Birthdays: Meriwether Lewis ,Austrian Emperor Franz Josef II, Leo Slezak Shelly Winters, Caspar Weinburger, Roberto Clemente, Rafer Johnson, Enoch Light, Coco Channel, Roman Polanski, Patrick Swayze, Madeleine Stowe, Christian Slater, Edward Norton, Martin Mull,

Robert Redford, born Charles Robert Redford Jr, another actor who at one time wanted to be an animator, is 71
fame and Oscars are okay, but what I really wanted to do is make inbetweens on Ickle Meets Pickle!

Congratulations to former Disney animator Doug Lefler who has joined the Tim Burton club of Animators who become live action directors. His first big movie- THE LAST LEGION with Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley, opens this weekend. Can you think of other animators who are now directing live action?

325-a.d. Today is the Feast of Saint Helena. A Roman innkeeper's daughter in Eboracum- modern York England. There she happened to catch the roving eye of General Constantius Chlorus. They married and their son Constantine later made himself Caesar and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman World. It's debatable exactly when she was baptized, but she undoubtedly had a great influence on her son's decision. She was also instrumental in researching and defining the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. She started the Christian fascination with holy relics.

1503-Pope Alexander VI the Borgia died. Some say he died of malaria , others that he poisoned himself accidentally while trying to poison someone else. The Borgia's enemies then take over the Vatican and end Caesar & Lucretia Borgia's reign of terror. The Pope had had seven children and at the time was sleeping with 16 year old Giulia Farnese whom he had painted as the Virgin Mary. People said the Alexander had sold his soul to the devil because at his death an ape appeared on his windowsill and water boiled in his mouth. Hmmm- proof enough for me. His 300 lb. corpse was so swollen with corruption that it had to be pounded into it's coffin with wooden wine corking mallets.

1573- In a vain attempt to cement a peace between French Catholics and Protestants, old Queen Mother Catherine De Medici married her daughter Margot to the Protestant Prince Henry of Navarre. Paris filled with Protestants and Catholics for the wedding. Street fighting and massacre broke out soon after. Henry survived and eventually became King Henry IV. Surprisingly, although Margot was dazzlingly beautiful and Henry was one of the horniest princes in Christendom, they didn’t get it on with each other. They kept separate courts and lovers, stayed friends and divorced amicably in 1605.

1896- 200 outlaws gather at Hole-In-The-Wall to form the "Wild Bunch".They never went all at the same time to a heist, it was more like a gunfighters guild. I wonder what the dues were?

1919- Tennessee becomes the last state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution giving women the vote. The legislature was deadlocked but the tie was broken by one state senator who changed his mind. He wanted to please his mother.

1937- The Toyota Automobile Company was established as an offshoot of the Toyoda Motorized Loom Works. They changed the name Toyoda to Toyota because a Shinto priest told them the name would be luckier.

1939- The movie the Wizard of Oz released and made a star of Judy Garland. Frank Morgan, ther actor playing the Wizard, needed to wear a shabby old coat so a studio costume designer went through some L.A. thrift stores until she found the good candidate. When Morgan looked in the lining he discovered the coat was previously owned by L.Frank Baum, writer of the Oz stories. Morgan was first president of the Screen Actor's Guild, but stepped down when he was considered 'too left' to work with the Roosevelt administration. Lyricist Yip Harburg ( Somewhere over the Rainbow ) was later blacklisted as a communist. "And yer little dog ,too!!"

1950- Battle of the Bowling Alley- The US and South Korean Armies pushed up against the Pusan Perimeter score their first victory against North Korean regulars. It got it’s name because the North Korean tanks bottled up into narrow defiles by the land made excellent targets for waiting anti-tank artillery, bazooka and aircraft. Eyewitnesses said it looked like a “Bowling Alley in Hell.”

1953- The first MacDonalds Franchise restaurant opened in Downey California.

1956- Actress Vivien Leigh suffered a mental breakdown after a miscarriage.

1958 - "Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov, published. The novel was rejected by four publishers before Putnams picked it up. It became a best seller and allowed Nabokov to quit teaching and focus on writing.

1958 - TV game show scandal investigation starts. Allegations that popular quiz shows like 21 were rigged turned out to be true.

1962 - Peter, Paul & Mary release their 1st hit "If I Had a Hammer"

1966- The Ice Slurpee was invented by two Dallas engineers for a failing Oklahoma ice cream store.

1977- The Xerox Company decided not to seriously market the Alto, the pioneering personal computer that had a graphic window interface and mouse long before anyone else. Xerox decided to stick with copying machines and disbanded their Palo Alto development team Xerox PARC. Most of their breakthroughs wound up in other computers like the Macintosh II and the IBM PC.

1977- The rock band the Police make their debut in a Birmingham nightclub. The lead singer Gordon Sumner started to get the nickname Sting from the black and yellow shirt he habitually wore.

1986 - John Tesh's first appearance on Entertainment Tonight.

1989- Publishing Tycoon Malcom Forbes flies 800 guests to Tangiers to celebrate his birthday. His birthday party cost $2 million. The soiree' comes to symbolize 1980's wealthy excess.

1999- TV psychic Kriswell predicted this date would be the End of the World.

Birthdays: Davy Crocket, Mae West, Marcus Garvey, Sam Goldwyn- original name Schmuel Gelbfisz, then Sam Goldfish, Monte Wooley, Maureen O’Hara, Boog Powell, Belinda Carlisle, Guillermo Vilas, V.S. Naipul, Donnie Wahlberg, Sean Penn, Robert DeNiro is 64

1661- THE PARTY. Armand Fouquet, the first minister of Louis XIV (the Sun King) decided to throw the ultimate party and invite his royal master. Fouquet's new chateau Vaux leVicomte was so lavish, the dinner for 6000 guests so exquisite, the gardens so beautiful and the entertainment was provided by the playwright Moliere. Everything was so all around superior to anything anyone had done that the King responded by having Fouquet relieved of his offices and thrown in the Bastille. It seems King Louis didn't like being upstaged by his servants. Fouquet's immodest ambitions were no help either, his motto was "To what heights may I aspire?" Louis wanted to arrest him on the spot, but his mother said to do so would spoil a really nice party. So he waited two weeks then sent his chief of Musketeers Comte D’Artangnan to arrest Fouquet, The king's new minister Colbert was much more modest in his entertainments.


1908- D.W. Griffith signed a contract to begin directing movies for Biograph Pictures. He was paid $50 dollars a week plus royalties.

1941-Walt Disney and his artists leave on a goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 government grant. President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to Nazis forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. Argentine president Juan Peron wanted to build a statue to Mussolini in Buenos Aires and had Wermacht advisors for his army- to this day the Chilean and Brazilian army wears feldgrau -German field grey and goosestep marches. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. Among other things they wanted Donald Duck. It also helped settle the Disney animators strike at home, because without Walt boiling over Roy could make a deal in private. The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos result.

1962- The Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr.

1969- The closing day of the Woodstock Rock Concert, Three Days of Peace and Music. Jimmy Hendrix did his now famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

1984- The Walt Disney Company informed it’s chairman Ron Miller that they wanted his resignation. Disney had fallen to 14th in film box office by then. Miller was Walt Disney's son-in-law and was once a professional football player. Within two years of Michael Eisner taking power Disney was number one.

1985-The Hormel Meat Packing Strike, severely threatening the worlds supply of SPAM.

1992- Famed film director Woody Allen admits he is having an affair with Soon Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his long time lover Mia Farrow. He is 60 and she is 21. But as the unrepentant Allen states: “The Heart wants what it wants.”

Thirty years ago! 1977- Star Wars, Disco, BillyBeer, Walt Disney's the Rescuers, Bakshi's Wizards, Saturday Night Fever, Son of Sam, Elvis Presley died, the Great East Coast Blackout,
and the musical Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure was released.



Retrojunk.com has the original movie trailor for your delight and edification.
ASIFA/Hollywood is planning to have a reunion of the crew of Raggedy Ann to celebrate the anniversary. It will be at the American Film Institute in Hollywood on November 17th. A simultaneous reunion will happen in New York City. A lot of wonderful people worked on this film, many getting their first start. If you are a Raggedy vet out there in the Blogosphere and I have not yet reached you, you are welcome to e-mail me and I'll send you details.

Thirty years..? Real for sure Strange.....

--------------------------------------
Birthdays: Otto Mesmer the creator of Felix the Cat, Myron Grim Natwick the creator of Betty Boop, Hal Foster the creator of Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond the creator of Flash Gordon, Kathie Lee Gifford,jazz great Bill Evans, Leslie Ann Warren, Angela Bassett, Julie Numar, Robert Culp, James Cameron, Bruce Beresford,Steve Carell, Madonna-real name Madonna-Louise Ciccone from Bay City Michigan is 49

Today is the Feast of St. Roch, who had a heavenly inspired dog to lick his sores and cure him of the Black Plague.

1877- BIRTHDAY OF THE WORD-"HELLO". In a letter dated today Thomas Edison wrote to the first president of AT&T about how people should initiate conversation on the new telephone machine. A genteel Victorian would think it impolite to speak until spoken to. Edison explained that the results of sonic tests proved the old English fox hunting call "Halloo!" was most audible over great distances. Alexander Graham Bell, an old navy man, always thought the right way to start a phone conversation was to say "AHOY!", but hello won out. It was the only English word Sioux Chief Sitting Bull ever learned. He loved to grab your hand and pump it vigorously while saying:" HELLO, HELLO!"

1896- Four miners find gold in Bonanza Creek in the Klondike. The Yukon Gold Rush begins.

1938- Blues legend Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband in Three Forks Mississippi.

1942- Happy Birthday Mighty Mouse. Terrytoon's short: "The Mouse of Tomorrow".

1954- First issue of Sports Illustrated.

1965- The AFL, American Football League offered it’s first expansion franchise to a new team called the Miami Dolphins. The AFL merged with the NFL in the 80s.

1969- “ Hey Man, we’re gonna serve breakfast in bed for 500,000” So was hippy Wavy Gravy’s announcement on the second day of the Woodstock Rock Concert. He said this was the day Americans learned to eat Granola. It was ladled out en masse in paper cups and has been a diet staple ever since.

1976- Apple Computers was founded by two college dropouts- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, in a California garage.

1977- E-DAY in Memphis. 42 year old Elvis Presley, donuts and Pizza Hut box in hand died sitting on the toilet. That is, if you choose to believe he really died...?

1987- The Harmonic Convergence- Another one of these celestial events that the mainstream media trumpeted as the end of everything. All nine planets of our solar system were in perfect alignment and the subsequent gravitational forces were supposed to knock the Earth into the Sun or something or other that would send us to Hell in a Handbasket. So what happened? Bupkis.

1991- The original Shamu the Whale died of respiratory failure at age 16.

Birthdays: Napoleon Bonaparte, Leon Theremin- inventor of that weird electronic musical instrument that is featured in all those 50s flying saucer movies, Samuel Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, Ethel Barrymore, Huntz Hall, Bill Baird, Julia Child, Edna Ferber, Sir Robert Bolt, Rose-Marie, Linda Ellerbee, Oscar Peterson, Mike "Mannix" Connors is 82, Nicholas Roeg, Ben Afleck is 35, Debra Messing is 39

778 AD.-Battle of Roncevaux or Roncesvalles. Legendary battle where Frankish Emperor Charlemagne's top knights -the Palladins: Roland waving his sword Durandel, Oliver and Ogier the Dane fell fighting the Moors. In reality the battle was probably a small rearguard border skirmish with hostile Basques tribesmen in the Pyranees Mountains.  But a poem about the incident called the Song of Roland inflated it into an epic Christian battle against the evil Moslem Moors, wizards and devils. The Chanson du Roland became the top best seller of the Middle Ages, read and enjoyed throughout Europe. When William the Conquerer's Normans went into battle at Hastings in 1066, William¹s minstrel Vailletan sang the Song of Roland at full gallop while tossing his sword into the air and catching it like a parade drum major.

1057-Scottish king Macbeth is defeated and killed by Malcom III Canmore at the battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. But did Burnham Wood move to Dunsinane?

1097- DEUS VOLT ! GOD WILLS IT! The First Crusade was announced at Clermont by Pope Urban VII. Christian Europe decided that the Holy places in Jerusalem should not be in Moslem hands. In his sermon the Pope addressed the assembled knights in their native French: "Christian warriors who continually seek pretexts for war and rape Rejoice! If you must have Blood, then bathe in the Blood of the Infidels, and Christ will count you among his Warriors! Soldiers of Hell, become Soldiers of the Living God!"  They sewed small strips of red cloth in a cross on their left shoulders and began with a massacre of any Jews they could find. History is at a loss to find any comparable social phenomenon.  It took Islam a generation to understand that this was a Christian Jihad (Holy war) declared on them. The Moslem Emirs were just as feudally divided as the European warlords until they united under the brilliant Kurd Sultan Sa¹Allah-al-Dhin or Salladin.

1100s-1400s- PAX DEI- The Medieval Church tried to limit the carnage of knights fighting and feuding by declaring a Truce of God during Lent and this, the beginning of the harvest season. It sometimes worked, but slaying infidels was still okay year round. See above.

1457 ­ The earliest dated book, "Mainz Psalter," completed.

1549- First Christian missionaries arrive in Japan. A band of Spanish Jesuits led by Father Francis Xavier landed in Kagoshima on the island of Kysuhu.

1620 - Mayflower sets sail from Southampton with 102 Pilgrims.

1794- The first U.S. coin minted in the United States, a silver dollar. Minting of colonial and state currencies had been going on in America for years, Continental Eagles and such. The word Dollar is derived from Thaler from JacobsThaler meaning from the Gift of St. Jacob , a Czech mountain valley where their were rich silver deposits.

1806- For his birthday Napoleon lays the cornerstone for the Arc de Triomphe.

1848 - M Waldo Hanchett patents the dental chair.

1885- Sir Richard Burton completed his translation from medieval Persian of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. There had been earlier attempts like a French edition in 1809, but Burton¹s edition introduced the west to Aladdin and his magic lamp, Sinbad the sailor and Sherherazahde.

1935- Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Pictures merge to become Twentieth Century Fox.

1935- Humorist writer Will Rogers and his one-eyed pilot Wiley Post are killed when their small seaplane crashed in Barrow, Alaska.

1947- SIXTY YEARS AGO-"The Stroke of Midnight" India and Pakistan, the Jewel in the Crown, get their freedom from Britain after 300 years. The end of the Raj.

1969-WOODSTOCK-Three Days of Peace and Music- The rock concert of the Century opened. The promoters, one of whom was heir to the Polident Denture Cream fortune, were hoping to host 50,000 people and launch a recording studio in the quiet New York farming town. What they got was 500,000 hippies and the social phenomenon that defined the Age. At one point the more conservative elements of the community got a court order to block the land to be used, but farmer Max Yasgur offered his cow farm for the site. Tickets went for $18, but there was such a crush of people at the gates that staffers gave up at one point and let everyone in.
Up till then in the tumultuous 1960¹s any gathering of young people that big meant violence and riot, and at one point New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller threatened to send in the National Guard. But the magic prevailed and there was no violence outside of 200 bad acid trips and one heroin overdose.
Richie Havens was the first act to play, he did six sets and kept stalling because the crowd was so immense they had to bring in the other bands by helicopter. When he ran out of songs to sing Havens started riffing any thing he could think of. This way Havens created his most famous tune "Freedom" with added in spirituals like "Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child". Drugs, sex and rock & roll flowed freely. At one point someone put LSD into the drinking water of the rescue helicopter pilot . He spent two hours flying in circles over the festival, thinking he was traveling over one huge expanse of people. One hippy had spent the entire night high on LSD. As he started to come down, the first thing he recognized in the dawns early light was Sha-Na-Na on stage doing 50¹s Doo-Wop. He thought he had been sent to Rock Hell.

Birthdays: Steve Martin, Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, Erwin "Magic" Johnson, Lina Wertmuller, David Crosby, California Banditto Triburcio Vasquez, Alice Ghostly, Buddy Greco, The 20's Parisian nightclub singer known as Bricktop, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, composer James Horner, director Wim Wenders, Emmanuele Beart, Halle Berry is 40

1281-A Pacific typhoon called by the Japanese the Kamikaze or The "Divine Wind" destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet of Kublai Khan as it approached the shores of Japan. The Mongols way of showing the Japanese that they meant business was as they captured small outer islands like Ryuku and Iwo Jima they crucified the civilians to the topmasts of their ships.

1457- The first printed Gutenburg Bible finished. One agent of Gutenberg's bringing the first shipment of bibles to Paris was arrested for witchcraft because locals thought it was humanly impossible for one person to make so many identical books without the aid of black magic.

1744- LOUIS LE BIEN AIMEE- Pleasure loving French King Louis XV had become gravely ill and was near death. His father confessor the Bishop of Soisson refused to give him the sacraments unless he banished his mistresses and reformed his sinful life. He did so and Louis health improved. He was so good the peasants began calling him Louis le Bien Aimee’- the Well Beloved. But boys will be boys. Louis grew bored with being a faithful sober husband. He soon called back his bimbos and banished the Bishop instead. Louis XV lived happy, if disreputably, to a very old age.

1781- George Washington and the Comte du Rochambeau had been debating whether to use their combined forces against the British in occupied New York City or Lord Cornwallis' army in Virginia. Today Washington received a letter from the Admiral DeGrasse that he was bringing a large French battlefleet to meet them at the Chesapeake Bay. Washington knew this would be his last chance, since his French allies wouldn’t send any more help, and everyone was starting to listen to a rumor that the Czarina Catherine of Russia was offering to broker an international peace conference in Vienna. At such a peace conference of kings he was sure that the idea of American Independence would be negotiated away. Washington decided to accept Rocheambeau's plan to attack Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia.

1784- On Kodiak Island Grigori Shelekov founded Three Saints Bay, the first Russian colony in the Americas. The Russians would continue to expand their trading posts and settlements until Russian America extended from Alaska to just north of San Francisco California.

1900 -The end of the 55 DAYS IN PEKING. A multinational military force relieved the diplomats besieged by the rebellious Boxers and regular Chinese Army in the Chinese capitol. The Dowager Empress Zhou Zhsi fled into the countryside. British, American, German, Russian, French, Italian and Japanese troops fought side by side and looted the beautiful Summer Palace. Just in case you thought tasteless sensationalist journalism is a modern problem- At this time back in Europe no one knew the Peking diplomats fate. The press had picked up on a report from a Shanghai correspondent for the London Daily Mail that reported them all massacred, with lots of lurid "eyewitness "detail of their rape and torture. Queen Victoria had been fooled to the point of ordering a memorial service at St. Paul's Cathedral before reconsidering until more substantive proof came in.

1908- The first international beauty pageant held in Kent, England.

1928 - Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur's play" The Front Page," premieres in NYC. They later went on to become top comedy writers in Hollywood. MacArthur is the one who sent Hecht the famous cable from LA. "Hecht, some quick, fortunes to be made and the competition are idiots!- Mac" When MacArthur died he put on his tombstone the epitaph "Over My Dead Body!"

1935- President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the National Social Security Act. Considered the most successful US Federal social program ever, today there is great controversy over it’s financial overhaul. In 1972 young George W. Bush submitted a paper in his business class at Yale. It’s theme was that Social Security was a big commie mistake.

1945-VJ DAY (Aug 15th in Japan) -President Truman announced the surrender sparking wild celebrations in allied cities like New York and London. In Japan citizens were politely asked to stand at attention by their radios as Emperor Hirohito explained to his people about the surrender. It is the first time they had ever heard his voice. At 3 am that morning 1,000 rebel Japanese troops attacked the palace trying to prevent the disgrace of the surrender announcement. They were fought off by the Imperial guard and the guard commander was killed. The speech was pre-recorded and went on anyway. Defense minister Anami committed Hara-Kiri while listening to the address. Gangs of angry kamikaze pilots wandered the streets looking for trouble. Their commanders had emptied the gas tanks of their planes to obey the Imperial edict.

1956- The Marilyn Monroe movie "Bus Stop" premiered.

1962 - French & Italian workers break through at Mount Blanc to create a auto
Tunnel through the Alps.

1965 - Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" hits #1.FYI -their real names? Salvatore Bono and Cheriyn Sarksiian LaPierre.

1965- Jane Fonda married director Roger Vadim, who put the beautiful young blonde in naughty movies like Barbarella. His previous wife Bridgette Bardot was a beautiful young blonde that he put in naughty movies….hmm.

1979 – A rainbow was seen in Northern Wales that lasted for 3 hours duration.

1980- SOLIDARNOSC!! - At a strike at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, Communist Poland the first mass peoples movement that would eventually topple European Communism was created. An electrician named Lech Walsesa climbed the fence and joined the strike, eventually becoming the leader of the movement Solidarity. He was a political prisoner, a Nobel Prize winner and eventually President of democratic Poland.

1994 – The world’s most wanted terrorist "Carlos the Jackal" was arrested in Khartoum Sudan when he entered a clinic to have a varicose vein removed from his testicle.

2003- A blackout shuts down the power from New York to Toronto to Detroit.

2006- A UN brokered ceasefire stopped the war between Israel and the Hezbollah living in Lebanon.

2126- Get your catchers mitts out! Comet Swift-Tuttle will pass very close by the Earth.