Birthdays: Louis Bleriot, Tommy Dorsey, George Sand, Charles Laughton, James Cagney, Princess Diana of Wales, Twyla Tharp, Carl Lewis, Jamie Farr, Sidney Pollack, Wally "Famous"Amos, Estee Lauder, Debbie Harry (Blondie), Olivia De Haviland, Toshiyuki Sakata (Oddjob), Genevieve Bujold, Karen Black, David Prowse, Dan Ackroyd is 72. Andre Crouch, Pamela Anderson is 57, Liv Tyler is 47
Welcome to July, named for Julius Caesar. Originally the Romans called it month number five- "Quintilicus Mensis". They had a ten month calendar that began with Mars (March), and ran out of names after Juno (June). After Caesar’s assassination, the Senate voted to change the name of Month Five to the month of the Divine Julius. So, thank Caesar that you don't have to celebrate The Fourth of Quintilicus.
1851- James MacNeil Whistler applied to West Point Military Academy. After struggling for three years, he washed out and concentrated on becoming one of the most celebrated artists of the century. He later joked:" If silicon was a gas, I’d be a major general by now!"
1858- Charles Darwin does a public reading of his theories on Evolution to the Linean Club in London.
1926- THE FIRST ANIMATED FEATURE. Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed premiered in Paris. Ten years before Walt Disney’s Snow White.
1933- Mickey’s Gala Premiere, Mickey short with Joe Grant’s caricatures of famous Hollywood celebrities.
1940- Chuck Jones short Old Glory. Porky gets an American history lesson from no less than Uncle Sam himself.
1941- Animation director Tex Avery stormed out of the Looney Tunes Studio when Jack Warner ordered cuts in his Bugs Bunny cartoon, THE HECKLING HARE. 40 feet was trimmed from the end of the cartoon by Leon Schlesinger who agreed with Mr. Warner it had one too many endings, involving Bugs and the Dog falling through space endlessly. Tex felt the run-on gag was the whole point of the joke. Leon put him on a four-week suspension without pay, but Avery had already lined up a new directing gig at MGM.
1941- THE FIRST TV COMMERCIAL -During the live coverage of a Brooklyn Dodgers-Philadelphia Phillies baseball game the first FCC sanctioned television commercial aired. It was for the Bulova Watch Company.
1944- Leon Schlesinger sold his animation and shorts company outright to Warner Bros Studio and retired.
1945- With WWII in Europe over, Bill Mauldin's wartime comic strip "Willie and Joe' ended it's run along with the European front-line edition of Stars and Stripes magazine. Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame said no one could draw mud like Bill Maudlin. Mauldin was once chewed out by General Patton for making his GIs so slovenly and cynical. He felt it was a negative image of the American Fighting Man. Seesh...everybody’s a critic!
1945- NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the Sunday comics section aloud over the radio because of a newspaper strike.
1956- The film Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers premiered. Effects by Ray Harryhausen.
1958- Does She or Doesn’t She? Clairol hair dye introduced.
1963- U.S. post office introduced zip codes.
1970- Hanna & Barbera’s attempt at a primetime animated series "Where’s Huddles?"
1970- The Xerox Company of Connecticut were convinced to open a new computer science lab on the west coast near Stanford University. It was called Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC. In 9 years, PARC would develop laser-printing, color graphics, GUI’s- Graphics User Interface, windows, cursor point and click, and Ethernet.
1972- Ms. Magazine started publication.
1979- Sony introduced the Walkman portable cassette player in the U.S.
1981- The Wonderland Murders. Porn star Johnny Holmes (aka Johnny Wadd) was implicated in a gang murder. This day four drug dealers called The Wonderland Gang were found beaten to death in his home. Holmes was tried as an accomplice but acquitted. Johnny Holmes died in 1988, and his story became the basis for Marc Walberg’s character in the film Boogie Nights.
1996- The movie Dinosaur Valley Girls premiered.
1998- Barbara Streisand married James Brolin.
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