Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days, New York World reporter Nellie Bly, real name Elizabeth Cochrane, set out to travel the world in the declared time. She did it in 72 days.
Nellie Bly was considered by Victorian society scandalously independent. She was a war correspondent, she had herself committed to a lunatic asylum to report on mistreatment of the mentally ill, she went up in a balloon and was the first woman to descend to the bottom of the sea in a diving bell- bathysphere.
1922- Happy Birthday B.B.C. the British Broadcasting Companies first regular radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results.
1937- SPAM introduced! Shoulder-Pork And haM.
1943- When Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct the New York Philharmonic, 24 year old Leonard Bernstein was asked to assume the baton. Bernstein became an overnight sensation.
1959- In Holcomb Kansas, two men broke into a farm home and murder four people. The subsequent trial and execution was attended by writer Truman Capote, who wrote the book “In Cold Blood”.
1960- Anthony Mann began shooting the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.
1963- Volcanoes push up out of the sea the island of Circe, now part of Iceland.
1967- Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sold his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts.
1968- Frank Sinatra announced that the smog and air pollution in Los Angeles had gotten so bad that he was moving out to the desert in Palm Springs.
1991- At ILM, the creation of the dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park were going to be done in traditional stop motion animation, like Ray Harryhausen used to do. Two CGI animators, Steve “Spaz” Williams and Walter Dippe’ did a quick test of a moving T-Rex on their own time and this day left it out for review as Spielberg’s producers chanced by. They loved the test and showed it to Steven who declared it all had to be done in CGI. The resultant success of Jurassic Park was the turning point in the digital revolution in modern media.
1998- Pixar’s A Bugs Life Premiered.
1998- Colorful and eccentric NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman married beautiful supermodel Carmen Electra. There was some doubt at first as to the validity of the story as Rodman admitted he was blind drunk throughout and didn’t remember the ceremony. They divorced shortly after.
2016- Disney’s Moana premiered.
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