Birthdays: Plato, Johann Sebastian Bach, Benito Juarez, Modest Mussorgsky, Fats Waller, Josef Pulitzer, Florenz Ziegfeld, Bronco Billy Anderson, Rev Ralph Abernathy, Armand Hammer, Harold Robbins, Matthew Broderick is 63, Gary Oldman is 67, James Coco, Timothy Dalton is 79, Rosie O’Donnell is 63, animator Kathy Zielinski.
1617-Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, died at Gravesend, England after being taken off her homeward bound ship, too ill with smallpox to continue. She was 21. Her children with John Rolfe became the beginnings of one of the largest families in Virginia, with many scions of the Old Dominion tracing their ancestry to Pocahontas.
1740- Composer Antonio Vivaldi - Il Prete Rosso- the Red Priest, conducted his last concert at the Ospedale Della Pietra in Venice. It was a home for orphaned girls so it was an all-girl orchestra. The 64 year old Vivaldi went to Vienna to see if he could get any commissions from the Austrian Emperor, but caught an illness on the way and died.
1859- The first public zoo opened in the U.S.
1871- William Stanley set out to find Dr. David Livingstone. Livingstone was an explorer –missionary who had disappeared into the African jungle. No one had heard from for two years. Stanley, an illegitimate Welshman, had been a soldier-adventurer in the American Civil War and fought on both sides. He undertook this African expedition financed by the New York Herald. His Swahili name was “Bula Matari” the Breaker of Rocks.
1917- Buster Keaton first stepped in front of a movie camera.
1930- Col. Lyman Sanders founded Kentucky Fried Chicken.
1935- Persia was renamed Iran and Mesopotamia renamed Iraq.
1947- Then Pluto short “The Rescue Dog” was released.
1951- HOLLYWOOD COMMIES- House UnAmerican Acitivities Commitee (HUAC) under Judge J. Parnell Thomas left Washington and set up in Hollywood to continue rooting out Communist subversion in the media. They began in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and later moved to the federal building downtown.
Out of 15,000 people who made a living in the movies and television, only 295 were ever proven or confessed communists. It was an open secret that for $5,000 delivered to the right committee member, your dossier would be moved to the bottom of the pile. The hearings stopped in 1956, the blacklist was broken in 1960 and Judge J. Parnell Thomas went to jail himself for embezzlement.
1952- DJ Alan Freed put on an event of the new pop music in Cleveland Ohio. Called the MoonDog Coronation Ball, it may be the very first Rock & Roll concert.
1961- The Beatles first performed at the Cavern Club in Hamburg Germany.
1961- based on the success of the first Playboy Club in Chicago, Playboy Clubs with their Bunny waitresses opened in New York, Miami and LA.
1963- On orders from Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Alcatraz Prison was closed.
1963- Barbara Streisand married Elliot Gould.
1988- the Screen Actor's Guild hits the bricks for the fourth time in twenty years, this time striking Hollywood for residuals for cable and videocassette income.
2006- The first Tweet sent on the new format Twitter. Scientist Jack Dorsey tweeted his friends “Setting up my twttr…” Twitter went public that July. In 2022 Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion and changed its name to X.
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