Birthdays: William Shakespeare, James Buchanan, John Muir, Sergei Prokoviev, J.M.W. Turner, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen Douglas the Little Giant, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Halston, Sandra Dee, Valerie Bertinelli, Lee Majors is 84, Judy Davis, Simone Simon, Tony Esposito, Michael Sporn, Michael Moore is 70, Herve Villechais, John Oliver is 47.
1867- William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, an optical toy predating motion pictures.
1896- THE FIRST PROJECTED MOVIES IN THE U.S.- The first projection of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 28th street and Broadway in New York City. Edison had to be nagged into this by his engineer W.K.L. Dickson. Edison thought projecting movies like the Lumiere Brothers were doing in Paris would never catch on, and the future of film was in nickelodeon machines. The movie show featured the sultry Annabella the Dancer and a boxing match, but the real hit of the evening was footage of Waves Hitting the Rocks on Shore, which made people instinctively jump to keep from getting wet.
1903- The first game of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) baseball team. They defeated the Washington Senators, 7-2.
1914- Chicago’s Wrigley Field opened.
1931- Warner Bros movie The Public Enemy was released. Starring Jean Harlow and a Broadway dancer with a strong lower east side accent named James Cagney. It made them both stars.
1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for a stunt where he dressed as a priest and solicited funds in a leper colony.
1970- Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane was inadvertently invited to a tea party at the White House by Pres. Nixon’s daughter Trisha. She had invited Slick because under her maiden name Grace Ward she was a fellow alumni of Finch College. Grace Slick and her escort Abbie Hoffman were in line to get into the event, when at the last-minute White House security recognized them and turned them away. It was too bad, because she had a plan to slip LSD into President Nixon’s tea.
1998- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows 98 to 4,000 industry leaders. When he ceremonially opened the first window, the system crashed- Doh!
2005- The first You-Tube video was uploaded- Me at the Zoo.
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