Birthdays: Eddie Rickenbacker, Rev Jesse Jackson, Juan Peron, David Carradine, Art Babbitt -the creator of Goofy would be 116, Chevy Chase is 81, Paul Hogan, Ruben Mamoulian, Edward Zwick, Johnny Ramone, Bruno Mars, Sigourney Weaver is 75, Matt Damon is 54
1871- THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE- Legend said in a shed behind 137 DeKoven St, Old Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocks over a lantern and starts a fire that burns down 17,500 buildings and kills 300 including Mayor Roswell Mason. The fire jumped the Chicago River and people rode their carriages into Lake Michigan and even jumped into open graves to escape. Eventually the firemen’s pumpers ran out of water and the Northside kept burning past Fullerton until it burned itself out when it hit open prairie. 300,000 were left homeless. One of the only downtown buildings to survive the inferno was Chicago’s beloved old water tower. The slaughter houses and grain elevators also survived so business could go on. Ironically the O'Leary house stayed intact, just the barn burned. Two journalists later admitted inventing the O’Leary cow story to sell newspapers.
1929- British Imperial Airways shows the first in-flight movie.
1933- HOLLYWOOD ACTORS FIRST MASS PROTEST- When Franklin Roosevelt created the NRA to fix wages and prices to try and solve the Depression, he even went as far as to try to regulate Motion Picture rates and fees. The catch was the rates were drafted with the advice of friends of the studio heads.
The actors went ballistic when they saw new rules, such as a cap on actors salaries of $100,000 a year (the producers had no such cap), restriction of actors independent agents, and terms of an old salary contract could stay in effect even after the contract expired, until it was renegotiated.
This night, at the El Capitan theater, hundreds of actors met to draft a petition calling for rewriting of the codes. The activists included Paul Muni, Frederic March, Jeanette MacDonald, Bettie Davis, Groucho Marx and Boris Karloff. Earth tremors from the Long Beach Earthquake made the actors move across the street to Graumans Chinese parking lot .
SAG president Ralph Morgan the brother of Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) was considered politically too left to face FDR, so he stepped down in favor of comedian Eddie Cantor, who had helped Vaudeville acts unionize. Cantor went to the president's retreat at Warm Springs Georgia with the petition, and had the hated articles taken out of the code.
1935- Ozzie Nelson married Harriet.
1945- "Bloody Monday" During a big strike three hundred and fifty armed thugs club their way through picketing Warner Bros. film workers.
1945- Percy Spencer was a researcher working on military radar for the Raytheon Corp. One day he accidentally walked through a beam of electronic microwaves, and noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. Intrigued, he placed some corn kernels near the beam and watched them pop. This day he filed a patent for the first microwave oven.
1957- Walter O'Malley announced the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles.
1957- Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his hit Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire.
1966- Premiere of the 4th season of the BBC series Dr. Who. It was the last regular season for the original Doctor William Hartnell, and it introduced the Cybermen. A malevolent races of robot people.
1968- The movie Romeo & Juliet premiered. Director Franco Zeffirelli caused a sensation by casting young people to play the young people! Olivia Hussey was barely 16, and Leonard Whiting was 17. In the play she was supposed to be 13. Great score by Nino Rota (the Godfather). Romeo & Juliet was the last time a film version of a Shakespeare play was ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
1971- John Lennon first released the song Imagine.
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