Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Jan 5, 2025

Birthdays: Zebulon Pike, Stephen Decatur, Alven Ailey, James Stuart Blackton (the first American animator, born in Lincolnshire, England ), W.D. Snodgrass, Jack Norworth who wrote " Take Me out to the Ballgame' , Konrad Adenauer, Astrologist Jean Dixon, Umberto Ecco, Yves Tanguy, Walter Mondale, George Reeves,  Roger Spottiswoode, Tissa David, Hayao Miyazaki is 84, Robert Duval is 94, Dianne Keaton is 79, Spanish King Juan Carlos, Marilyn Manson is 57, January Jones is 44, Bradley Cooper is 50.

1463- French poet Francois Villon was kicked out of Paris.

 

1825- Writer Alexander Dumas fought a duel with the Chevalier Saint George, a black duelist from Martinique. Neither man was seriously hurt and Dumas went on to write The Three Musketeers. Saint George also once fought a duel with Monsieur d¹Eon, a trans who fought his/her duels in a ball gown. The English Prince of Wales was a spectator.

 

1886- Robert Louis Stephenson published “The Strange Case of Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. Stephenson had been experimenting with opium and cocaine for inspiration. His wife recalled,” In the small hours of one morning I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. He reacted angrily: "Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale." After this he finished writing the story in 6 days.

 

1896- Josef Pulitzers’ New York World began printing the Sunday edition Yellow Kid comic strip with a yellow color on his shirt. The strip gave the name to the sensationalist tabloid press 'Yellow Journalism".

 

1934- Both the American and National Baseball Leagues agreed upon a standard size for a baseball.

 

1953- Samuel Beckett¹s play Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot) first premiered in Paris.

 

1959- Buddy Holly released his last single, It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.

 

1959- The first Bozo the Clown TV show premiered on TV. Larry Harmon played the famous children’s clown.

 

1961- “Hello Wilbur” Mr Ed the Talking Horse appeared on TV for the first time.

 

1962- After a holiday break, shooting resumed on Cleopatra. This was the first time stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton worked together, and the first signs of their love affair. Their tempestuous relationship was one of the great affairs of 1960s Hollywood.

 

1970- Soap opera “All My Children” premiered.

 

1979- EMI Records ended their contracts with the punk band the Sex Pistols. They felt their outrageous behavior had gone just too far.

 

1998-At the Heavenly Valley Ski Resort, former pop singer turned Republican  Congressman Sonny Bono died when he skied headlong into a tree. 

 

tom sito's animation almanac or Jan 4, 2025

Birthdays: Sir Issac Newton, Emile Cohl, Louis Braille, General Tom Thumb, Jane Wyman, Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm, Sterling Holloway the voice of Winnie the Pooh, Francois Rude, Floyd Patterson, Don Shula, Barbara Rush, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Julia Ormond is 60, Dyan Cannon is 88

 

 

1904, Thomas Edison's movie crew filmed the electrocution of an elephant. Topsy, was being destroyed by its owners after she killed three men in as many years. (The third was a man who fed her a lit cigarette as a joke) The event was a public spectacle to a paying audience of 1,500 people at Coney Island, where the elephant had actually helped build the attraction. Edison was the consultant chosen to arrange the electrocution, after cyanide-laced carrots had failed. He made sure to use Nikolas Tesla’s AC current, to show people how dangerous it was.

 

1932- Casey Stengel returned from the minors to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers, aka the Bums.

 

1936- Mickey’s Polo Team, directed by Dave Hand. 

 

1946- Terrytoons "The Talking Magpies" the first Heckle and Jeckle cartoons.

 

 

1954- Young truck driver Elvis Presley went into Sun Records recording studio in Memphis. He plunked down $4 to record two demos for his mothers’ birthday. " Casual Love Affair" and "I’ll Never Stand in your Way". Studio manager Marion Keisker was impressed enough to play the demo for Sun Records boss Sam Phillips, who called Presley back in for an audition.

 

1954- The Pinky Lee Show premiered on TV. Sponsored by Tootsie Roll.

 

1956- Walt Disney had lunch with his old competitor Max Fleischer, now retired. The meeting was arranged by Max’s son Richard Fleischer, who was working for Disney directing movies like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Although everyone had a nice time, Richard later admitted he found the whole thing depressing. Seeing his dad humbled:” It was like seeing David vanquished by Goliath.”

 

1957- The Dodgers are the first baseball team to buy a team airplane to travel around in.

 

1958- the TV show Seahunt premiered. It made a star out of Lloyd Bridges, the father of Jeff and Beau Bridges. 

 

1973- In San Francisco, scientists from several top food companies like Proctor & Gamble, Heinz and Del Monte began work inventing the Universal Product Code, or The Bar Code, now seen on everything you buy. The first product to sport the bar code was Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.

 

 

1997- Spoon bending psychic Uri Geller predicted a UFO would land in Tel Aviv. Israelis watched the skies, but in the end, nothing appeared.

 

1999- Ed, Edd n Eddy premiered on Cartoon Network.

 

2010- Dubai opened the largest office building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. 163 floors.

 

2000- Charles Schulz published the very last Peanuts daily comic strip. It ran continuously since 1950. Schulz refused to allow any one to ghost him or take over the strip. He died a month later of colon cancer, and his last Sunday was printed the next day.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for Jan 3, 2025

Birthdays: Marcus Tullius Cicero, John Paul Jones, Victor Borge, Zasu Pitts, Sergio Leone, Hank Stramm, Bobby Hull, Robert Loggia, Maxine Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Ray Milland, Anna Mae Wong, Steven Stills, J.R.R. Tolkein,  Andres Franquin, Victoria Principal is 74, Dabney Coleman, Mel Gibson is 69. Thelma Schoonmaker is 86

 

1933- MGM Louis B. Mayer hired his son-in-law David O. Selznick to produce movies. At the same time he was begging his workers to take a 20% pay cut because of the Great Depression, Mayer set Selznick’s salary at $4,000 a week. Newspapers joked “The Son-In-Law Also Rises.”

 

 

1953- Chuck Jones “Don’t Give Up the Sheep”, introduced Sam the Sheepdog vs. Ralph (Wiley) Wolf. 

 

1958- Howard Rushmore was the editor of Confidential one of the most ruthless scandal magazines in show business. This day for reasons never explained Rushmore murdered his wife, then shot himself in the back of a NYC taxicab. 

 

1973- Boatbuilding tycoon and George Steinbrenner led a group that bought the last place New York Yankees baseball club from CBS. "The Boss" becomes one of the more colorful baseball owners and propelled the Yankees into a new era of championship contention. Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for $10 million, and today they are worth several billion. 

 

1977- Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne file papers to form the Apple Computer Company. They announced the company April 1, 1976, considered the official birth of Apple.

 

1995- The Snookums & Meat TV show premiered.

 

2004- Following the success of the Mars Pathfinder Rover in 1997, Two more advanced probes Spirit and Opportunity were launched. This day Spirit landed safely on Mars and began transmitting. The JPL mission leader announced "We're Back...We're on Mars." Only supposed to last 90 days, Spirit transmitted for 6 years. Opportunity for 14 years. 

 

2004- After partying New Years in Las Vegas, 22 year old pop star Britney Spears woke up and realized she had just married her friend Jay Alexander while drunk.  Today she annulled it. Alexander, who listed himself as unemployed, was soon seen driving around rural Louisiana in a $90,000 BMW.

 

 

 

 

  

Tom Sito's animation almanac for Jan 2, 2025

Birthdays: Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV-1642, Frederic Opper the cartoonist of Happy Hooligan, Phillip Freneau, Roger Miller, Issac Asimov, Julius LaRosa, Tito Schipa, Renata Tebaldi, Tex Ritter, Dick Huemer, Cuba Gooding Jr, is 57, Tia Carrere, Kate Bosworth is 42

 

 

1496- Did Leonardo da Vinci try to fly? Leonardo studied the motor actions of birds and sketched numerous flying machines. In one of his notebooks Leonardo had written:” On the second day of January, I will make the attempt.” Leonardo later noted in his financial records payment to a physician when his apprentice named Antonio broke his leg. It’s been speculated Antonio broke it trying to pilot one of his master’s flying machines. 

1933- The character Nancy first appeared in Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip Fritzi Ritz.

 

1937- Hollywood actor Ross Alexander had hit on tough times. He had been in a few movies like Captain Blood and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but his career seemed to be stalled, he was in debt, and his wife committed suicide. This day the 29 year old went into the barn behind his Encino home and shot himself. The Warner Bros. Studio looked around for a replacement to refill their roster of handsome male leads. They replaced Alexander with an Illinois college sportscaster called “Dutch”- Ronald Reagan.

 

 

1958- Maria Callas threw one of the more celebrated temper tantrums in Opera history when she stormed off the stage at La Scala in the middle of Bellini’s Norma with the President of Italy in the audience. La Divina Callas was a Greek-American with a beautiful voice and the slimmest waistline since Lili Pons. She was part of the Jet-Set society culture, and her temper was famous.

 

 

1975- In a letter to MITS, college kids Bill Gates and Paul Allen offered their computer language adaptation of BASIC for the new Altair personal computer. They named themselves Microsoft. 

 

1984- The Zenith Corporation announced it would stop selling video recorders in Betamax format and go over wholly to VHS. Other electronics giants followed suit and VHS won out over the higher quality Beta system.

 

1994- College dropout Tod Rosendahl wrote the visualizing software Blender.

 

 

2000- Internet developers Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, had a conversation about writing data entries for collaborative websites called wikis. Saunders conceived of an open on-line encyclopedia encompassing all world knowledge. He called it Wikipedia.

 

2019- The Chinese space probe, the Chang’ 4 became the first man made object to successfully land on the Dark side of the Moon. 

 

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for Jan 1, 2025

Birthdays: Lorenzo De Medici” the Magnificent”, Pope Alexander VI Borgia, Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, Mad Anthony Wayne, E.M. Forrester, J. Edgar Hoover, Alfred Stieglitz, Xavier Cugat, Barry Goldwater, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Chesley Bonestell, Dana Andrews, Idi Amin, Kliban, Haruo Nakajima 1929(The actor in the Godzilla suit), Verne Troyer (Mini-Me), Frank Langella is 87 

 

Happy Last Day of Kwanza.

 

45 BC. AVE ANNO NOVUM! By order of Julius Caesar, the Roman Empire adopted the 12 month 366 day calendar developed by the Alexandrian scientist Sosigenes. This was an improvement from the ten-month, ten-day week, 304 day system that began in March. The ten-month system is why December, which means ten, is counted as the twelfth month. The old system had become so clunky that the Roman civil service had a special office just to tell you what day it was. To pull the calendar back in line with the solar year, Julius Caesar decreed the last year of the old system 46 BC would have to be 445 days long! He called it Ultimus Annus Confusionis- The Year of Total Confusion.

 

1839- Twelve years after Franz Schubert's death composer Robert Schumann was rooting around in an old trunk at his friend's house when he discovered the score for Schubert's Great C Major Symphony. That is why this Symphony is called # 9 when the Unfinished Symphony is called #8.

  

1881- The Eastman Kodak Company formed. Kodak supposedly was named from the sound of the snapping camera shutter. Ko-DAK!

1890- The First Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena California.

 

1890- Ellis Island, the great processing center for immigrants in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty opened for business. By the 1990 census it was estimated that close to 50% of the U.S. population could trace back to an ancestor who came through Ellis Island.

 

1909- London astronomers say they had detected signs of a planet further out than Neptune, the furthest known planet in our solar system. The theoretical body was called Planet -X until in 1930 an amateur astronomer named Clyde Tumbaugh found it, and named it Pluto.

 

1914- The Archbishop of Paris threatened with excommunication young people who dance the Tango. "It's lascivious nature offends morality."

 

1939- Vladimir Zworkin patented the Iconoscope (the eye of a TV camera) and Kinescope. The television process evolved over so many years -there were experimental TV stations in 1923 and the Berlin Olympics of 1936 were televised. So you can't really point to one Tom Edison type inventor, although Zworkin, Englishman James Logie Baird in 1924, Philo Farnsworth, and Dr. Lee DeForest all at one time tried to take the full credit.

 

1942- Because of the fear of a Japanese attack on the California coastline, the Rose Bowl that year was played in North Carolina.

 

1943- Walt Disney's Donald Duck cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face premiered. Originally titled Donald Duck in NutziLand, it was changed to match to the song after Spike Jones recorded it.

 

1953- Country music star Hank Williams had spent New Years drinking whiskey and doing chloral hydrate. When a West Virginia policeman pulled over his car, he remarked to the driver that his passenger looked dead. The driver said he was just sleeping and drove on. 29 year old Hank Williams was dead.  His last recorded song was “I’ll never get out of this World Alive.”

 

 

1959- The Chipmunk Song by David Seville (aka Ross Bagdassarian) topped the pop charts.

 

1960- The Radio and Television Director's Guild merge with the Screen Directors Guild to form the DGA.

 

1963- Tetsuwan Atomu or Atom Boy, an animated television show by Osamu Tezuka premiered on Japanese TV. As Astro Boy it became the first Japanese anime show to break into the mainstream American market.

 

1966- Ailing Walt Disney served as Grand Marshal for the Tournament of Roses Parade. Standing in the crowd on the curb with his mother was 8 year old John Lasseter.

 

1976- Potheads sneak up to the Hollywood Sign and change the two “O’s to “E’s so the sign read HOLLYWEED. 

 

1980- The debut of Gary Larson's single panel comic strip "The Far Side".  Larson has recently revived it online.

 

1984- By court order, the phone system AT&T also called The Bell System, which had dominated telephone communication exclusively since Alexander Graham Bell, was ordered broken up into 22 regional companies, the Baby Bells. The explosion of telecommunications, smart phones, blackberries, and bigger phone bills result.

 

 

2019- The space probe New Horizon reached the furthest known object in our Solar System outside the orbit of Pluto, a wobbly peanut shaped rock named Ultima Thule. 4 billion miles from Earth. A single radio signal from the spacecraft took 6 hours to reach Earth.