Birthdays: Former British PM Harold Macmillan, Jimmy Durante, Bertholdt Brecht, Leontyne Price, Roberta Flack, tennis great Bill Tilden, Lon Chaney Jr., Stella Adler, Mark Spitz, Boris Pasternak, Dame Judith Anderson, Greg Norman, Donavan, Dr Alex Comfort author of the Joy of Sex, Michael Apted, Jerry Goldsmith, Robert Wagner is 95, Laura Dern is 58
1862- After a hard night partying with fellow poet Swinburne, pre-Raphaelite Dante Rossetti returned home to find his wife dead of an opium overdose.
1863- Alanson Crane invented the Fire Extinguisher.
1870- Anaheim California was founded. No Disneyland yet. The name means Ana, as in Santa Anna River, and Heim, the German word for home. So- Home of the Santa Anna River. The town was founded by 50 German immigrant families who wanted to raise grapes and build a socialist commune.
1920- Major League Baseball banned the spitball pitch, scuff ball, licorice ball, all attempts to effect a baseball by defacing its surface.
1929- Elsa Lanchester married Charles Laughton.
1938- RKO screwball comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant “Bringing Up Baby” premiered. Directed by Howard Hawks.
1940- MGM's "Puss gets the Boot" the first Tom and Jerry cartoon and the first collaboration of the team of New Mexico born Bill Hanna & New York born Joe Barbera. Tom was originally called Jasper, but renamed later.
1949- The premiere of Arthur Miller’s play "Death of a Salesman”.
1960- Jack Paar was the star and host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. He pioneered the talk show format, the opening monologue and couch, that everyone uses today. He tried to tell one joke about a woman in a water closet (i.e. toilet) when the network censors cut the joke. Jack Paar was so angry, that in the middle of this show, he stood up, exclaimed “ There’s gotta be better ways to make a living,” and walked off the show. A few weeks later he was convinced to return, but he left permanently in 1962. His celebrity status faded while his successor Johnny Carson became famous. Paar later admitted quitting was the biggest mistake of his life.
1992- The children’s book- The Stinky Cheese Man debuted.
1996- IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess master Garry Kasparov. The first time a computer ever beat a human chess champion.
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