Gotta fly to Dallas today and direct the recording of the main theme music for the Car Talk Show. Will try to get to Dealy Plaza. Stand on the grassy knoll...
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Birthdays: Roman Emperor Vitellius, Duke Albrecht Wallenstein, Chief Justice John Marshall, Francis Scott Key, Jim Henson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Raft, Chief Joseph, Sheila MacCrae,, Anthony Newley. Phil Hartman, Mean Joe Greene, Linda MacCartney, Pedro Almodovar is 58

768 A.D. The two sons of Pepin the Short , Carloman and Charles, inherit the kingdom of the Franks, or France. Carloman then conveniently died,and Charles goes on to become Charlemagne- Charles the Great. The Franks had the strange custom of inheritance. Instead of primogeniture- eldest son inheriting all, they divided all their lands among all their male siblings evenly, who would immediately start fighting one another. Carloman supposedly died of food poisoning but getting rid of rivals with poison was common in those days.

1561- Mary Queen of Scots first met Presbyterian reformer John Knox. The beautiful young monarch, reared in Catholic France, attempted to win over the sour old preacher. Historian Will Durant called it the Renaissance meets the Reformation. Unfortunately Knox was not impressed by Mary’s personal charm and howled against her entire reign. He thought women as rulers were “an abomination in the sight of God.” When she was deposed and imprisoned in England he wrote Queen Elizabeth Ist constantly urging Mary be beheaded. Knox also called Queen Elizabeth a beast and whore.

1688- King Louis XIV of France declared war on Germany and moved his armies towards the Rhine. This had the unexpected consequence of deciding who would be King of England. Dutch prince William of Orange was waiting for the opportunity to invade England and overthrow his father-in-law King James II Stuart, who many English despised for being a Catholic . But William would never have dared such a move if Louis and his large French Navy who were allies of James, were watching him. Once Louis turned his attention eastward William could cross the Channel with little trouble. William overthrew James in short order and became King William III of England.

1869- BLACK FRIDAY- A scheme by robber barons Big Jim Fisk and Jay Gould to corner the US gold market backfired into a major financial panic. The two tycoons had thought they had convinced the gullible President Ulysses Grant into halting sale of government bullion. The night before Gould tried to bribe Grants brother-in-law James Corbin with $100,00 to ensure the President wouldn’t change his mind. But Grant smelled a rat and ordered millions in Federal gold put on the market to bring the prices down. Gold hoarders saw their investment shrink overnight. This day the value of gold dropped in three hours from $160 and ounce to $34. Up in the special part of the N.Y. Stock Exchange nicknamed the Gold Room, dozens speculators were ruined. One investor ran up and down shouting “Shoot Me! Someone Shoot Me!” “Let each man drag out his own corpse.”-Gould later testified. Jay Gould recovered and died in 1892 worth $70 million In 1872 Big Jim Fisk was shot dead in the lobby of the Grand Central Hotel by a jilted suitor of Fisk’s mistress actress Josie Mansfield. And Grant the Civil War hero was labelled a financial dunce by Washington insiders.

1906- Teddy Roosevelt designated Devils Tower Wyoming as our first national monument. Like all conservationists Teddy’s desire to preserve natural resources was blocked by Congressmen lobbied by rich developers. So he circumvented Congress and created sanctuaries like Devils Tower and Pelican Island by Presidential Executive Order.

1936- Babe Ruth's last appearance in a baseball game. Yankees lost to Boston 5-0.

1936- Noel Coward's play 'Private Lives' opened.

1938- Bob Clampett's cartoon "Porky in Wackyland" ( Foo!)


1938- Tennis champion Dan Budge won the US Open in Forrest Hills. Budge became the first person to win all four major tennis meets in one year- Wimbledon, French Open now called Roland Garros, Australian Open and US Open

1944- President Franklin Roosevelt had been criticized by Republican Congressmen for wasting money in needless wartime excesses. This day he defeated his critics with humor when they accused him of sending a Navy destroyer to the Aleutian Islands just to retrieve his lost Scottie dog Fallah. He said in a speech” Now I am used to personal attacks, My family is used to personal attacks, but Fallah- isn’t.(laughter) He’s Scottish, you know….and he hasn’t been the same dog since.”
Fala

1953-UPA's "Unicorn in the Garden" directed by Bill Hurtz, based on the cartoon style and story of James Thurber.


1953- The movie "The Robe" premiered, the first movie in CinemaScope. It's success was part of a wave of 'Sword & Sandal" epics and fostered many imitation wide screen processes- Superama,VistaVision, Dynarama, WarnerVision, TotalScope-etc. Paramount had experimented with VistaVision starting in the '30's. A colleague bought a number of their prototype cameras, beautiful pieces of machinery, no two exactly alike. There had been earlier experiments with wide screen - Abel Gance's 1925 Napoleon, which used three 35mm images shown simultaneously, and Cimmarron, which was a true wide screen 70mm film starring Richard Dix, released in 1930. It was superceded by 1967 by the more advanced Panavison lense. Today in Hollywood we still call a wide screen picture a "Scope" picture.

1955- President Eisenhower suffered a major heart attack while playing golf. Secretary of State Allen Foster Dulles and other White House staffers run things without even telling Vice President Nixon.

1960- The first nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is launched. There was a USS Enterprise in the Revolution, the World War Two battlecarrier of Admiral Halsey's, and Captain Kirk's starship, of course.

1960- The "Howdy Doody Time" children's show cancelled after a thirteen year run. The show remains a pivotal memory in the minds of thousands of American baby-boomers who grew up in the fifties. As the last song and the last credits rolled by, just before the cameras switched off, Clarabell the mute clown goes up to the lens and in a haunting voice said; "Goodbye, Kids."

1968- T.V. show "60 Minutes" debuts. Mike Wallace was pared with Harry Reasoner. The show was originally aired Tuesday nights at 10PM and fared poorly in the ratings. When it was moved to Sundays at 7:00PM it became a weekly institution.

1977- The TV series “The Love Boat “debuted.

1988- The GodFather of Soul Music James Brown got a little crazy sometimes. This day he burst into his office complex in Georgia waving a pistol and shotgun and demanded everyone stop using his washroom! After locking the bathrooms he led police on high speed chase through Georgia and South Carolina, only stopping when the cops shot out his tires. He rode the rims till they collapsed. James Brown did 2 years for being under the influence of drugs. Hay!

Happy Autumn Equinox! It rained in LA for the first time since April. How refreshing! Usually when we see the colors of orange and yellow in LA, it doesn't mean leaves but brush fires.

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Birthdays: Euripides-484BC, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Mickey Rooney, Julio Inglesias, Bruce Springsteen, Walter Pidgeon, Louise Nevelson, Jason Alexander, Mary Kay Place, Harry Connick Jr

courtesy of the Scotsman.
1779- "I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT !" Captain John Paul Jones on the U.S.S. BonHomme Richard defeated the larger British H.M.S. Serapis in an epic sea duel off Cape Falmouth, England. The two ships grappled each other side by side, pounded away with heavy cannon and fought hand-to-hand. The ships were so close that men could jump through the gun portals from one ship to another. At one point Bonhomme Richard was burning from stem to stern, sinking and all her guns out of action. But John Paul Jones refused to give up. The American crew thought their pint-sized Scots captain had lost his reason. When gunnery Ensign Grubb tried to haul down the Stars & Stripes, Jones knocked him down with a pistol butt. English Captain Pearson overheard Jones arguing with his officers about surrender, and called aloud "Do you strike your colors, sir?" That’s when John Paul Jones shouted his famous retort: "I have not yet begun to fight!"
To make matters worse the other American ship in the area the USS Alliance was manned by a jealous captain named Launnay. He ordered a broadside fired into the Bonhomme Richard! Launnay hoped that by helping the Englishman kill Jones he could then finish off the Briton and take all the credit for the victory. Jones personally ran over to a ten pounder cannon whose crew had been killed, loaded it and fired it himself, bringing down the Serapis’ mainmast.
Finally it was English Captain Pearson who gave up. The Bon Homme was so shot to pieces it sank, so the victors had to ride home on the Serapis. The point of the battle for Jones was trying to raid a British merchant convoy, and the convoy got away, but the symbolic victory to Americans and French was significant. John Paul Jones became a legend on the English Channel. In 2002 the wreck of the Bonhomme Richard was discovered 7 miles off the English coast and is being explored.

1780-"TREASON MOST FOUL !" General Benedict Arnold, fed up with being ignored for promotion by the American high command, planned to change sides by betraying West Point to the British. This was the huge American fortress that would give Britain control of the Hudson River and so split the rebellious colonies in half. Major John Andre' of British intelligence had a meeting with Arnold and was passing back through the lines when he was apprehended by some Yankee militia. These rascals skulked between the armies robbing anyone who chanced their way but when they discovered incriminating documents in his boot they turned Andre over to the authorities. Because Andre was out of uniform he was hanged as a spy. This morning Benedict Arnold found out Andre had been arrested and the jig was up just as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Lafayette were riding over for breakfast !
Arnold escaped to the warship HMS Vulture waiting down river while his wife Peggy stalled Gen. Washington and party in the parlor. When Washington learned of Arnold's treason and freaked, Peggy feigned a fit of hysterics. Disheveled, with her baby at her breast she shrieked to the horrified Washington :"They're putting hot irons in my Head! Hot irons in my Head!!". She was put to bed and later slipped away to safety. It wasn't known until 1930 when British Army Intelligence documents were made public that loyalist Peggy Arnold was not only deep in the scheme but had been the chief inspiration of Arnold's changing sides. When Peggy died in London of old age, a locket containing the picture of Major Andre was found around her neck.. Today it is a federal crime to write the name of Benedict Arnold on any monument.

I was walking around the Mayfair neighborhood of London a few years back and happened upon the plaque marking the home of Benedict Arnold. I was curious if the British would list him as a Loyalist, or a great American Traitor. With typical British tact and restraint, the blue plaque read MR. WILLIAM BENEDICT ARNOLD, USA MAJOR GENERAL, RETIRED, 1763-1819, RESIDED HERE.

1846- The planet Neptune discovered by Johann Gottleib Gala.

1912- "Cohen Collects a Debt" ,Max Sennet's first film comedy featuring the Keystone Kops.

1921- The Band-Aid self adhesive bandage introduced. A scientist at Johnson &Johnson invented it for his wife who kept cutting herself in the kitchen. Supposedly the skin tone color, which doesn't seem to match anybodies skin, was her skin coloring.



1933- At a dedication ceremony Adolf Hitler broke ground for the construction of Germany’s Autobahn system- 1400 miles of modern freeway. One story says Hitler himself conceived the idea since he was a lifelong auto enthusiast. But that is untrue. German designers as early as 1913 were inventing the road features common to today’s motorists- the Blending Lane and Clover Leaf, Fast Lanes and meridian divided roads.

1939- At the World’s Fair in New York a time capsule was buried not to be opened until the year 6939. It contains a Bible, a mail order catalog and newsreels of President Franklin Roosevelt.

1962- H& B's show 'the Jetsons' premiered. It was the first ABC show to be presented in color. Jane! Stop this Crazy Thing! Jane!

1964- Marc Chagalls paintings on the ceiling of the Paris Opera House unveiled.

1969- the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" premiered. Written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill. It made fortunes for stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who later started and independent film festival called Sundance.

1984-Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells met the Disney Animation Dept. and are pitched storyboards for the film Basil of Baker Street, later called the Great Mouse Detective. Eisner dictates memos to start the television animation division. Up to now their thinking had been to dismantle the animation department and earn income from the licensees of the existing library. Roy Disney was instrumental in insisting the animation division remain.

I got this the other day from my friend Dan Lund.



DREAM ON SILLY DREAMER is now available on iTunes

Burbank, CA - Award winning documentary "Dream On
Silly Dreamer" recently made available for download
through the iTunes Music Store.

"Dream On Silly Dreamer" documents the sad, final
chapter of the now extinct hand-drawn art form that
was the cornerstone of Walt Disney Feature Animation.
Building on the rich seventy seven year history of an
American icon and paying homage to the Disney
classics, director Dan Lund and producer Tony West
tell the revealing tale of how that storied icon came
to a crashing, albeit untimely, end.

"Dream On Silly Dreamer" enjoyed it's world premiere
in January 2005 at the The Animex International
Festival of Animation & Computer Games in
Middlesbrough in the North East of England. The film
was screened at numerous film festivals throughout the
year, won several awards and earned a certificate of
merit at the prestigious Anney Awards.

The iTunes Music Store allows users to buy music,
movies, TV shows, and audiobooks, or download free
podcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Organize and
play everything on your Mac or PC. Then sync it to
your iPod or iPhone and bring it along. Anywhere.
iTunes is a free download and is available at
apple.com.

Let's hope with the success of the Simpsons Movie and Pixar's restoration of the Disney Feature crew, 2d will not be extinct from mainstream Hollywood film. But I do miss that wonderful crew in the 1990s. Like Jeffrey Katzenberg prophetically told us in 1995: 'Hey, it was Camelot."
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Birthdays: Anne of Cleves 1515- Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins, Meryl Streep, John Houseman, Joanie Jett, Erich Von Stronheim, Tom Lasorda, Paul Muni, Debbie Boone, Scott Baio, John Woo is 59

480 BC. Themistocles and the Athenian fleet of 300 faced the 1,200 warships of Xerxes the Great King of Persia in the Bay of Salamis. This night at a war council the Greek admirals voted not to try to fight such mighty host but withdraw. Themistocles finding himself outvoted was so confident in their ability to win that he took a risk that could have cost his life. He sent a spy to Xerxes to tell him the Greeks were planning to flee so he should maneuver his fleet around them and cut off any hope of retreat. Xerxes fell for it and forced the engagement. The victory of Salamis assured the Golden Age of Athens.

1761- King George III’s coronation in London. Unlike his two George forebears who clung to their German Hanoverian roots, George III spoke English without an accent. All the great men of the day were there like Pitt the Elder, Edmund Burke and Dr. Samuel Johnson. In the crowd in front of Westminister Abbey, dazzled by all the pomp and circumstance, was a young colonist from America named John Hancock. Presented at court, he received from his sovereign’s hands a silver snuffbox. Ironically this was the very same Hancock whose bold signature would one day adorn the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

1776- Nathan Hale is hanged as a spy by the British in New York. The Connecticut schoolteacher had only been a spy for nine days until he was sniffed out and exposed by Colonel Robert Rogers, the French and Indian War hero who was now a Tory Loyalist. Today the spot where he was executed is near the w44th st. entrance of the PanAm err..Sony building near the flagship store of Brooks Brothers. Hale met his death cooly, one account later by a English officer named Montrose was that his last words were a quote from Addison’s play Cato :”I regret that I have but one life to give for my country….”

1925- Lon Chaney’s horror classic film the Phantom of the Opera premiered.

1927- The Dempsey-Tunney championship fight. Tunney wins in the famous 'long count', meaning the referee delayed the count because Dempsey wouldn’t return to his neutral corner. The extra time allowed Tunney to recover his wits and continue the fight to victory. Jack Dempsey was world heavyweight champion for ten years but retired a year later.

1964-Jerome Robbins’ “The Fiddler on the Roof “ opened on Broadway. In 1953 Robbins had named names to the MacCarthy HUAC committee to save his career. Now in Fiddler he had to use blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel and Beatrice Arthur who despised him. One of Tevye’s daughters was played by Puerto Rican singer Dominica Jimenes-Johnson. She would later go on to a successful career singing opera at the Metropolitan.

1967- Farewell voyage of the Queen Mary, in service since 1936.

1975- A emotionally unstable FBI worker named Sarah Jane Moore tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in front of the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Her gun arm was deflected at the last minute by a man named Bill Sipple. In the subsequent media attention Sipple was outed as a gay man and his career was damaged as a result. “I can’t see what my sexual orientation has to do with saving the President’s life!”

1976- TV show Charlie’s Angels premiered. It made a star out of Farrah Fawcett, Victoria Principle and Kate Jackson.

1979-Hanna Barbera's Super Globetrotter's Show, featuring Multi-Man, Sphere Man, Gizmo-Man,Spaghetti-Man and Fluid-Man.

1984- Michael Eisner named CEO of the Walt Disney Corporation.

Typical Union Meeting. Comrade Ivan, I heard they are hiring board artists on Family Guy..?

For you Animation Guild 839 members in the LA area, next Tuesday is the meeting for nomination of new officers for the union. They will serve a three year term. I hear a lot of top jobs may be up for grabs. Even if you usually can't be bothered going to these, THIS is always the most important General Membership meeting you can ever attend.

This is your chance to have a direct impact on how decisions are made by the local. The people you nominate will have the power over the financial health of LA animation, which has ramifications for the rest of the country. A bad or militant board can provoke major ruptures within the business which could bring on a strike or drive work out of town. A lazy or apathetic board can let the relevancy of the union movement fall away from the newer members and could cause management to ignore your rights under our contract.

Ignoring this meeting is like lending your wallet to a stranger.

Under my presidency (1992-2001) we organized big studios like Dreamworks, brought more CGI artists into the union than any other such organization in the world, built a multi-employer 401k plan and helped create complete medical coverage for same-sex couples. Under current President Koch retraining and user groups for traditional artists to CGI accellerated, big studios like the Simpsons now enjoy union benefits, the first games companies unionized and a new 839 headquarters is being built. We are the fifth largest union in the Hollywood backstage.

I salute all of those who donate their time and energies to making the local answerable to all and force for good for all our Toon Town family.

A corporation is not a democracy. A company is not a democracy. Our union is us, artists united. We are a democracy. For all our sakes and our families, please participate.



__________________________________________________

Happy Yom Kippur

Birthdays: Louis Joliet as in the French explorers Marquette and Joliet, Gustav Holst, H.G. Wells, Stephen King,Cecil Fielder, Rob Morrow, Larry Hagman, Ricky Lake, Fanny Flagg, Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers, Leonard Cohen not one of the Coen Brothers, Faith Hill, Bill Murray of Osmosis Jones is 57, legendary animation director Chuck Jones
courtesy toon images.

1327- English King Edward II was openly gay with his courtiers Piers Gaveston and later Hugh Despencer. In the Middle Ages it was okay to be gay if you were a big tough mo-fo killer like Richard Lionheart, but Edward was a weenie who lost battles to Scottish King Robert the Bruce. So he was overthrown by his own Queen Isabella the She-Wolf of France and her lover Roger Mortimer. This day Edward was murdered while being held in Berkeley Castle. The barons shoved a red hot spear up his butt. Edwards only son Edward III later killed everyone involved except his mom and became an utterly great king.

1589- During the French Religious Wars King Henry IV defeated a large Catholic League army at Arques. He wrote a friend later:”Go hang yourself my brave Creon, we were at Arques and you weren’t!”

1793- The French Revolutionary Government throws out the calendar and makes a new one. So today was the FIRST DAY OF THE FIRST DECADE (week) OF THE FIRST MONTH OF YEAR II OF THE REPUBLIC ! If you didn't get it you were guillotined.

1846- Drygoods dealer Mr. A.J. Stewart opened a store in New York City that was so large he put the various items in their own departments, the Department Store. He also had the first large glass display windows which one writer labeled “A useless extravagance.”

1897- The famous column by Frank Church in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World first appeared with the answer to 8 year old Virginia O’Hanlon’s question : " ...and yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus..."

1915- The British archaeological treasure Stonehenge was sold at auction to a Mr Chubb, who promptly donated it to the British nation.

1917-The Gulf Between, the first film shot in Technicolor. Because the process was more expensive than other processes in 1932 inventor Herbert Kalmus made a deal with Walt Disney to make his cartoons exclusively in technicolor to advertise to other studios the bold pure color.

1920- The Kimberly Clark Company introduces Kotex ladies napkins in a hospital-blue box. Before that women had to wear something like a linen diaper that they washed and re-used.

1938- It’s very rare for a hurricane to reach up into the colder Mid-Atlantic waters of the Eastern seacoast of the US. This day the Long Island Express- A force 3 Hurricane slammed into New England killing 600. The Boston area was hit with 120 mile an hour winds and downtown Providence was flooded under 13 feet of water. Hurricanes and Typhoons didn't start to get names until the 1960s when they began to be tracked on radar and satellite.

1944- An internal FBI memo concludes "Communist infiltration of the Hollywood Guilds and unions and the only organization that could stop them was the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals" a conservative publicity group that included Louis B. Mayer, John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Walt Disney.

1945- Disney short "Hockey Homicide" the first Sport-Goofy directed by Jack Kinney. Producer Harry Tytle mentioned in his memoirs that although Walt Disney didn’t complain about their success Walt never liked these cartoons and thought Goofy too stupid a character for the public to identify with.

1948- the first Texaco Star Theater television show featuring a minor nightclub comedian named Milton Berle. Berle’s antics make him a major star and with Arthur Godfrey’s show help grow television from a scientific curiosity to the entertainment every household had to have. For ten years the U.S. public never missed Uncle Miltie on t.v.

1950- General MacArthur’s UN Army fought their way into North Korean occupied Seoul. On a hilltop the First Marines Div raised a US flag on a loose drainpipe found near a local school. This caused one regular Army commander to complain: “Ever since Iwo Jima the Marines never pass up an opportunity to be photographed raising a flag over something!”

1954- The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine, was launched in Groton Conn. The submarines in the Finding Nemo ride at Disneyland were originally painted to look like the USN nuclear ships Nautilus, Wasp and one other I can't recall.

1957- The Perry Mason tv show with Raymond Burr premiered.

1970-first ABC Monday Night Football - Cleveland Browns defeated the NY Jets led by Broadway Joe Namath, 24-21. Announcers- Keith Jackson, Howard Cosell and retired Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dandy Don Meredith. In 2006 the show moved to ESPN.

1985- “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straights hit #1 in the Billboard charts. Writer Mark Knopfler was inspired by a workman in an electronics store making fun of celebrities on MTV and wrote his discussion down.

Recently my Car Talk colleague Helen Jen has been experiencing the joys of the Los Angeles Municipal Bus System. She has resorted to this deperate act since her car is getting repaired. She listened to me waxing rhapsodically about my time riding the busses when I first hit town thrity years ago. So she created a funny entry on her blog today.

http://helenjenart.blogspot.com/2007/09/conversation-about-la-bus-system.html
The older man I'm talking to in the 1977 image is Don Duckwall, during my first job interview at Disney. Yes, that was really his name. I recall after being rejected thinking to myself " %$#! If you had been born with the name Popeye, you wouldn't have a job!" Back then, the joke among us young shavetails was Step 1-Fly to LA. Step 2-Apply at Disney for a job. Step 3- Get rejected. Step 4- Then get jet lag. I think I was in that office within 24 hours of landing.
And I took the RTD # 86 bus from Studio City to Burbank.



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Birthdays: Alexander the Great -356 BC, Upton Sinclair, Jelly Roll Morton, Red Auerbach, Guy Lafluer, Fernando Rey, Ann Meara, Rachel Roberts, Jonathan Hardy,Fran Drescher, Sophia Loren is 73

356BC- The Great Temple of Artemis of Ephesus was destroyed by fire. It was said to be the work of a lunatic arsonist from Hailicarnassus. The temple had been built as a gift to the goddess by Croesus the Lydian who was so had so much wealth the phrase “To be as rich as Croesus “ is still in use today. Why had the Goddess Artemis would allow her house to be consumed so cruelly? The priests explained that she was probably too busy overseeing the birth of Alexander the Great in Macedon to keep a watch on her house. The Ephesians rebuilt the huge temple and 400 year later Saint Paul was thrown out of it for preaching his weird new religion. The cult statue of Artemis or Diana had dozens of breasts, which some describe as maybe bull testicles. They are symbols of fertility.

1670- English poet John Milton published his last works “Paradise Regained” and “Samson Agonistes”. He was blind but dictated to a secretary who wrote down his poems. When he felt the inspiration he would call him by saying:” Come. I need to be milked.”

1803- Irish patriot Robert Emmett executed for leading an abortive uprising against the British. His final words became famous: “ Let no man write my epitaph. When my country takes her place among the nations of the Earth, then, and not till then, Let my epitaph be written.”

1814- A new poem by Georgetown lawyer Francis Scott Key was first published in the Baltimore Patriot. First called the Defense of Fort McHenry. Keys brother in law Judge Nicholson suggested it sounded good sung to the tune To Anacreon in Heaven’. Soon everyone was singing it as the Star Spangled Banner.

1839- The steamer British Queen first brought news of the invention of Photography and the Daguerreotype process to the U.S.. Soon everyone is happily snapping away.

1853- Elisha Otis revolutionized office building construction by demonstrating his elevator that didn’t fall when the cable was cut.

1944- Now that the Pacific War was winding down martial law was lifted on the Hawaiian Islands. It had been imposed since Pearl Harbor. One tragic result for the servicemen was that the first thing the restored chief of Honolulu police did was shut down the brothels of Waikiki. The area known as Hotel Street was ringed with houses of ill repute servicing servicemen for the duration. One sailor reminisced: I got stewed, screwed and tatooed, all in one night.” The quarters most famous hooker, Jean O’Hara said: “ I think I slept with the entire US Navy.”

1952- CBS premiered the Jackie Gleason Show- The Honeymooners".

1955- The Phil Silvers Show, originally entitled You’ll Never Get Rich” debuted on CBS. His character Sgt. Bilko was later the inspiration for the Hanna Berbera Show Top Cat.

1973- Musician Jim Croce (30) died in a charter plane crash near Natchitoches Louisiana.

1984- The Cosby Show premiered.