Birthdays: Bartolomeo Christofori'- inventor of the piano, Alice Liddel 1852- the inspiration of Alice in Wonderland, Audrey Hepburn –real name Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, Roberta Peters, Maynard Ferguson, Pia Zadora is 70, Howard Da Silva, Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Richard Jenkins
1891 –THE DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES According to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, this was the day Sherlock Holmes perished at the Reichenbach Falls grappling with sinister Prof. Moriarity- The Napoleon of Crime. Conan Doyle had tired of his eccentric detective and wanted to get on to other types of novels. But readers were horrified he had killed off the great sleuth. Conan-Doyle couldn’t take a walk down the street without someone stopping him:” Sir, How could you?!” When touring the U.S. he wanted to lecture about historical subjects and spiritualism, but people only wanted know about Holmes & Watson. Finally, after a decade, Arthur Conan-Doyle gave in and began a new series called the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
1897- In Paris during a charity cinematograph show the nitrate film catches fire and 200 die. Movie film before the 1940’s was made from a very unstable nitrate mixture and could explode from the slightest contact with flame.
1927- The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences formed. Studio heads Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer originally conceived the Academy as an arbiter where studio artists could air grievances without fear of retaliation, thereby sidetracking the call for union representation. It didn't work. After the stock market crash the Academy supported the studio heads enforced employee salary cuts. Soon all pretense as an ombudsman was abandoned and AMPAS focused instead on being the arbiter of artistic achievement.
1943- 303rd Bomber Group and the 41st Combat wing bombed an enemy aircraft assembly plant near Antwerp. One B-17 called 8 Ball contained top gunner Clark Gable. His first time in action. Gable would be decorated for his bravery and promoted to captain. Hitler actually posted a reward if Gable could be shot down and captured alive. He was a fan.
1948- Norman Mailor's first novel published: "the Naked and the Dead".
1953 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Ernest Hemingway for The Old Man & The Sea.
1957 - Alan Freed hosts "Rock n' Roll Show" 1st prime-time network rock music show.
1963- Nelson Rockefeller married Margaret Fitzler-Murphy, called Happy Rockefeller.
1967- The Big Mac hamburger is invented by Jim Delligatti at his MacDonalds franchise restaurant in Pittsburgh. Steelworkers weren’t coming to his McDonald’s. They often ate one big meal a day after double shifts and the tiny burgers at McDonald’s weren’t going to cut it. They preferred the hearty burgers and meal sizes sandwiched at Eat’n Park or Primanti Bro’s. So the only way he could compete was to double his burgers!
1975- Moe Howard died, the last of the original Three Stooges.
1991- Bing Crosby’s son Dennis Crosby put a shotgun to his head and ended his life. In 1989 his younger brother Lindsay had committed suicide in a similar fashion.
2000- The Love Bug Computer virus ravaged the worlds commerce through Microsoft Outlook causing $10 billion dollars in damage and shutting down temporarily the e-commerce of large firms like Reebok. It was launched by a Philippine grad student as part of his thesis.
2001- Bonnie Lee Blakely, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was found in her car dead of a gunshot wound to the head outside of Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, Ca. They had just had dinner, and Mr. Blake had returned into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left at his table. In 2005 the actor was acquitted of his wife’s murder but lost a wrongful death suit to Blakely’s family. Robert Blake died in 2022. No other suspect was ever identified.
2012- Marvel's The Avengers, directed by Josh Whedon, opened.
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