Tuesday, April 15, 2025

tom sito's animation almanac for April 15, 2025


Birthdays: Leonardo DaVinci, composer Domenico Gabrieli, Nanak I the founder of the Sikh religion 1469, Charles Wilson Peale, Theodore Rousseau, Henry James, Bessie Smith, Heinrich Klee, Kim Il Sung, Claudia Cardinale is 87, Roy Clark, Emma Thompson is 64, Hans Conried, Olympic runner Evelyn Ashford, Alice Braga is 40, Seth Rogen is 42, Emma Watson is 34

 

Fordicidia-Ancient Roman Festival where 31 pregnant cows are sacrificed to Tellus, the Earth-Mother.

 

 

1874- THE IMPRESSIONISTS. In Paris, a group of young modernist painters, fed up with being rejected by mainstream galleries and salons, banded together to mount their own show, Le Societie Anonyme Artistes, at photographer Nadar’s old studio. One franc, and a one flight walk up allowed you to see works by Cezanne, Degas, Pizarro and Monet. The critics hated it. One writer Louis Leroy said,” These people are not real artists, they are just Impressionists.” The name stuck.


 

1924- The Rand McNally Company published the first automobile road atlas or North America.

 

1925- Ford introduced the first pickup truck. Up to now farmers had cut the backs off Model T cars and welded boxes on, to make a light-load vehicle. There was also an earlier pickup truck called the International, but it had limited distribution.

 

1927- First Hollywood star's footprints in cement ceremony at Grauman's Chinese theater. Called Hollywood's most enduring publicity stunt. Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman himself are the first to leave their prints. Grauman also invented the classic Hollywood premiere with spotlights, red carpet runways and chauffeured limousines.

 

1933- Chief of production Darryl F. Zanuck quit Warner Bros. over an argument about employee salary cuts, to take over a struggling little movie studio called Twentieth Century Fox, which he turned into a giant.

 

1935- Kodachrome film developed. First as motion picture film, later for home photography.

 


1938- Donald’s Nephews, the first appearance of Huey, Duey and Louie. All voiced by Clarence Nash.  Written by Carl Barks and Jack Hannah.

 

1938- Walt Disney received his first honorary degree, a Master of Science from USC.

 

1940- Franklin Roosevelt covertly gave permission for American volunteers (mostly Army and Navy fighter pilots) to join General Claire Chennault to fight the Japanese invasion of China as part of a freelance foreign corps serving in the Chinese air force. The Flying Tigers are born. The famous toothy grimace painted on their planes was created by Walt Disney artist Hank Porter.

 

 

1950- Chuck Jones short The Hypo-chondri-Cat.

 

 

1952- The Franklin Savings Bank issued the first credit card in the U.S. 

 

1953- Famed illustrator Charles R. Knight died peacefully in a Manhattan hospital. The man who first us all showed us what dinosaurs might have looked like and inspired the lush look of such films as 1933 King Kong. His last words were to his daughter Lucy, “Don’t let anything happen to my drawings.”

 

1955- The First McDonald's Restaurant franchise opened in Des Plaines, Ill.  Ray Kroc, a traveling milkshake machine salesman, buys into a franchise restaurant idea cooked up in 1948 by two brothers named McDonald from Santa Bernadino. He urged the brothers to go national with their pre-prepared food system, but the brothers wanted to stay local. So, he offered them 1 million bucks for their idea and name, (would you go to" Kroc’s?”). The rest is history. 

 

 

1962- AUNTIE EM! 80 yar old actress Clara Blandick, the Auntie Em of the Wizard of Oz, took an overdose of sleeping pills and tied a plastic bag around her head.

She had been retired for several years and was suffering from crippling arthritis and failing eyesight. She said,” It is time to embark on The Great Adventure.” She left out on a table her resume and press clippings so the newspapers would get her obituary right. 

 

1964- Walt Disney sent his attorney Robert Foster to Orlando Florida to quietly start buying up land for a planned new Disneyland Park.

 

1983- Tokyo Disneyland opens.

 

1990- Kennan Ivory Wayans comedy show In Living Color premiered on FOX TV. The show made stars of Marlon Wayans, Damon Wayans, Jamie Fox, Jim Carrey and the Fly-Girls, Jennifer Lopez and Rosie Perez.

 

1994- English ice skater John Curry who created the concept of Ice Dancing, died of HIV/AIDS at age 44.

 

2019- A terrible fire gutted Notre Dame Cathedral, which had stood for 856 years.

 

 

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