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.
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