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.
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