Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 31, 2024

Birthdays: Caligula 12AD*, Commodus 161AD, Amilcare Ponchielli, Eldridge Cleaver, Buddy Hackett, James Coburn, Itshak Perleman is 77, Van Morrison, Arthur Godfrey, Richard Baseheart, Rocky Marciano. Alan J. Lerner, Hugh Harman, Maria Montressori (of the Montressori Method of education), Hugh Harman, William Saroyan, Richard Gere is 74, Chris Tucker is 51. 

• Caligula was a nickname. His real name was Gaius, but as a child in his dad's army camp the troops dressed him up in his own little uniform. An army issued boot in Latin was a caligae, so they called him Caligula, or Little Bootie. As Emperor if you called him that he'd have you killed.

1829- Rossini’s Opera Guglielmo Tell debuted in Paris. The William Tell overture was heard for the first time- Hi Ho Silver!

1837- Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his American Scholar speech in Cambridge Mass. “Our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands is drawing to a close.” People called it an intellectual declaration of independence.

1881- The first men’s singles competition in tennis was held in Newport Rhode Island. The winner was Richard Sears.

1887- Thomas Edison patented the plans for a Kinetoscope, his original version of Motion Pictures using George Eastman’s new celluloid roll film. Most of the actual work was done by Canadian inventor W.K.L. Dickson. Working for Edison, he drove himself sick designing, building and improving the device as well as the camera and studio. He even designed an early sound on film system. But his boss Thomas Edison took all the credit. Edison wrote Edweard Muybridge at the time that he doubted the Kinetoscope would have much commercial value beyond the science lab. When Dickson gave Edison too much grief about not doing more with the new invention, Edison fired him.

1909- A geologist named Walcott hiking in the Canadian Rockies discovered the Burgess Shale. The first fossilized proof of the time period before the dinosaurs called the Cambrian Era. 

1928- In Berlin, The ThreePenny Opera premiered, music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Bertholdt Brecht with Lotte Lenya as Pirate Jenny. Mackie Messer or Mack the Knife was born.

1930 -Detroit radio station is 1st to broadcast a news program on the air.

1935- Disney cartoon Plutos’ Judgement Day.

1938- Walt Disney put ten thousand dollars down to buy 51 acres on Buena Vista Street in Burbank. He would build his modern air-conditioned studio there.

1941 –The Great Gildersleeve, a spin-off of Fibber McGee & Molly debuts on NBC radio.  The voice of Gildersleeve later narrated the UPA cartoon Gerald McBoing Boing.

1946- Looney Toon short 'Walky Talky Hawky' the first Foghorn Leghorn and Henery Hawk. The Foghorn character was based on a Fred Allen radio character Senator Beauregard Claghorn, that mocked bombastic Southern congressmen.

1948- Movie star Robert Mitchum was busted for smoking marijuana with a blonde in the Hollywood Hills. This would have normally smoked his career. Mitchum was so convinced his career was over that when asked by the police to state his occupation he said, "Former actor." But the new, postwar outlaw, noir attitude was in vogue. So bad-boy Mitchum emerged from county jail more popular than ever. When asked what he thought of being in jail, he said it's not much different than being free....but you meet a better clientele of people IN jail.

1955 - 1st microwave TV station operated in Lufkin, Texas.

1955- 1st sun-powered automobile demonstrated, Chicago, Ill.

1964 - Ground is broken for Anaheim Stadium, future home of the California Angels.

1964- Young comedian Richard Pryor made his first appearance on TV. He did some of his standup on Rudy Vallee’s Broadway Tonight Show.

1969- Former Heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano died in a plane crash in Newton Iowa. He had been hurrying home to attend a birthday party in his honor. He was 45.

1972- Russian Olga Korbut won a gold medal in gymnastics at the Olympics. She was the first of the cute little 15 year old girl gymnasts with the bright smile to catch the world’s attention.

2001- The NY Stock Exchange tries to avoid a Recession and bolster growth, by getting Michael Jackson and Jerry Lewis to ceremonially open trading sessions. Didn’t work.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 30, 2024

Birthdays: Mary Shelley, Jacques Louis David, Huey Long, Fred MacMurray, Raymond Massey, Ted Williams, John Blondell, Nancy Kulp, Timothy Bottoms, Jean-Claude Killy, Shirley Booth, John Landis, Tug McGraw, Stephen Silver, R. Crumb is 81, Lewis Black is 76, Cameron Diaz is 52

1784- The Empress of China, a fast-sailing American clipper ship established trade between New England and China. Far East trade had been cut off by the British since the Revolution broke out.

1850- Honolulu became a city.

1873- The Royal Canadian Mounted Police- The Mounties formed. 

1867- At the University of Göttingen, Albert Niemann isolated the chemical elements of the Columbian coca plant and named the powdery substance Cocaine. 

1935- “Top Hat” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers premiered.

1936- First newspaper comic strip entirely devoted to Donald Duck.

1939- Two days before the outbreak of hostilities, the last peacetime voyage of the HMS Queen Mary left Southampton evacuating Americans escaping the impending war in Europe. Among the crowd was a large contingent of Hollywood stars like Robert Montgomery, Loretta Young, Bob Hope and Jack Warner who had planned to attend the first Cannes Film Festival (postponed until 1946). The Queen Mary kept radio silence across the ocean to hide from U-Boats. This was wise because her sister ship HMS Athenia was torpedoed.

1939- The first Marvel comic book went on sale. Marvel comic #1, introducing The Human Torch and the Submariner.

1942- Cartoonist Al Capp premiered his comic strip “Fearless Fosdick”, a spoof of Dick Tracy detective stories.

 

1963- The HOT LINE is set up between the White House and the Kremlin. It was never really a red telephone, more a coded teletype machine. It was to prevent misunderstandings like the Cuban Missile Crisis the previous year. In 1986 they became a fax machine, and since 2008 a secure e-mail link. 

1968- The first 7-11 store opened in Palmdale California. Have a Slurpee!

1975- Ralph Bakshi's film "Coonskin". Bad boy Bakshi's portrayal of African American urban violence was deemed so offensive that it caused the first ever riot at the Museum of Modern Art, and it died at the box office. The film was retitled on video "Streetfight". When Ralph resurfaced, he turned his attention to Sword & Fantasy films.

1980- Willie Nelson released his hit song “On the Road Again.”

1983- Lt. Guion Bluford, the first African American in Space, went up on the Challenger space shuttle. 

1992- Astronomers Jane Luu and David Jewitt discovered the Kuiper Belt. That out at the edge of our Solar System, where Pluto is, is a second asteroid belt of even more particles and debris. Recently it has been speculated that the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs originated in The Kuiper Belt.

1993- The David Letterman Show premiered on CBS. Letterman was wooed away from NBC for $42 million bucks.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 29, 2024

Birthdays: Charlie Parker, King James II Stuart, John Locke, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Jean Dominique Ingres, Preston Sturges, Ingrid Bergman, William Friedkin, Dinah Washington, George Montgomery, Slobodan Milosevic, Robin Leach, Michael Jackson, Joel Schumacher, choreographer Mark Morris, Charles Kettering inventor of the automobile ignition, Joyce Clyde Hall the founder of Hallmark greeting cards, Richard Attenborough, Donald O’Connor, Rebecca DeMornay, John McCain, Elliot Gould is 86

 

 

1831 - Michael Faraday demonstrated the 1st electric transformer.

 

1864 - William Huggins published a study of the chemical composition of nebulae.

 

1885 – The first heavyweight title fight with regulation 3-oz gloves & 3-minute

rounds fought between John L Sullivan & Dominick McCaffrey. Before this bareknuckle fights could go on for 75 rounds and only be stopped when one of the other opponent was too bloody to continue.

 

1889 - 1st American Intl pro lawn tennis contest -Newport RI.

 

1893- Whitcomb Judson & Gideon Sundback invented the ‘clasp-locker” aka the zipper. 

 

1896- Chop Suey invented in New York City.

 

 

1908 - NY gives a parade to returning US Olympians from London. Wall Street brokers come up with the idea of throwing shredded stock ticker tape out the windows. The first ticker tape parade.

 

1909 - World's 1st air race held in Rheims France. Glenn Curtiss (USA) wins.

 

 

1925 - After a night on the town, Babe Ruth showed up late for batting practice. So Yankee manager Miller Huggins suspended Ruth & slapped a $5,000 fine on him. Whenever the Yankees were on the road and were safely winning a game, Ruth would take himself out of the lineup early so he could scout out a good bar for the team to go to later.

 

1929- New York City was having competitions between builders for who could build the tallest office building. The Chrysler Building had recently surpassed the Bank of Manhattan Building. On this day William Ratzengauer and former Presidential candidate Al Smith announced they would build a monster building, much higher than any other. It would be on the site of the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel. They would call it the Empire State Building.

 

1953- Warner's "Cat Tails for Two" introduced Speedy Gonzales.

 

1954- San Francisco International Airport (SFO) opened.

 

1955- Mamie Van Doren married Ray Anthony.

 

1958 - George Harrison joined the Quarrymen -Lennon-McCartney and Sutcliffe. The later rename themselves the Beatles.

 

1962- The Kennedy State Department sent poet laureate Robert Frost on a goodwill tour of Soviet Russia.

 

1964- Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins opened in wide release.

 

 

1967- Final Episode of the television series "The Fugitive". Dr. Richard Kimble catches the one-armed-man and clears his name. 78 million people watched this episode.

 

 

1974- THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE- Prizefighter Mohammed Ali won back his heavyweight crown from George Foreman in a wild showbiz event set up in Kinshasa, Zaire. Ali joked "Tonight, they'll be a thousand guys named Mohammed out there rooting for me, and another thousand guys named Ali rooting for me, but there won't be anybody else out there named George Foreman!" Foreman left boxing, became a minister, then returned in his 40’s to win the heavyweight crown and a fortune when most athletes are retired.

 

1976 - Anissa Jones, the child actress who played Buffy on the television show Family Affair), died of a drug overdose at age 18.

 

 

1989- Walt Disney Company announced their purchase of Jim Henson’s Muppets.

 

 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Aug 28, 2024

Birthdays: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, Jack "King" Kirby. George Villiers the Duke of Buckingham- minister of James I, Sean O'Flagherty, Donald O'Connor, Charles Boyer, Karl Boehm, Bruno Bettleheim, Disney designer Ferdinand Horvath, Ben Gazzara, Janet Evans, Ron 'Louisiana Lightning' Guidry, Nancy Kulp, Daniel Stern, Shania Twain, anim historian Charles Solomon, Jack Black is 55, Luiz Guzman is 68, Rita Coolidge is 63. 

1850- Lohengrin, the first opera written by Richard Wagner, premiered in Weimar. The Third Act chorus “Treulich Gefuhrt” became famous for weddings as “Here Comes the Bride, All Dressed in White”. Wagner asked his friend Franz Liszt to produce the opera because he was in exile for his political views. Wagner himself did not see Lohengrin performed until 1861. 

1907- UPS small package delivery service started in Seattle.

1922- The first broadcast commercial on radio.  It was for a real estate firm Queensboro Realty lasting ten minutes, and cost $100 dollars. The firm selling suburban homes in Queens NY immediately did $100,000 worth of business. The business world took note of this new method of advertising.

1938- Northwestern University conferred an honorary degree upon the ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy- Edgar Bergen’s famed ventriloquist dummy. The Dean of the School of Speech conferred a Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback upon the wooden celebrity. 

1945- One of the largest Japanese operated POW camps was outside of Singapore. 50,000 Allied soldiers were held there. There had been rumors since May that the war was ending, but nothing official. This day two heavy English bombers flew low over the camp and dropped a shower of leaflets. They said the Japanese had surrendered, the war was over, and help was on the way. One of the prisoners cheering was 25 year old art-school dropout Ronald Searle.

1951- Robert Walker was a boyishly handsome actor who had played in a number of successful Hollywood movies like The Clock, Bataan, See Here Private Hargrove and Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. This day a combination of amobarbital and alcohol caused him to suddenly collapse and stop breathing. He was 32. Accounts differ as to his mental state at the time, and whether his psychiatrist compelled him to take the injection of the sedative that brought about this fatal seizure. His son Robert Walker Jr went on to a successful acting career on things like Star Trek. Walker Jr. died in 2019 of old age.

1963- Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the climax of the first ' Poor People's March 'on Washington”. Organizer A. Phillip Randolph conceived a poor people’s march taking weeks not unlike the Bonus Marchers of 1929. The sympathetic John F. Kennedy administration prevailed upon them to keep it to one day to reduce the chance of violence and maximize media exposure.  They had planned for 100,000 but they got 400,000. Movie stars like Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, James Garner, Paul Newman and Charlton Heston attended.

1990- Computer pioneer Sandy Lerner was fired from the company she founded- Cisco Systems.

1996- The Prince and Princess of Wales Charles & Diana got divorced. This was the first Royal divorce since Henry VIII annulled Anne of Cleves in the 1530's, not counting George IV's secret marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert, which was hushed up, and his later cavorting with Lady Cunningham who was nicknamed "the Vice-Queen", and Edward VII's chasing every woman in Europe but his wife, etc.

2020- Actor Chadwick Boseman, who played T’Chala in The Black Panther, died of colon cancer at age 43.

.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 26, 2024

 Birthdays:  Sir Robert Walpole the first British Prime Minister, Mother Theresa, Albert the Prince Consort, John Wilkes Booth, Guilliame Appollinaire who coined the term Surrealism, General Maxwell Taylor, Christopher Isherwood, McCauley Culkin is 44, Geraldine Ferarro, Dr. Lee DeForrest, Ben Bradlee, Barbet Schroeder, Branford Marsalis, Chris Pine is 44, Melissa McCarthy is 54

 

1498- Michelangelo gets a job. The big Florentine stonecutter was commissioned by a French cardinal in the Rome of Pope Alexander VI Borgia to carve a Pieta, Mary lamenting over the body of Jesus. 

 

1576- The artist Titian died at age 88. He outlived all the artists of the Renaissance, worked every day of his life, and might have gone on had he not caught a touch of plague.

 

1838- American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson visited English writer Thomas Carlyle.

 

1846- W.A. Bartlet became first American mayor of Yerba Buena, in 1850 renamed San Francisco.

 

1868- First practical typewriter patented by Christopher Scholes. The Remington Company who were famous for making firearms took up the typewriter and mass produced it.

 

 

1918- 17 year old Walt Disney dropped out of high school and faked his birthdate in order to enlist to fight in World War I. Turned down for his age, he volunteered for the Red Cross. Assigned to the ambulance corps, he arrived in Europe just as the war was ending.

 

1929- The giant German dirigible Graf Zeppelin landed in Los Angeles at a remote place called Mines Fields, that would one day become Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). In ten years the Graf Zeppelin made 590 flights around the world without a single problem. It had a perfect safety record. Back then, lighter than air ships were considered much safer than airplanes.

  

 

1946 - George Orwell published "Animal Farm". Orwell said he conceived the idea for the novel while watching out his window a small boy driving a huge draft horse. The horse could have easily crushed the boy had it the free will, but instead patiently endured the boys taunts and flicks with a small switch. 

 

1946- First day of shooting on Jean Cocteau’s film Belle et le Bete, Beauty & the Beast.

 

1958- First day of shooting on the Alfred Hitchcock film North By Northwest. Conceived as a story that ended in a chase across the stone faces of Mt. Rushmore. The original title of Ernest Lehman’s script was The Man Who Hung from Lincoln’s Nose.

 

1961- The Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto dedicated.

 

1967 – The Beatles, Mick Jagger & Marianne Faithful met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

 

1970- Tens of thousands of women across North America march in The Women’s Strike for Equality. It was led by Betty Friedan of NOW, the National Organization for Women.

 

1971- The New York Giants announced they would move from Yankee Stadium to a new complex being built in the Meadowlands of Rutherford, New Jersey.

 

1980- Director Tex Avery died after collapsing in the parking lot of Hanna-Barbera. He was 72. Two weeks before he was asked by a friend why he was working in Hanna & Barbera? Tex laughed:" Hey, Don’t you know? this is where all the elephants come to die!"

 

 

1997- Special effects house Boss Studios, closed. 

 

 

 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 25, 2024

Birthdays:  King Ludwig II the Mad of Bavaria, Walt Kelly, Bret Hart, Lola Montez (flamenco dancing mistress of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria), Alan Pinkerton, Clara Bow, Ruby Keeler, Monty Hall, Van Johnson, Willis Reed, Frederick Forsythe, Wayne Shorter, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dr. Bruno Bettleheim, Leonard Bernstein, Sean Connery, Gene Simmons, Anne Archer, Elvis Costello is 68, Tim Burton is 64, Claudia Schiffer is 52  

1648- During the English Civil War, Parliamentary forces were attacking the Royalist stronghold of Colchester. Part of the city’s defenses was a huge mortar (cannon) nicknamed Humpty Dumpty. During one attack, enemy artillery fire destroyed part of the city wall beneath the huge gun, causing it to have a great fall. Royalist troops tried unsuccessfully to remount the cannon using horse-drawn winches and tackle. But all the Kings Horses and All the Kings men.....”  The nursery rhyme was first printed in 1810.

1830- This is the day of the legendary race between the locomotive the Tom Thumb and a horse and buggy outside of Baltimore. The Tom Thumb weighing in at about a ton and developing a whopping one-horsepower. It was built by Peter Cooper, who founded the Cooper Union Institute. The boiler driven fan broke down near the end, so the horse won. Still, the train’s performance was so impressive that the first U.S. railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, shifted from horse drawn to steam railroad.

1835- Joseph Pulitzer’s New York Sun newspaper ran a story that British astronomer Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of Neptune, had observed little men living on the surface of the Moon!  The story proved false, but it really boosted the sales of the paper.

1875- Matthew Webb became the first person to successfully swim the English Channel.

1916- President Woodrow Wilson created the National Parks Service out of 35 separate departments.

1923 Young filmmaker Walt Disney wrote to NY Producer M.J. Winkler, that he was no longer affiliated with The Laugh-O-Grams company in Kansas City.” I am establishing a studio in Los Angeles for the purpose of producing the new and novel series of cartoons I have previously written to you about.” This will become the Alice in Cartoonland series.

1928- Commander Byrd set off to explore the Antarctic. 

1970- A young singer named Elton John did his first US tour, opening at the Troubadour in LA.

1972- Blacula, starring William Marshall opened in theaters.

1980- The premiere of the Broadway musical version of the classic movie musical 42nd Street. In a moment of Broadway drama, producer David Merrick came out on stage and startled the cast and audience by announcing that the director of the play Gower Champion had died that very day. 42nd Street went on to be a smash hit. The play itself is about a Broadway director who works himself to death creating a hit musical.

1989- The Voyager 2 probe left Neptune and shot off into deep space, completing its mission, a reconnaissance of the outer planets of our solar system. It discovered the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, the additional moons of these planets, and the volcanoes of the Jovian moon Io, and the ice of Europa. Today, you have ten times more computing power in your phone than in the Voyager spacecraft, yet all these years later it continues to transmit signals back to Earth. By 2012 Voyager I and Voyager 2 have both left the Heliosheath, the outer perimeter of our suns’ gravity field, and today are deep in interstellar space. Voyager 1 with its Chuck Berry recording, should reach the next neighboring solar system in about 40,000 years. 

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/

 

1991- At the Emmy ceremony, comic Gilbert Gottfried upset the audience with a flood of masturbation jokes about Pee Wee Herman. Fox Network apologized the next day.

2000- Famed Donald Duck comic book cartoonist Carl Barks died peacefully at home. He was 99.

2001-Beautiful 22 year old R&B singer Alleiya was killed, when her overloaded chartered plane crashed on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug. 24, 2024

Birthdays: Jorge Luis Borges, William Wilberforce, Marlee Matlin, Yasir Arafat, Max Beerbom, Cal Ripken Jr, Joshua Lionel Cowan the inventor of Lionel toy electric trains, Kenny Baker-C3PO in Star Wars, Stephen Fry is 68, Durward Kirby- 1960s T.V. announcer, Duke Kahanamoku-1890- Olympic champion who popularized Surfing, Kirk Wise, Dave Chappelle is 52, Steve Guttenberg is 67

 

1847 - Charlotte Bronte finished the manuscript of her novel "Jane Eyre".

 

1853 – Saratoga Springs hotel resort chef George Crum invented Potato Chips, or crisps.

 

1887- The US set up a weather station in Greenland.

 

1913- Congress okayed the creation of the Parcel Post system- UPS.

 

1939- Mr. Leslie Mitchell became the first British Television announcer.

 

1940- In Milan the first successful jet flight- the Italian Camponi CC-2.

 

1942- Walt Disney’s film Saludos Amigos received its world premiere in Rio De Janiero.

 

 

1951- Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. The film won the Grand Prize and first showed the world that Japanese Cinema was a new creative force in the film world.

 

1966- The effects fantasy Fantastic Voyage directed by Richard Fleischer opened. The submarine in the film was designed by Harper Goff, who designed the Nautilus for Walt Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, also directed by Richard Fleischer, the son of Max Fleischer.

 

1973- One month after Bruce Lee’s death, his last film Enter The Dragon opened in the US to wild acclaim. It cost $800,000 to make and grossed over $140 million. It renewed interest in the late star and helped spawn the Chinese Martial Arts craze in the US. 

 

 

1995- Microsoft's Windows 95 introduced.

 

1997- According to the 1984 James Cameron film The Terminator this was the day the Skynet computer system became self-aware and began the War of the Day of Judgement.

 

 

2006- A team of astronomers at the International Astronomical Union including Neill DeGrasse-Tyson officially demoted Pluto from being the 9^th  planet to a “dwarf planet.”

  

2011- Steve Jobs announced he was stepping down from all his positions at Apple, Pixar and Disney due to his failing health. He died of pancreatic cancer shortly after.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug. 23, 2024

Birthdays: French King Louis XVI, Gene Kelly, Keith Moon, Rick Springfield, Sonny Jurgensen, Alphonse Mucha, River Phoenix, Queen Noor of Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Ed Benedict the designer of Yogi Bear and the Flintstones, Barbara Eden is 93, Vera Miles is 95, Shelley Long is 74, Nik Ranieri, Oscar Grillo

 

1634- Spain’s greatest playwright Lope De Vega wrote his last poem “El Siglo de Oro” – the Golden Age. He died the next day at age 73. A duelist and sailor on the Spanish Armada, Voltaire ranked him alongside Shakespeare. His work was so popular, the Holy Office of the Inquisition got angry when people sang a blasphemous doggerel that began “We believe in One Lope, the Poet Almighty…”

 

1750- 37-year-old Swiss writer Jean Jacques Rousseau published his first mature work- Discourse on the Arts & Sciences. In it he breaks with the other French philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot and began his theory of the Noble Savage- that Civilization is the problem, and we were all a lot happier when we were primitives. Voltaire laughed “the pamphlet made me want to get down on all fours and live among the bears of Canada!”

 

1872- The first commercial ship ever sent from Japan arrived in San Francisco carrying tea.

 

1926- Screen idol Rudolph Valentino died in a New York hospital of an infection due to a burst appendix and bleeding ulcer. He was only 30. Today his condition could be controlled by antibiotics, but they weren’t invented yet. Women around the world went mad with grief. From L.A. to Budapest, women committed suicide before his picture. In Japan two women jumped into a volcano shouting his name.

 

1937- The official opening of the MGM animation studio in Culver City. Their first project was an animated short of The Captain and the Kids based on Rudolf Dirk’s successful comic strip.

 

1937- At the urging of the Stanford Dean of engineering Fred Terman, graduate Bill Hewlett had his first meeting with David Packard. They called their company started out of their Palo Alto garage the Engineering Service Company. The Hewlett-Packard Company would one day be one of the biggest names in computers and their garage hailed as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

 

 

1947-President Truman’s daughter Margaret gave her first public singing concert. President Truman spent the following day personally telephoning music critics and threatening any who dared to give her harsh reviews. Paul Hume, the Washington Post’s music critic, wrote that Margaret Truman “cannot sing very well. She is flat most of the time.” The furious father dashed off a letter to Hume, warning that if they ever meet, “You’ll need a new nose, and plenty of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”

 

1953- David Mullany of Shelton Conn. invented the Whiffle Ball. He did it to help his son who was lousy at throwing a curve ball. 

 

1964- Twist and Shout! The Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl. 

 

1967- The record album “Are You Experienced” the debut album by Jimmy Hendrix and the Jimmy Hendrix Experience first went on sale. With songs like “Purple Haze, Hey Joe, and Foxy Lady “, it became one of the top albums of the year.

 

 

2007- Open-source advocate Paul Messina created the hashtag for Twitter. No Elon around yet.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 22, 2024

Birthdays: George Herriman the creator of Krazy Kat, Dorothy Parker, Claude DeBussy, Johnny Lee Hooker, Denis Papin 1647 inventor of the Pressure Cooker, Leni Reifenstahl, General Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Paul Molitor, Bill Parcells, Max Vilander, Carl “Big Yaz” Yazstremski, Dyanna Nyad, Deng Xiao Ping, Henry Cartier Bresson, Valerie Harper, Ray Bradbury, Cindy Williams, Kristen Wiig is 51

 

In Britain it is National Slacker Day: Stand Up for your Right to Sit Back Down!

 

 

1611- Galileo made a group of Venetian senators climb to the top of Saint Marks Basilica in Venice with him to demonstrate to them his new invention, the telescope.

 

1715 – Handel’s "Watermusic" premiered on the Thames River to mark celebrations of the Peace ending the 15 year long War of Spanish Succession.

 

1806- elderly French painter Jean Fragonard died of a cerebral seizure after eating a large fruit ice on a hot day.

 

1882- American showman P.T. Barnum bought the largest elephant in the London Zoo. He created a new name for the beast- he called it JUMBO. It was the highlight of his circus for years. After Jumbo was hit by a freight train and died, PT Barnum had its bones bleached and charged people admission to come look at its skeleton.

 

1901-The Cadillac Automobile Company formed. Named for the French explorer who founded Detroit, William De La Mothe-Cadillac.

 

1902- Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to ride in an automobile.

 

1906 - 1st Victor Victrola manufactured, using Emile Berliners flat record turntable system. The Victrola was so cheap and easy to use it became standard in many homes and finished off any competition from Thomas Edison’s rival talking cylinder system.

 

 

1927- Walt Disney’s last Alice in Cartoonland short, Alice in The Big Leagues released.

 

1927- 200,000 people protest in Hyde Park London and around the world for clemency for convicted Italian immigrants Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vancetti. They were socialists who were convicted of murdering a store clerk in Massachusetts and became a radical cause-celebre. Letters demanding mercy came in from George Bernard Shaw, Helen Keller, Picasso, the Pope and more. Woody Guthrie wrote folk songs in praise of Sacco & Vancetti. The next day the State of Massachusetts electrocuted them anyway.

 

1929- Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony The Skeleton Dance premiered. The tight dancing synch inspired a generation of animators.  The idea of dancing skeletons was suggested by composer Carl Stalling, a Kansas City movie theater organist that Walt befriended.

 

 

1939- The first aerosol spray can.

 

 

1942- Tex Avery’s first cartoon for MGM, The Blitz Wolf. 

 

 

1976- The protest at the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in New Hampshire. The birth of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement.

 

1984 – The last Volkswagen Rabbit produced.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 21, 2024

Birthdays: Christopher Robin Milne-1920, King Phillip II Augustus of France- 1165, King William IV of England- 1765, Aubrey Beardsley, Count Basie*, Wilt (Wilt the Stilt) Chamberlain, Friz Freleng, Kenny Rogers, Princess Margaret, Matthew Broderick, Vance Gerry, Basil Poliodouris, Steve Hillenberg the creator of Spongebob Squarepants, Peter Weir is 80, Kim Catrall is 68, Carrie Anne Moss is 57

1878 - American Bar Association was organized at Saratoga, NY.

1887- Mighty (Dan) Casey struck out at his last at bat with the NY Giants. The poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer was written many years later.

1888- William S. Burroughs of St Louis patented the first modern adding machine, not counting the abacus.

1911- Café waiter Vincenzo Perugia walked into the Louvre and stole the Mona Lisa.  Paris Police arrested Surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire, thinking the theft was some kind of statement by modernist movement artists.  For two years Vincenzo Perugia tried to fence the painting with no luck. Finally while trying to claim a ransom for it, he was arrested and the painting recovered.

1912- Arthur Eldred of Oceanside New York became the first Eagle scout. 

1921- On his first birthday, Christopher Robin Milne was given a Farrell teddy bear from Harrods. His parents first called it Edward, but when he could speak Christopher Robin named it Winnie, after Winnipeg, his favorite bear he saw at the zoo. The child would also mention the name of a swan there he liked named Pooh. This gave his dad A.A. Milne a neat idea for a new book.

1929- Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo marry.

1931- Pardon Us, the first feature length film starring Laurel & Hardy. In 1926, Hal Roach Studio director Leo McCarey noticed the Briton Stan Laurel and Georgia-born singer Oliver Hardy looked funny together. He put them in a series of shorts starting with Putting Pants on Phillip (1927). Pardon Us was their first Sound film. Laurel & Hardy became one of the iconic comedy teams in film history. 

1935- Big band leader Benny Goodman was having a tough time. His band lost its radio gig when the show Let’s Dance was canceled. So, he and his musicians drove across the country in a small caravan of cars playing various venues on the road. They were told in small towns to stop playing that newfangled Swing music and stick to old standards. One manager in Denver told him:” Don’t you guys know any waltzes? ” By the time they arrived in Los Angeles this day they were thoroughly demoralized. But today when they set up in the Palomar Ballroom in Hollywood the crowd was immense! And these kids wanted to jitterbug to the new Swing music! So hit it, Jackson, Awl Reet, Awl Reet!  

1944- Movie star James Cagney, star of Yankee Doodle Dandy, was cleared of charges of Communism. The accusations probably had less to do with Cagney's politics and more to do with his actor’s union activism, and his fighting in court the restrictive personal service contracts studios put their stars under. 

1959- Hawaii became the 50th state.

1967 –New York Mets second baseman Ken Harrelson became the first baseball free agent.  

1972 - Grace Slick was sprayed with mace by police after one of her band called the cops pigs.

1981- John Landis’ “American Werewolf in London” opened.

1987- The movie Dirty Dancing opened.

1989- The Voyager II space probe flew by the planet Neptune. It was discovered Neptune had a faint ring like Saturn. Scientists speculated the atmospheric pressure to be so great that it could actually rain diamonds.

1995- Bill Gates announced Microsoft Windows 95.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 20. 2024

Birthdays: President Benjamin Harrison, Sukenoba Nishikawa, Bernardo O’Higgins, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, H.P. Lovecraft, Art Tatum, Issac Hayes, Connie Chung, Jacqueline Susanne, Rajiv Ghandi, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Joan Allen is 68, Fred Durst, Alan Reed -the original voice of Fred Flintstone, Slobodan Milosovic’, Amy Adams is 50 

 

1882 -Peter Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" premiered in Moscow. The composer said of all his works the two pieces he liked the least were the 1812 Overture and the Nutcracker Suite. Overture 1812 was Richard Nixon’s favorite classical piece.

 

1896 – The Dial telephone patented. It was nicknamed the Gravediggers Dial because it was invented by funeral director Almon Stroweger. His inspiration to create the automated switching system was the local telephone operator was the wife of his competitor in the funeral business. She kept sending all inquiries for an undertaker to her husband. The rotary dial and Strowger switching system was the world standard until replaced by the touchtone button system in the 1980s. Even though the dial phone is a memory, the words remain when we speak of dialing a phone number.

 

1940- In Mexico City exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky was assassinated. While writing at his desk he was hacked in the skull with a mountain-climbers pick.  His murderer Ramon Mercador- alias Jules Antoine, alias Jackson, was paid by Stalin's agents. He got into Trotsky's household by dating one of the maids. It was rumored that part of the Stalinist cell in Mexico was famed painter David Siqueiros. Trotsky was having an affair with painter Frida Kahlo. Leon Trotsky predicted Stalin would try to get him while the world's attention was distracted by the Hitler War in Europe. When Mercador was released from a Mexican prison, Stalin presented him with a medal, the Order of Lenin.

 

1940- In a radio speech Winston Churchill praised the efforts of the Royal Air Force in fighting Hitler's bombers-"Never have so Many, owed so Much, to so Few.'

 

1953- The Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in Women first published. Alfred & Clara Kinsey’s study proved to the conservative American public that 50% of women had premarital sex, liked sex for more than just procreation, and 25% had an extramarital affair. This document following their 1948 report on sexual behavior of men revolutionized social attitudes towards sex and feminism. 

 

 

1972- Top Hollywood directors Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin announced a partnership in a new production company called "The Director's Company". Youngsters Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were also signatories. The partnership lasted two years then collapsed.

 

1982- Ralph Bakshi's film Hey Good Lookin'.

 

1989- George Adamson, who with his wife Joy were the naturalists who inspired the book Born Free, was murdered with machetes by Somali poachers in Kampi Ya Simba Game Preserve. 

 

1994- Studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg resigned from the Walt Disney Company.

   

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Aug 19, 2024

 

B-Days: Roman Emperor Probus (232AD), Orville Wright, Ring Lardner, Ogden Nash, Alfred Lunt, George Enesco, jockey Willie Shoemaker, Malcolm Forbes, Tipper Gore, Gene Roddenberry, Colleen Moore the It Girl, Jill St. John, Ginger Baker, Dawn Steel, John Stamos, Peter Gallagher is 68, Kyra Sedgwick is 59, Matthew Perry, Jonathan Frakes is 72, Bill Clinton is 78

1891 - William Huggins described the astronomical application of the spectrum.

1892- New Jersey pharmacist Charles Elmer Hires introduced the first commercially produced bottles of a new drink he dubbed “Root Beer”. Root Beer from sassafras root had been a traditional recipe since colonial times, but Hires was the first to market it. 

1909- The Brickyard is born. The first Indianapolis 500 auto race.

1929- The Amos & Andy show premiered on radio.

1933 The Walt Disney short Lullaby Land released. Directed by Wilfred Jackson.

1955 - WINS radio, announces it would not play "copy" white cover versions of black R&B.  DJs must play Fats Domino's "Ain't It A Shame," not Pat Boone's. In 1957 Little Richards “Tuttie-Fruitie” never got higher than 17th in the Billboard Charts, while Pat Boones version, by his own admission awful, went to number one.

1957- The NY Giants baseball team voted to move to San Francisco.

1960- The Russians launched a Sputnik capsule into space with two dogs- Belka and Strelka, 2 rats and 40 mice. They recovered this orbiting zoo the next day. The first sending of life into space and returning them safely.

1973 - Kris Kristofferson wed Rita Coolidge.

2004- Google stock first went public on the stock market.

2012- Director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Days of Thunder) committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in Los Angeles. He was 68.

2335 – According to Star Trek the Next Generation, this is the birthday of William T Riker, in Valdez Alaska, first officer of the Enterprise.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 18, 2024

 Birthdays: Meriwether Lewis, Austrian Emperor Franz Josef II, Leo Slezak, Shelly Winters, Roberto Clemente, Rafer Johnson, Enoch Light, Coco Channel, Patrick Swayze, Madeleine Stowe, Christian Slater, Edward Norton is 57, Martin Mull, Denis Leary is 67, Robert Redford born Charles Robert Redford Jr, is 88, Roman Polanski is 90

1850- Honore' Balzac died after drinking too much coffee. He was overweight, seldom bathed and picked his nose in public, but women still found him irresistible.

1856. Mr. Gale Borden patented condensed milk. It became popular during the Civil War when it was used by the army, then it spawned the process food industry. When Borden died, he left instructions that his tombstone be shaped like a milk can.

1937- The Toyota Automobile Company was established as an offshoot of the Toyoda Motorized Loom Works. They changed the name Toyoda to Toyota because a Shinto priest told them the name would be luckier.

1939- The movie The Wizard of Oz opened and made a star of Judy Garland. Frank Morgan, the actor playing the Wizard, needed to wear a shabby old coat so a studio costume designer went through some L.A. thrift stores until she found the good candidate. When Morgan looked in the lining he discovered the coat was previously owned by L. Frank Baum, creator of the Oz stories. Lyricist Yip Harburg (Somewhere over the Rainbow) was later blacklisted as a communist. "And yer little dog, too!!"

1953- The first MacDonalds franchise restaurant opened in Downey California. 

1955- Folksinger Pete Seeger appeared before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He refused to cooperate and was blacklisted. But he still managed to have a successful career on the folk scene and appeared on TV in 1967. 

1956- Actress Vivien Leigh suffered a mental breakdown after a miscarriage.

1958 - "Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov, published. The novel was rejected by four publishers before Putnam picked it up. It became a best seller and allowed Nabokov to quit teaching and focus on writing.

1958 – The TV Game Show Scandal investigation began. Allegations that popular quiz shows like 21 were rigged turned out to be true.

1962 - Peter, Paul & Mary release their folk song "If I Had a Hammer".

1966- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SLURPEE!  The Icee was invented by Omar Knedlik for a failing Oklahoma ice cream store. When licensed to 7-Eleven it was changed to Slurpee.

1969- Woody Allen’s first movie “Take the Money and Run”, opened. 

1969- The closing day of the Woodstock Rock Concert, Jimmy Hendrix did his famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Of the original 500,000 attendees, many were already headed home. Only 30,000 stragglers were left to hear him. Originally scheduled instead of Hendrix , was old cowboy Roy Rogers to sing his signature tune “ Happy Trails to You.” But Roy never made it there.

1977- The Xerox Company decided not to seriously market the Alto. It was the first personal computer that had a GUI, ethernet and mouse, color graphics, long before anyone else. Xerox decided to stick with copying machines and laid off many of their Palo Alto development team Xerox PARC. Most of their breakthroughs wound up in other computers like Apple’s Lisa, Macintosh and the IBM PC.

1977- The rock band the Police make their debut in a Birmingham nightclub. The lead singer Gordon Sumner started to get the nickname Sting, from the black & yellow striped jumper he habitually wore.

1989- Publishing Tycoon Malcolm Forbes flew 800 guests to Tangiers to celebrate his birthday. His birthday party cost $2 million. The soiree' came to symbolize 1980's wealth excess.

1990- 510 animators pay tribute to Betty Boop creator Grim Natwick on his 100th Birthday. It was the last big gathering of the artists of the Golden Age Hollywood Animation. Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, June Foray, Walter Lantz, Disney’s Nine Old Men, Mae Questel. 

1999- Popular TV psychic Kriswell predicted that day would be the End of the World. 

tom sito's animation almanac for aug 17, 2024

Birthdays: Davy Crocket, Mae West, Marcus Garvey, Sam Goldwyn- born Schmuel Gelbfisz, Harry Hopkins, Monte Wooley, Boog Powell, Belinda Carlisle, Guillermo Vilas, V.S. Naipul, Jim Courier, Donnie Wahlberg, Belinda Carlisle, Maureen O’Hara, Sean Penn is 64, Martha Coolidge is 79, Robert DeNiro is 81

1838- Lorenzo da Ponte died in New York City at age 89. In Vienna he was a librettist for Salieri and Mozart. He wrote La Nozzi de Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutti and Don Giovanni. Failed business ventures and bankruptcy made him move to America in 1805. "He who believes in his dreams is mad; and he who does not believe in them--what is he?"

1876- Richard Wagner’s 4 hour opera Gotterdammerung- the Twilight of the Gods, premiered.

1908- D.W. Griffith signed a contract to begin directing movies for Biograph Pictures. He was paid $50 dollars a week plus royalties.  

1908- The premiere of the first fully animated film, Emile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie". 

1941- EL GRUPO- Walt Disney and his artists arrive in Rio on a ten-week goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 U.S. government grant.  President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to the Nazis, forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. One of the things they wanted was Donald Duck. Back in LA the federal mediator Stanley White had worked out with Roy Disney that if they got Walt out of town, they could settle the Disney animators strike. The name comes from hotel footmen in Buenos Aires paging the artists as “ El Grupo Disney! Your bus is here.”  The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos result.

1954- Walt Disney’s True Life Adventure, “The Vanishing Prairie”, directed by James Algar, opened in theaters.

1960- Georg Pal’s The Time Machine opened in NY.

1962- The Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. One of the reasons they decided on Ringo was that he came with his own car.

1979- Monty Python’s The Life of Brian premiered. Directed by Terry Jones. Just before principal photography was due to begin, a key sponsor got cold feet about the dodgy religious connotations and withdrew their funding. At the last-minute Beatle George Harrison stepped in and donated $3 million of the $4 million dollar budget. He said he just wanted to see it. “ It is the world’s most expensive theatre ticket.”

1984- The Walt Disney Company executive board informed its chairman Ron Miller that they wanted his resignation. Disney had fallen to 14th in film box office by then. Miller had been Walt’s son-in-law and he was he was once a tight end for the LA Rams. Within two years of Michael Eisner taking power Disney was number one. 

1985- The Hormel Meat Packing Strike, severely threatening the world’s supply of SPAM.

1992- Famed film director Woody Allen admitted he was having an affair with Soon Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime lover Mia Farrow. He was 60 and she was 21. But as the unrepentant Allen states: “The Heart wants what it wants.” They’ve been together ever since.

 1994 The Great Baseball Players Strike- canceled out the season and the 1994 World Series. It was the longest strike in sports history until the NBA lockout of 1998.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 16, 2024

 Birthdays: Fess Parker, Karl Stockhausen, George Meany, Charles Bukowski, Menachem Begin, Otto Mesmer the creator of Felix the Cat, Myron Grim Natwick the creator of Betty Boop, Hal Foster the creator of Prince Valiant, Kathie Lee Gifford, Edie Gorme, Bill Evans, Leslie Ann Warren, Angela Bassett is 66, Julie Numar is 91, Robert Culp, James Cameron is 69, Bruce Beresford, Steve Carrell is 63, Madonna, aka Louise Ciccone of Bay City Michigan, is 66

1877- BIRTHDAY OF THE WORD-"HELLO". In a letter dated today Thomas Edison wrote to the first president of AT&T about how people should initiate conversation on the new telephone machine. A genteel Victorian would think it impolite to speak until spoken to. Alexander Graham Bell, an old navy man, always thought the right way to start a phone conversation was to say "AHOY!"  Edison explained that the results of sonic tests proved the old English fox hunting call "Halloo!" was most audible over great distances. In most languages around the world the word hello is the same.  

1930- Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process called Harriscolor. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.

1938- In Three Forks Mississippi, Blues legend Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband.

1942- Happy Birthday Mighty Mouse. Terrytoon's short: "The Mouse of Tomorrow".

1954- First issue of Sports Illustrated.

1965- The AFL, American Football League offered it’s first expansion franchise to a new team called the Miami Dolphins. The AFL merged with the NFL in the 80s.

1969- “ Hey Man, we’re gonna serve breakfast in bed for 500,000” So was hippy Wavy Gravy’s announcement at dawn on the second day of the Woodstock Rock Concert. Toasted oats in hot water was ladled out en-masse in paper cups. Wavy declared this was the day Americans learned first learned about Granola. 

1974- The Ramones play their first gig at the NY club CBGBs. Hey-Ho, Lets Go!

1977- E-DAY in Memphis. Elvis Presley, donuts and Pizza Hut box in hand, died of a heart attack while sitting on the toilet. He was reading a book-the Historic Search for the Face of Jesus. He was 42.

1985- On her birthday, Madonna married Sean Penn. They divorced shortly after.

1986 - Pixar's short Luxo Jr premiered at the Siggraph in Dallas.

1987- The Harmonic Convergence- Another one of these celestial events that the mainstream media trumpeted as the end of everything. All nine planets of our solar system were in perfect alignment and the subsequent gravitational forces were supposed to knock the Earth into the Sun or something or other that would send us to Hell in a Handbasket. Lots of New Age types flocked to occult sites like Mt. Shasta and Stonehenge to meditate on the End of All Things. 

 So, what happened? Nothing. 

1991- The original Shamu the Whale died of respiratory failure at age 16.

2005- Top Pixar story-artist Joe Ranft was killed in an auto accident. He was 45.

2019- Animator Richard Williams died of cancer at age 86.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 15, 2024


Birthdays: Napoleon Bonaparte, Leon Theremin- inventor of that weird electronic musical instrument that is in all those 1950s flying saucer movies, Samuel Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, King Frederick Wilhelm I of Prussia 1685, Lawrence of Arabia, Ethel Barrymore, Huntz Hall, Bill Baird, Edna Ferber, Sir Robert Bolt, Rose-Marie, Linda Ellerbee, Gene Upshaw, Oscar Peterson, Shimon Peres, Mike “Mannix” Connors, Nicholas Roeg, Animator Dick Lundy, Julia Child, Anthony Andrews, Ben Afleck is 51, Debra Messing is 55, Jennifer Lawrence is 33. 

1457 – The earliest dated bound book, The "Mainz Psalter," completed.

1519- Panama City, Panama founded.

1843- Tivoli Gardens opened in Copenhagen. One of the oldest amusement parks in the world. King Christian said. “When people are amused, they don’t worry about politics.” Hans Christian Andersen was a frequent visitor. One hundred years later, Walt Disney visited to get inspiration for his Disneyland.

1848 - M Waldo Hanchett patented the dental chair.

1885- Sir Richard Burton completed his translation from medieval Persian of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. There had been earlier attempts like a French edition in 1809, but Burton’s edition introduced the west to Aladdin and his magic lamp, Sinbad the Sailor and Scheherazade.

1911- Proctor & Gamble introduced Crisco shortening.

1914- After ten years labor, the Panama Canal opened for regular service.

1935- Humorist writer Will Rogers and his pilot Wiley Post were killed when their small plane crashed in Barrow, Alaska. 

1936- Disney animator Ward Kimball married painter Betty Lawyer-Kimball.

1939 - In 1st night game at Comiskey Park, Sox beat Browns 5-2.

1944- Operation Dragoon. To support the Normandy beachheads landings a second landing was made by allied armies on the southern French beaches near Marseilles.

1946- Disney’s Make Mine Music, featuring Blue Bayou, All the Cats Join In, and Willie the Operatic Whale.

1958 - Buddy Holly wed Maria Santiago.

1965- The Beatles play their largest U.S. concert yet, at New York's Shea Stadium.

1968- The pirate radio station Radio Free London began transmitting.

1969- WOODSTOCK-Three Days of Peace and Music- The rock concert of the 20th Century opened. The promoters, one of whom was heir to the Polident Denture Cream fortune, were hoping to host 50,000 people and launch a recording studio in the quiet New York farming town. What they got was 500,000 young fans and the social phenomenon that defined an age. At one point the more conservative elements of the community got a court order to block the land to be used, but farmer Max Yasgur offered his cow farm for the site.

 Up till then in the tumultuous 1960’s, any gathering of young people that big meant violence and riot, and at one point New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller offered to send in the National Guard. But the magic prevailed and there was no violence outside of 200 bad acid trips and one heroin overdose.

 Richie Havens was the first act to play, he did six sets and kept stalling because the crowd was so immense, they had to bring in the other bands by helicopter. When he ran out of songs to sing, Havens started riffing anything he could think of. This way Havens created his most famous tune “Freedom” with added in spirituals like “Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child”.  After his death in 2013, his ashes were scattered at the Woodstock site.

1973- Westworld with Yul Brynner and Richard Benjamin opened. 

1979- Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now” opened. Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, young Harrison Ford and even younger Lawrence Fishburne. Future Pixar director Ronnie Del Carmen (Inside Out) got his first job as a student painting scenery.

1984- “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” opened nationwide.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Aug 14, 2024

Birthdays: Gary Larson, Erwin "Magic" Johnson, Lina Wertmuller, David Crosby, Alice Ghostly, Buddy Greco, Nehemiah Persoff, The 20's Parisian nightclub singer Bricktop, Dick Lundy, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, C.S. Watson, James Horner, Rene Goscinny, Wim Wenders, Emmanuele Beart, Halle Berry is 58, Mila Kunis is 41, Steve Martin is 79

1908- The first international beauty pageant held in Kent, England.                             

1928 - Ben Hecht & Charles McArthur's play" The Front Page," premiered in NYC. They later went on to become top comedy writers in Hollywood after Sound pictures created a need for snappy dialogue. They came out to Hollywood after a mutual friend, writer Herman Mankiewicz sent Ben a telegram, “Hecht, some quick! Fortunes to be made and your competition are idiots!"

1939 - 1st night game at Comiskey Park -White Sox 5, Browns 2.

1939- Donald Duck Day at the NY World’s Fair.

1942- Pluto cartoon T-Bone for Two, released. Directed by Clyde Geronimi.

1956- The Marilyn Monroe movie "Bus Stop" premiered.

1962 - French & Italian workers break through at Mount Blanc to create an auto 

Tunnel through the Alps.

1962 - NASA test pilot Joseph Walker takes the X-15 supersonic plane to 60,000 ft.

1965 - Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" hits #1.

 

1965- Jane Fonda married director Roger Vadim, who put the beautiful young blonde in naughty movies like Barbarella. His previous wife Bridgette Bardot was a beautiful young blonde that he put in naughty movies….hmm.

1979 – A rainbow was over Gwyned, Wales lasted for 3 hours duration.

1980- Dorothy Stratton was a beautiful Playboy model whose acting career was beginning to take off, as well as a relationship with top Hollywood director Peter Bogdanovich. She was encouraged by Hugh Hefner among others, to shed her old loser boyfriend Paul Snider, who kept hanging around her. Today Dorothy Stratton was found shot to death by Snider, who then turned the gun on himself. She was age 20.

1995- Super-agent Michael Ovitz of CAA was named President of the Walt Disney Company under Michael Eisner. After 14 fruitless months he left. 

2009- Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo opened in North America.

2126- Get your catchers mitts out! Comet Swift-Tuttle will pass very close by the Earth.

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