Birthdays: Former British PM Harold Macmillan, Jimmy Durante, Bertholdt Brecht, Leontyne Price, Roberta Flack, tennis great Bill Tilden, Lon Chaney Jr., Stella Adler, Mark Spitz, Boris Pasternak, Dame Judith Anderson, Greg Norman, Donavan, Dr Alex Comfort author of the Joy of Sex, Michael Apted, Jerry Goldsmith, Robert Wagner, Laura Dern is 57
Happy Chinese New Year. The Year of the Dragon.
1837- Russia’s greatest poet Alexander Pushkin died of wounds from fighting a duel defending his wife's honor. His last words were directed to his books "Farewell, my friends..." Pushkin was the great, great grandson of a black man Abram Gannibal, brought from Cameroon to serve Czar Peter the Great in his Moorish Guard.
1929- Elsa Lanchester married Charles Laughton.
1938- RKO screwball comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant “Bringing Up Baby” premiered. Directed by Howard Hawks.
1940- MGM's "Puss gets the Boot" the first Tom and Jerry cartoon and the first collaboration of the team of New Mexico born Bill Hanna & New York born Joe Barbera.
1943- DUCT TAPE- During WW2, Miss Vesta Stoudt worked at a defense plant in Illinois. She noticed the way ammunition boxes were sealed required some effort to open. This could cost precious time in battle. She suggested they develop a strong cloth tape that could be torn open without scissors. Her supervisors ignored her. So, she wrote President Roosevelt this day. FDR loved the idea, and ordered Johnson & Johnson to make it. Because they waterproofed the tape, they called it Duck Tape. Like water rolls off a duck’s back. G.I.s liked the tape so much, they began using it for everyday repairs, even to close wounds. I’m not sure when it was first used on ducts. It was originally Army green. Manufacturers changed it to silver when marketed for home use.
1949- The premiere of Arthur Miller’s play "Death of a Salesman”.
1960- Jack Paar was the star and host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. He pioneered the talk show format, the opening monologue and couch, that everyone uses today. He tried to tell one joke about a woman in a water closet (i.e. toilet) when the network censors cut the joke. Jack Paar was so angry, that in the middle of this show, he stood up, exclaimed “ There’s gotta be better ways to make a living,” and walked off the show. A few weeks later he was convinced to return, but he left permanently in 1962. His celebrity status faded while his successor Johnny Carson became famous. Paar later admitted quitting was the biggest mistake of his life.
1966- CBS co-ops broadcasting the senate Kennan Hearings on the conduct of the Vietnam War with reruns of "I Love Lucy'. CBS news division president Fred Friendly quit in protest.
1966- Jaqueline Susanne’s novel The Valley of the Dolls first published. Although critics considered it cheap and trashy- Time Magazine called it “Dirty Book of the Month”, and Truman Capote called Susanne in her heavy 1960s eye shadow, a “Truck Driver in Drag” Valley of the Dolls sold like wildfire. Its frank portrayal of single women enjoying casual sex and taking drugs in suburbia was a big step in the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.
1992- The children’s book- The Stinky Cheese Man debuted.
1996- IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess master Garry Kasparov. The first time a computer ever beat a human chess champion.
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