tom sito's animation almanac for April 30, 2025

Birthdays: Elector Johann-Frederich the Magnanimous, Franz Lehar, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Max Skladanowsky, Jaroslav Hasek, Eve Arden, Jill Clayburgh, Alice B. Toklas, Isaiah Thomas, Cloris Leachman, Jane Campion, Al Lewis, Lars von Trier, Burt Young, Kirsten Dunst is 43, Gal Gadot is 40, animator Bill Plympton is 79 

1897- English Professor J.J Thompson discovered a subatomic particle 100 times smaller than a proton. He called it a 'corpusle' but later changed it to ' The Electron'. 

 

1900- John Luther Jones, called CASEY JONES died in a spectacular train crash near Vaughn Mississippi. Jones' freight train was running 75 minutes late so he stoked up his engine to 100 mph. Suddenly a switching error put a passenger train in his path. Jones stayed at the controls trying to stop the train while his crew jumped to safety. There was a head on collision but because of Jone’s bravery his was the only death. A brakeman later wrote the famous folksong. 

 Union activists prefer to remember that Jones was a strikebreaker running his train recklessly in defiance of a strike to impress his employers. The union still paid his widow his $3000 dollar life insurance. Folksinger Joe Hill in his song "Casey Jones the Union Scab." tells how when he went to heaven, the Angel’s Union Local #23 "fired Casey down the Golden Stair."

 

1902- The first ice cream cone was served at the St. Louis Worlds Fair. Invented by a Syrian immigrant cook. Los Angeles claims it was first.

 

1905- At Evansville Illinois, future baseball umpire Cy Rigler began the practice of raising his right arm to indicate strikes, so that friends in the outfield could distinguish calls. 

 

1916- The Chicago Cubs played their first game in Wrigley Field, then called Weegman Park. 

 

1938- Porky’s Hare Hunt. Featuring an early prototype Bugs Bunny directed by Ben Hardaway.

The design we all recognize appeared in 1940 with Tex Avery’s A Wild Hare.

 

1939- The 1939 World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows, NY. The Trylon & Perisphere presided over the gleaming Art-Deco paean to optimism, even as the world waited nervously for Hitler’s next move.  With President Franklin D. Roosevelt in attendance the NBC network began regular television broadcasting. It only went to a few homes.  Experts were not optimistic." It requires a darkened room and constant attention." one said.

 

1945- "Arthur Godfrey Time" debuts on CBS radio. Godfrey was a local Washington D.C. deejay who gained nationwide fame for his emotional coverage of the funeral of FDR. He then went from radio to television, hosting the first regularly successful television entertainment program. Godfrey in later life got increasingly hard on his employees and in an infamous incident actually fired star singer Julius LaRosa live on the air. 

 

1948- The first civilian Land Rover automobiles produced.

 

1952- Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television. Over one million kits were be sold in the first year. Originally invented by George Lerner in 1949 to stick faces on real vegetables, Mr. Potato Head was sold to brothers Henry and Merrill Hassenfeld in 1951 (the creators of the toy company Hasbro, Hass-Bros, get it?). In 2000 Rhode Island declared itself the Mr. Potato Head State. The Hasbro Toy Company is headquartered in Pawtucket, a city just outside of Providence.

 

1953- Frank Sinatra did his first session at Capitol Records with Nelson Riddle. This is the first recording of crooner Sinatra’s mature style.  

 

1976-  After completing his work on the Rescuers, Disney animator Milt Kahl retired. Shortly after Ralph Bakshi called him and offered him a job on his project Lord of the Rings. Milt replied, “ Thanks, but no thanks. If I wanted to keep doing shit I would’ve stayed at Disney.”

 

1988- Tom Hanks married actress Rita Wilson.

 

1992- BERN, the Geneva particle lab where the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, declared that WWW, aka The Web, would be open and free to all with no restrictions or royalties to be paid to them.

 

 

1993- The Walt Disney Company announced its’ purchase of top independent film producer Miramax. They produced films like The Crying Game. Ten years later a feud with Michael Eisner caused Miramax founders the Weinstein brothers to leave and form The Weinstein Company. By the time Miramax was sold off in 2010, it was a shadow of its former self.

 

1997- In the last show of the season, comedian Ellen Degenere’s character Ellen admits to Laura Dern that she’s gay. Disney promptly canceled the Ellen Show. Ellen returned a few years later with a talk show that became even more popular. Then her show was ended due to charges of a hostile work environment. She said, “I was kicked out of Hollywood…twice!”

 

 

2012- The Freedom Tower, was the building made to replace the destroyed World Trade Center. This day its height surpassed that of the Empire State Building, to be the tallest building in New York.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 29, 2025

 Question: In what part of the world is Bessarabia?

 

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What does the phrase mean “ …at one fell swoop”?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

History for 4/29/2025

Birthdays: Emperor Hirohito, Duke Ellington, Duke Wellington, William Randolph Hearst, Sir Thomas Beacham, Tom Ewell, Rod McKuen, Fred Zinneman, Irvin Kershner, Zubin Mehta is 89, Jerry Seinfeld is 71, Michelle Pfeiffer is 67, Daniel Day Lewis is 68, Uma Thurman is 54, Willie Nelson is 92. 

Scooby Doo designer Iwao Takamoto would be 100.

 

 

1771- Artist Benjamin West unveils his painting of the “Death of General Wolfe” at the Royal Academy in London. Wolfe was killed in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which decided that Canada would be English. West’s portrayal of Wolfe in his actual uniform instead an idealized Grecian god surrounded by floating cherubs, was considered scandalously realistic, and revolutionized painting.

 

1786- The day before his opera THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO was to premiere, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sat down after dinner and wrote the famous overture. Friends said he liked to think while playing billiards.

 

 

1856- The US CAMEL CORPS- The first shipment of 33 Egyptian camels arrived in Camp Verde, Texas. It was an idea of Secty of War Jefferson Davis. The Spanish brought horses to America. Why not camels? They have deserts. We have deserts. The First U.S. Dromedary Corps was set up under a Lt. Beale, to run a camel train from the Texas Gulf Coast to Ft. Tejon, just north of Los Angeles.  After one or two initial trips, the idea was scrapped by the Civil War. The camels were let loose, but never really took to multiplying in the wild, like horses and donkeys did. One Egyptian camel driver stranded in America, Hajj Ali, called Hi Jolly, wandered over to settle in Mexico. His son became president of Mexico. Plutarcho Elias Calles in 1923.

 

 

1944- Dancing Romeos, the last Our Gang comedy short was produced by MGM, which had bought the franchise in 1938 from Hal Roach. 

 

1950- MGM chief Louis B. Mayer fired Frank Sinatra for making a joke. At a production meeting Sinatra was told Mayer could not make the meeting because he hurt his hip riding. Sinatra joked he got hurt not from falling off his horse, but falling off Ginny Simms, a young actress Mayer was chasing. Sinatra was fired later that day.

 

1962- President John Kennedy hosted a dinner for a group of Nobel Prize winners at the White House. Kennedy said: “ I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined here alone.”  

 

1992- THE GREAT LOS ANGELES RIOT- Los Angelenos go berserk after an all-white jury in Simi Valley acquitted four policemen who beat up drunk motorist Rodney King while being videotaped. 63 killed, 2500 businesses destroyed, $1.5 billion dollars in damage, 13,200 arrests and large sections of Los Angeles put under martial law. Even Rodney King was moved to go on TV and proclaim: " Can't we all just get along?" 

 

2001- Pioneer 10 was a space probe launched to the outer planets in 1972. After sending the first photos of Jupiter and Pluto in 1973, Pioneer 10 left our solar system and headed for deep space in 1997. It is aimed at the Constellation Taurus. On this day 7 billion miles away Pioneer 10 phoned home to say it was fine. Its last message was received in 2003. I wonder if it asked if Richard Nixon was still president?

 

2004- The last Oldsmobile made, was ending the 106-year-old product line.

 

 

.

Tom Sito's Animation Almanac for April 28, 2025

Birthdays: English King Edward IV (1442), President James Monroe, Lionel Barrymore, Oskar Schindler, Carolyn Jones-aka Morticia Addams of the TV Addams Family, Ann Margret is 84, Jay Leno is 75, Saddam Hussein, Jean Redpath, Penelope Cruz is 51, Jessica Alba is 46, Godzilla is 71- see below.

            

1789- THE MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. The HMS Bounty had been sent around the world to bring back breadfruit samples to see if the plant could be a nutritional supplement for slave laborers in Jamaica and Bermuda.  During the return voyage from Tahiti the crew led by first mate Fletcher Christian, set upon Captain William Bligh, and set him adrift in a rowboat to die. They then sailed with their Tahitian families to settle permanently on an island. 

They choose Pitcairn Island because of its remoteness. Squabbles arose among the British and natives and their leader Fletcher Christian was killed while tending his sweet potatoes. Today many of the island’s inhabitants claim ancestry from the Bounty mutineers. 

Captain Bligh got to safety after navigating his little longboat 3,600 nautical miles to East Timor with almost no food, an unparalleled feat of seamanship. He was cleared by an Admiralty board and served with distinction in the Napoleonic Wars, although another ship mutinied on him. 

Like many 'famous' incidents, this passed by its time with little or no notice. What made the Mutiny on the Bounty world famous was a best-selling novel written in the 1920's by two Americans, Charles Nordoff and James Norton Hall, who met when pilots in the World War I Lafayette Escadrille. Then it became a popular movie with Clark Gable. James Hall’s son, Conrad Hall, grew up to be a famous cinematographer in Hollywood, who won Academy Awards for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Road to Perdition.

 

1828- English monarchs kept a menagerie of exotic animals at the Tower of London. Most were gifts from foreign rulers. Lions, apes, giraffes, canaries, a polar bear and an elephant. By the XIX Century the crown allowed tourists to visit, and it became quite the attraction. When old soldier the Duke of Wellington became Constable of the Tower, he found all the animals and the tourists annoying. The Tower should be a military bastion, not a bloody tourist attraction!

This day all the animals were moved to a new spot in Regents Park, and the London Zoo was created. 

 

 

1925- T.S. Elliot landed a job at Faber & Faber Publishing. His enabled the poet to quit his job as a bank teller at Lloyds and get serious about his literary career.

 

1937- Italy’s movie studio Cinecitta’ was dedicated.

 

 

1947- Thor Heyderthal set out on a balsa wood raft called Kon Tiki to prove ancient Peruvians could have used the ocean current to reach Polynesia.

 

 

1954- Happy 71^th Birthday Godzilla! The original kaiju movie by Ichjiro Honda was inspired when a Japanese fishing boat was fatally exposed by radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test. He was also inspired by the Hollywood movies The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and King Kong. Godzilla is an Anglicized version of the Japanese Kohjira, which is a combination of Gorilla and Whale. The famous roar was done by rubbing a resin-covered glove down some bass fiddle strings. The film was later released in the U.S. with American actor Raymond Burr (actually, Canadian actor.) acting in inserted scenes. The intact Japanese version of the film was not seen in North America until 2004.

 

1961-At La Scala, when tenor Guiseppi Di Stefano took ill, a young schoolteacher from Modena took the lead role in the opera La Boheme. Lucciano Pavarotti debuted. Called King of the High C’s.

 

 

1996- Genndy Tartakowsky’s Dexter’s Laboratory premiered.

 

 

2019- The Marvel superhero movie Avengers Endgame earned $1.2 billion worldwide in its opening weekend.  $350 million North America, and $850 million worldwide. A record shattering opening. 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 27, 2025

Birthdays: Ulysses S. Grant, King Edward IV, Samuel Morse, Mary Wollstonecraft, Edward Gibbon, Anouk Aimee, Sheena Easton is 66, Sandy Dennis, Coretta Scott King, Kasey Kasem, Jack Klugman

 

 

1667- Blind poet John Milton sold his masterpiece "Paradise Lost" to publisher Samuel Simmons for ten pounds. Ten years earlier under Oliver Cromwell’s patronage Milton was getting over a thousand pounds each for his poems

 

1918- Former race car driver Eddie Rickenbacker, now a fighter pilot in WWI, shot down his first enemy plane. By Nov. he shot down 26 planes and became America’s premiere ace. He won the Medal of Honor, Croix de Guerre, was later a CEO of Eastern Airlines and even wrote a 1935 comic strip about a pilot called Ace Drummond. In his later years he became with a young WW2 veteran who made comics named Charles Schulz.

 

1964- The John Muir National Wilderness created.

 

1967- Twiggy Day at Disneyland. The famous English fashion model and her entourage spent a groovy day at the park.

 

1970- THE FIRST ATM- Automatic bank teller machine, opened at the Surety National Bank in downtown Los Angeles.

 

 

1975- Monty Python and the Holy Grail opened in US theaters.

 

1981- Ringo Starr married Barbera Bach, his costar on the film 'Caveman'. UngaBunga!

 

2005- Maiden flight of the world's largest passenger plane- the Airbus A-380.

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 26, 2025

Birthdays: Marcus Aurelius, French Queen Marie De Medicis, Pasquale Paoli, John James Audubon, Frederick Law Olmstead, Eugene Delacroix, Syngman Rhee, Dr. Lee DeForrest, John Grierson founder of the National Film Board of Canada, Rudolf Hess, Bobby Rydell, Anita Loos, I. M. Pei, Eyvind Earle, , Kevin James, Amos Otis, Jimmy Giuffre, Rocker Duane Eddy- 85, Jet Li- born Li Lian jie is 62, Victor Perrin 1916, voice actor who did the Control Voice in The Outer Limits. He also was Dr Zin in Johnny Quest, First Lady Melania Trump is 55, Giancarlo Esposito is 69, Joan Chen is 62, Carol Burnett is 92

 

1928- Los Angeles City Hall dedicated. 

 

1940- Disney short “Tugboat Mickey”.

 

1941- An organ is played for the first time at a baseball game in Chicago.

 

1942- The last Little Orphan Annie radio program ran on WGN Chicago. After 12 years, Ovaltine replaced it with Captain Midnight.

 

 

1954- Akira Kurosawa’ The Seven Samurai opened in Japan.

 

1964- The “Its’a Small World” exhibit opened at the NY World’s Fair. After the fair it moved to Disneyland.

 

1965- Fred Smith, a student at Yale, got his economics paper back with a "c'" and a note stating the idea he espoused was impractical. The idea was an overnight air-freight service which he founded six years later as Federal Express.

 

1970-PAUL IS DEAD. The height of a strange rumor that excited the rock & roll world that Paul McCartney of the Beatles had died, and the news was being kept a secret. Evidence was presented in the cryptic lyrics of "I am the Walrus", songs played backwards and the record album photo where Paul is the only figure with his back to the camera. 

A primetime TV special hosted by celebrity attorney F. Lee Bailey explored the controversy. Finally, this day Paul and Linda McCartney held a news conference and declared he was very much alive and what on Earth was everyone on about? Paul McCartney is still alive today in his 80s.

 

1977- In New York City, Studio 54, the mecca of 70’s Disco culture opened.

 

1986- Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Conan the Republican, married Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy. 

 

1993- NBC announced former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live comedy writer Conan O’Brien would take David Letterman’s old Late Show spot. After a few years he moved on to replace the retiring the retiring Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. But soon Leno decided he did not want to retire just yet and bounced Conan.

 

he Bolshevik political positions thinking it would serve their own selfish interests. Unaware they were being used.

tom sito's animation almanac for April 25, 2025

Birthdays: Roman emperor Otho -32AD, English King Edward II-1284, Oliver Cromwell-1599, Giuseppe Marconi, Edward R. Murrow, Ella Fitzgerald, Albert Uderzo, Meadowlark Lemon, Talia Shire, Paul Mazursky, Hank Azaria is 60, Rene Zellwellger is 56, Jason Lee is 55, Al Pacino is 84, Ron Clements is 72

 

 

1719- The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe first published.

 

 

1926- Giacomo Puccini's last opera Turnadot premiered in Milan. Puccini died before its completion, so students had to finish the work based on his notes. At the beginning of the Third Act conductor Arturo Toscanini put down his baton, turned to the audience and said:" Here is where the Maestro died." He then left the podium in tears and let someone else finish it. 

 

1938- The German shepherd named Buddy became the first seeing-eye dog for the blind.

 

1953- Watson & Crick announced the DNA Molecular Construction Theory. The world sees for the first time the twisted ladder model. A female researcher named Rosalind Franklin actually did the most important research, but Watson & Crick took the credit. Rosalind Franklin died just before the Nobel committee announced their decision. This day, Watson went down to his local pub and told the barkeep:" Set up a round of lager, for I just discovered the Secret of Life!"

 

1956- Elvis Presley’s song Heartbreak Hotel goes to #1 in the pop charts.

 

1961- The US Patent office awarded a patent to Robert Noyce for the integrated circuit. This enabled computers to replace transistors with integrated circuits, and greatly reduce the size of computers while increasing their power.

 

1972- Witty, urbane actor George Sanders (All About Eve, Samson & Delilah, Sher Khan in Jungle Book) had turned age 65. Depressed about the death of his wife, and a diagnosis of onset Parkinson’s Disease. He complained he had been famous and rich, and was not looking forward to old age, and having a nurse wipe his bottom. So in a small hotel near Barcelona he committed suicide with sleeping pills and left a witty, urbane note. "Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored. Adieu, I leave you with your worries in this sweet cesspool called life."

 

1981- Dixie, the world’s oldest living mouse, died at age 6 1/2.

 

 

1996- "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk" opened on Broadway.

2021- Pixar's Soul won best animated feature at the Academy Awards.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 24, 2025

Birthdays: Daniel Defoe, William de Kooning, St. Vincent de Paul, Morgan Earp, Jack E. Leonard, Dame Ethel Smyth, Jill Ireland, Eric Bogosian, Sue Grafton, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Donner, Barbara Streisand is 83, Cedric the Entertainer is 61, Steve Lisberger is 74, Shirley MacLaine is 90, Djimon Hounsau is 61.

 

 

1833- The Soda Fountain was patented.

 

 

1874- Jesse James married his cousin Miss Zerelda Mimms, who he called Z. 

 

1901-The First American League baseball game. The Cleveland Blues vs. the Chicago White Stockings.

 

1913- The Woolworth Building was dedicated in lower New York. Its cornices decorated like the campanile of Saint Marks in Venice. At the time it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. President Woodrow Wilson illuminated its electric lights by flipping a switch long distance in the White House. One person upon taking the elevator to the top floor, said “ Is God in..?”

1933- Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.

 

1934- Due to an outcry from parents and religious groups, a judge ordered all prints of the movie Tarzan and his Matechanged to edit out the naughty parts.

 

1944- Film Noir classic film Double Indemnity premiered.

 

1954- Handsome English actor Peter Lawford married John F. Kennedy’s sister Patricia Kennedy. This union would give JFK his link to Hollywood, Frank Sinatra and the RatPack.

 

1961- First day of shooting on the film King of Kings, the Christ story starring Jeffrey Hunter. Called by one critic” I was a Teenage Jesus” In 1966 Jeffrey Hunter turned down a TV series after doing the pilot episode. His wife worried that he’d be typecast. The role of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk instead went to William Shatner.

 

1967- Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov became the first acknowledged fatality in the conquest of Space, when the parachute of his re-entering capsule got snarled and he fell four miles to Earth.

 

1979- Paul McCartney happened to be in New York City and dropped in on his old mate John Lennon. They spent the day together and at one point talked about visiting the set of Saturday Night Live but changed their minds at the last minute. Paul McCarthy left in the wee hours. It was the last time he ever saw John Lennon alive.

 

 

1981- Small companies like Apple and Commodore had dominated the personal computer market while giants like IBM stuck with large business systems. Now IBM weighed in with The IBM PC –personal computer, with basic software language DOS provided by Microsoft. It soon came to dominate the market.

 

1990- The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Challenger.

tom sito's animation almanac for April 23, 2025

Birthdays: William Shakespeare, James Buchanan, John Muir, Sergei Prokoviev, J.M.W. Turner, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen Douglas the Little Giant, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Halston, Sandra Dee, Valerie Bertinelli, Lee Majors is 85, Judy Davis, Simone Simon, Tony Esposito, Michael Sporn, Michael Moore is 71, Herve Villechais, John Oliver is 48.

 

1616- After a night out partying with Ben Johnson, John Draydon and other old buddies from Ye Old Mermaid Tavern, William Shakespeare caught a fever and died on his fifty third birthday.

 

“Souls of Poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?”

 

1746- THE GLASS HARMONICON- German composer Johann Christoph Witobald Gluck had premiered his first opera La Caduta de Giganti in London to weak box office. Today he hit it rich by playing an entire concerto on twenty-six drinking glasses with water raised to different levels to affect the pitch. He played it by rubbing his fingers along the rims. The crowd went wild. Another triumph of musical taste.

 

 

1867- William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, an optical toy predating motion pictures.

 

1896- THE FIRST PROJECTED MOVIES IN THE U.S.- The first projection of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 28th street and Broadway in New York City. Edison had to be nagged into this by his engineer W.K.L. Dickson. Edison thought projecting movies like the Lumiere Brothers were doing in Paris would never catch on, and the future of film was in nickelodeon machines.  The movie show featured the sultry Annabella the Dancer and a boxing match, but the real hit of the evening was footage of Waves Hitting the Rocks on Shore, which made people instinctively jump to keep from getting wet.

 

 

1903- The first game of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) baseball team. They defeated the Washington Senators, 7-2.

 

1914- Chicago’s Wrigley Field opened. 

 

1931- Warner Bros movie The Public Enemy was released. Starring Jean Harlow and a Broadway dancer with a strong lower east side accent named James Cagney. It made them both stars.

  

 

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for a stunt where he dressed as a priest and solicited funds in a leper colony.

 

1985- Coca Cola introduces New Coke. They decided to make the basic formula slightly sweeter to appeal to younger people. Its reception by the public was so overwhelmingly bad that the company returned to the original formula just 90 days later. The chairman of rival Pepsi Cola exulted: " We've been eye to eye for decades and I think the other guys just blinked! New Coke became a symbol for large-scale executive incompetence, 

 

1998- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows 98 to 4,000 industry leaders. When he ceremonially opened the first window, the system crashed- D’oh!

 

2005- The first You-Tube video was uploaded- Me at the Zoo.

 .

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 22, 2025

Birthdays: Queen Isabella I of Castille, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Immanuel Kant, Madame De Stael, Alexander Kerensky, Aaron Spelling, Eddie Albert, Glen Cambell, Betty Page, Marilyn Chambers, Rondo Hatton, Charlie Mingus, Peter Frampton, John Waters is 79, Jack Nicholson is 88

 

 

1741- Georg Frederich Handel dipped his quill into ink and began to write the Messiah.

 

 

1935- The Bride of Frankenstein released. James Whale’s sequel to his original classis. With Elsa Lanchester. “Friend…good! Smoke….good!” Ahah Hahhah!”

 

1940- Writer Ernest Hemingway cabled his editor Max Perkins from Havana about a new novel he began writing. " Title is "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from passage John Donne Oxford Book of English bottom page seventy-one STOP Please register immediately."

 

1942- Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Saboteur” premiered in Washington.

 

1952- The first nuclear bomb test shown on network TV -Tommy Turtle says duck and cover!

 

 

1954- The U.S. Congress added the phrase "In God We Trust" on to US money.

  

 

1964- The opening day of the New York World’s Fair. It was in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, built on the site of the 1939 World’s Fair.

 

1970- The first Earth Day. The idea was started by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin "The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy," Senator Nelson said, "and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda."

 

1972- Magnavox announced the Magnavox Odyssey. Created by Ralph Baer in his spare time, it was the first mass retail home videogame console.

 

1978- Comic actors Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi debut two new characters on the Saturday Night Live TV show, Joliet Jake and Ellwood Blues. The Blues Brothers are born. On that same broadcast, host Steve Martin did his King Tut Song. “Now when I die, now don’t think I’m a nut. Don’t want no fancy funeral, just one like Old King Tut.”

 

1996- Christopher Robin Milne died at age 75. The young boy whose fascination with a bear in the London Zoo called Winnie inspired his father A.A. Milne to write the Winne the Pooh stories. Christopher Robin wasn’t always appreciative of all the attention. He was bullied at school because of it. He once said of his father: "Someday I’ll write some verses about him and see how He likes it!"

 

2001- Dreamwork’s Shrek opened in theaters. I’m making waffles! 

 

 

2010- Shrek Forever After premiered. The 4^th installment of the Shrek saga.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 21, 2025

Birthdays: Numa Pompilus- 753BC, Queen Elizabeth II, Edwin S. Porter, Charlotte Bronte', John Muir, Freiderich Froebel the inventor of kindergarten-1782, Anthony Quinn, Patti Lupone, Charles Grodin, Anna Magnani, Andie MacDowell is 66, Tony Danza, Elaine May, Iggy Pop is 78, James McAvoy is 46, Rob Riggle is 55 

 

1910- Mark Twain died of congenital heart failure at 75 as Haley's comet appeared overhead. He once wrote: " When arriving in Heaven feel free to ask all the questions you want of Saint Peter. You may ask for his autograph, however don’t take any Kodak photos or bring your dog. Admittance to Heaven is based on favor, not merit, else the dog would be allowed to go in and you kept out.".

 

1921- The Coconut Grove nightclub opened in Hollywood.

 

 

1938- Disney animator Bill Tytla married artists model Adrienne LeClerc.

 

 

1961- Two British teenage rock bands meet each other for the first time- The Beatles met the Rolling Stones. They partied together often and wrote songs for each other.

 

1964- British TV viewers double their pleasure- BBC 2 goes on the air. Their first program is Play School.

 

1973- The pop song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn became a number one hit on the US, Canadian and UK pop charts. The song spawned the custom of a yellow ribbon as a symbol of remembering a soldier overseas, which reached its’ peak during the Iran Hostage Crisis. That in turn spawned variations like the red AIDS ribbon, the pink breast cancer ribbon, and so on.

 

1977- The musical Annie opened on Broadway. The sun will come out, tomorrow,….”

 

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a live primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. Called THE MYSTERY OF AL CAPONE’S SECRET VAULT. After wasting two hours speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room, sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles, trash and a few dollar bills.

 

1997-The first Intergalactic Funeral.  The ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960's LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary were shot into space.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

tom sito's animation almanac for April 20, 2025

Birthdays: Harold Lloyd, Juan Miro', Adolf Hitler, Tito Puente, Nina Foch, Gregory Ratoff, Ryan O'Neal, Jessica Lange, Luther Vandross, Don Mattingly, Rosalyn Summers, Crispin Glover, Lionel Hampton, Betty-Lou Gerson the voice of Cruella da Vil, George Takei is 88, Clint Howard, Daniel Day Lewis, Carmen Electra is 50, Andy Serkis is 62, Bob Kurtz, Harvey Deneroff.

 

Happy Easter. HAPPY EASTER, Commemorating the time when Jesus Christ was crucified and after three days rose from the dead. The Resurrection story has roots in other cultures- Osiris in Egypt, Dionysius and Orpheus in Greece and Odin in Scandinavia all had death and resurrection myths about them. Easter is named for Oster, Eostre or Aster, German goddess of the East Wind that brings Spring, who’s sacrifice was painted eggs laid at her alter.

In 63AD. Baodicea, The British warrior queen who battled the Roman legions of Nero had on her flags the Great Moon-Hare, who was the servant of Oster. 

In 1680 a German writer named Georg Franck published a story of a fantastic rabbit who laid magic eggs and hid them for lucky children to find. 

We owe a big colorful Easter eggs thanks to druggist William Townley, who invented Easter egg dye tablets in his Newark, New Jersey pharmacy in 1880. He branded his five-color dye kits, Paas, which comes from the word Passen, the Pennsylvania Dutch name for Easter. 

 

 

1859- " It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times..." Charles Dicken's novel "A Tale of Two Cities" began to be published in magazine form.

 

 

1902- Marie Curie discovered radium.

 

 

1909- Mary Pickford, the first movie star, goes in front of a camera for the first time.

 

1912- The first baseball game played at Fenway Park. The Boston Red Stockings, defeated the New York Highlanders (Yankees), 6-1.

 

1914- Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs opened. Commuters on the “El” could see how their cubbies were doing by looking for the W or L flag flying.

 

 

1912- A London West End theater manager and failed author named Abraham “Bram” Stoker died. He was 65. If anyone noticed him, it was because he managed the Lyceum theater where famed actor Henry King performed. Bram Stoker’s seven books and several plays made little money in his time. But a decade later a play adapted from one of his novels made him world famous. Dracula.

 

 

1925- The Warner Bros. Moving Picture Company merged with Vitagraph and began experimenting with fixing sound on to film.

 

 

1935- Radio program “Your Hit Parade” premiered.

 

1938-For Hitler’s birthday was the Berlin premiere of Leni Reifenstahl’s film Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 

 

1939- RCA president David Sarnoff dedicated RCA pavilion at World's Fair in New York City. First U.S. news event filmed on television. Sarnoff predicted that one day everyone would have a television in their home!

 

 

1946- Walt Disney’s Make Mine Music premiered in NY.

 

1951- After being fired by President Truman, General Douglas MacArthur was given a massive ticker tape parade on Wall Street in his honor.

 

1957- Chuck Jone’s short “Boyhood Daze” premiered.

 

1968- Pierre Elliot Trudeau sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada. Trudeau became one of Canada’s more colorful leaders with his flower-child wife Margaret. 

 

1974 - Paul McCartney and Wings releases "Band on the Run" .

 

1976 - At a stage performance at City Center NYC, George Harrison secretly slipped in and sang the Lumberjack Song with the Monty Python comedy troop. John Cleese recalled: “George was wonderful. He came up on stage with us as a Mountie and sang the 'Lumberjack Song’ impeccably, and I don’t suppose 10 percent of the audience knew he was up there."

 

1977- Woody Allen & Diane Keaton starred in the film “Annie Hall”. Young Christopher Walken did an early cameo as Annie’s weird brother. 

 

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 19, 2025

Birthdays: Paulo Veronese, Elliot Ness, Jayne Mansfield, Dudley Moore, Paloma Picasso, animator Iwao Takamoto, Ashley Judd, James Franco is 47, Kate Hudson is 46, Tim Curry is 89

 

 

1897-The first running of the Boston Marathon.

 

1910- The Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet. 

 

1927- Mae West found guilty of indecent behavior in writing, producing and starring in a Broadway musical entitled “SEX”. She was fined and emerged from jail more popular than ever.  She said:” Everyone thinks I am opposed to censorship. Actually, I’m in favor of censorship. I’ve made a fortune from it!”

 

 

1956- Movie star Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

 

1966- Roberta “Bobbie” Gibbs applied to run in the Boston Marathon but was rejected. “ Women are physiologically unable to bear the rigors of marathon running.” This day she hid near the starting line, and once the race got underway, she jumped out and blended into the runners. She dressed in her brother’s running shorts and cap. She expected to be booed by the crowd, but actually everyone cheered and shouted, “You go girlie!” She not only finished, but she finished in the top tier. She ran illegally in two more Boston marathons before they lifted the ban in 1971.

 

1970- XEROX PARC – The Xerox Company announced the setup of a research group in Palo Alto Cal. This group pioneered the development of the personal computer, GUIs, digital scanning and the laser printer. 

 

1973- Three years later Xerox Parc booted up the Alto, the first personal computer. They invented a new mouse, point and click windows, graphic interface and a digital printer. President Carter installed one in the White House. Yet Xerox didn’t know what to do with them, they were in the copier business. There was no internet yet, except for government communications. The Alto cost $16,500 each, too expensive for most, so the idea bombed. One day in 1979 a group from Apple visited led by Steve Jobs. The group was inspired by their progress, and they went back to Apple and put what they learned into the development of the Macintosh.

 

1987- The first Simpsons short aired today. MG01 "Good Night Simpsons" was on the 3rd episode of The Tracey Ullman Show, airing Sunday, 4/19/87 at 9pm. Animated by Wes Archer, Bill Kopp, and David Silverman.

 

 

tom sito's animation almanac for April 18, 2025

Birthdays: Lucretia Borgia, Franz Von Suppe’, Leopold Stokowski, Miklos Rosza, Herb Sorell, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Disney animator Phil Young, Conan O’Brien is 62, James Woods is 78, Eric Roberts, Rick Moranis is 74, Maria Bello is 58, David Tennant is 54, America Ferrerra is 41, Haley Mills is 79 

 

 

1906- THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE. 3,500 deaths and the city destroyed in the most frightening earthquake in U.S. History. Writer Jack London wrote:” Never has a modern Imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone!”  

San Franciscans dusted themselves off and rebuilt. By 1913 they were doing well enough to host the World’s Fair. A little ditty of the time said: 

            "They say God spanked the town, for being rather frisky.

                  Then why'd He knock all the churches down, yet leave up

                           Hotaling's Whiskey?"

 

1914-. The full feature length movie premiered in Turin, Italy. "Cabiria" directed by Giovane Patrone. It was believed to be the first full length movie ever until the discovery of a 1912 version of Quo Vadis.  D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic the Birth of a Nation popularized feature film format in the U.S..

 

1923- The Eastman-Kodak Company introduced 16mm movie film and projectors.

 

1955- Scientist Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 75. As he fell in and out of a coma, his last words were in German. Since no one around his bed could speak German, we don't know what his last words were. 

1958- At the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 78,672, the Dodgers play their first game in the City of Angels, defeating the new San Francisco Giants, 6-5.     

 

1967- Jonathan Frid first appeared as the vampire Barnabas Collins in the TV series Dark Shadows.

 

1994- Disney’s first theatrical musical based on one of their animated films, Beauty and the Beast: A New Musical, opened on Broadway. It’s first run would go for over thirteen years and became the 4^th highest earning show on Broadway. It saved Radio City Music Hall from demolition.

 

2000- Earlier that spring some of the world’s biggest internet companies –e-Bay, Amazon and CNN were paralyzed by a virus spread by a hacker. Today the FBI made an arrest. The culprit was a Canadian High School student who went by the domain name of Mafia Boy. He received probation, and a promise to use his computer only for schoolwork for two years.

tom sito's animation almanac for April 17, 2025

Birthdays: Tobias Stummer-1539, Duke Maximillian I of Bavaria, Nikita Khrushchev, Thorton Wilder, Clarence Darrow, Arthur Schnabel, Olivia Hussey, Gregor Piatigorsky, Don Kirschner, William Holden, Harry Reasoner, Boomer Eiseason, Sean Bean is 66, Victoria Beckham, Martha Sigall, Ron Miller, Jennifer Garner is 53, Rooney Mara is 40.

 

1869- The first professional baseball game ever played saw the Cincinnati Reds defeated the rival Cincinnati Amateurs, 24-15.

 

1875- The billiard game Snooker was invented by Sir Joseph Chamberlain, the uncle of the future British Prime Minister.

 

1924- Metro Pictures, Goldwyn and Mayer Films all merged to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. By 1940, MGM was the largest studio in Hollywood.

 

1929- Baseball great Babe Ruth married Ziegfeld Follies dancer Marge Colson in a morning ceremony. Then he drove to Yankee Stadium and hit a home run.

 

1937 "Porky's Duck Hunt" The birth of Daffy Duck. One legend is that voice actor Mel Blanc designed Daffy’s distinctive lisp to be his impression of the Looney Tunes boss Leon Schlesinger. When they screened this cartoon all the artists stood in dread of how Leon would take the joke. Leon never made the connection that the Ducks voice was an imitation of him. Michael Maltese recalled Leon saying: “ Hey fellowth, where’d you get the craythee voith of that duck? Lotta joketh!”  

 

1960- Munro, directed by Gene Deitch, written and designed by Jules Feiffer, won the academy award for best animated short.

 

1964-The Ford Mustang introduced by Lee Iacocca.

 

1971- The song "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night tops the pop charts. 

 

1973- In Marin County, young movie director George Lucas sat down and began writing a 13 page treatment for a story called, “The Adventures of Luke StarKiller: As Taken from the Journal of Whills”. This would later be polished into Star Wars, A New Hope.

 

1987- Comedian Dick Shawn ­the Hippy-Hitler in the original Mel Brooks film the Producers- was doing his one-man show The Second Funniest Man in the World at UC San Diego. After one particularly funny punch line he fell over dead from a heart attack. The audience laughed and clapped for several more minutes because they thought it was part of the act.

 

 

2011- The first episode of Game of Thrones premiered in the U.S. on HBO.