Birthdays: Will Rogers, Art Carney, T.S. Sullivant, Disney director Ben Sharpsteen, Treg Brown,Loretta Swit, Martin Balsam, Gig Young, Darla Hood, Joe Neikro, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ralph Maccio, Andrea McArdle, Walter Cronkite, Matthew McConnaughy is 53, Laura Bush, Kathy Griffin, Aardman animator Peter Lord is 70.
1918- Wilfred Owen, one of the great English poets, was killed in combat in World War I, only six days before the final armistice.
1927- HOWARD CARTER OPENED THE TOMB OF KING TUT. Other royal tombs had been opened before but they had always been cleaned out centuries ago by grave robbers. King Tut-Ankh-Amon’s was the first unspoiled Pharoah's tomb to be discovered in modern times. The site was discovered under a house built for workers excavating the tomb of King Ramses IV.
There was King Tut’s Curse guarding the door, and a few folks like Lord Carnarvon did go to an early grave: allegedly from scratching a zit and getting blood poisoning. Legend has it the same zit was found on King Tut's mummy! But Howard Carter, the man who broke the seal, rifled the tomb and did everything but stick his fingers in Tut's ears, lived to a merry old age and even pocketed a few artifacts he didn't feel like sharing with the British Museum. They were later returned by an embarrassed family descendant.
1931- One of the pioneering trumpet innovators of the new music called Jazz was Buddy Bolden. He was one of the first soloists to improvise within the body of a song, and so doing paved the way for the greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But by 1931 Bolden was forgotten. This day he died broke in the Louisiana Home for the Insane. His family couldn't even afford a Dixieland Band to play at his funeral.
1939- Packard introduced the first air-conditioned automobile.
1945- Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld first inserts his daughter Nina’s name into one of his cartoons. It was for a Broadway musical review “ Are You With It?” with Johnny Roberts.
1952- UNIVAC, the first business computer, accurately predicted Dwight Eisenhower would win in a landslide. This when regular polling showed a strong lead for Adlai Stevenson. The first computer projected results for an election.
1955- In Arizona, Willie Bioff, union official who tried to hijack the Hollywood unions (Including the Disney cartoonists) for Frank Nitti's gang, had turned informer and was in the federal Witness Protection plan. This day he got into his car, turned the key in his Ford pickup and exploded.
1963- The Beatles were part of the Queens Royal Command performance in London. John Lennon told the audience: " Will the people in the cheap seats clap their hands? And the rest of you, would you please just rattle your jewelry."
1977- The Incredible Hulk TV show starring Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby, first premiered as a made for TV movie.
1980- Yomiuri Giants baseball great Saduharu Oh retired after hitting 868 homeruns in his 22-year career.
1989- Grand Day Out, introduced the world to Wallace and Gromit.
1993- The Topanga-Malibu fires., Huge brush fires burned expensive homes in Malibu. The fires reached from the Santa Monica Mountains down to the ocean. Eyewitnesses said the 30 foot flames were reflected in the sky and water turning everything orange and the landscape looked more like Mars.
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