Birthdays: Torquato Tasso, Marius Pretipa, Raoul Walsh, Charlie Ruggles, Lawrence Welk, Samuel “Shemp” Howard, British PM Harold Wilson, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Bobby McFerrin, Sam Donaldson, Antonin Scalia, Jerry Zucker, Vannevar Bush- MIT scientist who in 1945 predicted the personal computer. Joey Buttafuco, Jules Engel, Douglas Adams, Rupert Murdoch is 94, Rob Paulsen is 69, Terence Howard is 56
1829- BachMania!-The Rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach-. Bach was little known in his time and after his death in 1750 was soon forgotten. Even his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach though his dad’s music old-fashioned. But a century later the stirrings of German nationalism led to the re-examination of this obscure organist. This night at the Singakademie in Berlin, musical superstar Felix Mendelsson performed “The St. Matthew Passion” and other Bach works. The musicians performed for free. The concert caused a sensation and Bach is soon being played all over Europe and influencing everyone from Berlioz to Wagner. Goethe and Hegel declared him a genius.
1851-Guisseppi Verdi's grand opera" Rigoletto "debuts. Considered Verdi's first mature work, it made him an international star. Based on Victor Hugo's "L'roi's amuse", originally about the lustful abominations of King Francois I of France, Verdi changed it to the Duke of Mantua and steered away from the class politics to a family melodrama. Victor Hugo didn't like it.
1918- THE GREAT SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC- This day the first noticeable rise in a strange new flu occurred at Camp Funston Kansas. It was called the Spanish flu because even though it broke out all around the world, Spain did not have wartime press censorship, so they reported it first.
In three years this new flu virus killed 21 million people around the Earth, 640,000 in the U.S. alone- everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to young Walt Disney got sick. In places like China, India and Russia thousands died. The epidemic killed as many people as the just concluding World War I. Then it disappeared as rapidly as it appeared. Experts believed it mutated into less lethal versions.
One of the reasons a CoVid 19 vaccine was created so quickly was scientist had saved samples of Spanish Flu virus to begin their development on.
1927- The first Roxy Theater opens at 50th st. & Seventh Ave. in New York. Roxy was a nickname of theater owner Samuel L. Rothafel who pioneered the movie palace and is called the father of De-Luxe presentation. There were soon Roxy theaters in cities from Hollywood to Sydney Australia.
1931- Famed German movie director F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Sunrise) was working in Hollywood when this day he died in an auto accident in Santa Barbara. Whether you believe Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon is a matter of debate. (that he crashed his car because he was going down on his Philippine driver.)
1943- The Broadway musical team of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened their first collaboration “Away We Go!”
1971- Philo Farnsworth died of pneumonia at 64. The young Utah native in 1922 had invented the television set, but by the 1960’s he was forgotten, broke and addicted to painkillers. The only recognition he got in his lifetime was as a contestant on the quiz show I Got a Secret. He won a check for $80 and a carton of Winston cigarettes. Today Farnsworth is considered the father of television, along with John Logie-Baird.
1971- THX 1138- Frances Ford Coppola convinced Warner Bros to release a fleshed-out feature version of a USC college thesis film by a young guy named George Lucas.
1977- Film director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home after he got her stoned on quaaludes. Polanski was charged with statutory rape. He jumped bail and fled Hollywood for exile in Paris. LA courts have been trying unsuccessfully to get him extradited ever since. Today he is in his 90s but still has never returned to the USA.
1984 - NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, adapted and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was released in Japan. When the Walt Disney company agreed to distribute the film, they released it in Europe with time cuts, about ten minutes. Miyazaki sent the studio a beautiful antique samurai sword. On the blade he engraved, “ No Cuts”.
2011- FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI- The northern coast of Japan was struck by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The quake sent a tsunami wave that erased whole towns and killed 20,000. A ripple wave went completely across the Pacific and sank boats in harbor at Santa Cruz, California and Oregon. The tsunami also damaged 5 reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, sending clouds of radioactive steam into the atmosphere and water.
5th Anniv. 2020- The World Health Organization (WHO) declared covid 19 a global pandemic.
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