Birthdays: Richard the LionHearted, Michel Caravaggio, Antonin Dvorak, Patsy Cline, Jimmy Rogers the Singing Brakeman, Peter Sellars, Sid Caesar, Freddy Mercury, Lyndon LaRouche, Euwell Gibbons- natural food advocate, Heather Thomas, David Arquette, Jonathan Taylor-Thomas

1381-Battle Of Kulikovo- Novgorod prince Dmitri Donskoi defeated the Tartars of the Golden Horde.

1504- Michelangelo unveiled his completed statue of David. The project had humble origins. The Florentine Republic had commissioned a statue from another artist who gave up after gouging a large hole in a huge block of Carrarra marble. Stuck with the block, magistrates asked Michelangelo if he could do anything with it. Michelangelo carved the David positioning the hole where the legs stand spread.

1565-Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent, the Grand Turk, Ruler of Men's Necks, The Great Peacock, Master of the Sublime Porte, Defender of the Faith, lifts the Siege of Malta. The Knights of St. John Hospitaller are granted ownership of Malta in perpetuity and become the Knights of Malta. Their symbol,.the Maltese Cross,is four barbed arrowheads forming a cross. Today they operate a charity ambulance service, St. John's Ambulance.

1565- The first permanent European settlement in North America- San Augustin or Saint Augustine Florida was founded by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles. He had sighted land on Saint Augustine’s day.

1636- Massachusetts established Harvard College, the first college of higher learning in North America.

1642- Plymouth governor William Bradford noted in his diary this day the Pilgrims executed a 16 year old named Thomas Granger for buggery. Young Master Granger confessed to buggering a mare, two cows, six sheep, two goats and a turkeybird. I guess the Pilgrims felt it was hard to enjoy thanksgiving when someone had relations with the main course.

1760- Montreal, the last French stronghold in Canada and seat of the French Governor, fell to British troops. Governor Vaudreuil-Cavagnal surrendered all of New France- or Canada.

1771- Mission San Gabriel founded by Fra Junipero Serra.

1892- Writer Francis Bellamy published "The Pledge of Allegiance" in the Youth's Companion magazine as a vehicle to instill a sense of Patriotism in America's youth. Bellamy was a socialist.

1900- THE GREAT GALVESTON HURRICANE- At this time no one could chart or forewarn hurricanes beyond trying to read signs in the sky’s color. Despite hurricanes being common no one in Galveston Texas was seriously prepared. There had been talk of building a breakwater in the harbor but nothing had been done. This day a huge hurricane that had ravaged Cuba came over and surprised Galveston Texas. It's eye later passed over Houston. No accurate count could be made of the dead but 4,000 bodies were recovered. CG animator Jim Hillin ( Wireheads) said his grandmother remembered a huge oak tree getting out of the ground and dancing a jig around the yard before it flew off. Afterwards authorities raised the town of Galveston 25 feet and built a sea wall to prevent future floods. Luxurious 3 story mansions were filled in and built on top of.

1921 - 1st Miss America crowned -Margaret Gorman of Washington DC.

1926- Screen actress Greta Garbo skipped her own wedding and left John Gilbert alone at the altar. They still stayed lovers and lived together at the Chateau Marmont.

1930 - Richard Drew creates Scotch tape.

1935- HUEY LONG, the "Kingfish" Louisiana governor and colorful 3rd party candidate for President is assassinated at the statehouse in Baton Rouge. His assassin, a quiet doctor named Karl Weiss, was riddled with bullets by Long's bodyguards before anyone found out why he did it. So many bullets flew some scholars wonder if Weiss' shot was even the one that killed Long.

1935-A vocal group called "4 Joes from Hoboken" get their first break on Major Bo's radio show. One of the singers is a young man named Frank Sinatra.

1935- Top Hollywood musical director Buzby Berkeley (42nd Street, Footlight Parade) got drunk at a party in Malibu and drove his Cadillac head on into oncoming traffic on Pacific Coast Highway near where Gladestones Fish Restaurant is today. He piled into three other cars. Berkeley was unhurt but three people died and four were injured. After three trials for 2nd degree murder Berkeley was found innocent. The reason star defense attorney Jerry Geisler gave was “cancerous tires”. Later it was revealed that all the tire experts who testified in the defense were on the Warner Bros. payroll.

1939- British Alfred Hitchcock began shooting his first Hollywood picture- Rebecca , for David Selznick.

1954- Akira Kurosawa’s film The Seven Samurai premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

1960- Penquin Books was charged with obscenity for the first large public paperback printing of D.H. Lawrence's 'Lady's Chatterley's Lover'.

1963-THE BOSTON STRANGLER- The killing of young Evelyn Corbin by the Boston Strangler. A married maintenance worker named Albert De Salvo terrorized the Beantown area by the rape-strangulation of 13 women over several years. Police were so baffled at one point they resorted to asking a Dutch Psychic for help. DeSalvo was finally caught and just missed execution as Massachusetts ban on capitol punishment had gone into effect months before. He was murdered in prison on 1973.

1965 - Dorothy Danridge, beautiful black actress (Island in the Sun), dies at 41 in Hollywood of sleeping pills overdose.

1966- T.V.'s STAR TREK debuts. That season it ranked 52nd in the Neilsen ratings, behind #1 "Iron Horse" starring Rory Calhoun and "Mr. Terrific". It was cancelled after two seasons but a letter writing campaign won it a third season. Star Trek then found a new life in syndication. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the rest of the principle cast had signed a deal guaranteeing royalty payments for only the first five reruns. So by 1969 when the show was being seen 200 times a day around the world they weren’t getting a penny. The cult fan base called Trekkies kept the memory of the show alive for ten years until Paramount felt compelled to revive the show as first as an animated series and then a series of feature films. Frank Sinatra once said: "The only good thing to come out of the Nineteen Sixties was Star Trek."

1966 - "That Girl" starring Marlo Thomas and Ted Bessell premieres on ABC-TV

1968 - "Funny Girl" premiered, starring a young Brooklyn singer named Barbra Striesand.

1971- Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center opened. It was planned in the early sixties by John and Jackie Kennedy, although then unaware that their name would be on it. The performance featured the debut of Leonard Bernstein’s choral work “Mass”.

1974- Daredevil Evil Kneival jumped the Snake River gorge in a rocket powered motorcycle.

1974- Replacement President Gerald Ford surprised America by pardoning resigned President Richard Nixon for whatever he may have done in the Watergate Scandal, but not saying he really did anything..... Ford sez: " Our great national nightmare is over.."
America later surprises Ford by electing Jimmy Carter in his place.

1979 - Jean Seberg, actress (Breathless, Airport), commits suicide at 40. She had been in love with a member of the radical Black Panther Party and was under continual harassment by the FBI and other Federal authorities.

1986- The Chicago based television talk show the Oprah Winfrey Show went national and became one of the most successful talk shows ever.

What's Opera Doc?

Nancy Beiman recently turned me on to this new book now on pre-order-

http://www.amazon.com/Stepping-into-Picture-Cartoon-Designer/dp/1934110434/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6864687-5767045?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186686896&sr=8-1

It's the first in-depth study of the work of one of the great animation art directors, MAURICE NOBLE. The man responsible for the unique design of famous Warner Bros shorts like What's Opera Doc?, Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century and the Roadrunner/Coyote series. Maurice was a great gentleman, artist and he sheparded a number of important people in our industry like director Rob Minkoff, Don Hall and Kelly Asbury. Sounds cool.

It'll be out in February 2008, which is a bit long to wait, and it's a bit pricey, but it probably be worth it.

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Birthdays: Grandma Moses, Dame Edith Sitwell, Elia Kazan, Richard Roundtree, Sinclair Lewis, Anthony Quayle. Peter Lawford, Senator Daniel Inouye, Susan Blakely, Shannon Elizabeth, Sonny Rawlins, Julie Kavner the voice of Marge Simpson, Don Messick the voice of Scooby Doo and Astro from the Jetsons

605 B.C. Nebuchanesser II crowned king of Babylon. In 597 he destroyed Israel and began the Baylonian Captivity of the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic writings, but he also build the famed hanging Gardens of Baylon for his wife Amrytis.

1776 -The FIRST SUBMARINE ATTACK-Yankee Ezra Lee pilots inventor David Bushnell's barrel shaped submersible "The Turtle" over to the British warship HMS Eagle. His attack consisted of an attempt to drill holes in her hull. But the ship was copper bottomed. Doh!

1812- BATTLE OF BORODINO, or La Moskova. Napoleon's French army and the Russians pound each other to bits before Moscow in the great battle immortalized by Tolstoy in 'War and Peace'. As the French army marched to the attack, Russian Prince Bagration sat on horseback in front of his troops. Before opening fire he pulled out a silver flask and toasted his enemy:"Gentlemen of France, Bravo! C'est Superb!". He was killed later.
Leo Tolstoy had an ancestor at the battle. General Mikhail Tolstoy was an eccentric who rode into battle in a horse drawn carriage with his pet black bear seated alongside him who drank his champagne. The French capture all the strategic points and force General Kutusov to abandon Moscow, but while the Russians could make good their losses La Grande Armee' was exhausted and thousands of miles from supplies and reinforcements. Napoleon was listless from a bad cold and hesitated sending in his Imperial Guard at a key moment to finish off the Russian army. Bad tempered Marshal Ney was enraged: ”Have we come so far merely to possess another battlefield? What is he doing so far back? He is no longer a general, he is an Emperor. Let him sit home in the palace and leave the fighting to us!”

1822- Brazil declared independence from Portugal.

1831- NICHOLAS Ist, the "Iron Tsar" crushed the POLISH NOVEMBER UPRISING. Throughout the 1800's every young generation of Poles started a new uprising that the Russians, Germans and Austrians would have to stomp down. They went as far as to outlaw the Polish language,the Catholic religion and in the German controled parts the Slavic suffix "-ski". Which is probably when Lech Waleski became Walesa and Sito was ..er.. always Sito. (?) In Jacksonian America the plight of the heroic Poles battling overwhelming odds was terribly inspiring to American Romantics like Longfellow, Hawthorne and Morse.
When hearing about their plight, Edgar Allan Poe ,in his usual drug induced delirium, grabbed a musket off his mantle and ran up and down his Bronx street shouting :"TO WARSAW! TO WARSAW!" Luckily the local constable was used to Mr. Poe's peculiar behavior and persuaded him to go home and lie down.

1880 - George Ligowsky patents device to throw clay pigeons for trapshooters

1888 - Edith Eleanor McLean is 1st baby placed in an incubator.

1892 -Gentleman Jim Corbett finally KOs John L. Sullivan after 21 rounds for heavyweight boxing title. Corbett was an advocate of the new Marquis of Queensbery rules and preferred using boxing gloves to bare knuckle fighting.

1907 - Sutro's ornate Cliff House in SF destroyed by fire.

1911- French avant-garde poet Guilliame Appollinaire was the man who coined the term “surrealism’. He was such an elitist, outspoken radical guy that Parisian authorities felt he must be up to something. So when the Mona Lisa was stolen out of the Louvre this day Appollinaire was arrested. There was no evidence and he was released shortly after. The real thief was a disgruntled waiter who once worked as a security guard at the museum.

1916 - Workmen's Compensation Act passed by Congress

1923 - Interpol was formed in Vienna

1936 - Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) began operation.

1940- Nazis bombers change their strategy of bombing RAF bases in southern England and instead concentrate on destroying London for psychological value. For the next 57 straight days London suffered under a rain of high explosives.

1956- US test pilot Ivan Kinchilo flew his experimental Bell-X plane to the edge of the Stratosphere. While modern passenger planes fly at 37,000 feet, Kinchilo was 126,000 feet up, almost 26 miles. He could see the curve of the earth, the blue of the atmosphere turning ultramarine and the stars at the edge of space. He was weightless for a few seconds. Called the First Spaceman, had Kinchilo not died in 1958 in an accident he would have been an important figure in Nasa’s Space program.

1957- Actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini separate.

1963- Mushi productions cartoon series."Tetsuan Atomo" debuts in the U.S as AstroBoy.

1978 - Keith Moon, rock drummer of the Who, died of a drug overdose at 31. He actually overdosed the drug he was perscribed to treat his alcohol and drug abuse. In one night he took 22 tabs of choloromethiazole edysilate. He was staying in the very same London apartment #123 Curzon Place, was the one that Mama Cass Elliot died in four years earlier.

1984-the Walt Disney Board formally fired Chairman and Walt’s son-in-law Ron Miller.

1996- Rap artist and actor Tupac Shakur was shot to death gangland style in Las Vegas Nevada. He was standing up in the open roof of a BMW 750 sedan talking to some girls when a Cadillac pulled along side and opened fire. In 2002 the LA Times concluded and investigation that rapper Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G. hired and killer and provided the gun. Notorious B.I.G. was himself shot to death shortly after.

2000- Barely legal teen pop star Britney Spears shocked even the permissive MTV Music Video Awards crowd by singing her hit “Oops, I Did it Again” while stripping and grinding in a Las Vegas showgirl type sheer bikini.

My wife Pat and I were very sad to hear tonight news of the death of opera tenor Lucciano Pavarotti. As young art students in New York City we used to get student half price standing room to the Metropolitan Opera. We saw Pavarotti several times, including as Caravadossi in Tosca and Rodolpho in La Boheme. Later we met him at a record signing at Tower Records on the Sunset Strip in LA.

It seems funny listening to big fat opera singers bellowing so loud. But the way to really experience Grand Opera is to go see one done up big in person. They never quite have the same effect on film as they do live. Maybe Bergman's Magic Flute and Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni the exceptions. But the best in theater arts and stage lighting goes into grand opera, which is why so many film directors enjoy occasionally working in that medium. Like animation, opera speaks directly to the blood. The plots are simple, the point is to reach our emotions. And the meaning of the words are unimportant, you feel the music in your gut.

Pavarotti was one of the great singers of our time, and he joins the celestial chorus beside the other great tenors Benjamino Gigli, Caruso, Jan Peerce, Lauritz Melchior, Richard Tucker and Jussi Bjoerling. Bravo, Pavarotti!

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Birthdays: Marquis De Lafayette ,Joseph Kennedy Sr., Buddy Holly, Jane Curtin, Swoozie Kurtz, Jo Ann Worley, Rosie Perez, Billy Rose, Ernest Tubb, Feliz compleanos a mi amigo Sergio Aragones! The man who has millions of kids reading the margins of Mad Magazine is 70 today!

1522- A ship reached Spain manned by only a dozen or more skeletal sailors. They were all that was left of Fernand de Magellans fleet of five ships and 260 men that set out one year ago to reach the Indies. Magellan was killed and eaten by cannibals in the Philippines, Magellan had beheaded three of his captains in Argentina and most of the crew was dead. The last leg of the trip the men sailed up the coast of Africa without stopping for food or water for fear of falling into the hands of their Portuguese enemies. But they had achieved the dream of the great Columbus, they reached the Indies by sailing west. In fact they had circumnavigated the globe, forever proved the world was round.

1812- At Borodino the Russian army prepared to fight Napoleon’s Army before the entrance to Holy Moscow. This night the Orthodox Metropolitan in procession carried through the camp the icon of the Black Virgin of Smolensk. Thousands of soldiers kneeled, crossed themselves and whispered Gospodi Pomilui- Lord Have Mercy. During the Napoleonic Wars Russian officers began the curious custom of making sure that they went into battle wearing clean underwear- no gentleman wanted his body to be found with dirty undies!

1847- After living in a shack on Walden Pond for two years, Henry David Thoreau moved in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord Mass.

1862- During the Civil War an incident occurred when Stonewall Jackson’s Confederate brigades moved through the pro-Union town of Frederick, Maryland. All civilians kept indoors and waved white flags from their homes. But elderly widow Barbara Fritchie flew a bigass Stars & Stripes from her window and dared anyone to do anything about it. General Jackson just smiled and tipped his hat as he rode by. Years later a famous poem was written about the incident, The Ballad of Barbara Fritchie:” Shoot if You Must, This Old Grey Head, But Spare your Countries’ Flag, She Said!”

1901-PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY ASSASSINATED- The President was visiting the Temple of Music at the World Exposition in Buffalo when anarchist Leon Czogolsz shot him with a pistol hidden in his bandaged hand. Czogolsz was such an emotionally unstable character that even other anarchists avoided him. He said he was inspired by the political speeches of Socialist Emma Goldman, which soured many mainstream Americans to radical Socialism.
McKinley lingered for two weeks while doctors were afraid to probe for the bullet. Ironically he had just inspected a new-fangled X-Ray machine at the science pavilion that could have saved his life but doctors said: " This is too serious a time for toys!" He died and Teddy Roosevelt became President. Roosevelt was a maverick Republican that McKinley reluctantly chose as his running mate because he was a hero in the recent Spanish-American War. When Tammany boss Paul Crocker heard about Roosevelt being made V.P. he shouted;" Don't you realize that now there's only one heartbeat between that nut and the Presidency-?!" Republican Senate Majority Leader Marc Hanna was also annoyed:”Oh, no! Now that crazy cowboy is President!”


1958- The Spunky and Tadpole show debuts!


1968- Many momentous events occurred in 1968: assassinations, riots, the Vietnamese Tet offensive, the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, Easy Rider, 2001 a Space Odyssey Sergeant Pepper. But that’s nothing compared to the television premiere of H.R. PUNFNSTUFF this day! Witchipoo, Orson and the Vroom Broom. Whether or not Sid and Marty Kroffts strange kiddie show was a code for drug use -HR meaning Hand-Rolled Puffing Stuff, is a matter for scholastic conjecture.

1969- Depatie-Freleng's the Pink Panther TV Show premiered.

1971-Happy Birthday Huggies! Scientists at Proctor & Gamble invent the disposable diaper.

1972 - John Lennon & Yoko Ono appear on Jerry Lewis' Muscular Dystrophy Telethon

1997- The great Funeral of Princess Diana of Wales brought England to a halt and was televised around the world. There was a last minute fuss over the fact that Buckingham Palace refused to lower the Royal Standard to half-mast, customary for a death in the Royal Family, because technically Diana was divorced and no longer part of that family. The tabloid press jumped on this as a way to divert public attention from the discussion that their hounding Diana was what caused the fatal car accident. As this day began the flag came down at the urging of the elderly Queen Mum.

And you thought the Presidential Campaign was long....
Today I got my first screener copies of films hoping for a nomination for an Academy Award. The awards won't be presented until next February 24th. But never you mind, Ladies and Gentlemen of the studio publicity departments- Start Your Hype Engines!

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Birthdays: Louis XIV The Sun King, Jesse James, Cardinal Richelieu, Johann Christian Bach, Jacopo Meyerbeer, John Cage, Quentin de la Tour, Darryl F. Zanuck, Jack Valenti, Bob Newhart, George Lazenby, Raquel Welch, cartoonist Kathy Guisewhite, Dweezil Zappa, Werner Herzog

1499- Former Columbus captain Alonso De Hojeda arrives in the New World on his own expedition. Along with him as pilot (Navigator) was a Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci made several more trips to the alien land and published a book about his adventures never mentioning Hojeda. His publishers spiced up his accounts with naked brown natives with lascivious morals throwing themselves on the Europeans. It was quite popular reading. In 1538 when Columbus was dead and forgotten German mapmakers Martin Waldseemuller and Gerhardus Mercator published the first mass printed maps of the known world. They drew on Vespucci's books and called the new hemisphere "America". I guess that's better than the United States of Hojeda.

1781- BATTLE OF THE VIRGINIA CAPES- Arguably the real battle that won the American Revolution. French Admiral DeGrasse' navy drives off the English fleet attempting to save Lord Cornwallis's army trapped inside the port of Yorktown by Washington and Rocheambeau. For command of the vital mission the British admiralty had passed over a more aggressive fighting admiral named Rodney in favor of an semi-retired fossil named Graves. Graves caught the French fleet dispersed unloading troops and supplies but instead of attacking he waited for three hours while the enemy formed in line. He then raised confusing signals – flags for “Attack” and “Maintain Position” being raised simultaneously/ The inability of the British navy to rescue Cornwallis sealed his fate and eventual surrender. If the British had won this battle scholars agree the French were tired of propping up the bankrupt American rebels who could barely muster a few thousand volunteers.

1867- After the Civil War the US experienced a beef shortage. This was answered by herding Texas longhorn cattle up to where they could be put on trains to Chicago and eastern meat markets. This day the first herd of Longhorns made it up the Chisholm Trail to the train depot of Abilene Kansas. A rancher who bought a thousand head of cattle at $4 a head could sell them up north for $40 a head. One cattle drive could net up to $100,000, well worth fighting Indians, rustlers and floods. This created cattlebarons and a new kind of hero in the publics mind, the Cowboy.

1929- Wall Street stocks soared to unprecedented heights throughout 1929. Starting today they began to taper off and slide. Economist Roger Babson, the Sage of Wellesley , warned of an impending Stock Market crash but people laughed him off. They called his warnings "Babson-Mindedness". The market would continue to move downwards for the next several weeks climaxing Black Tuesday, the great crash of October 29th and the Depression.

1932- Paul Bern, the studio executive husband of sexy starlet Jean Harlow, was found lying naked on his bathroom floor with a bullet in his head. He committed suicide and left a note apologizing to Harlow for not being able to satisfy her. Harlow called the studio and her agent before calling the police. All jumped to hush up the scandal. Jean Harlow loved to flirt with men in front of her husband. Once at a USC football game she saw a hunky fullback and said to Bern:”Daddy, please buy me that!”

1923-FATTY ARBUCKLE- Ex-plumber turned comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle signed a $3 million dollar deal with Paramount Pictures. He celebrated by staging a wild three day party in the penthouse of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. During the wild goings on he pulled young starlet Virginia Rappe into a bedroom. Soon screams were heard. Arbuckle came out and said "Get her dressed. She makes too much noise". Friends found Rappe in agony with her clothes shredded. She died of toxemia from a ruptured bladder saying "Fatty Arbuckle did this to me! Make sure he doesn't get away with it." Arbuckle was tried twice for rape and first degree murder, but was acquitted after both were hung juries. To this day film historians argue if Arbuckle was framed. In the trial it came out that Rappe had had a botched abortion and was suffering from internal bleeding before the party.
But Fatty Arbuckles career was destroyed. Women tore down the screen whenever his face appeared. In Wyoming cowboys shot their sixshooters at the screen. At the suggestion of Buster Keaton he made a living writing gags under the pseudonym William or Will B, Good. Years later Santa Monica pulled him over for drunk driving. He flung a champagne bottle out of the car and laughed "There goes the evidence again!"

1935- At a giant Nazis Party rally in Nuremberg Adolph Hitler told the world “We want Peace. Germany has no interest in harming her European neighbors .” uh-huh..

1935- Tumbling Tumbleweeds premiered, the film that made a star out of Gene Autrey, the Singing Cowboy.

1939- The British Empire had restructured as a commonwealth of dominions which some it's larger colonies had self rule, but to the outside world it still looked like everything from Hong Kong to Ottawa to Capetown was run on orders from London. Three days after British Prime Minister Chamberlain declared war on Nazi Germany U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull telephoned Ottawa to ask if that meant Canada was going to fight too ?

1943- Young British cartoonist Ronald Searle is captured by the Japanese in Burma. He spent his time as a P.O.W. working on the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai and making sketches of the nightmarish conditions of his fellow prisoners.

1957- Jacques Kerouac’s ode to the beat life ON THE ROAD, first published. Kerouac wrote it in a white heat using one large roll of white paper stuffed into his typewriter instead of individual sheets. When the editor got the novel it had no paragraph breaks of chapter breaks. Another young writer of the time, Truman Capote, was unimpressed. “That’s not writing, it’s typing.”

1958 – DR ZHIVAGO by Boris Pasternak published in US. It was banned in Russia until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

1964- Buffalo NY cook Angela Bellissima took some chicken wings, threw them into a deep fryer with spices and invented Buffalo Wings.

1980 - World's longest auto tunnel, St Gotthard in Swiss Alps, opened.

1989- President George Bush I st, does a major speech highlighting his war on drugs. He brandishes a bag of crack-cocaine he declares was purchased across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. Later the truth came out that no crack cocaine is sold in Lafayette Park, the DEA agents had to talk a crack dealer into coming to the park. They even had to give him directions because he never visited the White House area before.

1994-Patrick McDonnell starts drawing the comic strip MUTTS.

It's shaping up to be an interesting Oscar race for Best Animated Feature this year. Shrek III, Ratatouille, The Simpsons, Bee Movie, Surf's Up and Beowulf, Persepolis and perhaps Goro Miyazaki's first film. We'll see.

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Birthdays: Marcus Whitman the missionary who led the US settlement of Oregon territory, Howard Morris, Darius Mihlaud, Anton Bruckner, Chateaubriand, Craig Claiborne, Dick York, Paul Harvey is 89, Richard Wright, Nigel Bruce, Mary Renault, Tom Watson, Mitzi Gaynor, Damon Wayans, Beyonce' is 26

218BC- Hannibal’s army with elephants reached the summit of the Alps.

1781- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOS ANGELES. Royal Governor of New Spain Gaspar de Portola and Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra with twelve soldiers, some free black families and Indians, about 44 in all, dedicate a new town one days ride north of San Pedro. The 63 year old Serra had been stung by a scorpion but ignored it, so he hobbled around dragging his swollen leg. Fra Serra named the town after St. Francis of Assisi's first church in Italy , St. Mary of the Angels, so El Pueblo Nuestra Senora Santa Maria Reina de Los Angeles de Porcuincula. Now, who was it who first uttered the universal L.A. greeting-" Dude!"?

1884-Thomas Edison proves he could replace gas streetlights with electricity by illuminating one square New York City block (around Pearl st.) with his new dynamo. J.P. Morgan's bank on the corner of Wall and Broad streets is the first private business to be lit solely by electricity.

1888-George Eastman patents the roll film camera. The word "Kodak" is supposedly the sound the shutter made. Another story on the origin of the word was that George wanted a word pronounced the same in all known dialects. So after some research (Rochester lore has it that he did all of this himself) he concluded that only k and x qualified as sounds uttered the same way in all languages. Thus Eastman Kodak. Years later the Rochester based Haloid company, which had for years manufactured photographic paper for Kodak, invented a dry copying process and renamed their company Xerox, following the same convention.

1893- Writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter sent a letter to a sick child: " I don't know what to write you so I shall tell you the story of four little rabbits. Their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter." The Peter Cottontail stories born.

1904 – The Dali Lama signed the first treaty allowing British commerce in Tibet. Tibet had been a closed society forbidding any contact with the outside world.

1914-The Miracle of the Marne- In World War One the main German advance smashed down into France and after 5 weeks were approaching Paris. But Von Kluck's grey clad soldiers were stopped at the river Marne. It was the first battle where telephones played an important role and at one point General Gallieni rushed French reserves up to the front in Parisian taxicabs. The commander of the defense of Paris was Albert Dreyfus, the Jewish officer of the famous scandal of the 1890's now fully exonerated.

1934- Young filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl was contracted by the German Propaganda Ministry to film the 1934 Nazis Party Congress to be held in Nuremburg. While they were expecting a routine documentary Reifenstahl instead created the film The Triumph of the Will, who’s darkly hypnotic images would make film history.

1940- The Columbia Broadcast Service or CBS network started up their first television station.

1949- THE PEEKSKILL RIOTS. Singer Paul Robeson was a renaissance man who embraced controversy. An athlete, opera singer and actor he was also a passionate Black Civil Rights champion who expressed open admiration for the Soviet Union and Maoist China. This did not win him any friends in the segregated, paranoid America of the post war era. This day when Robeson and fellow activist folksinger Pete Seeger gave a concert in Peekskill New York their cars were pelted with stones by screaming white rioters, all with the blessing of the local police. Robeson’s person was shielded by a bodyguard of union men. Fifty years later the town of Peekskill officially apologized to Paul Robeson Jr. Pete Seeger said he saved two of the stones and put them into his chimney.

1957-Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel, named for Henry Ford's son. Touted as "the dream car of the decade". Ford spent more to promote it than any other car in history. Only 200,000 were sold and after complaints like the steering and brakes failing and dashboards unexpectedly bursting into flame the car was discontinued. Ford lost $250 million. Edsel became the synonym for corporate failure.

1957- Defying direct orders from the Federal Government Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent any black students from attending classes at Little Rock High School. President Eisenhower took over direct control of the Guard and sent in the bayonet wielding 101st Airborne to ensure his orders were followed.

1972- American swimmer Mark Spitz won his 7th gold medal in Olympic competition in Munich. He also spawned a cottage industry selling the poster of him wearing his medals, tiny Speedos and that’s about it. This image and the swimsuit poster of Farrah Fawcett, were two of the more famous images of the 1970’s. The Gillette Company offered Spitz a million dollars to shave his mustache in a commercial. Spitz said no.

1976- College party boy George W. Bush was busted for drunk-driving close to his family home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He later applied for a brand new Texas State driver’s license, which came with a clean record with no report of the arrest. As President delivering the commencement at Harvard in 2002 he joked:” In the motorcade, seeing all those police cars behind me with their lights flashing… kinda brings me back to my college days…”

1985- Australian press baron Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen so he could build the Fox television and movie networks. US regulations forbade foreign ownership of broadcasting stations so Rupert didn’t fuss about what country he was a citizen of.

1993- Herb Villechaise, the little person who began the show Fantasy Island with the announcement: ”Da PLANE! Da PLANE!’ committed suicide with a shotgun.