Birthdays: Jacques Montgolfier, Joseph Bonaparte- Napoleons older brother, St. Bernadette of Lourdes, Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam, Francois Poulenc, Charles Addams, Butterfly McQueen, Adolph Zukor, Charles Adams, E.L. Doctorow, Jean Pierre Rampal, Millard Filmore, Katie Couric, William Peter Blatty the author of Jaws, David Caruso, Nicholas Cage- originally Nicolo Coppola, is 60
1839- Frenchman Louis Daguerre announced the invention of Photography (Just three weeks later on the 31st Englishman William Fox Talbot will say he invented photography first). Today was his public announcement. Daguerre’s experiments had been going on since 1835, which is when Talbot said he was doing his. There was also Thomas Wedgewood and Nicephore Niepce’s claims to be first. Despite the dispute, the Daguerreotype photographic process became the popular system worldwide in the nineteenth century. The image of Lincoln on the five-dollar bill is from a daguerreotype.
1894-Edison’s " The Sneeze" The first motion picture film to be copyrighted
1896- The first Fanny Farmer Cookbook published.
1914- The NY Times reported that Mexican general Pancho Villa signed an exclusive deal with Mutual Motion Pictures for coverage of his revolution. Villa would even confer with young movie director Raoul Walsh for when to schedule an attack, to get the best camera angles. Villa's American lawyer who negotiated the deal was Texan Gunther Lessing, who twenty years later would become chief attorney for Walt Disney.
1924- George Gershwin completed his Rhapsody for Piano and Jazz Orchestra, popularly called the Rhapsody in Blue. Ira Gershwin came up with the name after seeing a museum show of Whistler paintings with names like "Composition in Grey, Nocturne in Green," etc.
1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.
1927- The first private telephone call from America to England.
1929- With the approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs, artist Hal Foster first began drawing the Tarzan comic strip.
1934 –The First Buck Rogers adventures.
1935- Roger Sherwood’s play the Petrified Forrest opened to smash revues at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway. Lead Leslie Howard got great notices, but the real find was an obscure hard drinking actor with sad eyes playing the gangster Duke Mantee – Humphrey Bogart. In the audience was Jack Warner of Warner Bros, who decided Mr. Bogart might just make it in motion pictures.
1943- Nicholas Tesla died in poverty. The inventor of AC current, rotary field motors and the Tesla coil. In his last years he had been experimenting with telegraphy, and trying to develop a death ray for the US Army.
1943- Walt Disney released the propaganda short The Spirit of ’43, commissioned by the Treasury Dept. Donald Duck explained that the best way to win the war, was to pay your taxes!
1961- In Providence Rhode Island a bunch of kids were stopped by police for driving a round a neighborhood store suspiciously carrying guns and masks. One 21 year old who did three days in jail for carrying a concealed weapon later became an actor- Al Pacino.
1966- A hippie rock band from what would become Silicon Valley, called the Grateful Dead, got their first gig playing in a nightclub called the Matrix. They would be one of the most successful rock bands in history, only breaking up after the death of their leader, Jerry Garcia in 1995.
1972- Pulitzer prize winning poet John Berryman went to a Minneapolis bridge over the Mississippi River, took off his glasses, waved at a few people then jumped to his death. He missed the river and hit the bank 110 feet below, but he achieved his initial purpose of killing himself.
2015- CHARLIE HEBDO- In Paris, Muslim extremists shot up the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for making cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. 12 people were murdered, including the editor, and four of France’s most beloved cartoonists. Their editor in chief Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, when he saw the gun pointed at him, stood and defiantly gave his killer the middle finger before he was shot. ( No, that is NOT the offensive cartoon.)
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