Birthdays: Guy de Maupassant, Amboise Thomas, William- first black child born in British America, Neil Armstrong, John Huston, Robert Taylor, Conrad Aiken, Roman Gabriel, Selma Diamond, Patrick Ewing, Joseph Merrick the Elephant Man, Loni Anderson, John Saxon, Jonathan Silverman is 54
1847 -Author Herman Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne. They went for a hike together in the Berkshires.
1910- The first Traffic Light set up on Euclid and 105th St. in Cleveland.
1921- KDKA Pittsburgh does the 1st radio baseball broadcast Pirates-8, Phillies-0.
1924- Arf, Arf ! the first Little Orphan Annie comic strip drawn by Harold Gray.
1926- Magician Harry Houdini stays in a coffin under water for one hour.
1927- RCA-Victrola record producer Ralph Peer realized there might be a market for “Hillbilly Music”. He set up a makeshift recording studio above a furniture store in Bristol Tennessee, and put an ad in the local papers for talent. In one day, he recorded stars Jimmy Rogers the Singing Brakeman, The Carter Family, The Tennessee Mountaineers and Ernest “Pop” Stoneman. This session has been called the “Big Bang of Country Music.”
1945- THE INDIANAPOLIS The ship that carried the atomic bombs, the cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-168 on the way back from Tinian Island. Because the Indianapolis was under top secret radio silence it took five days for the Navy to realize that she was even missing. By the time rescue planes reached the site most of her sailors had drowned or had been eaten by sharks. Out of 1,100 sailors in the water only 300 were found. Survivors recalled how they could feel the sharks noses bumping into the soles of their feet, then another comrade would disappear under water.
This day the plane that discovered them did so by accident. He had spotted the oil slick and assumed it was a submerged Japanese submarine and was closing in to drop a bomb when he saw the men’s heads bobbing in the water. The Navy court-martialed the ship’s Captain McVay for gross negligence. They even called the commander of the Japanese submarine to testify. McVay never got over the shame and committed suicide in 1968. In the movie Jaws, old salt Robert Shaw recounted the horrible story of the Indianapolis.
1953- The film “From Here to Eternity” opened, starring Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift. But the big story was Frank Sinatra’s Oscar winning performance as Maggio that signaled the turnaround in his slumping career.
1955- The Screen Actor’s Guild strikes Hollywood for television residuals. Their president was Walter Pidgeon who had played Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet.
1956- Chuck Jones short Rocket By Baby premiered. “Mot!”
1957- American Bandstand featuring the eternally teenage Dick Clark debuts on television.
1961- The theme park Six Flags over Texas first opened.
1962- GOODBYE, NORMA JEAN. Marilyn Monroe found in bed dead of barbiturate overdose. She was 36. Whether you think the starlet overdosed by accident, suicide, or was done in by the Mafia, the Kennedys, a Svengali like personal physician, lovesick physical therapist or space aliens, it is still a mystery. She made a call to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s office in Washington several hours earlier but was rebuffed. Her last call was to her hairdresser Mr. Guilaroff. She left the bulk of her belongings to her drama teacher Lee Strassberg and her funeral was organized by ex-husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio. Her Westwood cottage had a tile over the doorway which read :"All my troubles end Here."
1964 - Actress Anne Bancroft & Comedian Mel Brooks wed.
1966- Caesar’s Palace Hotel & Casino first opened to the public. This was the first of the super-resort casinos, with a total theme park design and three times the space and accommodations of anything yet seen on the Vegas Strip. Its success ushered in an accelerated era of building for Las Vegas casinos.
1966 –It a moment of youthful indiscretion, John Lennon declared his band the Beatles were now more popular than Jesus. This flippant comment provoked a firestorm of nationwide protest among conservative elements in the US. Beatles albums were publicly burned in the streets. Lennon apologized, then followed up by saying he was being crucified over the comment. Paul McCartney rushed up to the mike to insist that wasn't the choice of words they preferred.
1967- Bobby Gentry released “Ode to Billy Jo”.
1980- The Osmond Brothers break up.
1984- Actor Richard Burton died of cerebral hemorrhage at 58. With a tumultuous career and two marriages to Elizabeth Taylor, the hard drinking Burton was the most famous English-speaking actor of his day. But unlike Lawrence Olivier and Ian McKellen, he was never knighted. In 1974 while staring in a movie as Winston Churchill, Burton wrote an editorial titled "To play Churchill is to Hate Him". A son of desperately poor Welsh miners, he strongly objected to Churchills upper-class elitism. The British public was outraged, the royal family in particular. Richard Burton was buried with a copy of Dylan Thomas’ poems in his pocket.
1984- Joan Benoit won the first Women’s Olympic Marathon.
1986 - It's revealed painter Andrew Wyeth had secretly created 240 drawings & paintings of his neighbor Helga Testorf, in Chadds Ford, Pa
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