Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Tom Sito's animation almanac for april 24, 2024


Birthdays: Daniel Defoe, William de Kooning, St. Vincent de Paul, Morgan Earp, Jack E. Leonard, Dame Ethel Smyth, Jill Ireland, Eric Bogosian, Sue Grafton, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Donner, Barbara Streisand is 82, Cedric the Entertainer is 60, Shirley MacLaine is 89, Djimon Hounsau is 60.


1184 B.C. (est.) TROY FALLS TO THE GREEKS- Despite the warnings of the seers Cassandra and Laocoon, the Trojans brought Ulysses' great wooden horse into the city, and at night the Greeks climbed out and opened the city gates to destruction. The reason we have any date for this was this day the Romans celebrated a festival commemorating the event, and they invented our calendar. 


1584- Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi asked the Heii Shrine in Edo (Tokyo) to dedicate a new heraldic design - the red disc Asahi - Rising Sun flag is created. 


1800- The U.S. Congress set up the Library of Congress. By 1814 it had three thousand volumes, but they were destroyed when a British Army burned Washington. Thomas Jefferson then donated his own private library to restart the collection. Today it numbers in the millions of volumes.


1833- The Soda Fountain was patented.


1874- Jesse James married his cousin Miss Zerelda Mimms, who he called Z. 


1901-The First American League baseball game. The Cleveland Blues vs. the Chicago White Stockings.


1913- The Woolworth Building was dedicated in lower New York. It’s cornices decorated like the campanile of Saint Marks in Venice. At the time it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. President Woodrow Wilson illuminated its electric lights by flipping a switch long distance in the White House. One person upon taking the elevator to the top floor, said “ Is God in..?”


1933- Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.


1944- Film Noir classic film Double Indemnity premiered.


1954- Handsome English actor Peter Lawford married John F. Kennedy’s sister Patricia Kennedy. This union would give JFK his link to Hollywood, Frank Sinatra and the RatPack.


1961- First day of shooting on the film King of Kings, the Christ story starring Jeffrey Hunter. Called by one critic” I was a Teenage Jesus” In 1966 Jeffrey Hunter turned down a TV series after doing the pilot episode. His wife worried that he’d be typecast. The role of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk went instead went to William Shatner.


1979- Paul McCartney happened to be in New York City and dropped in on his old mate John Lennon. They spent the day together and at one point mediated visiting the set of Saturday Night Live but changed their minds at the last minute. Paul McCarthy left in the wee hours. It was the last time he ever saw John Lennon alive. 

1981- Small companies like Apple and Commodore had dominated the personal computer market while giants like IBM stuck with large business systems. Now IBM weighed in with The IBM PC –personal computer, with basic software language DOS provided by Microsoft. It soon came to dominate the market.


1990- The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Challenger.


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