Birthdays: Alex de Tocqueville, Benito Mussolini, Clara Bow, Natalie Wood, Paul Taylor, Sig Romberg, Dag Hammarskjold, Peter Jennings, Michael Spinks, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dave Stevens creator of the Rocketeer, Ken Burns is 70, Booth Tarkington, David Warner, Steven Dorff, Professor Irwin Corey, William Cameron-Menzies, Peter Jennings, William Powell, Will Wheaton is 52
1890- Near Auvers-sur-Oise, artist Vincent Van Gogh went behind a hay bale and was shot. He lingered for two days and died of blood poisoning. He was 37. His brother Theo was so distraught he died six months later of a brain disease and melancholia. Recent scholarship says Vincent did not commit suicide but was accidentally shot by a delinquent kid playing with his father's gun. Vincent told the police he committed suicide to protect the child from being imprisoned.
1920 - 1st transcontinental airmail flight from NY to SF.
1922- In Kansas City, Walt Disney released his first Laugh-o-Gram short- Little Red Riding Hood, animated by Rudy Ising.
1938- Three Missing Links- a Three Stooges comedy with the boys as cave men and Ray Crash Corrigan in a gorilla suit.
1942- Orson Welles left Rio De Janiero after RKO fired him and stopped production of "It's All True". RKO also had “the Magnificent Ambersons” re-cut to a more acceptable 90 minutes and fired the executive producer first who brought him to Hollywood.
1946- In Los Angeles, Jazz great Charlie Parker had learned of the death of his baby daughter back in New York. He showed up for a recording session so drunk and high his producer had to hold him up in front of the mike. Later that night he fell completely apart, ran naked down the street, set fire to his hotel room smoking in bed. The cops had to shake him violently to wake him, he fought with them and they beat him up and threw him in jail. He was committed to the Camarillo Mental Hospital.
1948- Former Disney assistant-animator Hank Ketcham’s comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appeared.
1952 - 1st nonstop transpacific flight by a jet.
1957-Happy Birthday NASA! President Eisenhower signed the bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA to oversee the space program, separate from the military.
1957- The Tonight Show with Jack Paar as host premiered.
1962- The film “Dr No” premiered, introducing the world to the suave spy James Bond 007. They first considered Cary Grant, David Niven, Patrick McGoohan, and James Mason, who all turned them down. So, the producers chose young Scots actor Sean Connery. Ian Fleming wrote of the choice, “Disaster!!” Fleming always imagined Bond would resemble band-leader Hoagy Carmichael. Sean Connery had just starred as the villain in a Tarzan film, and the producers wanted him to film the sequel. He asked for a time off to go do, “a little spy picture.”
1965 - Beatles movie "Help" had its Royal World premiere at the London Pavilion in the West End. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon in attendance. The film actually opened a month later. People said the movie was filmed “in a haze of marijuana smoke” and most people on the film didn’t know what was next as they were writing it as they went along.
1974- Mamas and the Papa's chubby singer Mama Cass Eliot died of a stroke, not as was widely believed from choking on a sandwich. She was 32.
1981- Prince Charles of England married Lady Diana Spencer. The ill-fated fairy tale wedding was seen around the world on live television. Unknown to Di at the time was Prince Charles was already romantically involved with Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles.
1989- Miyazaki’s film Kiki’s Delivery Service premiered in Japan.
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