Birthdays: Roman general Pompey Magnus, Miguel de Cervantes, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Rudolph Diesel (inventor of the engine), Enrico Fermi, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Autrey, Lech Walesa, Stanley Kramer, Bryant Gumbel, Greer Garson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ian McShane, Anita Ekberg, Russ Heath, Tom Sizemore, Emily Lloyd is 55, Silvio Berlusconi
1930- Ninety-year-old writer George Bernard Shaw refused the offer of a Peerage.
1930- First day of shooting on the Tod Browning horror classic Dracula. Hungarian actor and morphine addict Bela Lugosi played the lead role he had already made famous on stage. Lugosi was identified with the character Dracula for the rest of his life. When he died, he was buried in the Dracula cape.
1933- The movie A Bill of Divorcement introduced the star Katherine Hepburn.
1936- Leaders of the Spanish Fascist Phalange forces vote Gen. Francisco Franco "Il Caudillo- the Leopard", their overall leader, or Generalissimo.
1938- Walt Disney brought 60 of his lead artists to a soundstage and told them of his plans for an animated concert feature, to be called Fantasia. He finished by running the work reel for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, originally begun as a Mickey Mouse short.
1953- The television show “Make Room for Daddy” premiered, making a star out of big nosed nightclub entertainer Danny Thomas. The Lebanese Thomas had tried to break into films like other nightclub stars, but with no luck. He burst into tears after Columbia studio chief Harry Cohn suggested he get a nose job and forget about it. Danny Thomas at one time was the richest man in Beverly Hills.
1959- Hanna Barbera's "Quick Draw McGraw" TV show. Baba Louie, Snooper and Blabb and Augie-Doggie and Doggie-Daddy.
1961- Russian ballet star Rudolph Nureyev, acclaimed as the greatest dancer of his age, defected to the west in Paris and was granted asylum.
1967- The cult TV series The Prisoner premiered.
1969- The TV series Love American Style premiered.
1969- Country singer Merle Haggard released the song “I’m Proud to be an Oakie from Muskogee”. It was a huge hit on the country charts, but more than that, it was a conservative declaration of cultural war of against the urban-hippy, liberal rock & roll counterculture that dominated American media at the time. It focused rural anger into an already polarized American public debate.
1975- The legendary R&B singer Jackie Wilson, collapsed of a heart attack while performing on stage for Dick Clark’s ‘Good Ol’ Rock and Roll Revue’ at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, N.J. He lingered in an out of a coma for 8 years, dying in 1984. He was only 49. All the time he was comatose, Dick Clark paid all his medical bills, and kept it a secret. This wasn’t revealed until Clark himself died in 2012.
1976- At his birthday party musician Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally shot his bass player Norman Owens in the chest with his 357 magnum. He said he was using the gun to try and open a soft drink bottle and it accidentally went off. Owens survived and sued Lewis.
1996- The first Nintendo 64-bit game system, The NES, debuted in the US. It sold 500,000 units the first day. .
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