Sunday, April 28, 2024

Tom Sito's Animation ALmanac for April 28, 2024


Birthdays: English King Edward IV (1442), President James Monroe, Lionel Barrymore, Oskar Schindler, Carolyn Jones-aka Morticia Addams of the TV Addams Family, Ann Margret is 83, Jay Leno is 74, Saddam Hussein, Jean Redpath, Penelope Cruz is 50, Jessica Alba is 45, Godzilla is 70- see below.

1897- The first distress signal sent by wireless at sea. The S.O.S. (Save Our Ship) code wasn't invented until 1912.


1925- T.S. Elliot landed a job at Faber & Faber Publishing. His enabled the poet to quit his job as a bank teller at Lloyds and get serious about his literary career.


1937- Italy’s movie studio Cinecitta’ was dedicated.


1947- Thor Heyderthal set out on a balsa wood raft called Kon Tiki to prove ancient Peruvians could have used the ocean current to reach Polynesia.


1954- Happy 70th Birthday Godzilla! The original kaiju movie by Ichjiro Honda was inspired when a Japanese fishing boat was fatally exposed by radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test. He was also inspired by the Hollywood movies The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and King Kong. Godzilla is an Anglicized version of the Japanese Kohjira, which is a combination of Gorilla and Whale. The famous roar was done by rubbing a resin-covered glove down some bass fiddle strings. The film was later released in the U.S. with American actor Raymond Burr (actually, Canadian actor.) acting in inserted scenes. The intact Japanese version of the film was not seen in North America until 2004.


1961-At La Scala, When tenor Guiseppi Di Stefano took ill, a young schoolteacher from Modena took the lead role in the opera La Boheme. Lucciano Pavarotti debuted.


1967- Citing his Black Muslim religion, world champion prizefighter Cassius Clay, now renamed Muhammad Ali, refused to be drafted into the army to fight in the Vietnam War. "I’m not mad at any Vietnamese person over there." The World Boxing Federation stripped Ali of his championship title, but he won it back during the 'Rumble in the Jungle" prizefight against George Foreman in 1974.



1996- Genndy Tartakowsky’s  Dexter’s Laboratory premiered.



2019- The Marvel superhero movie Avengers Endgame earned $1.2 billion worldwide in its opening weekend.  $350 million North America, and $850 million worldwide. A record shattering opening. 


 



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