Birthdays: Frank Sinatra, Roman Emperor Alexander Severus, Edvard Munch, Gustav Flaubert, Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie, John Jay, Edward G. Robinson, Marshal von Rundstedt-the Black Knight of Germany, Ed Koch, Zack Mosley –the cartoonist of “Smilin' Jack", Connie Francis, Dionne Warwick, Cathy Rigby, Tom Wilkerson, Tracy Austin, Bill Nighy is 74, Jennifer Connelly is 54, Mayim Bialik is 49
1897-The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip by Rudolph Dirks appears in the William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. The first comic where characters spoke in word balloons. When Dirks took a vacation without Hearst’s permission, Hearst got another artist to draw the strip. Dirks went to rival paper The New York Sun, and recreated the strip as the Captain & the Kids, leading to the first artistic plagiarism lawsuit.
1899- George Grant of Boston invented the Golf Tee.
1901- First transatlantic wireless signal sent by Guglielmo Marconi. The letter “S” was sent electronically from Newfoundland to Cornwall. This finally ended the frustrating hoopla over laying transatlantic telegraph cables and have them break down almost constantly since the 1850s. The pioneers of radio broadcasting like Armstrong, Lee Deforest and David Sarnoff got their start working for the Marconi Wireless Company.
1913- The Mona Lisa, which had been stolen out of the Louvre in 1911, was recovered. It was found in a hotel room in Florence, kept by waiter Vincenzo Perugia, who had stolen it. He had worked at the Louvre, so he knew all the back-room passages. He and his accomplices dressed as janitors to avoid suspicion.
1925- The world’s first motel opened. Arthur Heinman opened the Milestone Motel in San Luis Obispo California. Motel was a contraction of Motor-Hotel.
1939- Movie star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. one time King of Hollywood, now a forgotten silent movie star, died in his sleep of a heart attack in his apartment in Santa Monica. He was 54.
1952- The first Screen Actors Guild Strike. President Walter Pidgeon -Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet- had the movie stars hit the bricks to win television and commercial residuals. The final deals were settled by then SAG president Ronald Reagan in 1960. Ronnie compromised with the studio heads (many who later backed his bid for the governorship of California) that only residuals for films released after 1955 would be paid.
Actors who made their big hits in the 30's and 40s like Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and The Little Rascals were left out. Mickey Rooney, who's Andy Hardy movies were the top box office of the mid-1940's put it mildly: "Reagan screwed me !!"
1955- the first hovercraft design patented. It wasn't built and launched until 1959.
1967-“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” opened. The first American movie about an interracial relationship.
1980- The song “Whip It” by Devo won a gold record.
1991- Actor Richard Gere married supermodel Cindy Crawford.
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Yesterday’s Question: People speak of Christmastime as the Yuletide season. What is a yule?
Answer: In the animist and Wiccan religions of the northern Teutonic and Scandinavian people, the celebration of the winter solstice was the 12 day festival called Yule. With the burning of the Yule Log in the family fireplace. When Germanic and Nordic peoples mingled with Southern Gallo-Roman peoples in the barbarian invasions, their customs blended with the Saturnalia to become Christmas traditions.
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