Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, Arthur Q. Bryan the voice of Elmer Fudd, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius, Enrique Inglesias, animator Bob Clampett, Don Rickles, film graphic designer Saul Bass
1878- David Hughes invented the Microphone while trying to get over bronchitis.
1910- Russian-Jewish glove salesman Shmuel Kelpfish married Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville performer Jesse Lasky. Kelpfish later changed his name to Sam Goldfish, then Sam Goldwyn. He and his father-in-law Jesse Lasky went into the new flicker business and started the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They soon moved to Hollywood. He was famous for his pithy comments “Goldwynisms.” Like, “If people don’t want to go see a picture, nothing can stop them!” and “ I want this picture to begin with a volcanic eruption, then build to a shuttering climax!”
1912- The movie studio Famous Players Lasky born. In 1914 they changed their name to Paramount Pictures.
1943- Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"- Ooohh Wolfy!
1947- Department store mogul Harry Gordon Selfridge died in poverty in Putney, a suburb of London. He was 89. Even though his store Selfridges made millions, in his old age he wasted so much money on gambling and women, his exec board stripped him of his power. In 1943 he was arrested for vagrancy for loitering in front of his own store.
1962-"A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" opened on Broadway.
1962- Director Joe Mankiewicz shot the climactic spectacle scene of Cleopatra –Elizabeth Taylor, entering Rome through the Arch of Titus on a mobile sphinx surrounded by thousands of extras. The shot had been delayed six months after a stunt woman fell off an elephant, and then the light in the Forum had not been right. When Elizabeth Taylor appeared in the scene, the Italian extras were supposed to shout "Hail Cleopatra!, but instead they all shouted "Liz! Liz!"
1962- An MIT lab open house that year featured a new idea created by grad students Slugg Russell and Adam Kotok for the college’s PDP-1 mainframe computer. An interactive game called Spacewar! Scientists had been adapting chess and checkers to be played on a computer, but this was the first original game. A spaceship shoot-em-up. The company that leased PDP-1s gave out Spacewar! as a perk and soon around the country scientists were playing away into the night. Most computer game pioneers like Nolan Bushnell got their inspiration from playing Spacewar!
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