Birthdays: St. Thomas Becket, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Lord North, Samuel Beckett, Dame Eudora Welty, Al Green, Jack Cassidy, Butch Cassidy, Franklin W. Woolworth, Howard Keel, Don Adams, Ricky Schroeder, Peabo Bryson, Ron Perleman, Stanley Donen, Alfred Butts the inventor of Scrabble, animator Glen Keane
1870- New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.
1902- J.C. Penny opened his first store in Kemmerer Wyoming.
1939- The film Wuthering Heights starring Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon premiered. Sam Goldwyn was disgusted by the headaches to bring this Charlotte Bronte novel to the Hollywood Screen. When asked if he planned to film more XIX century novels he replied: "Don’t bring me no more scripts by guys who write with feathers!"
1943- Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial at the Washington D.C. Mall.
1949- Lead character designer and story artist Joe Grant resigned from Disney Studios, not to return until 1989.
1953- A British WWII intelligence officer turned newspaperman in peacetime was bored with his life. His name was Ian Fleming. He decided to write a novel about his idea of the ultimate spy. Looking for a suitably bland name, his favorite book on birdwatching was written by someone named James Bond. "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, yet very masculine name, was just what I needed.” His wife thought the finished story was vulgar. This day, the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, came out and was an instant hit.
1962- The New York Mets (metropolitans) Baseball Club formed. They played at the old Giants park, the Polo Grounds, until Shea Stadium was built in 1964 next to the Worlds Fair grounds. The team adopted the Blue and Orange logo colors of the Fair as their own. Blue and Orange were also the colors of the moved away Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants.
1964- Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor for the film Lilies of the Field. The first Oscar for any black actor or actress went to Hattie McDaniel as Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind in 1939. Best actress was not won until Halle Berry in 2002.
1964- The Best Animated Short Oscar was won by Ernie Pintoff’s film The Critic, voiced by Mel Brooks.
1967- Columbia Picture’s bizarre version of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale premiered. Several directors, John Huston, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, George Raft, and David Niven. Richard Williams opening titles, and Dusty Springfield ‘s song “The Look of Love.” Stories of a lot of recreational drugs off camera.
1970- "Houston, we have a problem here..." An explosion of an oxygen tank disabled the Apollo XIII moon mission. For the next several days the world held its breath as the spacecraft ricocheted itself around the moon and came back to Earth, the slightest mis-calculation of trajectory meant a cold, airless death for the three astronauts. Their plight was made into the film “Apollo XIII” directed by Ron Howard.
1997- 21year old golf phenomenon Tiger Woods won his first Masters Tournament by a record 12 strokes.
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