Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 13, 2025

Birthdays: French Admiral Bailly de Suffren, Cheech Marin, Father Flannagan, Bob Crane, Cameron Crowe, Woye Solenka, Dave Garroway, Chef Paul Prudhomme, Michael Spinks, Film special effects artist Jim Danforth, Dr. Erno Rubik inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, Computer artist Lillian Schwartz, Harrison Ford is 83, Tom Kenny the voice of Spongebob Squarepants is 64, Mike Ploog is 83, Patrick Stewart is 85

 

 

1798- Poet William Wordsworth visited Tinturn Abbey and was inspired to write his famous elegy on the ruins.

 

1923- While digging in the Gobi Desert, paleontologist George Olsen discovered the first fossilized dinosaur eggs.

 

1925- Walt Disney and Lillian Bounds marry. She was one of Disney’s first employees hired. Lillian was one of the first female animation ink & paint artists. She would also cover the secretaries front desk on occasion. After Walt’s death she was central to the creation of the Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown and the Disney Family Museum in SF.

 

 

1930 – David Sarnoff the head of the NBC radio network said in the NY Times," The new invention of Television would be a theater in every home". Sounded crazy back then. Critics said it would require one room of the house be darkened, and they doubted people would just sit still that long. Held back first by the Depression, then the world war, television did not to really catch on until twenty years later.

 

1939- Frank Sinatra recorded his first album, this one with the Harry James Orchestra.

 

1949- Hollywood Studio exec David O. Selznick left his first wife Esther, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, to marry actress Jennifer Jones.

 

 

1953- Chuck Jones first day at the Disney Studio. Warner Bros laid him off with most of the animation staff when they attempted to go into all 3D production. Walt Disney hired Jones and this day showed him around the studio. Walt asked him, “ Well, where do you see yourself fitting in?” Chuck replied, “Well to be honest, the only job here I would really like is yours.” Walt laughed,” Well, that’s taken.” Chuck worked in story for 4 months, then returned to Warners when they realized their mistake and reconstituted their team. 

 

1981- Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits opened.

 

1984- The film The Last Starfighter with Robert Preston opened. Pitched as, “The Music Man in Outer Space” because it was Robert Preston’s last film. The first movie where all the spaceships and effects were done with CGI, instead of miniatures and models. Their computers had a total combined memory of 25 MGB.

 

1985- Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldorf organized a massive live concert called LIVE AID. Televised and seen by 1.5 billion people, it raised money for African famine relief. Madonna, Santanna, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys and reunions of Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who and Led Zeppelin.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for july 12, 2025

Birthdays: Gaius Julius Caesar, Henry David Thoreau, Impressionist painter Eugene Boudin, Oscar Hammerstein, Kirsten Flagstad, Andrew Wyeth, Pablo Neruda, George Eastman, Milton Berle, Cheryl Ladd, Van Cliburn, Richard Buckminster Fuller, George Washington Carver, Josiah Wedgewood- of Wedgewood china and pottery, Michelle Rodriguez, Richard Simmons, Krysty Yamaguchi, Brian Grazer is 73, Bill Cosby is 88, Ben Burt- George Lucas’ sound effects guru who created the sounds of Darth Vader and R2D2, is 77.

 

1870- Celluloid film patented. Invented by John Carbutt, Hannibal Godwin and George Eastman. They had been trying to invent a substitute for ivory billiard balls. Inventor George Eastman later perfected the sprocket and hole system of roll film for cameras, replacing the large glass plates. Celluloid film would be the standard for photographs and movies until the Digital Revolution of the 1990s.

1876- Gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok arrived in Deadwood South Dakota to prospect for gold, see some old friends like Calamity Jane, and play a little poker. 

1901 – Baseball pitcher Cy Young won his 300th game.

1914 – Young reform school graduate Babe Ruth made his baseball debut, as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.

1928 - 1st televised tennis match.

1937- The US Government passed the Marijuana Licensing Act, the first of many laws to try and regulate and eventually eliminate marijuana growing. The act was ruled unconstitutional in 1969, but by then marijuana was top on the list of illegal substances.

1960: The first Etch-a-Sketch goes on sale.  Frenchman Andre’ Cassagnes invented it. He was the son of a Parisian baker born allergic to flour. Getting a job as an electrician, he noticed the properties of aluminum powder sticking to a glass. (he called it Telecran’, or L’Ecran Magique, or “The Magic Screen”). His first corporate sponsor had their accountant Arthur Granjean do the paperwork for the invention. Granjean wrote his own name in instead of Cassagnes, so in many books he gets the credit as the inventor. After failing to get some of the bigger toy companies to bite, They sold the invention to the Ohio Art Company.

1962 – The Rolling Stones first performance at the Marquee Club, London. One band member named Elmo Lewis, changed his name to Brian Jones.

1979- Disco Demolition Night. Disc jockey Steve Dahl of WLUP created an event where Chicago fans could get into Comisky Park for 98 cents if they each brought a Disco record to burn. Instead of the usual crowd of 5,000, they got 50,000 who rushed the field. Thousands of records were thrown at the players like Frisbees while they were trying to play, and the field torn up when they dropped a crate of records on the pitcher’s mound. The Chicago White Sox were forced to forfeit the game to the Detroit Tigers. 

1990- TV series Northern Exposure premiered.

2015- In Disney World Florida the exhibit The Magic of Disney Animation was closed down.

tom sito's animation almanac for July 11, 2025

History for 7/11/2025
Birthdays: Robert the Bruce, John Quincy Adams, Sir Thomas Bowdler, E.B. White, Yul Brynner, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leon Spinks, Tab Hunter, Toby Bluth, Sela Ward, Kimberly “Little Kim’ Jones, Stephen Lang is 73, Giorgio Armani is 91, Martin Scorsese is 82

1848 - London's Waterloo Station opened.

1855- An earthquake knocked down Los Angeles -again.

1906- Nordisk Films in Copenhagen founded. 

1937- George Gershwin died of a brain tumor at age 38.

1938- The radio show The Mercury Theater of the Air with Orson Welles and John Houseman premiered.

1952- LA’s Randy’s Donuts, with its iconic giant donut sign on its roof, opened.

1962-The Tellstar I satellite transmitted the first television images from France to USA.

1969 – The Rolling Stones release "Honky Tonk Woman".

1970- “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night hits #1 in the pop charts. The song was written by young composer Randy Newman. 

1975- Chinese archaeologists excavating at the ancient site of XIAN discover an entire army of 6,000 terra cotta statues buried in formation with their chariots and cavalry. Each life-sized statue was an individual portrait. They were buried in 221 BC to protect the tomb of China's first emperor Qin Shiwang, whose name is where the name China came from.

1979- The world held its breath and covered their heads as the first U.S. space station SKYLAB fell back to earth. 77 tons of space debris in 500 pieces falling around Australia and the Indian Ocean. Luckily it didn’t hit anyone, although chunks were imbedded in an office building in Perth.

1991- Disney announced it would enter into a deal with a bay area digital offshoot of Lucasfilm named PIXAR. Hit films including Toy Story, Monsters Inc. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Coco were the result.

1997- A lunatic named Jonathan Norman was arrested for trying to break into Steven Spielberg’s home. He believed Spielberg “wanted to be raped”, and had on him chloroform, duct tape and S&M paraphernalia.

2016- Nintendo released the Pokemon Go app for smart phones and it caused a sensation.

2021- Richard Branson, billionaire CEO of Virgin Airlines, went up in space, just shy of orbit, in a privately made rocket plane. Amazon head Jeff Bezos followed shortly after. This initiated a new fashion for Space tourism by the Beautiful People set. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 10, 2025

Birthdays: John Calvin, Marcel Proust, James McNeill Whistler, Nicholas Tesla, Carl Orff, Camille Pissarro, Adolphus Busch the founder of Budweiser, George DiChirico, Jacky "Legs" Diamond, Arlo Guthrie, Jake LaMotta, Joe Shuster- one of the creators of Superman, Fred Gywnne, David Brinkley, Arthur Ashe, Queen Camilla, Jessica Simpson is 45, Chiwetel Ejiofor is 48.

1873 - French poet Paul Verlaine wounded Arthur Rimbaud in a pistol duel.

1881 -Jesse James robbed his last bank, The Davis and Sexton Bank of Iowa. Then he changed his name to Mr. Howard and tried to live quietly with his wife Zerelda Mimms in Missouri. He called her “Z”. 

1890- Wyoming became a state.

1892 - 1st concrete-paved street built in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

100 Years Ago-1925- THE SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL-Tennessee school teacher John Thomas Scopes went on trial for violating a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution to children. Scopes was defended by famed lawyer Clarence Darrow sent by the ACLU, the prosecutor was William Jennings Bryan. 

The trial evolved (forgive the pun) from a small claims misdemeanor to a debate on Charles Darwin’s theory itself. This day the media descended upon the little town of Dayton Tennessee, which had hoped to attract attention for its slumping economy. It was the first trial broadcast live on Chicago radio WGN nationwide. 

Hundreds of spectators attended from hillbillies with squirrel rifles, a chimpanzee in a suit called Mr. Joe Mendy to columnist H.L. Mencken, packing 4 bottles of bootleg scotch and a typewriter. Darrow humiliated Bryan in the debate by pointing out the contradictions in the Bible, but Scopes was found guilty anyway. The ban on teaching evolution remained in Tennessee until 1967.

1932- In a baseball game against the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indian pitcher Eddie Rommel perfects the knuckleball pitch.

 1941- Jazz great Jelly Roll Morton died at 50 in Los Angeles from complications of asthma. He liked to call himself the inventor of jazz. As debatable as that claim was, he was one of the first musicians to develop a personal solo style distinct from the rest of his band. Legend is his mother practiced voodoo in New Orleans, and she told him the reason for his fame and fortune was because she had pledged his soul to the Devil.  He spent his last hours in a panic with his wife Mabel anointing his head with Holy oil. He’s buried under his given name Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe.

1950 - "Your Hit Parade" premieres on NBC (later CBS) TV.

1976- the last wooden slide rule produced. The K&E company gave it to the Smithsonian.

1985 - Coca-Cola Co admitted New Coke was a big mistake and announced it would resume selling old formula Coke. 

1987- The Brave Little Toaster premiered in theaters. Directed by Jerry Rees. 

1979 - Chuck Berry sentenced to 4 months for $200,000 in tax evasion. The old rocker said:” It never fails, every ten years I wind up in jail for something.”

1985- “We Don’t Need Another Evil. “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome opened in theaters.

1992- Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World premiered. Starring with the animation was Kim Bassinger , Gabriel Byrne and a young actor named Brad Pitt.

tom sito's animation almanac for July 9, 2025

Birthdays: Schopenhauer, Elias Howe, Ottorino Respighi, David Hockney, Samuel Elliot Morrison, Sir Edward Heath, Kelly McGillis, Barbera Cartland, J. Paul Getty II, H.V. Kaltenborn, Richard Roundtree, Daniel Guggenheim, John Tesch, Fred Savage, Chris Cooper, O.J. Simpson, Courtenay Love is 65, Debbie Sludge is 75, Brian Dennehy, Tom Hanks is 69, Sofia Vegara is 52

271B.C.- Greek philosopher Epicurus died at age 72. A strict vegetarian, he suffered from kidney stones and dysentery from drinking only water. 

1842 - Notary Stamp Law passes.

1910 - Walter Brookings becomes 1st to pilot an airplane up to an altitude of one mile!

1918- Depressed after his sweetheart Estelle married another man, writer William Faulkner left his Oxford Mississippi home to go to Canada and enlist in the RAF. He never saw combat, because World War I ended as his training was completed.

1929- The first airline service set up between New York City and Los Angeles (Glendale Airport). It was set up by Clement Melville Keyes, and Jack Maddux, running Ford Tri-Motor airplanes. First called Maddux Airlines, then later Trans World Airlines or TWA.

1937- A fire at the Fox Studio film vaults destroyed thousands of stored nitrate prints. Entire careers were erased from film history. Stars like Theda Bara and William Farnum had most of their work destroyed. A tragedy to film history.

1955 - "Rock Around Clock", arguably the first Rock & Roll song, hits #1 on Top 100 chart\

1956 - Dick Clark's 1st appearance as host of American Bandstand.

1972- David Bowie first appeared as his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust.

1976- Walt Disney’s The Treasure of Matecumbe premiered.

1981 - Walt Disney's the "Fox & The Hound," released. The first animated feature Walt Disney had no input on. Although the film has brief screen credits, it marks the torch being passed from the Nine Old Men golden age generation to the boomer generation. A complete personnel roster would include Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Woolie Reitherman, Tim Burton, John Lasseter, Bill Kroyer, Don Bluth, Lorna Cook, Henry Selick, Brad, Bird, John Pomeroy, Dan Haskett, Linda Miller, Steve Hulett, John Musker, Jerry Rees, Rebecca Rees, Randy Cartwright, Glen Keane and many more.

1983- The Police’s single "Every Breath You Take" goes to #1.

1993- Industrial Light & Magic completed its transition to digital technology by shutting down its Howard Anderson Optical Printer. The Optical Printer system of mattes had been the way Motion Picture visual effects had been done since Georg Melies in 1909, but the Digital Revolution had changed everything.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 8, 2025

B-Dazes: Jean de LaFontaine, John D. Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller, Kathe Kollwitz, Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin, Louis Jordan, Billy Eckstine, Steve Lawrence, Percy Grainger, Cynthia Gregory, Phillip Johnson, Kim Darby, Marty Feldman, Roone Arledge, Kevin Bacon is 67, Billy Crudup,  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Angelica Huston, Raffi , Jeffrey Tambor is 81.

 

 

1835- The Liberty Bell cracked. It rang for the Declaration of Independence and was being rung for the death of Chief Justice John Marshall.

 

1881- Soda fountain owner Ed Berners of Two Falls, Wisconsin first drizzled chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream and invented the Ice Cream Sundae. It cost a nickel. It was called that a sundae because he only served it on Sundays as a treat after attending Church.

 

 

1907-The First Ziegfield Follies staged on the roof of the New York Theater, today called the New Amsterdam Theater.

 

1911- Burbank incorporated as a city.

 

 

1922- Horn player Louis Armstrong first left his hometown of New Orleans to go to Chicago and play in King Oliver’s Jazz band.

 

 

1932- Tod Brownings disturbing movie "Freaks" about a family of circus sideshow performers, premiered. One of Us, One of Us!

 

1950- Chuck Jones’ Eight-Ball Bugs” With the little penguin.

 

 

1961- Panda and the Magic Serpent premiered the U.S. Directed by Taiji Yabushita. The first Japanese feature done in color.

 

1969 - Thor Heyerdahl and his raft Ra II landed in Barbados, 57 days from Morocco. He was trying to prove ancient mariners could have traveled from Africa to the Americas using a ship made from papyrus reeds. It also may explain the phenomenon that some Egyptian mummies have been found to have traces of tobacco and chocolate in their stomachs.

 

 

1982- Walt Disney's TRON- the first film featuring computer graphics premiered.It only was about 20 minutes of actual CGI, in some parts actors wore florescent tape down their bodies to look like glowing vector lines. But it was a significant achievement.Remember in 1981 there were no off-the-shelf graphics software. The big deal at the time was that MAGI had just solved the "hidden Line" problem.

 

1998- An original 1477 William Caxton copy of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" became the world's most expensive book when it was sold for £4,621,500 to billionaire oil heir Paul Getty.

 

tom sito's animation almanac for July 6, 2025

Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Czar Nicholas I, Frida Kahlo, Della Reese, Bill Haley,

Nancy Reagan, Sylvester Stallone is 79, Merv Griffin, Janet Leigh, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sebastian Cabot, James Bodrero, The Dalai Lama, LaVerne Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Ned Beatty, Geoffrey Rush is 74, Former President George W. Bush is 79, Fifty Cent is 50 Years, Jennifer Saunders is 67.

Happy St. Fermin's Day, the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Remember when running the trick to it is keeping oneself directly in front of the bull’s head. This area between his eyes is his blind spot. 

1886 - Horlick's of Wisconsin offers the first malted milk to public. It began as an attempt to create a new type of baby formula.

1895- A businessman named William Sydney Porter returned from Honduras where he had fled after being indicted for embezzlement. He had returned because he had learned of the illness of his wife.  Porter was sent to prison, and while there began writing little stories which he later published under the name O. Henry. 

1917- As Lowell Thomas’ newsreel cameras rolled, Lawrence of Arabia and Bedouin Sheik Ouda Abu-Tai captured the Red Sea Port of Aqaba from Turkish troops. The battle was dramatized in the 1962 David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia.

1925, Walt and Roy Disney place a $400 deposit ($5,750.00 in modern money) on a lot located at 2719 Hyperion Avenue, in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Their aim is to build a big new studio. 

1928- The film "The Lights of New York" premiered at the Strand theater on Broadway. 1927's the Jazz Singer popularized sound movies while still being half silent. This film was the first with an all dialogue track. 

1944- A fire broke out in the main tent of Ringling Bros Circus during a children’s matinee in Hartford Connecticut. The big top had been waterproofed with a paraffin solution thinned with gasoline and now that mixture engulfed the tent in flames. 168 died and 682 more were injured, mostly children. In 1950 an arsonist named Robert Segee admitted he started the Hartford Circus Fire. One little girl who died was never identified. Newspapers called her “Little Miss Nobody”.

1957- Chuck Jones short "What’s Opera, Doc?" debuted. “Kill da wa-bitt, kill da wa-bitt..."

1957- 16 year old John Lennon first met 15 year old Paul McCartney at a church picnic near Woolton, England. Lennon invited McCartney to join his first band called the Quarrymen, but McCartney missed their first engagement because of a boy scout trip.

1964 - Beatles' film "Hard Day's Night" premiered in London. The bands iconoclastic, antics portrayed by Richard Lester’s surreal free style direction set the style for the music videos of the future.

1965 - Rock group Jefferson Airplane formed.

1996- Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump opened in theaters.

1998- French workers at Disneyland Paris theme park went on strike for better pay and not having to smile constantly like Americans do. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 5, 2025

Birthdays: P.T. Barnum, Beatrix Potter, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, Jean Cocteau, Admiral David Farragut, Len Lye, George Pompidou, Shirley Knight, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Milburn Stone (Doc on Gunsmoke), Warren Oates, Bill Watterson, Henry Cabot Lodge IV, Animator Dave Hilberman, Eva Green is 46, Huey Lewis is 75, Edie Falco is 62

1910- Writer O. Henry died of cirrhosis and tuberculosis at 47. His last words were "Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark." He became a writer while serving a jail term for embezzlement.

1930- The Fox Midland Theater held the first meeting of a Mickey Mouse Club. 

1935- The Wagner Act passed congress, decreeing all American workers have the right to collective bargaining and to form unions.

1943- Betty Grable married bandleader Harry James.

1952- London Transport scrapped the last of their electric streetcars in favor of diesel polluting double-decker buses.

1954- Elvis Presley recorded "That’s All Right" at Sun Records in Memphis. Some call it the first true Rock & Roll song, but that is disputed by Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock, Ike Turners Delta 88 and many other R&B hits. “That’s All Right” was written by black bluesman Arthur Big-Boy Crudup, who never profited from the song’s success and died living in a shack.

1954- Tomoyuki Tanaka announced the beginning of production on the movie Godzilla.

1975- Tennis player Arthur Ashe became the first African-American to win Wimbledon.

1989- The first episode of the TV sitcom Seinfeld.

1994- In Bellevue Washington, a man named Jeff Bezos started a company selling used books through the mail. Named Cadabra shortly after he changed it to Amazon. 

2002- International Professional Women’s Tennis had become dominated by two amazing American sisters, Venus and Serena Williams. This day Serena defeated Venus to win Wimbledon. Of 17 Wimbledon Women’s singles since, the Williams sisters won 14 of them. 

Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 4, 2025

Birthdays: Jean Pierre Blanchard the balloonist-1753, George M. Cohan, Stephen Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Calvin Coolidge, Rube Goldberg, Louis Armstrong*, Edward Walker the inventor of the Lava Lamp, Mayer Lansky, Tokyo Rose, Louis B. Mayer, George Murphy, Bill Waterson, Neil Simon, Mitch Miller, Gina Lollobrigida, George Steinbrenner, Ann Landers, Ron Kovic, Geraldo Rivera, Victoria Abril is 66, Pam Shriver, Rene Laloux, Gloria Stuart, Malia Obama, Eva Marie Saint is 101

1855- Henry Davis Thoreau moved to Walden Pond. He was the first U.S. writer to describe nature as a thing of beauty instead of a mortal enemy to be conquered. This date is considered the birth of the American Conservation Movement.

1855- Walt Whitman published his quarto of poems The Leaves of Grass. Many people were shocked at its frank description of sexual desire. Whitman’s mother said:” Walt is a good boy, but strange.”

1862- Oxford mathematics professor Charles Dodgson rowed ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sister up the Thames in a small punt. The little girls called him Dodo. They begged him for a story, so Dodgson made up fantastic tales of March Hares, Mad Hatters and the Queen of Hearts.

Dodgson later wrote them down and published them in 1865 as Alice in Wonderland. He used the pen name Lewis Carroll, which was a joke on the fact that Renaissance scholars adopted big stuffy Latin names like Ludovicus Carolus Magnus.

1883- Buffalo Bill staged his first Wild West Show in North Platte Nebraska. Bill and his partners took the show all over the US and played for the crowned heads of Europe until 1916.

1905- Los Angeles developer Abbott Kinney had broken with his partners over the Santa Monica Pleasure Pier. He moved down the coast to some marshy wetlands and built a new community with canals, lagoons and gondolas. The town of Venice California was dedicated this day. In 1925, the City of LA got rid of most of the canals and gondolas. Venice went on to be a seaside mecca for Beatniks, Hippies and weightlifters like young Arnold Schwarzenegger.

1911- The first rollercoaster on the Pacific Coast opened on Santa Monica Pier.

1914- First day of filming on D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.”

1915- Heavyweight Champion Jess Willard who had taken the championship from Jack Johnson was himself beaten by a new kid named Jack Dempsey, the Manassas Mauler. Dempsey chewed pine tar to make his jaw hard and washed his face in ocean brine to toughen his skin against cuts. Dempsey hit Willard so hard, he broke his jaw and knocked out six teeth by the fourth round. Jack Dempsey defended his title several more times and became a popular media figure by appearing with many Hollywood Movie stars.  After he retired, he opened a bar-restaurant in NY Times Square called Dempseys, the first sports-bar.

1917- The US First Division paraded through Paris in advance of the main American armies still to come. General Blackjack Pershing laid a wreath on the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette and proclaimed:” Lafayette- nous voisci! Lafayette, we are here!” Jake Strauss the owner of Macy’s Department Store changed it to “Gallerie Lafayette, we are here!”

1917- The July Coup. Lenin and the Bolsheviks tried to overthrow the Russian Government early but were put down. They fled into exile, Lenin lived in London, Trotsky lived in the Bronx. They tried again in October.

1926- Hungarian film director Mano Mikhali Kertesz arrived in Hollywood. He changed his name to the more manageable Michael Curtiz and directed classic films like Captain Blood, Robin Hood and Casablanca.

1927-Walt Disney’s Trolley Troubles with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit premiered.

1933- In San Francisco Bay, the work began on the Oakland Bay Bridge..

1956- MIT’s TX-1 Whirlwind computer added an adapted typewriter keyboard to enter data.

1966- President Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act.

1968- “The Green Berets” premiered. John Wayne financed and produced this attempt to counter the antiwar sentiment sweeping America by creating a pro-war WWII style movie about the Vietnam conflict.

1969-“Give Peace a Chance.” released by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band.

1976- What’s Love Got to Do With It?  Singer Tina Turner left Ike Turner.

1976- The Ramones first arrived in England for a tour. They greatly inspired future bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols. When playing at the Palladium the Sex Pistols said they couldn’t get tickets to get in, so the Ramones pulled them in through the men’s room window. Hey, Ho, Lets Go!

1981- UPA producer Steve Bosustow passed away.

1982- Jimmy Connors defeated John McEnroe for his final Wimbledon Championship.

1982- Ozzie Ozbourne married Sharon Ozbourne.

1984- First Lady Nancy Reagan began the campaign to combat drugs among kids by saying “Just Say No”. Two of her Secret Service bodyguards were later caught doing cocaine.

1990- 2 Live Crew released the song Banned in the USA.

1997-NASA landed Pathfinder on Mars and deployed Sojourner, the first ever autonomous robotic rover.  Expected to function for only two months, the rover collected data on the Red Planet for the next ten years.

2012- The Higgs-Boson is a subatomic particle. It existed only in theory until in  this day, the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced they had observed one.

2022- Kazuki Takahashi, the millionaire creator of the manga craze Yu-Gi-Oh, drowned off the coast of Okinawa while trying to rescue a young American girl swimmer caught in a rip current. He heroically saved the girl, when a freak wave took him. He was 60.

tom sito's animation almanac for july 3, 2025

Birthdays: King Louis XI of France "the Spider King"1423, Franz Kafka, Mr. Preserved Fish -New York Congressman 1819, Joel Chandler Harris “Uncle Remus”, Dave Barry, Leos Janacek, John Singleton Copley, Ken Russell, Tom Stoppard, George Sanders, Peter Fountain, Yeardley Smith, Tom Cruise is 63, Kevin Hart is 45

1931- The Cab Calloway Orchestra recorded 'The St. James Infirmary Blues."

1937- In California the Del Mar Racetrack opened.  Owner Bing Crosby personally welcomed the first customers to his track. Called “Where the Surf Meets the Turf.”

1943- Chuck Jones short Wackiki Rabbit debuted. Background design by Bernice Prolyfka were based on Hawaiian shirt patterns. The two castaways were caricatures of story people Ted Pierce and Mike Maltese, who provided their voices.

1969- Brian Jones, having been kicked out of the Rolling Stones just days before -- drowned in his swimming pool.  His home was once the estate of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne. 

1969- On the same day, John and Yoko Lennon were almost killed in a car crash, along with John's son Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko.

1971- The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison, was found dead of a heart attack in his bathtub in Paris. He was 28. 

1971- In Sweden, the first laser eye surgery was performed.

1985- Robert Zemeckis’ film Back to the Future opened. 

1991- James Cameron’s Terminator 2 Judgement Day, premiered.

1996- Independence Day, by Roland Emmerich opened.

2002- Powerpuff Girls the Movie, premiered.

tom sito's animation almanac for july 2, 2025

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Valentinian III (419AD), Bishop Thomas Cranmer (1429) , Christoph Witobald Gluck, Herman Hesse, Medgar Evers, Patrice Lamumba, Thurgood Marshall, Andrez Kertesz, Richard Petty, Abe Levitow, Ken Curtis, Ahmad Jamal, Cheryl Ladd, Jose Canseco, Jerry Hall, Imelda Marcos, Ron Silver, Lindsay Lohan, Brock Peters, Margot Robbie is 35, Larry David is 78

1650- The first daily newspaper is published in the city of Leipzig. 

1723- Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorale Magnificat first performed in Leipzig.

1921- To prove what a neat new invention radio was, RCA chief David Sarnoff broadcast for free a live feed of the Jack Dempsey vs. George Carpentier championship prizefight. He had loud speakers set up in Times Square that attracted ten thousand listeners. As it happened, the live reports were a sham. An eyewitness to the fight relayed details via tickertape to a Manhattan studio. Then an announcer read them aloud over the radio as though he were there. No matter, the effect was electric. Suddenly everyone wanted a radio in their home. 

1927- The film Flesh and the Devil established a new star named Greta Garbo.

1934- Twentieth Century Fox signed a movie contract with child star Shirley Temple.


1945- In the July issue of The Atlantic Magazine, MIT Scientist Vanaevar Bush predicted some day in the future we would all be writing to each other on little electronic boxes on our desks. He didn’t have the name computer yet. He called it a “memex”. We would read stories, watch movies, have access to all the libraries of the world. We would send each other letters and pictures on it. In a Manila hospital, a young serviceman named Douglas Engelbart was recovering from war wounds. He read this article there and was inspired to study this new field. He eventually invented the computer mouse, hot keys, and coined the term "on-line."

1951- New Yorker cartoonist Sam Cobean was killed in a car accident. He was 38.The following year a collection of his work “The Cartoons of Cobean” was published by Saul Steinberg, with a forward by Charles Addams.

1955- The Lawrence Welk T.V. Show debuts. Wannaful, wannaful! 

1973-Art Babbitt began his animation lectures to Richard Williams London Studio. Dick took copious notes, and they became one of the most copied, underground how-to books in film history.

1980- the Abrahams-Zucker Bros comedy Airplane! Premiered. 

1982- Don Bluth’s The Secret of Nimh premiered.

1986- Walt Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective released in theaters. 

1986- John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China debuted.

Tom Sito's animation almanac for July 1, 2025

Birthdays: Louis Bleriot, Tommy Dorsey, George Sand, Charles Laughton, James Cagney, Princess Diana of Wales, Twyla Tharp, Carl Lewis, Jamie Farr, Sidney Pollack, Wally "Famous"Amos, Estee Lauder, Debbie Harry (Blondie), Olivia De Haviland, Toshiyuki Sakata (Oddjob), Genevieve Bujold, Karen Black, David Prowse, Dan Ackroyd is 73. Andre Crouch, Pamela Anderson is 57, Liv Tyler is 48 

Welcome to July, named for Julius Caesar. Originally the Romans called it month number five- "Quintilicus Mensis". They had a ten month calendar that began with Mars (March) and ran out of names after Juno (June). After Caesar’s assassination, the Senate voted to change the name of Month Five to the month of the Divine Julius. So, thank Caesar that you don't have to celebrate The Fourth of Quintilicus.

1926- THE FIRST ANIMATED FEATURE. Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed premiered in Paris.  Ten years before Walt Disney’s Snow White.

1933- Mickey’s Gala Premiere, Mickey short with Joe Grant’s caricatures of famous Hollywood celebrities.

1940- Chuck Jones short Old Glory. Porky gets an American history lesson from no less than Uncle Sam himself.

1941- Animation director Tex Avery stormed out of the Looney Tunes Studio when Jack Warner ordered cuts in his Bugs Bunny cartoon, THE HECKLING HARE. 40 feet was trimmed from the end of the cartoon by Leon Schlesinger who agreed with Mr. Warner it had one too many endings, involving Bugs and the Dog falling through space endlessly. Tex felt the run-on gag was the whole point of the joke. Leon put him on a four-week suspension without pay, but Avery had already lined up a new directing gig at MGM.

1941- THE FIRST TV COMMERCIAL -During the live coverage of a Brooklyn Dodgers-Philadelphia Phillies baseball game the first FCC sanctioned television commercial aired. It was for the Bulova Watch Company.

1944- Leon Schlesinger sold his animation and shorts company outright to Warner Bros Studio and took a less taxing post in merchandising until his death in 1949.

1945- With WWII in Europe over, Bill Mauldin's wartime comic strip "Willie and Joe' ended it's run along with the European front-line edition of Stars and Stripes magazine. Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame said no one could draw mud like Bill Maudlin. Mauldin was once chewed out by General Patton for making his GIs so slovenly and cynical. He felt it was a negative image of the American Fighting Man. Seesh...everybody’s a critic!

1945- NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the Sunday comics section aloud over the radio because of a newspaper strike.

1956- The film Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers premiered. Effects by Ray Harryhausen.

1958- Does She or Doesn’t She? Clairol hair dye introduced.

1963- U.S. post office introduced zip codes.

1966- The US Medicare Program began. The first Medicare card was given by LBJ to elderly former President Harry Truman. At the time it was felt there was no need to include prescription drugs in the program since their cost was so low. 

1970- Hanna & Barbera’s attempt at a primetime animated series "Where’s Huddles?"

1970- The Xerox Company of Connecticut were convinced to open a new computer science lab on the west coast near Stanford University. It was called Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC. In 9 years, PARC would develop laser-printing, color graphics, GUI’s- Graphics User Interface, windows, cursor point and click, and Ethernet. 

1972- Ms. Magazine started publication.

1979- Sony introduced the Walkman portable cassette player in the U.S.

1981- The Wonderland Murders. Overly endowed porn star Johnny Holmes (aka Johnny Wadd) was implicated in a gang murder. This day four drug dealers called The Wonderland Gang were found beaten to death in his home. Holmes was tried as an accomplice but acquitted. Johnny Holmes died in 1988, and his story became the basis for Mark Walhberg’s character in the film Boogie Nights. 

1996- The movie Dinosaur Valley Girls premiered.

1998- Barbara Streisand married James Brolin.